“The notion of fully embedded government operatives inside a campaign is hard to imagine under these circumstances,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former head of FBI counterintelligence and an NBC News national security analyst. “What is easier to imagine is the FBI trying to flesh out information on Russian intelligence operatives by making approaches to campaign staffers if the reasonable suspicion was there and the approvals were in place.”
This is what Stefan Halper was trying to do with Carter Page when Halper approached Page at a conference in the UK. Halper, in this role, would have been an “informant” rather than an embedded “spy,” a technical distinction that has no practical importance in this context.
^ What “Halper was *allegedly* trying to do ...”
I have to be careful to use weasel words here or the Deep State may come knocking at my IP address.
“The notion of fully embedded government operatives inside a campaign is hard to imagine under these circumstances,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former head of FBI counterintelligence and an NBC News national security analyst. “What is easier to imagine is the FBI trying to flesh out information on Russian intelligence operatives by making approaches to campaign staffers if the reasonable suspicion was there and the approvals were in place.”
A distinction without a difference
As TheDCNF reported exclusively in March, Halper and George Papadopoulos met several times over a period of a few days in Sept. 2016. Several days earlier, Halper contacted and met with a third Trump campaign official. That official, who has requested anonymity, told TheDCNF that Halper expressed interest in helping the campaign.
Maybe Bannon was the anonymous official who turned him down? Manafort was gone by then.