Damage Control: Clapper meets Trump to express 'dismay' over Trump Dossier

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 13:14 UTC

© Asssociated Press

James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence.

Clapper meets Trump in attempt to repair relations with US intelligence community after publication of 'Trump Dossier' as alleged British author goes into hiding.

Following the eruption of accusations against the US intelligence community at Donald Trump's press conference on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has met with him to try to limit the damage, and in order assure Trump of his "dismay" that the Trump Dossier was leaked and that the US intelligence community was not responsible for it.

Donald Trump is likely to be less than fully convinced of Clapper's assurances for the reasons I discussed previously. Nonetheless it is likely that an attempt will be made to draw a line under the affair in order to re-establish some sort of working relationship between Trump and the US intelligence community.

In further news concerning the Trump Dossier, its supposed author - a former British intelligence officer called Christopher Steele - is said to have fled his home with his family, supposedly fearing for his life. There are some reports that he is hiding in a British intelligence 'safe house'.

Whilst it is indeed possible that Steele really is afraid of Russian vengeance, his fears are in that case grossly overstated. Russian intelligence is most unlikely to be interested in him if only because they know the contents of the Trump Dossier are made up and untrue.

What Steele's disappearance does is take him out of circulation so that he can avoid public questioning about the Trump Dossier, though if he is really hiding in a 'safe house' it is a certainty that British intelligence are questioning him intensively about it. I would add that for the British government, which has in recent days been trying to forge contacts with Trump and his team - even to the point of sending over British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to talk to them - publication of the Trump Dossier has come a major embarrassment.

Lastly, claims that are appearing in the Internet that one specific notorious claim in the Trump Dossier - that Trump had a sex orgy with prostitutes in the Presidential suite of Moscow's Ritz Carlton Hotel - was invented on a public message board as a prank, are almost certainly untrue. The timetable of the Dossier makes that all but impossible. What these stories may show is how widely the contents of the Dossier were circulating in the months before it was published. They do not prove that this particular story was fabricated as a prank.

Comment: Bloomberg reports more details on the on-going conversation between Clapper and Trump:

"I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security," Clapper said.

Trump rejected the reports as false, and said Clapper did as well during their phone call.

"James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated," Trump said in a Twitter post Thursday. "Made up, phony facts. Too bad!"

During a press conference on Wednesday, Trump accused intelligence agencies of leaking the report, likening them to Nazi Germany.

"I think it was disgraceful -- disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out," Trump said. "I think it's a disgrace, and I say that -- and I say that, and that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do."

Clapper said the pair discussed the document and that he emphasized it didn't originate in the U.S. intelligence community. He also said he didn't believe the leak of the dossier, published Tuesday by BuzzFeed, came from U.S. intelligence sources, and that the administration didn't rely upon it when reaching its conclusions about Russian culpability for the hack and release of Democratic e-mails.

Clapper did indicate that he had briefed policy makers on its existence, however, saying he was obligated to ensure they "are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security." But, Clapper said, the intelligence community hadn't made any judgment on whether the claims within the document were reliable.

The very fact that this report was so laughably amateurish suggests that it was not supposed to see the light of day any time soon. The leak, the media fallout, and Trump's reaction have got the intelligence community running circles again. If this was a 'secret weapon' of theirs to use post-inauguration they've got a royal mess on their hands.