User talk:Valjean/Essay/Why Wikipedia documents opinions and nonsense

People who endorse this essay

• Andre🚐 21:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Significantly overstated claim

"(L)inks were first discovered in 2015 when secretive meetings all over Europe between Trump associates and proven Russian intelligence agents/spies were recorded in routine surveillance of those spies. Allied intelligence agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to American intelligence."

You should share the underlying evidence for that assertion with former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, if it exists:

Mr. Strzok's skeptical annotations of the [February 2017] Times article, headlined "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence," were similar to congressional testimony months later by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey disputing it. Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he thought was incorrect about the article, which cited four current and former American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. Mr. Strzok's annotations disputed the article's premise and other aspects. He wrote, "We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials."—Source: "F.B.I. Agent in Russia Inquiry Saw Basis in Early 2017 to Doubt Dossier," The New York Times, July 17, 2020.

To my knowledge, the above claim (originating in thinly-sourced U.K. news articles from 2017) is not well-founded in recent high-quality journalistic or academic sources, at all. To date, the only specific case that has been reliably documented is Paul Manafort's interaction with Konstantin Kilimnik, who was officially sanctioned for his connection to Russian intelligence last year, and which is still a far cry from your "secretive meetings all over Europe between Trump associates and proven Russian intelligence agents/spies". Certainly, any implication that this précis is a matter of established fact akin to the scientific consensus on (say) climate change or vaccine efficacy (the latter of which Trump has staunchly defended, for whatever it's worth, over the boos of a large portion of his audience) is a regrettable exaggeration that undermines the more reasonable parts of your essay. (And, no, editors aren't WP:FRINGE or WP:TENDENTIOUS or incompetent simply for echoing Strzok as quoted in the NYT.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:51, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Um, no. George Papadopoulos, for starters[1] Andre🚐 02:18, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

According to former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe's December 19, 2017 testimony (p. 13), the agency never sought FISA surveillance of Papadopoulos because "Papadopoulos' comment (to Alexander Downer) didn't particularly indicate that he was the person that had had—that was interacting with the Russians." Furthermore, both Downer and Papadopoulos have disputed aspects of The New York Times's 2017 reporting, specifically the suggestion that "heavy drinking" was involved and that Papadopoulos made an explicit statement about "thousands of emails". Notably, the declassified FBI document initiating the Crossfire Hurricane investigation (pages 2-3), written by Strzok, instead refers to "concerning statements Mr. Papadopolous made about suggestions from the Russians that they (the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hilary Clinton. ... It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

George Papadopoulos, 31, pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the presidential campaign. [2] Andre🚐 03:59, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, but we were discussing Valjean's "proven Russian intelligence agents/spies," not the less-specific "Russian intermediaries". Like Trump himself, you seem to have some difficulty with precision.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the "proven Russian intelligence agents/spies" language is from, I assume Valjean wrote it. It's a little too strong but not by much. They were more like strongly suspected and considered to have ties to the Russian foreign ministry. At any rate, there is extensive work detailing Page, Manafort, Papadapolous, and Trump Jr's meetings with the Russians.[3] Andre🚐 04:22, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Just a couple points:

1. Judicialwatch is a very unreliable source (maybe blacklisted?).
2. The Russian spies were the ones being monitored by about eight European allied intelligence agencies. In the course of that normal monitoring, they incidentally discovered multiple people associated with Trump were engaged in worrying discussions with these agents, so they reported these suspicious activities to U.S. intelligence.

That's all for now. G'nite. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:47, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

1. The FBI released Strzok's "Electronic Communication" (EC) in response to a FOIA request by the right-leaning legal activist group Judicial Watch, yes. I'm surprised that this would be enough for you to discount it.
2. As stated above, there remains (as of 2022) no publicly-available corroboration of any of those anonymously-sourced 2017 claims. Neither the Mueller report nor the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General's Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation mention anything about "secretive meetings all over Europe between Trump associates and proven Russian intelligence agents/spies ... recorded in routine surveillance of those spies ... by about eight European allied intelligence agencies." Meanwhile, Strozk—who was in charge of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation at the time—suggested in contemporaneous notes that "We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials." Paul Manafort's interaction with Konstantin Kilimnik is sometimes cited as retroactive vindication in light of the latter being sanctioned by the United States Department of the Treasury in 2021; however, this is still only a single documented case.

To make this dubious reporting, the provenance of which remains unclear, a litmus test for source reliability ("Any source that sows doubt about the following proven facts is not a RS ... There are such things as verifiable, reality-based, facts."), when even editors who largely share your perspective (e.g., Andrevan) believe that you are somewhat overstating your case, undermines the credibility of the rest of your essay. (IMHO, of course...)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:02, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

So while the language about the meetings with proven spies taking place in Europe might be overstating it slightly, there were a number of meetings with the Russians, which are well-documented at Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. "Flynn and Kushner met with Kislyak in December 2016 to establish a secret line of communication (backchannel) between the Trump administration and the Russian government" "On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after being promised information about Hillary Clinton." Not to mention all the stuff relating to Trump Tower Moscow Andre🚐 16:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

TheTimesAreAChanging, see my update below. You make some good points above. My original comment, late at night, was made without a good read of what was written. I just scanned it with my half-closed eyes and left the comment above. Now I've looked at it a bit more, but still not thoroughly analyzed it. If I understand you correctly, we may have a case where RS are in disagreement. Is that correct? Another possibility is that they are speaking about different things. I appreciate your good faith attempts to parse this. The devil is in the details, and I know from past experience that I can learn from you. That's the key to the best content.

About Judicialwatch, "I'm surprised that this would be enough for you to discount it." It's not enough for me to discount the primary source content. It's just a red flag as they have a history of misusing such things. It's better to use a RS. That's all. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I have updated the wording. Hopefully this is more accurate:

• Those links were first discovered in 2015 when secretive meetings and interactions all over Europe between Trump associates and "known or suspected Russian agents" were recorded in routine surveillance of those persons and spies. Allied intelligence agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to American intelligence.

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:15, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I understand and appreciate that you have (slightly) modified the language to better match the specific sources presented, but I believe that this is largely orthogonal to my concern that the 2017 news reports cited appear to have been largely inaccurate, or at least not corroborated by any more recent sources such as the Mueller report (2019). Furthermore, it is quite unclear how news reporters would have had access to such highly-classified signals intelligence when the FBI, at least, had no knowledge of it at the time the articles went to print. (You will recall that in June 2017, Comey publicly testified regarding the veracity of a February The New York Times article titled "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence," stating "in the main, it was not true.") The two articles from Luke Harding are especially open to question given Harding's close (even fawning) relationship with Christopher Steele and his authorship of the widely-debunked "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say." As noted by Paul Farhi in WaPo:

But one week after publication, the Guardian's bombshell looks as though it could be a dud. No other news organization has been able to corroborate the Guardian's reporting to substantiate its central claim of a meeting. ... The lead reporter on the Manafort article, Luke Harding, declined to comment on Monday and referred questions to the newspaper's spokesman, Brendan O'Grady. ... However, the Guardian did tweak some of the language in its original report to sound less definitive in its conclusions. ... WikiLeaks on Monday identified the alleged fabricator as Fernando Villavicencio, an Ecuadoran journalist and activist. A government ministry under Ecuador's previous government accused Villavicencio of fabricating documents; Villavicencio's supporters call him a crusading journalist who exposed corruption under former president Rafael Correa. Villavicencio's byline appears on the Guardian's Manafort article, but only in the newspaper's print edition, which doesn't circulate widely outside Great Britain. ... But the story doesn't specify the date of the alleged meeting. In addition, no photos or video of Manafort entering the embassy have emerged. The Guardian is silent about whether its reporters saw any such photographic evidence. [Glenn] Greenwald notes that the embassy is surrounded by cameras that record who enters and leaves. "If Paul Manafort got anywhere near that building, let alone three times, there would be mountains of evidence" in the hands of Ecuadoran intelligence officials, whom the Guardian cited as the source of its story.

In light of the above, and your acknowledgement that Harding is your primary source for these alleged "secretive meetings," it should be obvious why you are painting with too broad a brush. As written, your essay currently holds that "Any source that sows doubt about (Harding's reporting) is not a RS ... There are such things as verifiable, reality-based, facts." Indeed, but I am "sowing doubt" about Harding's reporting, following WaPo's lead, not because I agree with Trump that journalists in general are "fake news" or the "enemy of the people" (or because I doubt that "There are such things as verifiable, reality-based, facts") but because Harding seems to have a poor track record for fact-checking and accuracy (to the point where sympathetic spies from multiple intelligence agencies, in both the U.K. and Ecuador, seem to view him as a reliable way to launder unsupported claims or disinformation to the public).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

The 2017 reports were not confirmed but they were not debunked. The Mueller report does corroborate many of the claims, for example that Roger Stone was working with wikileaks, and much of the information about Manafort and Gates. You appear to be soapboxing and your overall view of this is not accurate. Andre🚐 16:15, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I haven't expressed any "overall view" of anything, and I'm the one citing the Mueller report as an authoritative source, so I don't need to be reminded of its contents, thank you very much. It's unclear why you think that my comments are soapboxing, unlike the original essay that I am responding to. There are some aspects of Valjean's essay that are reasonable, others that are overstated, but I am focusing narrowly on bullet point 4: "Editors should understand how to evaluate sources, and here are some topics that are red flags to watch for. Any source that sows doubt about the following proven facts is not a RS: ... secretive meetings and interactions all over Europe between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents were recorded by multiple (at least eight) allied intelligence agencies during their routine surveillance of those Russian persons and spies. Those agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to U.S. intelligence." Frankly, I believe that I am competent to understand and evaluate sources, yet I don't think that bullet point 4 has been established as a "proven fact" or that it is unreasonable (or WP:FRINGE) to "sow doubt" about said claims. (Quite to the contrary, in fact.) Obviously, Valjean can put whatever he wants in his own user essay, but IMHO the essay would be more credible without bullet point 4. That's all.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:40, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I think you make some good points about the specific issue, but please don't modify my original quote ("Any source that sows doubt about the following proven facts is not a RS) to make it specifically about Harding ("Any source that sows doubt about (Harding's reporting) is not a RS).

I still AGF that you are trying to accurately parse the issue, and I appreciate it. Maybe I'll tweak that even more to avoid any cause for weakening my case. I'll think about it. Thanks again. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:49, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

By your overall view I mean the idea that if some of the reporting from 2017 hasn't been confirmed that it is debunked. Or that the Mueller report in any way casts doubt on or negates the idea that the Trump campaign had multiple contacts with Russians and Wikileaks. "secretive meetings and interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents" were indeed proven, and this is a provne fact. Andre🚐 19:50, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Reboot

To make constructive progress on the #4 part, let's see how it can be improved.

Current version:

"Those links were first discovered in 2015 when secretive meetings and interactions all over Europe between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents were recorded by multiple (at least eight) allied intelligence agencies during their routine surveillance of those Russian persons and spies. Those agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to U.S. intelligence."

TheTimesAreAChanging, how would you word that? I'd certainly like to understand the matter better, so go for it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:58, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I would simply remove it, since I don't accept that the above statement is "established fact". (Attributing is also an option, but that shouldn't be necessary for genuinely "established fact".) Tangentially, bullet point #4 is much more specific than other bullet points such as "Trump did not win the 2020 election" (#7), "Climate change is largely caused by humans and is serious" (#14), and "Vaccines are safe" (#15), which inevitably makes it easier to challenge or dispute. (For example, what if someone thinks that there were only five foreign intelligence agencies involved, as opposed to the eight mentioned by Harding et al.? Would that person satisfy your definition of a "fringe editor"?) It's just not necessary to insist on such a weirdly specific, uncorroborated, and contested statement as a litmus test for "Evaluating sources in the AP2, Trumpian, post-truth era". Again, you can put whatever you want in your own user essay, but I strongly disagree that "doubting" any of the above makes any editor incompetent or any source unreliable, which is what you are positing.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

For context, you follow the aforementioned bullet points with:

No editor here should doubt any of the facts mentioned above. Period. Only "fringe editors" doubt them. In these post-truth Trumpian political times, fringe editors often have a strong Trump bias and point of view because they adopt Trump's open animosity toward reliable sources. They believe his untruths and the fake news stories that support him and attack those he does not like. They live in a closed information bubble and are often ignorant of the facts, thus disqualifying them from editing on politically sensitive topics. AP2 topic bans are usually the best way to deal with them until they show a positive learning curve that demonstrates they are better informed and can vet sources accurately.

Taken together, and assuming that all of the bullet points are weighted equally, this seems to me to be a remarkably extreme stance. Frankly, I'm glad that you are not in a position to actually issue topic bans/blocks based on the provisions in this essay, because my comments above "doubting" bullet point #4 could easily make me a prime target! (Applied broadly enough, even Andrevan might be sanctioned for conceding that "The 2017 reports were not confirmed but they were not debunked.") Note that even mild expressions of "doubt," as opposed to a forceful refutation or edit warring, could be enough for sanctions under your proposed formulation.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

What is it that you are doubting though? The "all over Europe" part might be a bit hyperbolic, but at a minimum, there were the aforementioned secretive meetings and interactions between those parties. Andre🚐 19:51, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Andre, I consider eight different European countries as "all over Europe". That point is now moot as I have removed that point. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:15, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't know of any proven contacts between Russian intelligence agents/officers and Trump campaign members, other than Manafort's interaction with Kilimnik (whose own relationship with Russian intelligence is itself murkier than our Wikipedia article makes out, as is often the case with matters related to espionage and counterintelligence). If there were others, that still has not been proven in publicly-available sources, and so (in my view) it would not suggest that someone is a "fringe editor" if he or she were to express doubt that there definitely were many more such contacts. Again, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence" almost made it sound like the Trump campaign was on the phone with the Russian hackers as they broke into the DNC. Per Comey and Mueller, whatever else one might think of Trump or his campaign, it seems clear that this was a misleading impression.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:04, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

But you are of course incorrect in the thrust of your claim. The June 2016 meeting with Natalya Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower. Jeff Sessions' meeting with Sergei Kislyak. Papadapolous meetings with Mifsud. Michael Cohen meeting with Felix Sater. Michael Flynn meeting with Kislyak. We didn't even get into the NRA and Maria Butina. And of course, it's not at all unproven that Deripaska, Kilimnik, had well-established ties to Russia and to Manafort and Gates. All of this information is well-shown in RS. For example this story [4] or this one[5] Assange was of course implicated[6]: "G.R.U. provided Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, with the D.N.C. and Podesta archives" Andre🚐 20:58, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian attorney who going back to 2014 worked closely with Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the Steele dossier (which, of course, completely missed the Trump Tower meeting and the proposal for a Trump Tower Moscow, while reporting bunk about pee tapes, illicit payments to Romanian hackers, the DNC hack being Carter Page's idea, and Michael Cohen's trip to Prague). No credible source has ever even alleged that Veselnitskaya is an undercover spy. Similarly, it's quite inconceivable that a senior diplomat like Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., would have had any involvement in covert operations or hacking the DNC. (Sessions briefly met Kislyak in public settings, including his senate office, which is a fairly routine thing for U.S. senators to do with the Russian ambassador, while Flynn talked to Kislyak after being named the incoming U.S. national security advisor.)

Again, we're taking about Russian spies, not Russian people in general. Much (if not all) of the above was already under FBI investigation at the time that Strzok wrote "We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials" and that Comey testified "in the main, it was not true." You may have watched a bit too much Rocky and Bullwinkle, but not all Russians (or even all Russian envoys) are Boris and Natasha. And if there were contact(s) with actual Russian intelligence officers, one might at least consider Manafort's statement to The New York Times: "This is absurd. I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers. .. It's not like these people wear badges that say, 'I'm a Russian intelligence officer.'"

Would Comey and Strzok meet Valjean's definition of "fringe editors" if they were to start Wikipedia accounts?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

This isn't an article, and I don't need to engage with you on this, so this will likely be my final post on this topic in this venue, because I find it frustrating to argue with people such as yourself for no reason. I apologize. However what I will say is that this message is extremely naive, lacking in factual grounding, and seems to ignore many of the key facts such as Manafort's conviction which was of course pardoned, such as the fact that Veselnitskaya "had Russian spy agency as client" per Reuters, [7], "Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On" [8] NYT, such as the fact that Kislyak was ex-KGB [9] and obviously, he was an agent of the Russian government acting in the open. And of course Maria Butina [10] [11] [12] And you conveniently ignore Deripaska and Kilimnik. So yeah, if you don't think Trump's campaign had plenty of contact with Russian agents you are in fringe land. And Rocky and Bullwinkle is a great show. Andre🚐 23:54, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

A response worthy of the late Donald Rumsfeld: "go massive—sweep it all up, things related and not." Personally, I think that "fringe editors" include those who doubt that Cohen Atta was in Prague.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:11, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

[13]Cheney's assertions that Mohammad Atta, the chief Sept. 11 hijacker, had met months before the attack with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech capital, Prague, were also unsubstantiated, Andre🚐 00:40, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Really? But unnamed Western intelligence sources were so sure that it happened! And Los Angeles Times ([14]) is usually a highly-reliable source! I guess it's true: Journalism is the first rough draft of history. Even when "directionally accurate," the final draft may need revisions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 13:22, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Ridiculous argument. LA Times article is only reporting on a claim by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross. Andre🚐 18:21, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Exactly! Per the source: "Confirmation of the meeting—previously revealed only in anonymously sourced reports—provides the first evidence that one of the skyjackers had dealings with Iraq five months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon." In other words, unlike Harding, at least they got one on the record source. (It was still bunk, though.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:28, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Bunk, just like your argument that "Flynn talked to Kislyak after being named the incoming U.S. national security advisor." Flynn talked to Kislyak before Trump took office. [15] Andre🚐 19:34, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

To avoid controversy, I have made some revisions and toned it down. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:15, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Am fine with your removal in the interest of making your essay more palatable to other editors, but I don't concede that anything was proven critical of your original, for example, that Veselnitskaya, a self-described Kremlin informant, couldn't be described as a Russian intelligence asset. Andre🚐 01:38, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Valjean: Thank you! Although we may still have disagreements on-wiki about specific article text from time to time, I can endorse almost all of this essay as currently written, despite our occasional content disputes. That makes it a more unifying, and hence useful, essay in my book!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:05, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

TheTimesAreAChanging, you are very welcome. I should thank you! I always appreciate constructive and civil criticism. How else can I learn? I just need to be convinced, which is a reasonable position. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:02, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

References

2015-2016 foreign surveillance

Was it 8 countries with meetings or 8 intelligence agencies picking up the intelligence and warning the US about it? Andre🚐 01:35, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

IIRC, the agencies for 8 named countries. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:48, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, that part might have confused me. I took secretive meetings and interactions all over Europe to mean that there were recorded meetings between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents in 8 countries. Which is what I meant was hyperbolic because it's really that the intelligence agencies throughout the world were recording communications and some meetings, but the meetings AFAIK were not necessarily in the same countries as the 8 named intelligence agencies? Andre🚐 02:54, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

One source -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:09, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Right, but this says the people close to Trump meeting with Russians in Britain, the Netherlands and in other countries, but I didn't think that the meetings were in The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia. Andre🚐 03:16, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Andre, this is from Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies#2015-2016 foreign surveillance:

In late 2015, GCHQ, the British eavesdropping agency, during the course of routine surveillance, used "electronic intelligence" to collect information from Russian targets. They found that "Russians were talking to people associated with Trump...According to sources in the US and the UK, [the conversations] formed a suspicious pattern." The British passed this information about "suspicious 'interactions'" between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents" to U.S intelligence agencies. Over the next six months, European allies began to "pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries." Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by several allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands). Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

In March 2017, The New York Times reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officials — and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump". Separately, U.S. intelligence had overheard Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, talking about contacts with Trump associates. Some Russian officials were arguing about how much to interfere in the election. Then cyber attacks on state electoral systems led the Obama administration to directly accuse the Russians of interfering.

I count seven different countries above (I'm not sure where I got the eight), but Australia is not European: United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, France, Netherlands, and Australia. The USA also picked up its own surveillance info.

What's really sad is that Trump, upon assuming office, immediately began sharing classified info with Russia and many good sources were killed or went to ground. They began to drop like flies. Even before the election, Steele's sources began to dry up as the Trump campaign began to realize they were being investigated by someone (Steele and FBI). Russia acted on that info. U.S. intelligence was forced to immediately extricate a double agent and his family. That agent had access to what was on Putin's desk and conversations in Putin's office, and some of Steele's info seems to have originated from him. This guy reported what Putin was saying and knew his motives. Steele reported such information. Since Trump was more loyal to Russia and Russian intelligence (he believed them over U.S. intelligence), he said that he had the right to share classified info with Russia. This was treason in plain sight.

There is no reason to believe he doesn't still have that attitude regarding the classified information he took to Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere. He had been collecting huge amounts of very sensitive info in boxes in the White House residence for a long time (even though his aides warned him not to do it), and then he took some of it to Florida, but likely also to Bedminster, Trump Tower, and elsewhere. He kept moving and hiding stuff, only releasing some to NARA and lying that he had turned over everything. Every person in his family, and all his close associates, should be detained and every property searched from top to bottom, including Ivana's grave at Bedminster. It took at least eight huge guys to lift her coffin, and they were struggling. Trump is a case where a clear Russian asset acts like a professional, but clumsy, spy. He's carefully selected all these cool toys, and he wants to brag about and share them with his closest friend, and that's Putin. The Arabs would also pay a lot for that info. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:31, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

I definitely agree with you about the treason. The main point I'm quibbling with the 7 or 8 countries is that 7 or 8 countries reported surveillance of the contacts. But the meetings themselves, I don't see that they took place in the same list of countries. For example I don't think they were ever actual physically in Estonia. The text says they were physically in Britain and the Netherlands, and separately that intelligence agencies had electronic sigint from 7/8 countries. The original text I referred to as hyperbolic seemed to imply that the Trump meetings were taking place in the same 7/8 countries that intelligence was monitoring them. My interpretation was that it wasn't clear that the Trump people actually went physically to all the same places that their intelligence agencies picked up sigint. Andre🚐 18:35, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Andre, you do have a point, but only if we limit ourselves to this source. Each intelligence agency kept an eye/ear on "known Kremlin operatives", and since this was sigint data (electronic intelligence), that didn't require Trump's people to necessarily physically be in the country. But this source says there were physical meetings in those countries (hence my "all over Europe" wording), but more on that later. To be most accurate, exact quoting is best. Let's look at this source:

"In late 2015 the British eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, was carrying out standard “collection” against Moscow targets. These were known Kremlin operatives already on the grid. Nothing unusual here – except that the Russians were talking to people associated with Trump. The precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public, but according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern. They continued through the first half of 2016. The intelligence was handed to the US as part of a routine sharing of information....

"But the electronic intelligence suggested Steele was right. According to one account, the US agencies looked as if they were asleep. "'Wake up! There's something not right here!' – the BND [German intelligence], the Dutch, the French and SIS were all saying this," one Washington-based source told me.

From that, I get this:

British, German, Dutch, and French intelligence agencies were all reporting that "Moscow targets...known Kremlin operatives....were talking to people associated with Trump". Those agencies were "all saying" such "exchanges" were taking place, and "according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern". This "electronic intelligence" info was gathered by British intelligence during its "process of carrying out standard 'collection' against Moscow targets", and the other agencies reported similar findings.

Is that an accurate parsing of that source? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:34, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that checks out Andre🚐 01:49, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

References

Physical meetings, not just sigint evidence

Andre, these sources say there were physical meetings in those countries (hence my "all over Europe" wording). Knowing that, does that change your views expressed above? Even more importantly, do you still hold concerns that would require changing this wording at the Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies#2015-2016 foreign surveillance article?

In late 2015, GCHQ, the British eavesdropping agency, during the course of routine surveillance, used "electronic intelligence" to collect information from Russian targets. They found that "Russians were talking to people associated with Trump...According to sources in the US and the UK, [the conversations] formed a suspicious pattern." The British passed this information about "suspicious 'interactions'" between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents" to U.S intelligence agencies. Over the next six months, European allies began to "pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries." Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by seven allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands). Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

In March 2017, The New York Times reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officials — and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump". Separately, U.S. intelligence had overheard Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, talking about contacts with Trump associates. Some Russian officials were arguing about how much to interfere in the election. Then cyber attacks on state electoral systems led the Obama administration to directly accuse the Russians of interfering.

Let's look at what those two sources say:

The Guardian

European allies were supplying information about people close to Trump meeting with Russians in Britain, the Netherlands and in other countries, the Times said.

The New York Times

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.

The warning signs had been building throughout the summer, but were far from clear. As WikiLeaks was pushing out emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee through online publication, American intelligence began picking up conversations in which Russian officials were discussing contacts with Trump associates, and European allies were starting to pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries.

But what was going on in the meetings was unclear to the officials, and the intercepted communications did little to clarify matters — the Russians, it appeared, were arguing about how far to go in interfering in the presidential election. What intensified the alarm at the Obama White House was a campaign of cyberattacks on state electoral systems in September, which led the administration to deliver a public accusation against the Russians in October.

In the weeks before the assessment was released in January, the intelligence community combed through databases for an array of communications and other information — some of which was months old by then — and began producing reports that showed there were contacts during the campaign between Trump associates and Russian officials.

The nature of the contacts remains unknown. Several of Mr. Trump’s associates have done business in Russia, and it is unclear if any of the contacts were related to business dealings.

The New York Times, citing four current and former officials, reported last month that the American authorities had obtained information of repeated contacts between Mr. Trump’s associates and senior Russian intelligence officials. The White House has dismissed the story as false.

Since the Feb. 14 article appeared, more than a half-dozen officials have confirmed contacts of various kinds between Russians and Trump associates. The label “intelligence official” is not always cleanly applied in Russia, where ex-spies, oligarchs and government officials often report back to the intelligence services and elsewhere in the Kremlin.

So, do you still hold concerns that would require changing the wording at the Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies#2015-2016 foreign surveillance article? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:57, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Valjean, I don't see a problem with the article itself, I just think the wording you had in the essay didn't distinguish clearly between the places where the meetings took place and the nationality of the intelligence agencies that had intercepted the electronic communications. E.g. the Estonian intelligence agency seems to have been listed, but I do not believe they ever were said to have travelled to Estonia. So the "all over Europe" might be a bit of an exaggeration if the meetings were in the UK, Netherlands, and potentially elsewhere, versus a longer list of intelligence agencies such as Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia (which is not in Europe of course) that had picked up electronic communications. Andre🚐 16:32, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I tend to agree. The sources indicate that meetings occurred in various nations and name the nations which reported contacts, but they don't list every physical meeting's location. I guess it's possible that neighboring nations were watching the same Russian spy, monitored the same contacts, and individually reported the contacts, making it look like there were more contacts than actually occurred. We're really getting into OR speculation here, but that's what a talk page is for. We try to understand what the sources are saying, and that effort often requires OR. In this case, we're even more free as this is my private talk page. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Here's the original wording:

"(L)inks were first discovered in 2015 when secretive meetings all over Europe between Trump associates and proven Russian intelligence agents/spies were recorded in routine surveillance of those spies. Allied intelligence agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to American intelligence."

Here's a better version:

"(L)inks were first discovered in 2015 when multiple allied intelligence agencies reported secretive meetings between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents". These "suspicious interactions" were recorded during routine surveillance of those Russians. The agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to American intelligence. Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

Is that better?

Some of this detail could also be included:

"Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by seven allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands)."

What's a good way to include it? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:56, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the 2nd version is better, and the additional detail seems good too. This would address my concerns. Andre🚐 17:59, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Andre, now we can compare the versions above with the wording from the "Links..." article:

"British, German, Dutch, and French intelligence agencies were all reporting that "Moscow targets...known Kremlin operatives....were talking to people associated with Trump". Those agencies were "all saying" such "exchanges" were taking place, and "according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern". This "electronic intelligence" info was gathered by British intelligence during its "process of carrying out standard 'collection' against Moscow targets", and the other agencies reported similar findings."

"(L)inks were first discovered in 2015 when multiple allied intelligence agencies reported secretive meetings between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents". These "suspicious interactions" were recorded during routine surveillance of those Russians. The agencies were alarmed and reported those contacts to American intelligence. Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

"Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by seven allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands)."

The wording at the Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies#2015-2016 foreign surveillance article:

In late 2015, GCHQ, the British eavesdropping agency, during the course of routine surveillance, used "electronic intelligence" to collect information from Russian targets. They found that "Russians were talking to people associated with Trump...According to sources in the US and the UK, [the conversations] formed a suspicious pattern." The British passed this information about "suspicious 'interactions'" between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents" to U.S intelligence agencies. Over the next six months, European allies began to "pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries." Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by seven allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands). Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

In March 2017, The New York Times reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officials — and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump". Separately, U.S. intelligence had overheard Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, talking about contacts with Trump associates. Some Russian officials were arguing about how much to interfere in the election. Then cyber attacks on state electoral systems led the Obama administration to directly accuse the Russians of interfering.

Are there any substantial differences that require we change that wording? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:14, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the new version is clearer but I don't have a factual problem with the old one. Andre🚐 15:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

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