Talk:Steele dossier/Archive 26

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Bloat, focus, and structure

Hey all. Just for the record, I'm coming in from an off-site discussion where it was noted that a prior version of the article could easily be read to suggest that the big picture Steele dossier allegations were by-and-large credible, when this is in fact not the case. Specifically, while it is broadly true that the Russian government acted to encourage support for Trump and discourage support for Clinton, claims that the Trump campaign solicited this activity or was coordinating with Russia were undermined by closer investigation of Steele's sources. I've tweaked the first paragraph to fix this, and added a cite to page XI of the Horowitz report on Crossfire Hurricane, which mentions that investigation and how it reflects on the original information.

More broadly, though, I think this article is suffering from some pretty severe bloat and lack of focus. In many ways it feels like the non-fiction equivalent of what MOS:PLOT and WP:PLOTSUM warn about in terms of overly long summaries. I mean, the ToC is two vertical screens long on my laptop, not including the end matter, and these sections are on average fairly long. The history and authorship sections go on for paragraphs about who paid who how much, who wrote what, and so on, with little to no reference to the document(s) and its/their role in the broader Trump/Russia series of controversies. Then follow two enormous sections detailing every allegation made, with occasional digressions into unrelated aspects of the meta-controversy. The whole article is like this, to the point that the contextual information and place of the dossier in the broader series of controversies (ie what's actually notable about it) ends up getting swamped by all of this extraneous and often repetitive detail.

Fixing all of this is kind of a huge project, more than I feel comfortable taking on as an individual, so I wanted to start discussion here about how to refocus, condense, and contextualize things. I think the right place to start is the basic structure. The most important point in my view is to avoid letting the body of the article devolving into a blow-by-blow list of things that happened, and more generally to always keep the broader context of the dossier in mind. While I'm not sure how to order everything, here are the basic sections I'm envisioning:

Genesis of the reports

This would discuss the Clinton campaign's hiring of FusionGPS, Steele's relationship with Fusion and his sources, and any needed biography of them as individuals.

• It may be worth merging or deleting Steele's page; the main argument against such an action back in 2017 was his alleged role in the FIFA corruption investigation(s), which itself is only notable because it was exaggerated by the FBI in the Carter Page warrant application. In general I think the people involved should only have independent pages if they are themselves a nexus of different aspects of the Trump/Russia meta-scandal, such as Igor Danchenko and Carter Page, or if they're notable outside that context, like Michael Cohen.
• We should also make a note about the Washington Free Beacon research and the fact that the two operations were conflated, obviously, but some unpublished similar research on behalf of a different organization does not need 27 paragraphs.

Allegations

This should fold together and condense the four sections of the current article describing the various allegations and the debates about their truth.

• Broadly, I think we can bring the allegations together into a few groups:
  1. General Russian preference for Trump victory and associated interference.
  2. Connections between Russians and Trump associates and campaign personnel. This, notably, should be restricted to connections that predate the report. Just for example, Michael Flynn does not belong in this section.
  3. Supposed blackmail material (related to both candidates).
  4. Alleged coordination between campaign and Russian efforts.

Spread

This should have a subsection on the Clinton campaign itself, media actions, and the Crossfire Hurricane connections. The White House briefings on the matter also belong in this section.

Rhetorical Role

This section would be about the continued reference to the dossier in efforts to discredit other aspects of or investigations into the Trump/Russia meta-scandal, from Paul Manafort through John Durham and on past the 2022 midterms. Things like Trump's RICO suit go here.

Legacy

The current legacy section (actually a subsection of the history section...) would work as a pretty good endpoint for the article, though it might deserve some filling-out as more analyses are published elsewhere. Parts of the reactions section could also maybe be folded in here, if they matter and haven't been captured by other sections.

This is more of a writing project than a sourcing/researching one, I think. The current article, after all, has more than 500 references already; I'd be surprised if there's anything really missing. I do also want to note that in doing this writeup, I've noticed similar problems with the way various parts of Trump's political career are covered more generally. Obviously the Trump/Russia meta-scandal is closely related, and I think that article needs some major TLC and maybe some splits, but in general I'm not a fan of how the Donald Trump template is organized. If this restructure works out, or if it starts to spread beyond this page, I'll take things to WP:TRUMP and see how people feel about that.

In any case, what do people think about these proposals? This is the first time I'm proposing something this major on the wiki, so I'd appreciate help/advice. (@Valjean)

Gazeboist (talk) 22:18, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

From reading the above, I have a feeling you haven't read the whole article. You mention some things that are already dealt with, but I may be wrong. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Part of what you see as bloat is likely because content has been added as controversy has exploded and criticism rained down on specifics of the whole business. Mainstream media and fringe/Trump/far-right media have warred over it, although the mainstream media would have stopped mentioning it if Trump hadn't constantly kept attacking the dossier with obviously false claims. That forced the mainstream media to respond, thus keeping the topic alive.

This all meant we had to document both the criticism and the facts about it. Thus we cover pretty much every aspect found in RS, as we should. We do not write summary articles here. We write exhaustively as we are not paper. Size isn't an issue. People can read the lead. Scholars can read the parts that interest them. The references are a treasure trove. Readers can come here and find nearly every possible question about the dossier answered, but holes may exist, and we should fill them when found, especially when new information is published.

That means it's a bit of a fool's errand to try to make huge changes (many have tried and ended up causing more harm than good), but specific spots can always be improved, so narrow your focus and zero in on awkward stuff, duplication, etc. to begin with. Since this article has long been one of the most contentious articles at Wikipedia (in the AP2 arena), we must be careful to avoid spilling the applecart over the whole plaza with large changes or too many at once. Discuss each one in its own section here. Whatever changes are made, zero content should be lost. (By "content" I'm not talking about bytes, but facts, opinions, and sources.) Keep in mind how to apply a very important POLICY, and that is WP:PRESERVE. We honor the good faith efforts of many editors by trying to keep and improve their additions and tweaks. Improvement often does require condensation, revision, and removal of duplication, but we can do that and still honor PRESERVE. Just err on the side of too much rather than losing vital information. People study the tiniest details to figure out who is lying, who did what and when, etc. We should help them.

You will note I have, after really thinking long about whether or not to do it, reverted your edits to the lead, and my edit summary explains why. I think(?) it's really the last sentence that's the real issue, and we can discuss how to improve it without causing more bloat to the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:25, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

claims that the Trump campaign solicited this activity or was coordinating with Russia were undermined by closer investigation of Steele's sources what's the citation for that? Horowitz report is a primary source. Andre🚐 00:24, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that is referring to the Mueller report's conclusion, at least the part about "coordinating". Mueller was unable to prove it. It is not disproven, and Roger Stone's actions with WikiLeaks (which Trump knew about) are seen as coordination and/or attempts at coordination. As far as soliciting help from Russia, Trump did it openly on television, and his campaign did it in myriad ways, including secretive meetings with actual Russian spies, as reported by seven different allied intelligence agencies. This activity started happening in 2015. Otherwise, there were many forms of collusion and cooperation between the campaign and Russians. It was only "conspiracy" and "coordination" that were not proven, largely because of Trump's obstruction of investigations and lots of destruction of evidence. Mueller's investigation was crippled and ineffective.

Regardless, this article does document what the Mueller report says and what the Inspector General's report says regarding anything connected to the dossier and its allegations. There is no need to do more on that front that I can think of right now, but I could be wrong.

What I'd like to know is more about this: "were undermined by closer investigation of Steele's sources." Gazeboist, what are you thinking of with that statement? Do you have something new on the subject (I hope so!), or are you referring to what we already write about it? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:57, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

As to the article as a whole...

There is an obvious reason why the article on Bell's Theorem does not open with Lee's work on kaons, then explain why Bell chose to publish where he did, then launch into biographies of Bell and Bohm, summarize the EPR paradox, derive the theorem, rederive the theorem alongside a summary of various Bell tests, and then briefly describe every "influential" interpretation of quantum mechanics, all on the basis of university press releases.

As it stands, this article badly conflates the claims and evidence related to the Steele documents themselves with the broader context of Trump's engagement with Russia, then treats subsequent events where Trump acted favorably toward Putin and Russia as "proof" of the "correctness" of what was, taking the Steele documents on their own, a series of unsubstantiated conspiracy claims. I'm not suggesting that any of the actual information should be removed from wikipedia entirely - especially not the huge volume of citations. Just that the current state of this article, titled "Steele dossier", ultimately dissolves the Steele dossier itself into the broader soup of Trump/Russia controversies and rhetoric without clearly distinguishing between actual fact, contemporary reporting, and rhetorical claims. It is not useful except as a collection of sources, some of which flatly don't connect to the nominal subject. Given that we appear to have basically stopped getting new information about the dossier itself, I think we can safely look back, re-assess, and break things down into a much more comprehensible "what happened" / "what did people think" / "what's stuck around" description, which is what I was trying to outline in my original comment. I don't think there's any fact claim that doesn't belong on wikipedia, but I think some of the contemporary analysis and guessing, or even just some elements of the story, may have been given undue weight due to recency biases.

I can feel myself rambling, so I'm going to stop, but having poked around, it looks like the right thing to do given what I'm trying to suggest is to create a talk subpage to work out what a redraft of the article would look like. Is there a reason not to try this, or a better way to go about it?

(Please give me a bit to respond re: Horowitz)

Gazeboist (talk) 02:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok. The Horowitz report, already cited about 40 or so times by this article, states on page XI: Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source's account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a "well-developed conspiracy" in Reports 95 and 102 attributed to Person 1. I haven't had time to dig deeper and find the particular interview they're referencing in that sentence, but this is Steele's main source telling the FBI in 2017 that Steele's claim of a "well-developed conspiracy" mischaracterized the information Steele had been given by that source. I'll try to come back early next week and dig more into this particular item. In general, though, for purposes of this article, I would take the original reports from Steele (and things like contemporary communications about them) to be primary sources, but the Horowitz report seems to be at least as much of a secondary source as, say, an analysis from Lawfare. Gazeboist (talk) 02:42, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts on the allegations

Gazeboist, let me share a few of my thoughts on this. I'd appreciate knowing yours. See this as brainstorming. If you want to place your comments in the appropriate spots in the middle of comment below, just copy my signature and place it before your indented comment.

This is the part of the article that I originally created as a separate sub-article, and it has been reworked over the years. The problem with it being a sub-article was that this main article told about the existence of allegations without mentioning them. So that content was merged into this main article, which makes sense. When one writes an article about a book, but only discusses the cover and criticism of the book, but does not mention the actual contents, something's really wrong. It is the contents (the allegations) that are the book. So we fixed that problem. That's now ancient history.

The dossier contains many more allegations than are mentioned here, and that's because we are not allowed to depend on primary sources. We depend on secondary and tertiary sources, so we only mention the allegations mentioned in such sources, using the dossier as backup for exact wordings. According to RS, the other allegations simply don't have enough due weight for mention here, and that's okay. The article is long enough as is. Some of them have nothing to do with the election, Trump, or national security. They are digressions, some obviously from Galkina. That doesn't mean we shouldn't cover them. We should cover anything to do with the dossier, but RS don't do it, so we can't.

Editors and readers will naturally have their own interpretations of which allegations are the most important, serious, wonky, silly, correct, or false. On this talk page, such OR considerations are not only allowed, they are vital to figuring out how to apply common sense and editorial judgment to the creation of content, but ultimately we must bow to RS, limit what we are allowed to write, and let them dictate what is written. For example, we can't write that an allegation is the "key" or "central" one without attributing that to a RS, as it's an opinion. We do that when we can.

Which allegation(s) have gotten the most attention in RS? Which ones are the most important or significant? Certainly valid questions, and when RS offer their opinions, we can add those attributed opinions. My impression is that the pee tape allegation got the most attention, by far, while being rather unimportant from an informational angle. It places the whole dossier in an unserious light, but we must not act like the public. We know better. Yes, if Trump is being blackmailed, that's very important, but we don't need the dossier to tell us that is the case. Trump has always bragged about his sexual prowess, his beautiful women, and has never hid his infidelities. Totally separate from the dossier, we know he has spent a lot of time in Russia over the years, and there are sources (including short mention in the dossier) which describe his actions with women there, especially young ones, actions that shocked even Russians, who know that such info would be used against Trump. So is the pee tape allegation as important as the attention it got, or did it get attention because it was salacious? I think the latter. It also served as a foil to distract from the really important allegations of national security issues, and, according to the dossier, distracted from corruption in China. Fusion GPS advised Steele to not include it, but this was an unfinished rough draft, and his MI6 training informed him to include everything at this preliminary stage of development. Unfortunately, this is what got published, and it drowned out coverage of more serious and accurate allegations. Right-wing media kept that aspect in the faces of viewers and readers so they didn't know about the serious and true allegations.

What about a very central allegation, that there was a "conspiracy of cooperation"? Well, which part of that is the most important, the plan or the deed? "Conspiracy" involves the plan, whereas "cooperation" is the deed. Mueller couldn't prove, but did not disprove, "conspiracy", but he found a whole lot of active and passive cooperation/collusion, usually described in many different ways. Who cares if own can prove that two bank robbers planned to rob a bank? No, the fact they did it is much more important. Only in the world of American politics would one let the robbers go free because the police couldn't prove they "planned" it together.

Unconfirmed allegations have been treated as false, and that's just wrong. Accusations that the dossier is fake are just Trump's bloviating and lying. There is zero evidence that anything in it is fake or that it was not a serious effort to collect information that could be used as opposition research. Unfortunately for Clinton, it never served its purpose, which was to weaken Trump and help her win.

Accusations that the dossier contains Russian disinformation have been made, even by serious people like Hill, but zero evidence provided. One must also remember that the FBI has analyzed and examined this possibility and addressed this long after the fact, and they found zero evidence that such was the case. The Inspector General's report discusses this. The FBI also felt it would make no sense for the Russians to do that. Steele was aware of this danger, and he knew that his proximity to Deripaska on another matter was a potential weak spot, but he kept those deals separate. In fact, he was working closely with the FBI in its efforts to flip Deripaska, but that didn't work out.

A couple allegations may be inflated or just rumor, if one believes Danchenko, but the FBI again leans toward it being Danchenko who is trying to cover his ass by "minimizing" his role. He was scared when it first became public knowledge that he had anything to do with the dossier, but he did, and the FBI knew that informants in his position often seek to minimize or deny their connections and roles. They are the ones who are lying, not the police, or in this case Steele. That's all in the Inspector General's report.

The FBI analyzed why there was a discrepancy between what Danchenko said and what was written in the dossier, and they provided three possible explanations, and then they leaned toward it being Danchenko who was covering his ass, not Steele who had misunderstood or was exaggerating, although that could still be true. Even then, that doesn't make the allegation false. It just remains unconfirmed. We have a section about this because RS and the Inspector General's report discuss it. See Steele dossier#Discrepancies between sources and their allegations.

How many sources did Steele have? BBC correspondent Paul Wood, writing in The Spectator, wrote: "Steele had '20 to 30' sources for the dossier and in two decades as a professional intelligence officer he had never seen such complete agreement by such a wide range of sources."

We know that Danchenko was Steele's main sub-source, but Galkina "stood as the dossier's most important contributor". Between them they had many contacts (sub-sub-sources), all the way into the Kremlin. Danchenko, and especially Galkina, are very well-connected. (The FBI hired Danchenko and he proved to be extremely valuable.) Steele had sources who had no connection with each other reporting on the same events, so that type of confirmation is also valuable. Then the FBI's own sources confirmed what Steele's sources had told him, so they just nodded and noted that Steele had pretty good sources. That's why they even listened to him. Then, because they couldn't interview most of the sources, they depended on their own sources, not Steele's, when making judgement calls, assessments, and writing their reports. The January 2017 ODNI assessment confirmed Steele's central allegations, the ones mentioned in the lead. Steele's sources were far ahead of the FBI.

So we're left with a bunch of allegations mentioned in RS, all of them different, with very different sources, some based on very solid information, a couple based possibly on rumors, some confirmed, some unconfirmed, and nothing serious actually disproven. The experts at Lawfare wrote this in December 2018: "The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven." They know the difference between unconfirmed and disproven. It's a shame that so many don't. Now you understand why we can't make any form of group judgment or declaration about the allegations. They must be treated separately, except for those mentioned as a group in the ODNI assessment.

Now how to cover this in the last sentence of the first paragraph? Very briefly, as it's too complicated to deal with in the lead. We deal with it all much better in the body, treating each allegation separately. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:36, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

References

I don't want to get into everything right at this moment because it's late, but I do want to highlight what I think is the main thrust of our disagreement. The way I see it, there are two different layers to the subject of this article, and they need to be separated very carefully and then held separate throughout the article.

First, there is the set of documents Steele produced as a subcontractor for FusionGPS. These vary in what they describe and in their general trustworthiness, from well-informed analysis of things that were true but not necessarily well-known or universally acknowledged (that the Trump campaign and the Putin administration were favorably disposed towards each other and that each recognized this and attempted to capitalize on it) to what amounted to wild speculation (that Trump was or would as president act as some sort of subordinate or proxy for Putin).

Second, there is the reaction to Steele's reporting, at the time and into the future. Because it contained several extremely severe and/or salacious allegations that were at best difficult to corroborate, it immediately became the centerpiece of Trump's frankly farcical attempts to portray any discussion of his affinity for Putin as part of a conspiracy to smear him. Simultaneously, because it fit so clearly into the broader story of that obvious affinity, it was accepted relatively uncritically by organizations investigating and discussing those connections (as covered by the Horowitz report and for example Eric Wemple's series discussing the reaction). Understanding both of these things is key to understanding the long halflife of the "Steele Dossier" as an idea and a point of rhetoric. I think this article, in general, does not do a great job of separating these things, and particularly tends to treat parts of the reaction as an unbiased analysis of the documents, rather than as a key part of what makes them notable. In particular I want to emphasize the cautions at the end of WP:PST's paragraph on secondary sources, about how primary and secondary sources can blur together.

Consider a novel like Uncle Tom's Cabin. Obviously it's notable principally because of its political and cultural impact, not because of any innovations it makes to the literary art form. Because of that, it would profoundly confuse the article to draw mostly on the contemporaneous discussion to describe the themes, or to get bogged down in the particulars of life on a southern plantation and how it did or did not differ from the novel's portrayal. It would also be needlessly restrictive and even potentially introduce bias to rely on those sources to construct the summary rather than simply consulting the novel itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gazeboist (talk • contribs) 07:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I am seriously intrigued (in awe!) by your thinking here. It would be great to see how this could be done. Just start with small proposed examples in their own sections on this page and let's see where this goes. I have a vague premonition this could really improve some things. Thanks! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:46, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Changes to lead

As to my adjustments to the opening paragraph:

I actually based my changes on your breakdown above, but with the unconfirmed/contradicted claims added and all claims somewhat consolidated. I end up with:

1. Vladimir Putin preferred Trump to Clinton and instigated Russian efforts to tilt US public opinion towards a Trump victory. (confirmed, ODNI)
2. Cyberattacks were conducted on both campaigns by Russian agents/proxies. (confirmed, ODNI)
3. Trump's campaign personnel and associates included several people with undisclosed connections to various Russian figures. (confirmed, ODNI)
   • "Secretive", like "largely discredited", is opinion/analysis that properly belongs in the body of the article. "Undisclosed" or "private" are sufficient for the opening.
4. Russia retained or retains blackmail files for both candidates. (unconfirmed and dubious in prominent detail)
5. Trump and his campaign engaged in a deliberate, long-running, mutual effort to coordinate with Russian actors. (contradicted by original source, Horowitz)

This bundle of claims is, in my experience, what people are referring to when they talk about the truth or falsity of the "Steele dossier" as a whole. At this point, we can do a sort of "fact checker" evaluation of the bundle as a whole: is it best described as fully true, basically true, partially true, basically false, or fully false? Given that the base claim that there was Russian activity was more or less confirmed, but the most salacious details of the alleged blackmail amount to uncorroborated rumor and the top line claim that the Trump campaign was actively coordinating with Russian influence efforts was later contradicted/undermined by Steele's own original source, I land on "partially true". Major aspects of the bundle are true, but other major aspects are at best highly suspect.

My changes to the opening paragraph of the article were intended to bring it into line with the above analysis. In particular, since people are likely to come into the article with a vague idea of the allegations as a whole and a strongly polarized opinion on the broader meta-controversy, I think it's extremely important to specify both the major claims that are true and the major claims that are at best highly suspect. Otherwise a reader is going to judge everything together and come away with an incorrect impression of the facts. I'll freely admit that my phrasing could be improved; I'm particularly not happy with the wording I landed on for the influence operations, though obviously I'm not a fan of the original either. I will however stand by the walkback from "several key allegations" to "some aspects". The first suggests that the claims are basically true, even if some details haven't been corroborated, while the second keeps things properly ambivalent before directly stating what is and isn't known. Changing "the" to "a" is just a grammatical thing; ODNI likely produced multiple reports on a variety of subjects in January of 2017, of which the election interference report was one.

Gazeboist (talk) 02:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Gazeboist, I think your attempted change would have been a slight improvement but, as you might see from the archives of this talk page, improvement can be difficult. Good luck. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:15, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree. It's a good update to the text. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:36, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

"Secretive" is not opinion. The contacts, starting in 2015 (AFAIK), were covert contacts with actual Russian spies. We know this because seven different allied intelligence agencies discovered these contacts rather accidentally during their routine surveillance of what the spies were doing. They discovered that these spies in different countries all over Europe (even Australian intelligence reported such contacts) were discussing things with Trump people, and it worried them enough that they independently started reporting their findings to American intelligence (possibly both FBI and CIA). The full nature and details of these contacts have never been revealed as it would endanger sources, disclose who and now they were being spied upon, and otherwise endanger intelligence-gathering secrets.

When confronted with these accusations, Trump and everyone connected with him denied and lied. That was their pattern all throughout his presidency the time. "Undisclosed" contacts that are denied and lied about means they were meant to remain "secret". So "secretive" isn't OR or opinion. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

As to the lead, "secretive" is excessive synthesis. In the body of the article, the specific contacts that occurred can be discussed where relevant, and the specifics of secret vs undisclosed vs false vs not broadly known can be dealt with. Gazeboist (talk) 19:18, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Have you examined this section: Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations? It should be examined carefully before proceeding down this path. When you're done, you may or may not revise you approach. We have steered clear of bundling allegations (we only mention the few that were discussed in RS) and their confirmation status. They are quite varied, from different sources, and even Steele knew that some might be shaky. He never claimed they were all true.

By dealing with what RS say about each one in its own section, we avoid the danger of OR. We are not allowed to include our OR synthesis speculations of what the RS means when they say what they say. We can do that on this talk page during discussions, but that doesn't get into the article. When one reads a section and what all the RS say about that particular allegation, one gets a sense of whether it's true, maybe true, uncertain, unlikely, or even false. It's a very mixed bag, and sources are rarely agreed, so we just include all of them. When there is uncertainty about an unconfirmed allegation, readers should come away with that feeling of uncertainty found by reading all the RS. Does that make sense to you? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:11, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I will however stand by the walkback from "several key allegations" to "some aspects". The first suggests that the claims are basically true, even if some details haven't been corroborated, while the second keeps things properly ambivalent before directly stating what is and isn't known. Changing "the" to "a" is just a grammatical thing; ODNI likely produced multiple reports on a variety of subjects in January of 2017, of which the election interference report was one.

That is about specific allegations made in June 2016 and mentioned in THE ODNI report of January 2017, so we can't really change that. The point of that is that Steele's sources were far ahead of the FBI. They alleged things later confirmed and then formally stated in the ODNI report. Steele had sources in the Kremlin, with one in Putin's office. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I have. That section is terrible. It's a major offender in terms of conflating the Steele documents with the broader meta-controversy. Again, this is not the article on Trump's relationship with Russia, the 2016 Russian influence operation, or any of that. This is an article on the documents compiled by Christopher Steele. Wikileaks, Rosneft, sanctions, etc are only relevant to this article in terms of how the documents were referenced in the subsequent political discourse. Papadopolous isn't confirmation of Steele's documents; Steele explicitly didn't know about him. There's plenty more to say about that, but honestly that section is a good example of the twostep that this article should be helping to remedy instead of contributing to: people lose track of the nature and claims of the Steele documents, their sourcing, and how they relate to other public information, get lost in the details of the broader Russia/Trump issue, and wind up with a gestalt opinion of Steele based on their general sense about Trump and Russia. This article needs to separate the Steele documents from that broader issue, not mix them together. Gazeboist (talk) 19:13, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

"how they relate to other public information" is the key phrase, so you do recognize we should do that. That's what we have tried to do in the context of how RS do it. We must follow their lead. The Steele dossier has been brought up and connected by RS with many aspects of the Trump-Russia nexus. For example, Steele didn't know about Papadopoulos, but the dossier was and is wrongly blamed as the trigger for the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In fact, it was the actions of Papadopoulos that were the trigger. Myriad RS and government documents and reports discuss both the dossier and Papadopoulos in that connection. That means we are duty-bound to mention it here. Readers are told that the "Steele dossier is to blame for the witch hunt of an innocent president." Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump is to blame for shooting himself in the foot, cozying up to Putin, defending and aiding Russian interference, and surrounding himself with people very willing to follow his orders to seek contact with Russia and build a good relationship with Russia. Papadopoulos and Carter were just doing their duty.

Since you see that section as problematic, I suggest you start a new section and list specific examples, using quotes and sources from those sections. Then we can work on improving it.

I get the feeling, right from your opening remarks about revamping the article, that you have an ideal way such an article should be written. That's not how we work here, especially for controversial topics like this. Editors' opinions are ranked lower than RS. We must bend our ways of thinking to what RS say and deal with the issues. We do not bend the coverage to fit our imagined ideal. We let RS dictate what and how we cover it. Then we try as best we can to group general themes together so it makes some sense, and let each section stand on its own. That's what we have tried to do.

My approach to writing articles follows those principles. I start with no assumptions about the final result, gather all the sources I can find, then "dump them on the table" like pieces of a puzzle, without me having any idea what the picture looks like. I then sort them into topical piles that make little pictures. One topic and all the RS that speak about it. After a while, it often becomes apparent which little piles and pictures fit together with other little piles and pictures. The result is what RS say and how they say it. I have to approach this with no preconceived ideas of an ideal article format. There are exceptions for certain types of topics. We even have MOS guidelines for such cases. I don't think we have any guideline that dictates how to deal with something as complicated as this.

Don't look at the article as if it will read, from top to bottom, as a coherent flowing narrative. It can't do that because the topic isn't one flowing narrative about a single event. The dossier covers many topics, many events, and many people. Then, to make it even more complicated, it, and especially certain parts of it, has become a battlefield for warring political factions, all documented in myriad RS, and each dealing with it in different ways, so all we can do is try to make it a bit less confusing. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:43, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

As to that one sentence, if it's just about the ODNI report, it doesn't belong in the lead. The lead should be a general description of the subject matter; the second sentence of the article is not the appropriate place to endorse a single near-contemporary source's assessment of something that has been thoroughly discussed and disputed for years. Gazeboist (talk) 19:13, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

It's not really about the ODNI report, but that report just happened to deal with several of the most important and central allegations. We decided to put those major allegations at the top because they are so central and important, not just to the dossier, but how the dossier was the first to explain the real issues of the whole Trump-Russia affair to the FBI, and they are still true to this day. Important things like that get mentioned in the lead.

The other allegations can be summarized in a sentence without specifying the details in the lead. Leave that for the body. Please propose a sentence to deal with all the other allegations. Right now we have this:

"Most of the dossier's other allegations remain unverified."

Here's a try:

"The rest of the dossier's allegations are largely unverified or are debated, and the Mueller report concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates."

That also covers the unproven "conspiracy" allegation made by Steele. The last 2/3 is adapted from the lead at Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

Another version:

"The veracity of allegations can vary widely, with some allegations publicly confirmed, others unconfirmed, but, according to James Clapper and Fox News host Shepard Smith, none are disproven. According to Lawfare, "none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.""

"Doubtful, though not yet disproven" is a phrase used by Fusion GPS. In November 2019, the founders of Fusion GPS published a book about the dossier and had this to say about its veracity:

"After three years of investigations, a fair assessment of the memos would conclude that many of the allegations in the dossier have been borne out. Some proved remarkably prescient. Other details remain stubbornly unconfirmed, while a handful now appear to be doubtful, though not yet disproven."

Some of that can be condensed, and then somehow combined. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:43, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean: I'm not sure of the best way to arrange the citations and crosslinks within the summary (you seem much more adept at that than I am), but how about this for the actual text: While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven. I have an urge to add some kind of comment about how this variance drives the controversy over the dossier, but I think that would be analysis. -- Gazeboist (talk) 00:42, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Gazeboist, you're "not sure of the best way"? How do you think I feel? I've been dealing with this stuff for ages and am still uncertain, so I welcome your input. I really, REALLY!!, like your version. It seems to cover all angles. I have tried to add some good refs we already use and came up with this:

While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.

If that works for you, feel free to use it as a substitute for the last sentence of the first paragraph. Then we can see how it really looks and works. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:13, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

There is another sentence we could add that covers an important, two-part, allegation:

As far as the allegation of a well-developed "conspiracy of cooperation", the Mueller report did not directly address "cooperation", but did conclude there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates."

That is one of the most important allegations, and it was neither proven nor disproven. Should we also add that sentence? (BTW, many forms of passive and active cooperation (another word for collusion) by Trump, Don Jr, and his campaign members were proven in spades, but that's too much for the lead. IOW, they could prove that robbers "robbed the bank", but couldn't prove the robbers actually planned to help each other do it. ) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:13, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll swap in the new final sentence. As far as the Mueller stuff, my view is that we're better off covering that in the body of this article and/or in other related articles. Because of all the rhetoric, it's almost impossible to talk about what happened without getting into weird philosophical digressions about the line, if there is one, between publicly requesting/accepting help from another party and directly coordinating with them, and this sentence does enough to get across the idea of "broad vibe is basically correct, but be careful about details". -- Gazeboist (talk) 16:11, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Gazeboist , I agree. The lead should just be a summary and not get too much "into the weeds" with complicated details and explanations. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:14, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I do still think the opening section could be cut down and rearranged into three or maybe four paragraphs. We cover the allegations and their trustworthiness in the first, and I don't think we really need to repeat that info until we're actually expanding on it in the body. The second paragraph can take on the documents' origins, publication, and sharing to the IC; the debate over who knew what about payments can be left to the relevant section of the article. Then the third paragraph can summarize the varying reactions, and maybe we do a separate fourth paragraph on its continued life in rhetoric and conspiracy theories. I'll come back at a later date to put some real work into that effort. -- Gazeboist (talk) 16:35, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

You may want to read this essay of mine: How to create and manage a good lead section

Leads are generally one to four paragraphs in length, but five and even six paragraphs can be justified for long and complex articles.

The current lead, IIRC, has evolved according to demand, IOW largely in reaction to what readers and editors felt was essential to mention "up front", and that has been determined by the controversiality of the dossier and certain allegations. That's why each paragraph touches on so many different topics in the article. It's hard to condense such a large article into a 4-5 paragraph lead. We have similar problems with some other large articles. The more simple and homogenous a topic, the easier it is to condense/summarize it into a shorter lead. The more complex and controversial, the more difficult. That's our situation here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:14, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

"Former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services"

Peter, why did you remove the following?

Paul Wood, writing in The Spectator, said the source was one of Danchenko's contacts, "no less than a former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services. This source did not talk specifically about the 'pee tape' but, Danchenko told Steele, he said they had sexual kompromat on Trump going back years. 'We've got him over a barrel.'"

Edit summary: "No, Paul Wood did not say in that 2020 article that the source was one of Igor Danchenko's contacts. Paul Wood said that somebody else, unnamed, said it."

My original source:

Finally, there was another Danchenko contact, a ‘former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin official’. This was later said to be no less than a former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services. This source did not talk specifically about the ‘pee tape’ but, Danchenko told Steele, he said they had sexual kompromat on Trump going back years. ‘We’ve got him over a barrel.’

Peter, please parse this from the above. They appear to be talking about the same person:

• "another Danchenko contact" = "a ‘former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin official’" = "a former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services".

How did I get this wrong? What am I missing?

Full paragraph, so we can count the five "other" sources (my numbers in brackets):

Steele has five other sources for the ‘golden showers’ story. [1] One is the hotel manager, [2] another a maid. Neither had first-hand information, the manager agreed it might have happened, the maid relayed gossip among the housekeeping staff. [3] One is ‘an American’ who supposedly saw a row in the hotel reception about whether a group of prostitutes could go up to Trump’s suite. This American is not Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, who told a Congressional committee he had ‘stopped’ five prostitutes from trying to visit Trump. [4] Another source was a friend of Danchenko, described as a Russian with a ‘wide social network’, who said the story was common knowledge around the Kremlin. Finally, there was [5] another Danchenko contact, a ‘former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin official’. This was later said to be no less than a former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence services. This source did not talk specifically about the ‘pee tape’ but, Danchenko told Steele, he said they had sexual kompromat on Trump going back years. ‘We’ve got him over a barrel.’

Other info about Steele's sources for the "pee tape" allegation: While many people do not believe the "pee tape" incident happened, Stanislav Belkovsky, Russian political analyst and a founder and director of the Moscow-based National Strategy Institute of Ukraine, disagrees: "Prostitutes around the city say the 'golden shower' orgy story is true". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:56, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Typically quote marks are used to indicate quotes. So when Paul Wood puts ‘former senior intelligence officer now a Kremlin official’ inside quotes, and then adds the vague phrase "was later said" about the person, it would be wrong for Wikipedia to suggest that Paul Wood was responsible for the claim. Changing to "Paul Wood said that someone said ..." would be truer but would not justify inclusion, because then instead of a credible commentator the source is anonymous or Mr Steele or Mr Danchenko or whatever, at some unknown time before August 12 2020, about an unnamed person. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 12:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I fixed the attribution issue by including more of the quote. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:00, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

References

Valjean has re-inserted the disputed material, with additions. I do not agree that the inclusion is justified. Who agrees or disagrees? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:42, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Peter, you can do better than that. Your complaint was about attribution, and I fixed the issue. If you have a better way to do it, then suggest it. The source and relevance are good, so what is your objection now? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:41, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

I gave my reason and am now waiting to see who agrees/disagrees with Valjean's insertion and re-insertion despite my objection. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Peter, that remark brings no clarity to the situation. What is your real objection? If it's no longer an attribution problem, then it sounds like it might be an "I don't like it" issue, and we don't consider that a legitimate argument. You aren't even mentioning any policy-based reasoning. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:46, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

It is pointless trivia that adds no real value. Per policy Valjean needs to get consensus to reinsert this text. We had a discussion a while ago that ended with consensus that the unnamed Russian prostitute opinions about the pee tape should be removed. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:11, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

This is nothing like that. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:16, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Your word "trivia" makes me think of WP:GOSSIP and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Yes, anonymous-prostitute objections are comparable to the objection I made about how quoting unnamed people quoting unnamed people isn't justifiable, and is worse in this case because it's a direct quote yet WP:RS/QUOTE can't be followed. This anonymous-prostitute-related discussion is also comparable if as you suggest it was another case of Valjean inserting and then re-inserting despite objections, though I think your reminder there about WP:BRD had no lasting effect, and I prefer to think of WP:ONUS: "The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." Perhaps WP:BLP would apply too if the living persons didn't include Donald Trump. In 2021 I didn't repeatedly object to Valjean's re-insertion of a different Paul Wood quote of a quote, but that was before I read that Mr Wood's unnamed sources, if Christopher Steele and/or Igor Danchenko are meant, did their research on the internet / in bars etc. and that even Mr Danchenko regarded it as "rumor and speculation" -- thus Paul Wood's 2020 article is obsolete and WP:NOTSCANDAL says potentially-obsolete sources shouldn't be added. Still, despite knowing PAGs favour our objections, I know that some prefer to count noses, so let's see if others comment. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

We are not dealing with "unnamed people quoting unnamed people". We are dealing with a citation from a very notable BBC journalist, Paul Wood (journalist), writing in a very RS, The Spectator, the longest-lived current affairs magazine in the world and in history. WP:RS/QUOTE is certainly satisfied. The content is rather short and properly attributed. The subject is very much on-topic (the dossier makes allegations, what a surprise!!!), and the alleged source ("Former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services") is certainly notable enough for mention. Steele, Danchenko, and Galkina have remarkable networks of sources. The FBI rated Galkina's the best, and she unwittingly provided info to Danchenko.

This is the typical IDONTLIKEIT obstructionism we have come to expect. One need not read it, just look at the contribution history, and one knows what to expect. It's really cheap wikilawyering, using illegitimate arguments:

1. "Obsolete"??? Utter BS. The "kompromat" issue will never be obsolete.
2. BLP is not an issue as this is properly-sourced content about a PUBLICFIGURE.
3. "Consensus"??? "Consensus", like "due weight", is not an argument to be used in isolation. They have no legs of their own. They mean nothing alone in cases like this. A consensus not based in multiple other policies is just POV obstructionism. Mentioning other policies isn't enough either, as that's just PAG flag-waving wikilawyering. No, the arguments, based on those policies, must be legitimate. That is not the case here.
4. "Trivia"??? These allegations (that the Russians have various types of kompromat on Trump) are not trivia. We're just learning about the many types of kompromat. Trivia is stuff that is ONLY found in The National Enquirer and such junk sources. The "kompromat" issue is covered in many RS.

The objection is also rooted in "truth" personal POV ideas that ignore "verifiability, not truth". Questions about whether "what is alleged is true or not" or whether "the original sources for the allegations are notable or not" are irrelevant. Our policies deal with this and rule out such arguments. Reliable secondary sources cover the issue, and that is why we cover it, not because we agree or disagree with the sources or content. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:01, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

• Just read this thread–I don't really see any reasonable objections to the edit by Valjean. The head of a foreign intelligence service having essentially blackmail on the U.S. President at the time is obviously more than just trivia. It's cited to a reliable source and properly attributed. And the source being unnamed is not a problem, we allow anonymous sources when interviewed by a reliable source who vouches for them. ––FormalDude (talk) 18:16, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
• Now that the language has been changed; I'm having difficulty understanding the objection. This is certainly not trivia. O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
• The objection seems like a moving target. It's noteworthy and RS verified with attribution. SPECIFICO talk 18:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
• Ditto. EEng 19:52, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree w Valjean, FormalDude, O3000, SPECIFICO, and EEng. Disagree with Peter. Andre🚐 20:07, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

I would disagree that the information is pointless trivia. starship.paint (exalt) 14:19, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

A majority has decided to support the re-insertion so I'll say no more. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:27, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

This is noteworthy content, more than just trivia, and should be included. Agree with the voices above who say as much. It's widely covered by RSes. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Proposal

I say we take off and nuke the whole article from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Then you and Gazeboist can post a sane account of this sorry mess. Shtove (talk) 17:00, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. The article is unreadable dreck and contains many falsehoods. Take this sentence of the lead "some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven." How far backwards can someone bend over to avoid saying this dossier was bunk? It is sourced almost exclusively to sources from 2018 and earlier, and is not in line with the modern understanding on the document. For example, this 2021 CNN source that says "A series of investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources." Almost all sources call the Dossier some variation of "debunked" or "discredited" (for example NYT and NPR. This article is locked in 2018 and is badly out of date. We should simply accept what almost all post 2021 sources say. Mr Ernie (talk) 17:55, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

• Strong oppose Andre🚐 21:14, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Sounds like a NOTHERE partisan biased proposal. Crazy. That's not how Wikipedia works. This is a newbie error, a sort of WP:POINT violation. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

  Do you think the lead is in accordance with those 3 sources? Specifically the quoted sentence? Mr Ernie (talk) 02:40, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

  The sentence from the lead was collaboratively developed above and summarizes ALL RS, not just three, and the mentioned criticisms are included several places in the article. You clearly still haven't read the article and studied the sources. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:46, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

• If there are many problems it should be easy to point out and try to resolve? Why should we nuke before that? starship.paint (exalt) 05:18, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Improve it with high quality RSes before "nuking it from orbit". — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:43, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

• Um, no? In as much as there is a problem, it is with false equivalence between weighty analytical sources, and gadflies. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:36, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Strongly agree 77.32.18.215 (talk) 01:45, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

• Agree This article was created two days after media revealed the existence of the Steele dossier. Over the next six years, further information about the dossier would be released, debated and added to the article. It wasn't helped by the fact that many editors were extremely concerned about how the report would affect various U.S. politicians.

What we are left with is a confusing, meandering, unreadable mess that pays too much attention to when information was revealed and what various people thought at various times.

The article should begin with what we know now. The dossier combined publicly available information with fabrication in order to harm Donald Trump's election prospects. The focus of the article should be on how and why this was done, and how successful it was, rather than a debate about how reliable it is.

One of the more interesting aspects of the dossier is why it was taken seriously, when it was obvious to reasonable observers that it was mostly fabricated. Maybe that will help future readers when similar reports are issued in the future, although it seems people don't learn.

TFD (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the best approach would be to assemble a chronology of facts established in the findings of the various investigations and litigation that flowed from the dossier's compilation, but sourced directly from the official reports; then feed in elaborations found in reliable media sources that are compatible with those facts, reserving the parts that are incompatible or fact-free for talk-page discussion amongst the scholastics. Shtove (talk) 09:39, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Shtove, you've got it backward. We start with and depend on secondary RS, not primary sources. You have written articles on history before, so you know that your proposal to nuke this article violates many policies. It's a nonsense and disruptive partisan proposal that should get you topic banned. This topic, like it or not, is extremely notable and covered by myriad sources of all types. Only the secondary RS have weight here, so they are the main sources of info.

We do not create articles to fit a particular "ideal" concept or result. Instead, we let RS dictate what we write here. We build and tweak as we get more information, all the while preserving the documentation of the historical development of the topic. The article will show how the topic got "from A to Z". Early misunderstandings are documented and later corrections then added to that. Facts do take precedence over opinions, but secondary RS attributed analyses and opinions are some of the most valuable content we have as they place those facts in their proper context. All significant details are included, and significance is again determined by RS. If a detail is controversial, RS will cover it more, and so we include that detail.

The steady drumbeat of lies and accusations (it's fake, fabricated, a witch-hunt, etc.) right from the beginning continues, and we ignore them for what they are, just extremely biased and usually counterfactual and fringe partisan opinions (it's fake, fabricated, a witch-hunt, etc.) which are trumped by mainstream RS facts and opinions that have real due weight. They have more due weight than primary sources. Only the bits of primary sources that are mentioned in secondary RS can be used, as they tell us what bits of the primary sources have due weight for mention here.

A good portion of this article is only notable, and therefore must be mentioned, because Trump and the right-wing media bubble have criticized, misrepresented, and lied about it. That forces the mainstream media and other sources (such as books) to explain and debunk that nonsense. That's how we document most of the right-wing POV, lies, and conspiracy theories here. They do get their voice, but they are placed in context by the mainstream RS. They all become part of the article. WP:PRESERVE dictates that we respect the hard work of all the editors who have worked in good faith to create and improve the article. We do not "nuke" their work. We improve it when RS dictate the need for improvement. We do not delete or "nuke" things we don't like, much less developed articles. That's unheard of for good reason. We do not allow our content to be hijacked by editors who would be more at home at Conservapedia. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:30, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

See "The Steele dossier: A reckoning" (Marshall Cohen, CNN November 18, 2021). While mainstream media took the report seriously when it was released, it has no credibility now. But instead of reflecting reliable sources, the article is stuck in the 2016 election cycle. It itself reads like opposition research. It's like we were still arguing that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, we were winning in Afghanistan or many other absurd claims that were once believed. Once they are debunked in rs we should move on. TFD (talk) 19:18, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

You obviously haven't read our dossier article very carefully. It's been updated to include all the descriptions (discredited, fake, etc.) Those opinions are included. Cohen's article is cited FIVE times in our article for both facts and opinions. (Search the page for "[191]".) Keep in mind "no credibility" is your opinion. Hyperbole doesn't help. Cohen wrote: "But five years later, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished. A series of investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele's sources." That's a very unnuanced statement that's easily misunderstood and is partially counterfactual. Many of its central allegations are actually confirmed, including by the ODNI. The FBI's own sources confirmed many of the allegations, so the FBI used their own sources, rather than the dossier, because it could not independently talk to Steele's many sources. That makes sense. Because of the agreement between Steele's sources and the FBI's own sources, the FBI had "greater confidence" in the dossier initially, but could not continue to use it later without the ability to speak to the original sources (Danchenko's and Galkina's unwitting sources). The FBI's own sources were still enough to open an investigation into whether and how much the Trump campaign was helping the Russians. They found quite a bit. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:38, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I read this article and it gives credence to the report which current rs do not. The parts of the report which U.S. intelligence confirmed were already known facts or speculation. The apparent favoritism of Trump over Clinton on Russian state media had already been reported as well as contact between Trump and his officials and Russians. We knew for example that Trump was in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe contest. Similarly allegations of Russian hacking were already known. See for example "How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House" (CNN April 8, 2015). In fact the Russia Trump narrative hit the media Dec. 17 2015, about when Steele was beginning his report. TFD (talk) 21:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

TFD, if only it were that simple:

"Steele wasn’t aware that by August, 2016, a similar debate was taking place inside the Obama White House and the U.S. intelligence agencies. According to an article by the Washington Post, that month the C.I.A. sent what the paper described as “an intelligence bombshell” to President Obama, warning him that Putin was directly involved in a Russian cyber campaign aimed at disrupting the Presidential election—and helping Trump win. Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.’s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.’s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump’s team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.) But, as the Post noted, the C.I.A.’s assessment that the Russians were interfering specifically to boost Trump was not yet accepted by other intelligence agencies, and it wasn’t until days before the Inauguration that major U.S. intelligence agencies had unanimously endorsed this view."[1]

See also: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies#2015-2016 foreign surveillance of Russian targets.

Steele already wrote of this in June, and the ODNI confirmed it publicly in January 2017. Steele's central allegations were proven true. Sure, some things were public knowledge, and Steele naturally commented on them, but his sources also provided background, even for those things, that were not public knowledge. For example, neither Steele nor the public knew of the Russian offer to Papadopoulos, yet his sources alleged a similar offer was made to Carter Page. The Russians wanted to make sure the Trump campaign knew they were willing to help by giving them the stolen DNC and Hillary emails, so they plied both of Trump's messengers with the same offer of help. That's why Donald Jr., who obviously knew of the offer, was so excited at the Trump Tower Meeting. He thought: "Finally, we are getting what they had promised to Papadopoulos, all those juicy stolen Hillary emails." Boy was he disappointed! They ended up talking about the Russian desire for the sanctions to be lifted. Donald had to hold his end of the quid pro quo bargain by doing that, and he did publicly say he would do it. So Roger Stone ended up having to work with Assange and Guccifer 2.0 to try to coordinate the release of the stolen emails, and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Donald Trump had to have known of this attempted coordination. Trump even had Rohrabacher, "Putin's favorite congressman", travel to London and meet with Assange, where he relayed Trump's promise of a pardon if Assange would deny any Russian involvement in the hacking of American targets and the release of the stolen emails.[2] So Assange denied Russian involvement and blamed Seth Rich, even though a dead man cannot continue to supply stolen emails, and Assange knew he was dealing with Guccifer 2.0, not the dead Seth Rich. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:32, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter that Steele wasn't aware of discussions in the White House and U.S. Intelligence, since the claims of Russian hacking had already been reported in CNN and other news outlets. Essentially Steele made two types of claims: ones that were in the public arena and ones either fabricated or obtained from wholly unreliable witnesses.

BTW I find it difficult to read extremely narrow paragraphs.

TFD (talk) 07:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It would also be good if you didn't go into all that Assange stuff in the Steele article particularly when you get the timeline wrong and have a strong POV about him. The whole business here is a mess enough without messing up the picture more. NadVolum (talk) 08:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

NadVolum, thanks for mentioning that. Although Assange and Wikileaks are synonymous, that part isn't critical to the dossier. Other content covers it, so I have cut it. Also, you mention "the timeline". What are you thinking about? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:16, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Assange had already embraced the conspiracy theory about Seth Rich as a possibility long before Rohrabacher's visit. That visit accomplished nothing. and yes it was pretty obvious to everyone that Guccifer 2.0 was not Seth Rich - that's why Assange could receive a leak from him a week after his death. NadVolum (talk) 20:22, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. You're right about the timeline. The only good of a renewed public denial from Assange at that time would be to reinforce that belief in susceptible people. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

TFD, here's more:

BBC correspondent Paul Wood wrote:

"Steele was first to warn that Russia was mounting a covert operation to elect Donald Trump. Fusion GPS – his partners in Washington DC – have called this the dossier's 'foundational initial assertion' and it was correct. Much later, the Mueller inquiry would state that 'the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.' Steele wrote about what was happening as early as June 2016...The US intelligence agencies...did not publish their findings until December 2016, too late to prevent the effort to influence the election."[3]

Steele knew some things before the general public knew them. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Crossfire Hurricane was launched on July 31, 2016, a couple of days after the FBI learned from Australia about Papadopoulos providing proof that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Russians. The FBI knew of several types of Russian hackings, which began in 2014 and 2015, but had no evidence the Trump campaign knew about it ahead of everyone else. Papadopoulos provided the proof, thus justifying the opening of a full investigation. The FBI also knew, due to a series of alerts from seven European and Australian intelligence agencies, that Trump's people were holding suspicious, secret, meetings with Russian spies all over Europe. So the FBI was aware that the Russians were mounting some form of attack on American targets. Steele, already in June, and without knowing about Papadopoulos, connected the dots that the hackings were part of a cooperation ("a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation") between Russians and the Trump campaign. The FBI only learned of that later, and the media much later. Mueller could not prove a "conspiracy", but he sure found lots of cooperation and attempted coordination. Manafort's repeated sharing of specific election data no doubt helped the Russians target their many very deep intrusions into the electoral systems of many states. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:32, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. The cleaned up stories proposed above instead of the article are just points of view. The actual situation is an actual mess, there is nothing wrong with reflecting reality rather than the POV's of people who can't stand uncertainty and mess. NadVolum (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Should we create a criticism section?

As far as I know, we don't have a specific policy page solely devoted to the existence of criticism sections, but do find guidance in NPOV and maybe some other policies. It seems that they often refer to the essay WP:Criticism, where we find some excellent guidance. Here's the nutshell:

We definitely "include significant criticisms of the subject", but we keep getting criticism from certain editors, like Mr Ernie, that seem to indicate they aren't aware of this fact. Is such ignorance of this article's actual content sufficient reason to go against recommended practice?

We even document all the "hoax, fake news, totally discredited, false, manufactured, Russian disinfo" types from the right-wing echo chamber and Trump supporters that are totally baseless and voiced without evidence (the Trumpian "the more true it is, the more it will be criticized because it makes Trump look bad" type, IOW "Donald Trump's misuse of the term "fake news""). To them, the proven veracity of many important allegations and the criticism have no connection. The more true the allegation, the more they will deny this fact and continue to criticize it. We plainly have NOTHERE editors who do this and keep kicking this dead horse.

As long as a criticism has been mentioned in a RS (which often document fringe POV), it has been included at the appropriate spots. That's what we are supposed to do. In spite of that fact, I'm wondering if we should create a criticism section here. Sometimes it's justifiable.

On what basis can we justify it? Will it violate NPOV by giving too much weight to baseless and false criticisms? Will it give too much weight to fringe POV? Will doing so violate "avoiding undue weight and POV forking"? Or should we just continue to keep it in the logical spots?

What think ye? Can we create a consensus for or against such a section? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:43, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

There is no way of neutrally covering a contentious political topic that Mr. Ernie will not endlessly complain about. I'm sure he's a lovely chap, but his editing indicates that he has drunk deep of the Kool-Aid. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:37, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I’ve been pretty busy in RL lately, but I plan to weigh in here later that a criticism section isn’t necessary, but what is is a tone change to reflect due weight of sourcing post 2021. Don’t worry, I’ll present many reliable sources. Until then, I’ll give you the opportunity to present a diff of me inserting unsourced or “kool-aid” content into the article to back up this needless aspersion you’ve casted. This type of personalization is what causes this topic area to be so toxic. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:48, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that you get all your information from the walled garden of right-wing media. The reality-based media hasn't changed at all: Steele included commentary on the verification status (or otherwise) of specifics, and time has only reinforced the fact that the unverified stuff on which he cast doubt, was dubious. However much the right-wing media might pretend that Crossfire Hurricane was predicated on the Steele opposition research being accurate and verified, contemporaneous records show that not to be the case. John Durham wasted six million dollars on the "oranges" investigation and found diddly-squat. His summary is that he personally thinks the FBI should have done some more investigating before launching an investigation. Which is fine in theory, but the FBI (and later Mueller) found seriously alarming links between the Trump campaign and one of America's leading geopolitical enemies, which is a rather pressing concern even for an organization like the FBI, which is about as conservative as you get. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:22, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

NO as I seem to recall its frowned upon. Its not a policy, but not a done thing. I think it should be in prose, rather than just a list of grievances (which is what such sections tend to end up being). Slatersteven (talk) 14:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Oppose - Slatersteven is right, I believe "criticism" sections are implicitly discouraged in the MOS and NPOV, but the issues with it are very well captured explicitly in the Wikipedia:Criticism essay: In most cases separate sections devoted to criticism, controversies, or the like should be avoided in an article because these sections call undue attention to negative viewpoints. It is better usually to place criticisms alongside the content they criticize, to make sure those viewpoints are appropriately given DUE weight and avoid any UNDUE emphasis on pros OR cons. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:08, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

There’s now even less reason to blame Clinton for the Russia probe

A good article that also mentions the dossier:

• There’s now even less reason to blame Clinton for the Russia probe.

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:08, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

That's a column in the Washington Post and hence fails rs. The same columnist wrote an article in 2016 “Donald Trump is facing an apocalyptic election scenario, thanks to women voters.” If you want reassurance about HIllary Clinton, it's a good article. Whether or not it reflects a reasonable interpretation is another matter. Since it isn't rs, don't waste your time with it. This is not a forum where we hash out what we think happened. TFD (talk) 01:38, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Why in particular does it fail rs - what policy or guideline covers this thanks. NadVolum (talk) 08:40, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

NadVolum, that's a good question because TFD's statement is a fringe newbie-type statement. TFD, you are confusing The Washington Post for The New York Post or The Washington Times (or The Washington Examiner). Those are unreliable sources, whereas WaPo is among the top five English language RS (top 3 American). RS opinions are perfectly fair game as long as they are attributed properly, and Bump is renowned for his cutting analyses. He is echoing the growing mainstream response to Durham's partisan, opinionated "report".

You might benefit from reading this NYT article, this Twitter thread by Ryan Goodman, and also this analysis by Matt Gertz, who pretty accurately calls Durham's "report" a "300-plus-page op-ed". Remember that Durham was appointed to run what has been described as a "coverup" for Trump's misdeeds in Ukraine (and other misdeeds) that led to his impeachment. It appears Durham is still trying to do that.

(What does the Durham report have to do with Steele's dossier, our topic here? Because he misrepresents it in many ways.)

You're meeting resistance because only Trump's supporters are fooled by this attempt by Durham, and that's because they don't read good sources. They are caught up in the initial breathless reaction (remember NOTNEWS) to Durham's long-awaited report, and now mainstream RS are beginning to analyze it and pick apart its numerous inaccuracies, falsehoods, and other junk content. Durham is no Horowitz, and the many places where their reports disagree, Horowitz easily wins because he stayed non-partisan and did not push the Trump/Russia/GOP narrative, unlike Durham. He's a party hack who keeps pushing the accusations he made as the prosecutor in court, even though they did not win there. Now he's trying them on a gullible public. Don't be part of that crowd. Start reading ONLY mainstream RS. It might be painful, but do it anyway. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Twitter and Media Matters are not reliable sources and are more likely to misinform than educate. Mr Ernie (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Not proposing to use them. MM is a partisan RS. Twitter is obviously a mixed bag. Ryan Goodman is excellent. Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:11, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

"Ryan Goodman (born in Johannesburg, South Africa) is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and is the founding co-editor-in-chief of its website Just Security, which focuses on U.S. national security law and policy." Guy (help! - typo?) 15:52, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Er, what? An article by Philip Bump in The Washington Post is presumptively usable, though attribution would be advised. It's also correct.

In case you are not a frequent viewer of Fox News, it’s worth explaining the two claims here. The first is that the dossier of reports compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was the genesis of the Russia probe. The second is that the idea to link Trump to Russia was itself a political tactic by Clinton’s campaign.

Neither of those things is true, and a quick timeline will make clear why.

This is in fact what Durham's "oranges" report finds, despite all his arm-waving (and his rather concerning statement as fact of claims already adjudicated as false by courts of law). Guy (help! - typo?) 16:00, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Where and which facts were adjudicated as false by courts of law? Raj208 (talk) 21:43, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

His statements about Sussman, for example. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:13, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

WAPO has a reputation for fair analysis. This is not an op-ed or an opinion article only, those are clearly indicated as such when it is the case ("The Washington Post's view" and "Opinion", respectively). —PaleoNeonate – 14:26, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate, you are right. It is clearly labeled as "analysis", and Bump is very qualified to do this. He's a subject matter expert on this topic. Analysis articles are highly valued as RS here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:04, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Durham Report

Shouldn't this whole article be updated to reflect the revelations of the Durham Report? 151.198.54.2 (talk) 05:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

What specific "revelations" are you referring to? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:51, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I left you a note on your talk page. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:02, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The Clinton Campaign Hoax

Durham is on record and has proof that Hillary Clinton committed this crime of the Russian Hoax to frame Donald J Trump. Wikipedia needs to change the wording or delete Steele Dossier from the wording of “controversial” to “illegal crime committed by the Clinton Campaigb to frame Donald J Trump.” There is no “controversy” as Durham has all the proof with Hillary Clinton all over it, and backed up by our Federal Bureau of Investigation. 136.61.213.57 (talk) 13:18, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Source? Slatersteven (talk) 13:22, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Then why didn't he indict her? soibangla (talk) 13:23, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

This is about the latest revival of another Trump/Russia hoax on the American people. It would make a good article here. It's actually pretty old and is based on a "letter contains unverified Russian intelligence information" likely intended to become the seed of such an anti-Clinton conspiracy theory. John Ratcliffe revived it by releasing the declassified info that had previously been rejected by a Senate panel.

BTW, it's pretty natural that a political campaign will publicize any suspicious activity by their opponent, and there was lots of Trump-Russia activity of a suspicious nature. The Clinton campaign didn't invent it. The blame for investigations of Trump-Russia connections lies firmly at the feet of Trump and his campaign.

CLAIM: A declassified letter from the United States Director of National Intelligence proves that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned the “Russia hoax” against Trump in 2016.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The letter contains unverified Russian intelligence information and some lawmakers have criticized its release as a political move. The letter explains that in 2016, Russian intelligence had alleged that Clinton “had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal” against Trump. The document also clearly states that American intelligence officials do not know whether this claim is accurate, an exaggeration, or a lie.[4]

See also:

• The failure of the Durham report. Durham tried to prove a Democratic plot to frame Trump. He couldn’t.
• Again: There’s no evidence Hillary Clinton triggered the Russia probe
• Trumpworld’s latest effort to undermine the Russia probe may be even less substantive than prior attempts
• Intel chief releases Russian disinfo on Hillary Clinton that was rejected by bipartisan Senate panel. Former top officials were aghast at the move by John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence.
• Release of unverified Russian intelligence sparks questions about politicization
• CIA, NSA chiefs opposed release of unverified Russia intelligence to Republican lawmaker
• Trump official releases unverified Russian intel on Clinton previously rejected by Senate panel

So who's going to create the article? It's a notable topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:28, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm copying soibangla's comment from above as it's spot on: -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:31, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

US intelligence became aware of a Clinton campaign plan that was snatched from Russian servers by Dutch intelligence and relayed to USIC which had suspicions it was disinfo that Russia wanted us to snatch and run with, and Durham twice tried to get warrants on Soros with it, but Beryl Howell twice denied his requests because it was dubious. soibangla (talk) 00:02, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

No role in triggering CH investigation

Additionally, it is easy to surmise that the Steele Dossier with its many unverified claims (burden of providing facts was on Steele), it was still used as a significant source of information to kickstart an unnecessary and political investigation, which in fact benefitted Clinton. To fully vindicate Clinton given the many dubious connections her campaign had to the Dossier, is irresponsible. Raj208 (talk) 21:46, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Raj208, you should have pinged Guy. (Now done.) The dossier had no role in "kickstarting"/triggering/"the genesis of" the Trump-Russia investigation (Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation), but there were other things that did. While that subject is covered in several of our articles, you may will definitely benefit from reading my essay Why Crossfire Hurricane?. There you will see the various factors, as explained by a Republican majority committee. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:00, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I keep getting my comments suppressed because I said that the Steele Dossier indeed had a role in triggering the investigation. There were many other factors as well. Durham concluded that the FBI made many such missteps to justify the investigation. There is also an extreme bias towards Wapo which clearly supported the Russia Collusion narrative and ended up being wrong on many elements. To keep pointing to a source which in itself did unfair reporting on the matter in question is disingenuous. I would respectfully request this comment stay posted. Raj208 (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Raj208: the Steele Dossier indeed had a role in triggering the investigation remains false no matter how often it is repeated soibangla (talk) 18:17, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, no, this repetitive denial and repetitive pointing to discredited sources won't change the reality. Instead, the claims that the Steele Dossier had nothing to do with initiating the investigation have been proven false. How is it possible to force a narrative to completely eliminate the role of this Dossier that was front and center in the beginning of the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory? Raj208 (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Raj208, I answer you right below in this section. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:40, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Raj208, the Steele Dossier had nothing to do with initiating the investigation has been established fact for years and Durham affirmed it. soibangla (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-russia-probe-durham-report/h_7da89097f9d84161b05068f15d029711

The article indeed points out as does the Durham report that this report was indeed critical of the Steele Dossier. I believe that needs to be pointed out on Wikipedka in order for this section to be perceived as unbiased. Why the resistance to something so fundamental and reasonable? Raj208 (talk) 20:15, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Raj208, yes, Durham, just like Trump and all his supporters, is critical of the dossier. Durham is working for Trump's interests, and unlike other investigations (Mueller and Horowitz), is shoddy work that's very partisan and untrustworthy. His criticism of the dossier is not news and our article documents all forms of discontent aimed at the dossier, some of it justified and some just uninformed complaining and conspiracy theories, like yours.

You keep claiming that the dossier was used to trigger the start of the Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation) (CH), and we keep telling you that is not true. Even Durham says so in that article:

Durham: "As noted, it was not until mid-September that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators received several of the Steele Reports."[5]

The CH investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, and the CH team first got a few memos from the dossier on September 19, 2016.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe: "We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information."[6]

Durham concedes this point right above in your CNN source. His criticisms of the dossier have nothing to do with your claim. Now tell us how they could have opened the investigation in July based on dossier memos they did not see until September? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:38, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I can then concede the point that it did not trigger the investigation. That makes sense. However, you will now have to concede that the Dossier was indeed used to support and continue the investigation when exculpatory evidence existed. The truth is that Crossfire Hurricane was an unjustified investigation as now confirmed by Durham. You say he was a Trump appointee and was beholden to Trump. However, you now have a responsibility of also admitting that the Biden DOJ is beholden to the Biden administration. While not fully related, for context on some of your obviously biased posts, it is important to note. Raj208 (talk) 12:28, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

The other issue is that you completely dismiss the fact that Durham was critical of the Dossier. This is relevant and that relevance is almost entirely dismissed by you in place of the semantics that it did not "trigger" the investigation. It is fine if it wasn't a trigger but if it was then used regardless to continue the investigation when it could have been ended, then that needs to be adresses. We are seeing selective bias and a lack of neutrality here. Raj208 (talk) 12:32, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

You don't seem to have read "Why Crossfire Hurricane?" yet. Read it. It isn't long.

The dossier was NOT "used regardless to continue the investigation when it could have been ended". The investigation continued because of lots of evidence other than the claims in the dossier. "Crossfire Hurricane was" NOT "an unjustified investigation." It started with lots of evidence unrelated to the dossier that created "probable cause". Both the Inspector General's investigation and Mueller's investigation disagree with Durham, and Durham provides no new evidence for his assertions to undermine their conclusions. His claims are mere partisan posturing eagerly grabbed by Republicans to make more false claims.

When one reads Durham's actions as a prosecutor in court (very interesting stuff), when he is prosecuting Danchenko, and then reads his report, one sees the same type of actions. He made accusations in court that he was unable to prove, and which the court rejected. That's why Durham lost in court. Yet, in spite of that, Durham makes the same disproven claims in his report. That's pretty shoddy work. His whole report is filled with partisan posturing and disproven claims as if he ignored what the courts and the Inspector General and Mueller found. He just ignores all of it and pushes on. His report is not a serious or professional report, unlike the other reports. In spite of that, we mention Durham and his investigation many times. Is there some specific sentence we could include that would be good to add? Please suggest it.

When the FBI received the full dossier, its claims just became part of the other claims and evidence that had to be investigated. Once the FBI had tried to investigate its claims, which they were duty-bound to do, and they were unable to prove or disprove many of the claims (because the FBI could not speak with the original sources), they were no longer able to use the dossier. That's why the January 6, 2017, ODNI assessment of Russian interference did not use the dossier as part of its assessment.

The ODNI and FBI used lots of other evidence the FBI had of the myriad secretive and suspicious contacts and actions of Trump and his campaign with Russian officials and spies. See Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies.

All that evidence alone, without the dossier, was justification for continuing the investigation. When Trump and his associates kept lying about these things, IOW evidence of "consciousness of guilt", that strengthened the FBI's suspicions that something weird was going on. The Mueller investigation, which subsumed the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and stopped it, found many forms of illicit cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russians, but was unable to prove a formal written or oral "conspiracy" in the form of "coordination".

To illustrate, Mueller was able to prove that bank robbers had robbed the bank but he was unable to prove the robbers had "conspired" to rob the bank. What's more important? What they did or how they planned it?

The blame for the investigation lies squarely at the feet of Trump and his people. If he and his people had not acted suspiciously and lied repeatedly, the investigation would have stopped much sooner. Stop trying to blame everyone else. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:54, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It is now widely known that Crossfire Hurricane was a political attack on a political candidate supported by his opponent and her party. All major claims made through the investigation and those in the Dossier are now deemed false including those magnified by Adam Schiff. The sources you continually cite, again, are not neutral. No conservative site is given prominence and any dissenting voices are silenced on the basis of pure semantics instead of substance. Columbia Journalism Review, a reputable publication recently published a long 20,000+ word piece by Jeff Gerth on the conspiracy theories fabricated on 'Russiagate.' Gerth is an award winning former NY Times journalist. This piece was suppressed and wasn't given any prominence by the media despite its credibility. Your continuing claims implying that a fabricated investigation and a clearly fabricated Dossier are somehow not relevant, reek of bias. Raj208 (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

OMG! Read this. Durham may have lied twice to Congress. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:49, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

More here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Not a RS and likely misinformation since it comes from Schiff. Your non RS writes that Schiff "relitigated the Mueller report findings in a manner that clearly indicated that the Trump campaign did coordinate with Russian election interference efforts directed by Vladimir Putin" while the Mueller Report very clearly says the opposite - the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Mr Ernie (talk) 20:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not that simple. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:43, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It's also hilarious to me that Schiff says "So you think it’s perfectly appropriate or or maybe just ill advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent?" when in fact this was exactly what the Clinton campaign was doing through Steele with this little dossier. Mr Ernie (talk) 20:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Ernie, still reading unreliable sources? It would appear so. There is nothing "exactly" the same about it. Trump was cooperating with an enemy power that was aiding him, whereas Steele was stealing information that Russia did not want to be revealed. There is a huge difference. One is very improper (treasonous?) cooperation between allies (who should not be allies), the other is the act of an enemy of Russia to spy on and expose that cooperation. Steele was somewhat successful, and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation even more so. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:43, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Durham also testified this today: “There is not a single substantive piece of information in the dossier that has ever been corroborated by the FBI, or to my knowledge anyone else." Mr Ernie (talk) 00:31, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

He says substantive in his report, too. But I don't see he described how one might objectively define the threshold of substantive. soibangla (talk) 00:47, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

soibangla, I wonder what he means by that. It seems like a "get out of jail free" card for any falsehood he then spouts. There are two noteworthy dossier allegations that have not been proven, the pee tape and Cohen in Prague, and they are definitely not disproven. In both cases, Trump and Cohen repeatedly uttered unforced lies as dubious alibis that make one wonder why they would do that if they were not lying. Otherwise, most dossier allegations are plausible but unproven, or have been resoundingly proven true. Many of its most important allegations are considered true. Yet, Durham pays homage to his lyin' leader by spouting nonsense that is totally counterfactual. Note that Mr Ernie has not yet responded to my query below, even though pinged. He should internalize the meaning of this quote, often misattributed to Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Just because Durham said it doesn't make it true, and quoting Durham as if it was some great truth he uttered is just plain foolish. Durham is spouting widely contradicted nonsense. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

re: "most dossier allegations are plausible but unproven, or have been resoundingly proven true" - what specifically? OckRaz ^talk 07:52, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

OckRaz, here is the carefully crafted neutral wording of our consensus description of the topic in the lead:

Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated by the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties; and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian agents. While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.

So the key/main/central (depending on the RS) allegations of the dossier were true, and it took six months after Steele wrote them for the ODNI assessment to confirm them to be true. A number of other allegations are minor, likely true, and give insider background for proven events, but may never be "proven" true as one would need witnesses to come forward and confirm they said it. Note that most of the sources were unwitting and would deny they ever said anything for a number of reasons. (Putin has a nasty habit of disappearing such people.) The FBI noted this and the Horowitz report gives three possible explanations for discrepancies between content in the dossier and what the source said about it. One is the natural reaction to deny when one's role has been exposed. This is the daily experience in all police and intelligence work. Sources deny what they have said, and only a fool believes such denials. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, do you believe Durham is correct? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:25, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe RS - Hyping the lurid document written by a former British spy that made since-discredited claims about Trump’s ties to Moscow. Do you? RS post 2021 overwhelmingly refer to the dossier as "discredited" or similar. This is not accurately reflected in the article. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Valjean, do you agree with this: Eventually, his credibility collapsed. It was discovered his report was essentially paid opposition research. Investigators failed to corroborate its central claims, like that Trump attorney Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to collude with Russian officials (something Cohen, now a fierce Trump critic, denies to this day). Maybe most damningly, one of his primary sources, Igor Danchenko, later told the FBI that he had never intended any of the information he provided Steele to be presented as “fact.” Rather, it was mostly “hearsay” and material from “conversation he had with friends over beers.” (Danchenko, it turned out, had also previously been a paid FBI source). Mr Ernie (talk) 14:42, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

You aren't answering my question. Do you believe what Durham says here? "There is not a single substantive piece of information in the dossier that has ever been corroborated by the FBI, or to my knowledge anyone else." -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:44, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Durham failed largely because "the problems identified in" [Durham's report had already been] "remedied following an OIG report." This is a pretty good summary of the Durham hearing: "CNN’s Chris Wallace Roasts Jim Jordan: ‘Really Didn’t Score Any Points Against Democrats’ With Durham Hearing". "Durham’s report generated wildly disparate reactions in the conservative and non-conservative media and agreement from legal experts like Mediaite founder Dan Abrams that there was no “knockout punch” against the FBI, and most of the problems identified in it were remedied following an OIG report."[7] -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It is more likely that the press narratives about Russiagate were incorrect. I'd believe John Durham over Mother Jones' David Corn, who was wrong about a lot of Russia stuff. Mr Ernie (talk) 19:57, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

You should read the conclusion of this RS. The question of collusion-or-no-collusion is not a settled matter. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:22, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It's actually quite settled that Trump’s campaign, and later transition, were filled with a remarkable number of people who had secret interactions with Russian actors, about which they lied either in real time or in retrospect. Aka, yes there was collusion. Andre🚐 23:29, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

You guys are funny. You should have sent those blog posts to Mueller so he could *actually* get to the bottom of it. US intelligence became aware of a Clinton campaign plan to push this Russiagate narrative, Brennan briefed everyone about it but Comey withheld that from the agents in charge of investigating it, and a lot of people swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:52, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

US intelligence became aware of a Clinton campaign plan that was snatched from Russian servers by Dutch intelligence and relayed to USIC which had suspicions it was disinfo that Russia wanted us to snatch and run with, and Durham twice tried to get warrants on Soros with it, but Beryl Howell twice denied his requests because it was dubious. soibangla (talk) 00:02, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Durham's nonsensical claim (“There is not a single substantive piece of information in the [Steele] dossier that has ever been corroborated”) is now fodder for fringe media. Mainstream media (IOW RS) aren't touching it. Here's a typical example from an unreliable source. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:41, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Excessive length of article

This article is currently 443,920 bytes long; this is extremely long for an article, and guidelines would seem to strongly suggest it be split or edited down. Most articles this big are lists or timeline articles that require inclusion of a large number of items; this doesn't seem to be one. I must admit I am somewhat puzzled by its size, given that (according to the article itself) it was not a crucially important document and much of the stuff in it was false ("Many allegations in the dossier have been dismissed by authorities or remain unverified", "The Mueller Report contained passing references to some of the dossier's allegations but little mention of its more sensational claims", "it did not play any role in the intelligence community's assessment about Russian actions in the 2016 election").

Given, then, that this seems to have been partially (or mostly?) nonsense that doesn't seem to have had much effect on anything, it seems strange that our article on it goes through a detailed, apparently line-by-line recounting of every individual claim that was made in it. I think some of this could simply be removed, or at the very least edited down.

Looking at {{Section sizes}}, it seems that the "Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations" section is extremely long (over 100 kilobytes) and could easily be its own article -- in fact, if it were its own article, it would itself be near the upper bounds of reasonable article size! The same is true for "History" (96 kilobytes). On one hand, it might be good to split these out, but on the other hand, since the document itself doesn't seem like it was that pivotal in the course of history, it may be unreasonable for us to have not one but three separate articles on it.

Thoughts? jp×g 23:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

This has been a concern for some, but for others like myself, it's no problem. There are many other larger articles on less contentious topics, so it is what it is.

Splitting is an option (see end of this comment), but what part can be split off without creating a forbidden POV fork? It seems like the controversiality and conspiracy theories related to it have guaranteed that there are lots of important details and a huge amount of RS coverage, largely the fault of the constant attacks from the GOP, Trump, and fringe right-wing media. Political journalist David Corn of the progressive magazine Mother Jones described the dossier as "a convenient foil, their false flag" for the "Trump gang". It has been used as a convenient distraction to divert attention from things that were really important, like the Trump campaigns cooperation with the Russians and aid to them. They have given it more importance than it really merited.

It is the amount of coverage that has driven the size. Nearly every detail explains and contradicts crucial claims made by opposition politicians and conspiracy theorists.

Don't confuse "false" for "unproven". Don't buy Trump's claims, that some RS have carelessly repeated. Very little has ever been shown to be false, a lot is proven true (the most important allegations), and even more is unproven (many of little importance). The actual facts about that have gotten lost in the conspiracy-mongering, while disputes over it do account for much of the RS coverage, and there has been a lot of such disputing and smoke. Smoke gets attention. Most of the allegations of "false" have been opinions without facts.

We can't leave out any details or allegations that have been covered by RS, so that leaves us with maybe finding some duplication. There might be some, but that won't make much of a dent. I'm happy to leave it as is. As we get further from it timewise and it gets less attention, then it just remains as a great resource for historians, and that's one of the great purposes served by our articles.

The two sections that could be split off and really make a difference are the History and Authorship and sources sections. Using summary style, we could do that and it would be an immediate huge effect. The section that could be most easily split off without creating a problem is the litigation section, but it isn't very large. What do you think about splitting off those two sections? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:54, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree that this article is excessively and unreasonably long and is overdue for drastic cuts. Most of the contemporaneous speculation by political news articles should be removed. There are also too many non-encyclopedic opinions. Mr Ernie (talk) 19:33, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Rather than splitting off sections as has been done, I strongly recommend cuts and trims. The article is a shapeless, unfocused mess that is barely understandable to someone who doesn't know about the details of the case already. Splitting it doesn't address these problems at all, and just creates potential POV fork issues. I agree that there's not the scholarship to demonstrate that this is such a pivotal document that it needs the spinoff articles. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:21, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Why is this labeled controversial and not discredited?

Most RS's consider this to be discredited, not merely controversial.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A jury on Tuesday acquitted on all counts a think tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.

A Russian analyst who worked on a discredited dossier linking Donald Trump to Russia has been found not guilty of lying to the FBI.

For Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia University’s journalism school, the discredited dossier is an example of the complexity journalists deal with when deciding whether to publish.

But the dossier has been largely discredited since its publication, with core aspects of the material exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors.

The lead should reflect this. DarrellWinkler (talk) 21:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. The article is badly outdated, stuck in 2017, and way too long. Improvement attempts are almost immediately reverted. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

That's because this has been perennially discussed and there isn't a consensus that in fact discredited should be uncritically used as a description, since much of the dossier was confirmed or was not disproven. Andre🚐 23:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Agree and that is more so true in 2023. O3000, Ret. (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

"discredited" is weaselspeak for "lots of people have criticized it, but none of it has been publicly disproven, so we just don't have a better word for it" soibangla (talk) 00:12, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Soibangla, that's a good way to put it. We're dealing with a word that is purely opinion and not only unrelated to facts, but not based on facts. It started with Trump, and even RS have repeated it. We document both facts and opinions here, so of course this article documents the fact that the dossier has been characterized as "discredited", even though it's a vague slur of uncertain meaning, but meant to imply that it has been debunked or proven untrue. An examination of the allegations and what RS say about each one shows a very different picture.

A judge has even weighed in on the use of the term. On January 4, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled on Trump's repeated tweets describing the dossier as "fake" or "discredited":

"None of the tweets inescapably lead to the inference that the President's statements about the Dossier are rooted in information he received from the law enforcement and intelligence communities. ... The President's statements may very well be based on media reports or his own personal knowledge, or could simply be viewed as political statements intended to counter media accounts about the Russia investigation, rather than assertions of pure fact."

Let's not confuse facts with opinions. We are not allowed to do that. We already document the facts and also document that it has been characterized as "discredited". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:18, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

"Discredited" is how many high quality reliable sources are characterizing this document. DarrellWinkler (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• At this point it is widely described as discredited by most RS. Discredited means it lost respect or credibility, not I don't like it.
  • CNN - The largely discredited dossier was a collection of unverified and salacious allegations compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele, whose dirt-digging was indirectly funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
  • PBS - well as the reliance by the FBI on a dossier of uncorroborated or discredited information compiled by an British ex-spy, Christopher Steele.
  • Politico - The dossier contains now-discredited rumors and salacious claims about Trump’s cooperation with the Russian government and was provided to the FBI
  • Columbia Journalism Rreview - where he recounted the most salacious allegation in the now discredited dossier
  • NPR - the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.
  • Wall Stree Journal - The material in the dossier has since been largely discredited.
  • The Intercept - at the heart of the now discredited Steele dossier
  • Newsweek - the Steele Dossier, a now-largely discredited document

So yeah, I think its safe to call it what it is, and bring it in line with all those respected highly reliable sources. I agree we should change controversial in the lead to discredited or a variation of that. PackMecEng (talk) 02:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Problem is it has not been wholly discredited. Slatersteven (talk) 13:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

RS say that its discredited enougn to use it as a qualifier when discussing it. As also, as Valjean points out, talk about why it's described that way a lot in the body. This is not an all or nothing situation either. Just the lead summarizing the body. PackMecEng (talk) 14:28, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

No they say "partially discredited" enough for us to say that. Slatersteven (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Most of the sources I gave above just use discredited but I could see a case for largely discredited which a couple of them use like CNN, WSJ, and Newsweek. Would that work? PackMecEng (talk) 15:35, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

This has a lot to do with how much due weight we give opinions not based on facts, especially in the lead. "Controversial" is pretty factual and says nothing about the reliability/truthfulness of the dossier, but is about how it's been discussed and the roles it has played. No one would deny it's been very controversial.

Trump's attacks, as the judge noted, are not based on facts (a principle that applies to much of what he says), so we should not give Trump's words more weight than they deserve, which isn't much. Yet, because he's so notable and RS have documented what he says, we do the same. We do document that he has attacked the dossier using many terms that are disconnected from reality. The lead says this:

"Trump denounced as fake news."

So should we add more to that in the lead? That source says this:

"Trump immediately labeled the dossier a “witch hunt” and has since repeatedly decried it as “discredited,” “debunked,” “fictitious” and “fake news.”

As usual with Trump, most of that is a lie. "Discredited" is the closest we come to an opinion that might have some relation to reality (it has been a big disappointment with many possibly true allegations still unconfirmed), so we're back to the question of whether we should include it. We could add it to the lead at that spot:

"Trump denounced it as "fake news" and "discredited", and many sources have repeated those opinions."

How does that sound? (We'd add a couple RS that mention those words.) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The consensus view from mainstream reliable sources is this is discredited. They dont qualify that with "totally" or "in part". Thats the language which should be in the article. DarrellWinkler (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

No, RS do not say that, as demonstrated by all the sources above. That is your personal opinion on the matter, they are not quoting Trump or anything silly like that. They are saying that in their voice, which is covered by editorial oversight. We go by RS here and that is how RS describe it. PackMecEng (talk) 15:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this dossier seems to have been discredited. Saying anything less, or playing with words and citations to make it appear viable, lessens up-to-date encyclopedic information. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:53, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

??? PackMecEng, the RS do say that. They do express that opinion. Are you denying it's an opinion voiced by your sources? Are you denying they are repeating the opinion first voiced by Trump, but in their own voice? I am not denying that. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:57, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I am saying that according to RS the reasons you are listing for why it is called discredited is not the mainstream RS view. Saying that it is mainly discredited because Trump said so is a fringe viewpoint not supported by the majority of reliable sources. PackMecEng (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The word is usually just thrown about without any context or indication of what is meant. It is used as a slur. If it is being used to imply that the dossier's allegations are mostly debunked or shown to be false, and no doubt many sources use it in that way, then they are not being factual, as an examination of each allegation, and what RS say about it, shows that very few allegations are even close to being false, just unproven.

So the term is an unspecific slur, and we don't give such opinions much due weight. In this case, we should, and do, mention it in the body because RS do. Right now we're discussing whether the lead should also mention it, and I'm not averse to doing so. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The article should reflect the sources, not add any additional context or indication of what these sources write. DarrellWinkler (talk) 17:56, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

An interesting article by experts in oppo research: "Much of the Steele dossier hasn’t been disproved to date, but rather has gained greater credence based on Trump’s turbulent presidency."[8] -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:25, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I gave a list of high quality RS that state in various ways their view. I give far less weight to the opinion article covered in disclaimers that you gave. It has no value for this discussion. PackMecEng (talk) 17:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Thats an opinion piece and is notable only for the opinion of its author. DarrellWinkler (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Valjean. And I don't think that we're going to come to a consensus quickly, so maybe an RFC is in order. Andre🚐 18:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

References

This has been proven, by the FBI, to be fake.

Why is this not shown to be a fake dossier created by Hillary Cliton, illegally, to discredit Donald Trump? The FBI admits they made it up and it has been proven to be completely fake. Why is this protected from these edits, unless Wikipedia is pushing fake news? Wikipedia should probably make not and allowe the correct information to be published before they get sued for defamation. 134.132.40.221 (talk) 14:50, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Source? Slatersteven (talk) 14:51, 18 August 2023 (UTC)