OPINION:
One lesson from the FBI’s drive to dethrone President Trump is that agents, like journalists, are only as good as their sources.
The FBI has handled and paid handsomely thousands of confidential human sources over the years under strict guidelines that demand agents validate the sources’ credentials and instruct them on the need to provide accurate information.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, in the instance of Crossfire Hurricane from 2016 to 2019, the FBI’s trio of top confidential human sources were comically wrong, sending the bureau down a dark path that will forever stain its reputation.
Today, the Justice Department is reviewing how the FBI bungled such an important job as investigating the president of the United States and his advisers. FBI Director Kash Patel said in May that his team had discovered more hidden Crossfire files and urged the public to stay tuned.
With Crossfire Hurricane opened July 31, 2016, the FBI’s working assumption was that candidate Trump was up to his ears in Russian co-conspirators who were helping him defeat Hillary Clinton. Agents were so confident that they opened Crossfire without first interviewing any witness or subject.
Weeks later, FBI Director James B. Comey latched onto a Democratic Party-financed dossier that told wild tales of a Russia-Trump election conspiracy. Mr. Comey walked it to key power centers, even to President-elect Trump.
Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official, wrote the 35-page dossier that election year, financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. Mr. Steele’s handler was Fusion GPS, a secretive group of Wall Street Journal alumni.
Mr. Steele had been a confidential human source for the FBI since 2013. After finishing the first dossier chapter in July 2016, Mr. Steele contacted his FBI handler, summoned him to London and handed him the Russia allegations against Mr. Trump. The FBI’s sordid dossier history was underway.
As an FBI confidential human source, Mr. Steele gets an F. The problem with his work product dossier is that it was not true. According to special counsel John Durham’s 2023 report, the FBI did not confirm any substantive felony allegations after three years of trying.
Crossfire Hurricane leader Peter Strzok opened a counterintelligence case on four Trump associates. The Justice Department would approve only one wiretap — on campaign volunteer Carter Page — based on the hoax dossier.
This brings us to the second pivotal confidential human source: Stefan Halper, a longtime FBI source and Washington foreign policy figure. He happened to meet Mr. Page that July at a conference in Europe and told the FBI he could use the meeting to surreptitiously question him.
His FBI handler agreed. Mr. Halper secretly recorded four conversations. Mr. Page offered nothing but his own exoneration. The FBI misled federal judges by not including Page denials in wiretap affidavits.
In fact, Mr. Page expressly denied to Mr. Halper ever knowing Igor Sechin. The dossier claimed he met with the Russian energy tycoon, who supposedly offered him a huge bribe.
Later, Mr. Halper told the FBI that he now remembered Mr. Page did, in fact, acknowledge a Sechin meeting. However, no such admission was on any of the four recordings, the Durham report said. Shockingly, the FBI never went back and reviewed them.
Mr. Halper’s “misstatement of an important fact was significant,” said the Durham report, calling it a “misrepresentation to Crossfire Hurricane investigators of [Mr. Halper’s] conversation with Page regarding Page’s alleged meeting with Sechin.”
Mr. Halper struck again to fuel the liberal media Trump-Russia hysteria. This time his target was another Trump associate, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.
In 2014, Mr. Flynn, then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the featured dinner speaker at the University of Cambridge in England. One attendee was Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born Cambridge scholar on Kremlin intelligence.
With Crossfire opened two years later, the dinner became a pivotal moment in the Trump-Russia tale to Mr. Harper. He claimed to the FBI that Ms. Lokhova had left the function with Mr. Flynn and had gotten into his cab for the trip to a London-bound train.
His story leaked to the press, which had a field day. Of course, it was another Russia hoax.
For one, Ms. Lokhova denied accompanying the general. She said Mr. Halper, a Cambridge professor then, didn’t even attend the dinner.
After Mr. Halper’s allegation surfaced, the FBI made direct inquiries to British authorities. After receiving no confirmation, Mr. Strzok “noted that … the FBI continued to be unaware of any information, other than that provided by Christopher Steele in his dossier reports, alleging contacts between Trump associates and senior Russian intelligence officials,” Mr. Durham said.
The third member of the confidential human source trio was Russian Igor Danchenko, the Steele dossier’s main source. Mr. Danchenko, a onetime Brookings Institution researcher, told the FBI in January and March 2017 that he confirmed “zero” claims. The information he gave Mr. Steele was gossip picked up in Moscow over drinks.
How did the FBI react after spilling the dossier all over town? It rewarded Mr. Danchenko with confidential human source status and orders to return and prove the dossier. The bureau paid him “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the Durham report said. For all the money and time, Mr. Danchenko failed to confirm any allegation.
The FBI paid Mr. Halper more than $1 million during a three-decade partnership ending in 2017.
The FBI offered Mr. Steele $1 million to confirm his dossier, but he could not.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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