Chris Steele is a former MI6 and FBI asset who compiled a dossier of unsubstantiated allegations about President-elect Donald Trump. The current Director at the private security and investigation firm Orbis Business Intelligence, is a curious player in the sensational efforts of Trump adversaries. Here is what I discovered about the former British intelligence officer.
For Donald Trump’s part, his press conference this week revealed his righteous indignation at just how far his opponents will go to smear his coming administration.
Shunning Buzzfeed and ostracizing CNN for their irresponsible broadcasting of the “dossier”, Mr. Trump was crystal clear in pointing the finger at crooked media and the people behind. The incoming president was also clear in identifying his adversaries, a fact that has been corroborated.
The Steele dossier was contracted by both Republican and Democratic adversaries of Mr. Trump. Senator John McCain, the notoriously hawkish Arizona arms industry puppet, admitted he turned over the dossier to the FBI. While McCain’s involvement is shocking enough, I believe other familiar faces funded the extended smear campaign. The Guardian has done some of the homework in tracking down how this dossier came into being, but this “Steele” character is still a bit of an enigma.
Chris Steele has only this week come into the limelight, but Mother Jones had actually reported on some of his activities back in October of 2016. By using The Guardian story, and what can be gleaned from the Mother Jones report, profiling Mr. Trump’s new nemesis is actually not so difficult. Steel’s LinkedIn profile and connections are telling. Steele has received some interesting endorsements on LinkedIn.
First, Jonathan Winer, who’s a Special Envoy at US Department of State, acknowledged the former MI6 agent on his international relations skills, it is key to note that Winer is not only the special envoy for Libya, but he was previously a senior director at Margery Kraus’ APCO Worldwide, a former Assistant Secretary of State, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s legislative assistant. Are your eyebrows raised?
Paul Andrews, who’s director of Ultrax Consulting Limited also recommended Steele. Of further interest is the fact Andrews was a member of Her Majesty’s Foreign Commonwealth Office for 15 years. Maybe a direct quote from Andrews’ security agency will shed more light:
ULTRAX has, both directly and indirectly, been a leading provider of training services to Her Majesty’s Government and is one of a small number of private companies to have been entrusted with providing consultancy services and training to Ministry of Defence and Government Agencies with a National Security agenda.
Clovis Meath Baker CMG OBE is a senior adviser to the UK Government’s so-called Stabilisation Unit. He recommended Steele for his “counterterrorism” capacity. As an interesting note here, Baker is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is the world’s oldest independent think tank on international defense and security.
Chris Burrows, Steele’s fellow director at Orbis, he’s in the same circles as the Trump dossier author, but with a wider reach within the LinkedIn community. Burrows was the First Secretary of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office for 9 years, and is perhaps tied in part to the Moscow element of this story. His recommendations include one from Fedor Zhavoronkov, who is the most intriguing figure in this loop of spooks I found so far. Zhavoronkov was a key security account manager for the famous Grant Vympel agency in Russia formed from the famous special operations Group “Vympel, which took part in storming the Russian “White House” in support of then President Boris Yeltsin. I mention this only because the 2nd October Revolution only narrowly failed with the reluctant help of elements of the Russian military. Of dissenters in Russia, there are still many.
Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge takes the same track I did in framing the connections of Christopher Steele, but he goes further in assessing the credibility of the so-called “Trump dossier”. Durden quotes one Andrew Wordsworth, co-founder of London-based investigations firm Raedas, who often works on Russian issues, who called the dossier “unconvincing” at best. What is most “convincing” for me is the fact Chris Steele was involved with Alexander Litvinenko, the man whose death the British leadership tried to pin on Vladmir Putin. According to today’s reports, Steele has now fled his multimillion pound sterling home fearing his own life. You read this correctly, the web of “Putin probably did it” macabre is growing huge.
The murdered Russian double agent Alexander Litvinenko, Ukraine revolution cheerleader and warmonger Senator John McCain, MI6 spooks out the ying yang, Fake News going rampant, the US intelligence community melting down, and Donald Trump accused of more infidelity than Putin himself – what else can we expect in the next few days? McCain visits the scene of his war crimes, then flies home to turn over make-believe dossiers on a new president? Oh well, just read this Daily Mail piece and find a copy of Alice in Wonderland, then come back and tell me which crazy world we live in.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
