Steele responds to the Horowitz Report, and Horowitz comes off the worst for it
Christopher Steele has responded to the Horowitz Report through his Washington DC lawyers (letter dated Dec 10). 1/17 tinyurl.com/vgkswym
The 5-page letter is not a full response to the aspersions against Steele contained in the Horowitz Report (for reasons given in the letter it couldn’t possibly do that), but it does correct and criticize the Report on a number of important points. 2/17
1/ The Horowitz Report (HR) says that the FBI and Christopher Steele never came to a “shared understanding on the terms of their relationships.” 3/17
This is a misrepresentation of the facts.
The FBI had its own internal reasons for describing its relationship with Steele — with Orbis, actually — in the way it did, but the FBI’s description is not just an alternative understanding, it is untenable. (Proven in the letter.) 4/17
2/ Steele was never a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI with respect to any matter. (The letter proves it.) 5/17
3/ The FBI never asked Steele not to disclose information to the media. (The letter proves it.) 6/17
4/ Refutes the suggestion that none of Steele’s reporting on Carter Page has been corroborated.7/17
The letter: Page has himself largely acknowledged the accuracy of information in Orbis’s reporting about him (citing the Mueller Report and Page’s testimony before HPSCI). 8/17
5/ Steele/Orbis never reported that there were links between the Alfa Bank server and Trump Tower. The letter: “Even a minimal investigation by the FBI….” 9/17
6/ The most important rebuttal, however, is directed at what the HR says about the Primary Sub-Source (PS-S).
(The discussion about the PS-S in pp.186–193 of the HR, it turns out, was the very material that the OIG unredacted within hours of the report’s release.) 10/17
Here is what Orbis/Steele have to say about this: 11/17
The letter continues: “The ‘Primary Sub-Source’s’ debriefings were meticulously documented and recorded.” 12/17
In other words, if Horowitz had simply given Steele an opportunity to respond to the unredacted material before it was released, documentation from Orbis’s files would have led to a fuller account of what the PS-S told Steele. 13/17
The more complete picture that Steele could have provided wouldn’t necessarily have impugned the PS-S either, as I argued on the day of the Report’s release. (Steele himself says it would have put the matter “in a different light.”) 14/17
In that posting, I pointed to evidence within the report (quoting particularly a statement by the Supervisory Intel Analyst) that the Report probably failed to give an accurate picture of the communications between Steele and the PS-S. 15/17
Even if (unlike me) you don’t believe that the documentation in Orbis’s files would exonerate Steele, it cannot be denied that Horowitz is grievously at fault here. 16/17
Horowitz wanted (and claimed to have examined) all the relevant available evidence in his probe, but on this very important matter, he didn’t get all of it, and that was his fault. 17/17
