That's very interesting--especially this item on Christopher Steele: "It emerged yesterday that he was the MI6 case officer assigned to Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB agent murdered in London with a radioactive substance." I had been wondering where MI6 and the British government fit into things even before seeing this, so now I'm really curious. During Plamegate, the forces collaborating to smear Bush included rogue elements from Italian, French, British, and American intelligence, as well as former and current U.S. intelligence officers stationed abroad in those countries and others. With the current Trump dossier, we have Steele shopping it to the FBI in Rome, to the BBC in the UK (
"Our correspondent said he had been shown the memos about Mr Trump in October last year, when he was told Mr Steele was "in fear of his life", having spoken out about potential Russian involvement in Mr Trump's election.":
Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele in hiding after Trump dossier), and to
Mother Jones and CNN in the United States (and who knows who else). I agree with the Russians' premise that we should assume Steele still has some connection to MI6. I wouldn't assume he's acting officially on behalf of the British government without some evidence, though--more inclined to see anti-Brexit elements working with Obama and Clinton's people here on this.
I also see from that link that I'm not the only one reminded of Nigergate: Patrick Cockburn: Dodgy dossier is reminiscent of Saddam's supposed WMDs.