Christo's blog

When Buzzfeed.com leaked ex-MI6 spook’s Trump Dossier last this past Wednesday, most critical thinkers’ initial reaction was wide-eyed skepticism. The combination of alphabetized sources, the improbable breadth of alleged access to top-secret information, and over-explicit details from the (not as improbable – more on this in a future post) alleged fetishes of a President-Elect, beggared belief.  Serious analysts like Mark Galeotti who cannot be accused of sympathy for Trump or Putin, challenged the dossier’s plausibility, arguing that the cited anonymous sources had suspiciously wide a network with access to diverse state secretes – and on top of that, were willing to share them via remote communication with a UK based handler.

My initial reaction was similarly dismissive. However, after playing devil’s advocate – and testing certain assumptions about how the dossier may have been compiled – I have shifted my position. We now know conclusively (against his will) that the report was written by an industry-respected former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Is it probable that Steele would have invented, purposely conflated, or embellished details in the report in order to please his client – or to substantiate his own Russophobic precepts? (the theory has been posited in the UK press that he may have been emotionally blinded by his own experience in handling Litvinenko’s case on behalf of MI6).

I strongly doubt the embellishment theory. Steele’s only gainful asset of late has been his reputation, both among private clients but also – crucially – among state actors who have used him to investigate transnational corruption cases such as the FIFA scandal. There is no plausible hypothesis in which Steele would knowingly embellish his report and then proceed to not only furnish it to his private clients (who, one could argue, might be gullible enough to accept Ludlumesque fiction as fact), but also to the FBI and CIA – who he would know would never trust him again if he once served them red herrings.

Therefore, I believe  Steele provided a bona-fide report of what he thought was the objective truth at the time of writing, and (importantly) in doing so, drew on actual sources, alphabetized or not, that he trusted. He did communicate with his sources, via proxies as described, and yes, such communication would have had to be remote, most likely via tradecraft-standard apps such as Signal (which at least a year ago intelligence operatives were swearing by). Whether or not what his sources fed him was truthful, is a different matter.

Now let’s move to the main substantive criticism of the dossier: the plausibility of existence of sources with such broad scope of access to Kremlin insiders – including to head of Rosneft and former PM Igor Sechin, presidential adviser Sergei Ivanov, Foreign Ministry officials, and even to Putin himself.

Indeed, such ubiquitous access to sources is extremely hard to acquire, especially for a non-state actor such as Christopher Steele. But impossible it is not.

A complex power-wielding apparatus such as the Kremlin cannot function without an extensive human support system.  While decision-making is highly centralized, information dissipation is inevitable, often as result of the eventual complacency that any successful authoritarian system promotes among its insiders. (let’s just remember the several mail hacks of senior Kremlin aparatchiks over the last 3 years – with one exception the “hacks” were not the result of foreign signit or cyberattacks, but of rather primitive humint – literally of passwords being visually pilfered as they were typed-in by self-assured Kremlin staff working at their macs in trendy cafes near the Kremlin.

But more importantly: namely because of the  concentration of the most sensitive information at the top of the power pyramid, any potential source in the vicinity of the top  would have access to not one, but to a variety of information vectors, that all lead to the very peak.

One such hypothetical source, who would have been well-placed at the crossroads of several of the information vectors drawn upon in Steele’s dossier, died in unusual circumstances on December 26 2016: a point in time when the dossier had been so broadly diffused in DC, London and Rome, that we may assume with near-absolute certainty it had landed on Putin’s desk.

On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele reports for the first time of  having a source close to  Rosneft President Sechin:

“A source close to Rosneft President, Putin close associate and US-sanctioned Igor SECHIN, confided details of a recent secret meeting between him and visiting Foreign Affairs Adviser to Donald TRUMP, Carter PAGE. According to Sechin’s associate, the Rosneft CEO had raised with PAGE issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for associated move to liet Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia. PAGE had reacted positively to this demarche by SECHIN but had been generally non-committal in response”

Three months later, in October 2016 Steele followed up with his alleged source to provide more details from the July 2016 meeting with Carter – arguably from the same source close to Sechin. In this more detailed section, it becomes clear that the original source – “a close associate of Sechin” – is confiding details to “a trusted compatriot”, and not directly to Steele. Here is the relevant section from the October 19 report:

The content of the alleged discussion between Page and Sechin is explosive. Thus, calling the conduit of this information “a close associate” is an understatement. If indeed authentic, this source must have been unusually close to Sechin; trusted sufficiently to be made part of this most corrupt of geopolitical bargaining. To put it bluntly: it doesn’t get more “top secret” than this. It is safe to say that the source we should be looking for is not a PA or a chauffeur.

Sudden Death Syndrome

At 14:23 Moscow time, one of Russia’s most subservient news outlet with a  first-at-the crime-scene reputation –  Life.ru, ran the sensationalist headline:  “Sechin’s Chief of Staff Killed in Downtown Moscow”.  I caught a glimpse of this headline in real-time, as I have a browser alert for breaking news from Life.ru. I remember being particularly startled by the headline, as only a week earlier, a Russian mid-level diplomat had been found shot in the head, with two bullets, in his Moscow apartment.  The working hypothesis of the investigation was reported to be “accidental homicide or suicide”. Did I mention the two bullets?

I read quickly through the new story. The gentleman in question, Gen. Oleg Erovinkin, had been found dead, by his driver, in the back seat of his corporate Lexus which had been parked in a downtown alley in Moscow’s China Town district. Erovinkin, 61, was a KGB/FSB general, who had been head of the Department for Protection of State Secrets at the Kremlin under Yeltsin, and later under the early Putin. In 2008,  Putin (then a fresh Prime Minister) appointed him Chief of Staff of his deputy PM Igor Sechin. When Sechin was promoted to President of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in 2012, Erovinkin followed him into the ominous-sounding, if fuzzily-defined position of “Chief of Special Supervision of the President’s Apparatus.”  Insiders have described Erovinkin to me alternately  as “Sechin’s treasurer” and “the go-between between Putin and Sechin”.  One thing that everyone seems to agree – both in public and private sources – is that Erovinkin was Sechin’s closest associate.

The initial Life.ru story reported that FSB investigators were at the scene and working on determining the cause of death, and that doctors on site had only confirmed that Erovinkin was indeed dead.

By the time I had tweeted my observation that this murder would be the first time that a FSB General had been violently killed in Russia, Life.ru had already changed the headline of the story.  It was now “The Chief of Staff of Rosneft’s President found dead in Moscow“. However, certain news aggregators managed to copy the story with the original headline. (Life.ru also appear to have neglected to delete a reader’s comment referencing the change of headline; the fact that the story headline in Russian media was altered was also noticed by this Ukrainian newspaper) .  The original story was also completely deleted from the popular Kremlin-funded news-tracker, Mediametrics.ru (Mediametrics has a history of removing stories deemed inconvenient to the regime.)

Subsequent coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Life.ru and other Russian media provided contradictory narratives of what exactly took place. It was universally reported that due to Erovinkin’s high position in a strategic state corporation, and his former government function, the investigation will be handled solely by FSB, including FSB forensic pathologists.

However, while some media reported that Erovinkin had been found dead in the back seat, others reported that he has been in the driver’s seat, and had managed to park the car after his heart failed. Yet other news sites reported he “caused a minor traffic accident after his death“.   There were reports that Erovinkin may  been “en route to or from the Kremlin where he had been delivering highly confidential documents”

Later in the day Life.ru published a follow-up story with the misleading headline “Rosneft Links Erovinkin’s Death With His Heart Problems”.  The actual text of the story contained a quote from Rosneft’s press officer who said “I spoke with him the other day…he felt perfectly okay“…and adds the speculative comment, “Heart [issues] are the typical problem for men this age“.

(Life.ru is known to take direct content instructions from the Kremlin and the FSB, as became clear thanks to a series of email leaks in 2015 and 2016, including hacked phone and email messages of the Life’ owner Arman Gabrelyan.)

Since the initial flurry of contradictory media reports on December 26th , there has been zero coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Russian media. Needless to say, FSB has not pronounced a cause of death, and is unlikely to ever do.

Was Erovinkin a Steele Source?

Steele’s source for the alleged Carter Page/Sechin convo must have fulfilled three mandatory criteria:

1.  s/he must have been credible enough TO STEELE for him to risk including this bombshell – knowing it would result in heavy doses of skepticism, potentially detrimental to his reputation.
2.  s/he must have been trusted enough by Sechin to be able receive access to this uniquely sensitive information.
3. assuming a “strictly-need-to-know” principle, such information must have inevitable had to be shared with him/her, due to his/her function.

It seems safe to conclude that Erovinkin fulfills, probably uniquely, all three conditions. His career heritage alone (as Chief of Kremlin’s innermost secrets between 1994 and 2008) makes him a source of unparalleled reliability – if you can get him. That takes care of (1). (2) is self-evident.

In relation to (3) – the alleged, highly sophisticated equity-for-no-sanctions scheme, would require sophisticated planning, structuring and implementation in utmost secrecy. It would be unthinkable that Sechin might do any of this without the aid of his most trusted treasurer.

Thus, IF Steele’s direct source was truthful, it is extremely highly likely that the ultimate source had been Erovinkin.

Does the sudden death add credibility to the dossier?

As someone scolded me on Twitter following my original December 26 insinuating tweet, “But people die every day!“. Indeed, even FSB Generals must die one day.  It might be also plausible that ostensibly healthy, 61 year old FSB Generals die while driving a car but not before they heroically park it out of harms way. Or are found dead in the back seat by their driver, who is a plain clothes Ministry of Interior officer. (but rarely both together)

It might also happen that an FSB General dies, and the death is first honestly misreported as a murder, and then quietly re-reported as a heart failure by a media outlet with a long history of reporting-as-requested.  Put all of these in a mix, though, and it becomes statistically hairy.

As I wrote earlier, I have no doubt that at the time Erovinkin died, Putin had Steele’s Trump dossier on his desk.  He would – arguably – have known whether the alleged Carter Page/Sechin story is based on fact or fiction. Whichever is true, he would have had a motive to seek  – and find the mole (or, in the “non-true” hypothesis, the slanderer). For reasons similar to the reasons for which I wrote this, he would have had to conclude that Erovinkin was at least a person of interest.

What is not known is what happened next. It might have been nothing, in case Putin had evidence of a different mole, one unknown to us. Alternatively, he may have confronted Sechin and Erovinkin and asked for explanations (this alone may, in a kind-of-benign scenario, have brought about Erovinkin’s actual heart attack). Or it could have been more orthodoxally true to the spirit House of Cards.

[To be continued…

In the next part: Who in fact paid for and who acquired the 19% in Rosneft; who the direct source may have been; and why “germophobe defense” has holes]

Last October I wrote an analysis of the Dutch Safety Board’s report for a think-tank. As it was not published in open access then, I thought I would now publish a portion of it headlined “Gaps between the lines.”

Given the US’s recent statement that their own data confirms DSB’s findings relating to the origin of the BUK’s trajectory, I thought this section may be of interest (some parts are obviously outdated).

***

DSB Report: Gaps Between the Lines

Several elements in the DSB report suggest that the Dutch investigators, and their international partner services, may know more about the specifics of the missile launch circumstances than is disclosed in the report. One such element is the reference to classified information that was provided to the DSB team to inspect but without permission to cite it. Such information, the report said, was provided by the Dutch military intelligence and general intelligence services, and included information gathered by these two agencies and information from partner security services. This information “confirmed the report’s findings about the causes of the crash”, but due to national security considerations, could not be included in the report.

From a sub-report on the knowledge of the Dutch security services, included in a different section of the report, however, it becomes evident that the Dutch services had no substantial classified information or data-gathering operations in the area of the crash. Thus it is most likely that the information referenced was provided by foreign services. The only realistic source is the United States satellite surveillance operation in the area. The United States have not kept it secret that they have access to proprietary satellite surveillance in the area, as evidenced by a series of released satellite imagery purporting to show Russian GRAD rocket launches into Ukraine[1]. Russia has also tactically accused the US is not disclosing satellite data on the MH17 (although it has effectively not disclosed its satellite data, either).

In all likelihood, it was namely US satellite imagery that was presented to the DSB management, and gave them sufficient comfort to proceed with the definitive conclusion about the missile type and launch location. Shortly after July 17^th 2014, the US Embassy in Kiev released a stylized image of a trajectory of the suspected BUK, originating from the area of Snizhne, precisely within the polygon later modelled by DSB.

The question arises why the US – and its allies – are withholding such vital data they are in possession of. There are three plausible hypothesis.

First, the data may in fact have already been submitted to the JIT, but in the interest of the criminal investigation, it will not be disclosed until the completion of that line of inquiry. Indeed, withholding similar “smoking gun” data is not unusual in criminal investigations, especially in ones of such cross-border complexity and possibly involving state-sponsored actors.

A second hypothesis is that the US does not wish to release such data into the public domain, for fear of exposing its data gathering methods to its enemies. This may be linked, for example, to the potential use of LEO (low-earth orbit) reconnaissance satellites above or adjacent to Russian territory.

A third hypothesis may be that the US and its allies are tactically deferring disclosure of such incriminating data, to allow Russia one last exit from the highway to a rogue state. If Russia cooperates with the West, and concedes to partial acceptance of blame, it may be spared the full public disclosure and its political consequences. Such cooperation may be embodied by delegation of guilt to pro-Russian separatists and to certain rogue elements in the Russian military, without whose involvement the separatists could not have realistically implemented the BUK launch.  While this would not exculpate Russia in full, it would give the Kremlin a deniability legend, which is mandatory for retaining the delicate consensus of the Russian elite, and for saving face on the international stage.

The West’s interest in such hypothetical self-censorship is solid.  A substantiated disclosure of the Kremlin’s involvement in the shoot-down of a passenger plane would create unquantifiable risks for international security. On one hand, Russia will lose any incentive to moderate its expansionist, retaliatory or subversive activities outside its boundaries, which are currently still mitigated by its desire not to pay a high reputation cost.  On the other hand, such development would lead to collapse of the internal consensus of the elite within Russia, which may lead to destabilization in an unpredictable political direction.  Neither of these prospects are acceptable to the West.

A possible nod towards this scenario may lie in certain unnecessarily open-ended conclusions in the DSB report on MH17. For instance, while the polygon computed by DSB’s experts clearly points to territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists, no explicit reference to that fact is made in the text. When DSB director Tjibbe Joustra was asked if the missile launch area was controlled by separatists, he confirmed. When pressed further to confirm that, therefore, pro-Russian forces must have launched the missile, he declined to do so. When confronted by a reporter who asked “But does 2 + 2 not make a 4?,” Joustra replied: “Yes it does, but sometimes, someone else needs to make that calculation.”

A hint in the same direction is the fact that immediately after the publication of the report, Dutch prime-minister Mark Rutte requested an urgent conversation with Sergey Lavrov. Significantly, this initiative was disclosed only by the Russian side, as part of the standard Russian diplomatic plaintive narrative about the West “that tries to boss Russia around”.

We believe this third hypothesis to be the most plausible. In its scope, an additional unknown variable is whether Russia will agree to such hypothetical political trade. Obviously, whether a similar transaction is desirable for the Kremlin depends on the balance between the domestic political cost of admitting that it has mislead its population for nearly two years, and the reputation cost of disclosure of incriminating information.

What the West may overestimate, however, is the discount factor that the Kremlin places on international reputation cost. Additionally, that reputation cost may be brought down to zero by extraneous events, such as for example the Russian intervention in Syria, laden with risks for massive civilian casualties.

Thus, if Russia does accept a hypothetical deal, it will be to preserve the fragile consensus of the domestic political and business elite, rather than to preserve its international reputation.  The Russian media coverage in the wake of the DSB report was substantially more objective than the defensive, patriotic press coverage following the downing of MH17 in July 2014. While this is far from a symptom of a dramatic collapse of the consensus of the elite, it does signal a tangible threat to Putin’s regime, in case the final report contains strong incriminating evidence. What has become clear now is that the Kremlin no longer has control over the mainstream commercial media and certainly not to the extent required to limit the diffusion of objective information.

In any event, under this hypothesis, these are decisions that the Kremlin must make in the next several months, if not weeks, in order to prevent the JIT investigation from crossing the point of no return.

On August 26 1999, Russia launched  the Second Chechen War in response to a a Chechen-based Islamist group’s invasion of Dagestan. A couple of weeks later, a series of apartment bombings in Russia killed more than 300 civilians. Responsibility for the terrorist attacks was claimed by an entity no one had heard of before – and never heard of after. In an anonymous phone-call to ITAR-TASS on September 9th 1999, the “Liberation Army of Dagestan” took responsibility for the bombings, saying they were  “in response to the bombings of civilians in the villages in Chechnya and Dagestan”

Several Russian historians, and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko claimed later that the apartment buildings bombings were a false-flag operation by the FSB, in an effort to consolidate Russian public opinion behind the nascent full-scale war against secessionist Chechnya. Notably, the then, separatist, Chechen authorities said the same.

For the sake of argument, lets assume that the false-flag scenario is a secondary, unproven hypothesis. The main hypothesis – also Russia’s official version of events – is that extremist Islamist groups attempted to terrorize Russian society as retribution for Russia’s military foray into Ichkeria’s territory.

Again, for the sake of argument, let’s note that there was a third theory, promoted by US historian Prof. Peter Reddaway and Russian researcher Dmitri Glinski. They believed the actual terrorist attacks were indeed perpetrated by Wahhabists, but not without the actual prior knowledge of, if not passive assistance by, the FSB.

If we stick with the main hypothesis, we have to assume that the bombings taught Russia an unforgettable institutional lesson, and Russia’s security services learned that terrorist attacks are a foreseeable consequence of specific government policies. All the more that Russia was subjected to several more terrorist attacks in the period 2000-2003, causing the loss of another 300 or so lives. In all cases, brought about by homegrown Islamist extremists.

Indeed, as a reaction to Chechen-linked terrorism, and especially after the Beslan siege, Russia introduced all-encompassing, heavy-handed preventive controls aiming to eliminate any risks of recurring attacks. The bew 2006 Russian anti-terrorism law grants virtually unlimited, state-of-emergency powers to the FSB and police during unannounced “counter-terrorism operations” which are not subject to any parliamentary or other oversight, and grants unrestricted surveillance powers to the security forces. Entering the perimeter of a Russian airport requires going through a metal detector – before you even get to the check-in desk.

Come 2015. Russia intervenes in the Syrian civil war and attacks “ISIS positions”. The Kremlin publicly announces that one it its primary goals is to defeat ISIS’s potential to bring back its terrorist war on Russian soil – for instance, via the latent Wahhabist cells in the North Caucuses. The Kremlin publicly declares, after its first bombing raids, that it has prioritized hitting “Russian-speaking cells” among  the ISIS militants.  Meanwhile, Ramzan Kadyrov goes around arresting ISIS suspects in Chechnya, suspected of trafficking people to – or planning to emigrate and join the ISIS. Last week, he even foils a plot by ISIS-linked Wahhabists to assassinate him – and lets his would-be assassins go home, after a sermon.

It would seem logical, assuming the main hypothesis  above, that Russia would have an airtight institutional preparedness for any terrorist back-clash to its air-raids in Syria. All the more that the raids are claimed to have killed dozens, of not hundreds, of civilians, if accounts by opposition groups and international conflict-watchers are to be trusted. The latter, whether a fact or just a legend, are a typical catalyst of terrorist reactions.

Thus, the heightened terrorist-risk context for Russia should be assumed and modeled by Russia’s security services. That model does not need to need specific, explicit threats by groups known to seek exposure for their terrorist intentions.

But Russia gets even that. Four days before the crash of A-321, ISIS threatens publicly that it will avenge – on Russia and the West alike – over “the murder of Muslims in Syria and Iraq”.

With all of that in place, Russia not only does not issue a public warning to its citizens traveling abroad (the last travel warning on Russia’s foreign ministry’s website – from May – advises Russians to beware of USA’s intent to hunt down and kidnap Russians who may be under suspicion of financial crime under US law). Russia also takes no preventive measures to heighten security of civilian flights to and from risky air destinations. And that is in stark deviation from Russia’s own anti-terrorist domestic policies, let alone from best practices, such as Israel or the US, for instance.

A-321 then gets shot down, or blown up. For a few days after the incident, Russia sticks to an agnostic stand, but slowly leaks – via its controlled media – the “explosion” hypothesis. Almost as if it wants to temper its electorate to the thought of a terrorist act, while minimizing the downside to itself by the shock value. Ultimately, once the bomb theory has diffused sufficiently,  Russia officializes it, by grounding all flights to and from Egypt, and announcing an emergency plan to repatriate nearly 80,000 Russians vacationing in Egypt.

Something doesn’t fit in this sequence of events. I just don’t buy the story that Russia’s security apparatus is so careless, or callous, or incompetent. Even without for a moment considering the second hypothesis from 1999, one must ask oneself: is this not what security services anticipated, and did not mind, happening?

If so, why would they ever want this tragedy to happen?  To rally public support for a deeper, ground intervention in Syria?

Or to elicit the West’s sympathy, and to engender a context for detente, leading to potential dropping on sanctions?

Or is it even the contrary to #1 above… Russia, having realized that its intervention in Syria is in a deadlock, certainly without ground-troop support, and it needs a domestic excuse for terminating its ad-hoc assistance to Assad?

Or is it, indeed, that Russia just dropped the ball – and failed to plan?

I guess the Kremlin’s unavoidable upcoming decision on what to do in Syria: escalate, cooperate, or terminate – will give us the precise answer.

UPDATE 3/12/2015

Last night, ISIS released an execution video of what they called was a “Russian spy” among them. The person being executed appears Chechen.  The executioner addressed the camera in Russian, and claims that the person being killed was an FSB informant.

Shortly after this release, Ramzan Kadyrov released the following statement:

“This Russian is a Chechen. His head was whacked off. I have confirmation of these facts….About the fact that he worked for some agency…I don’t buy that. I think he was framed.  Chechens know him, remember him, and won’t leave him unavenged.  Whoever murdered our compatriot, should not live. We will send him to the next world on a one-way ticket”

Kadyrov thus tried to deflect ISIS’s accusation that the person was an FSB informant, however this assertion runs against his own statement from January 2015, when he said the following:

Within this terrorist organization we have a good network of agents. This allows us to track their movements. Moreover, it gives us advance information, allowing us time to send in on a one-way ticket to the next world those who would point a gun at Russia

No comment.

Yesterday, the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, the official Kremlin advisory think-tank, presented its report titled “The Fight Against Aids: Global Trends and National Security.” It includes the following notable paragraphs:

“Today we are confronted with a well-structured, extensive global corporation dealing with the fight against HIV / AIDS. At its disposal is a global network of non-governmental organizations that make up the backbone of the corporation Global Fund, as well as 11 UN agencies mentioned as partners in the framework of the joint program, UNAIDS. Their activities are carried across borders of nation-states and are transnational in nature.
Their global strategy is in line with, and to the advantage of the United States.

Coordinated by the US, the course of action of these global organizations puts to the test national sovereignty, national cultural values ​​and historical traditions of the countries that are the object of their efforts. And Russia has been able to feel it for itself.

For several years, the Russian NGOs, while implementing a project of UNAIDS and the Global Fund, in fact, destroyed traditional values, including family values, and tried to introduce new behavioral norms. These programs of “harm reduction” and substitution therapy aimed at the legalization of drugs and prostitution. They openly aim to change the laws of the Russian Federation, in order to smoothly introduce Western values ​​and norms of behavior. And not only.
We must especially pay attention to the “care” offered by global coordinators to vulnerable groups (HIV-infected drug addicts, prisoners, migrants, LGBT). They, being the most dissatisfied, are seen as a potential force of protest, from which you can create opposition to the authorities…… As imposed by the United States through international organizations, programs to counter AIDS undoubtedly threaten Russia’s national security”.

Which reminds me of something Stalin said in 1947, when Molotov reported to him of the United State’s offer to provide economic and financial aid to Russia and Eastern Europe, along the lines of the Marshall Plan.

“This is a ploy by Truman. … They don’t want to help us.  What they want is to infiltrate European countries.”

Instagram, Aleppo, today.

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