A former CIA analyst explains how to read the Trump dossier

BuzzFeed published a dossier earlier this week full of unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Most of the discussion since then has orbited around the veracity of the claims and the ethics of the organization that published them. (For a thorough account, read this explainer by Vox’s Zack Beauchamp.)

What has received less attention is the intelligence value of documents themselves. It’s not clear how seriously we should take them, or how seriously the intelligence community takes them.

Remember: The dossier isn’t an official document of the intelligence community. As the BBC reported, it’s part of a privately funded opposition research file produced by a former MI6 agent and funded by both Republican and Democratic political operatives. Still, while they’ve yet to corroborate any of the claims outlined in the dossier, American intelligence agencies thought the charges were credible enough to brief President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump about it.

Does that mean the claims in the dossier are likely true? Does it mean the intelligence community considers this more than mere speculation? How much evidence is required in order to declare a source “credible”? Is it possible that the CIA or the NSA deliberately leaked this information in order to damage Trump?

To answer these questions, I reached out to Aki Peritz, an ex-CIA analyst and current adjunct professor at American University. I asked him how skeptical we should be of a report like this and what, if anything, we can glean from the fact that American intelligence agencies found it important enough to bring to the president and president-elect.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.

What was your first impression of this story and the dossier in particular?

Well, obviously the claims it makes are highly salacious. But we’ve no idea if any of this is true. First, we don’t know who these sources are. It’s entirely likely that they’re feeding the author of this report garbage, as often happens. It’s also possible that the sources don’t exist at all. The entire story reads like a fabulist plot from a piece of spy fiction. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it does mean it should be read with caution.

At this point, it’s extraordinarily difficult to determine what’s true and what’s not, and this document raises more questions than it answers.

How skeptical should the average reader be about the primary source of this report?

I’d urge extreme skepticism. I wouldn’t suggest dismissing it altogether, but a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted. We know relatively little about the source of the dossier apart from his name. I suspect there are truths contained in this dossier, but it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. These are explosive claims about corruption and bizarre sexual acts and connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian intelligence services.

If we were to take this report at face value, half the people cited should be in prison. But we can’t verify any of it, and so it might just be a story. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and until we’ve seen such evidence, I’d be extremely skeptical.

As someone who’s read countless intelligence reports, did anything about the structure or tone or language of this dossier strike you as familiar or odd?

The report itself is written rather oddly. It’s clearly produced by someone who’s written intelligence reports before, but it’s structured very informally, which is very unusual. There’s a very formalized way of writing reports like this, and anyone who’s worked in the intelligence community has been trained to write this way. There are differences among countries and organizations, but there’s still a fairly standard approach to this sort of thing. The language in this report was uncommonly loose, and that’s not something you’d typically see.

Now, is that true of a privately funded report like this? Obviously, this was done by a former MI6 agent, but it’s not an official document of an intelligence agency, so perhaps that accounts for the informal structure.

I don’t know anything about Christopher Steele, the guy who wrote this report, or about his consultancy company, so I can’t speak to that. What I can say is that someone who worked in government was obliged to write reports like this in a certain way, and I’m not sure why that person would radically change the way he wrote them, regardless of the context.

A lot of people are taking this seriously because it appears our own intelligence agencies are taking it seriously. If the CIA or the NSA or some other intelligence agency regards a source as “credible,” as they seem to have done in this case, what exactly does that mean?

That’s the thing, who actually has said this source is “credible.” Do we know for sure? It’s unclear to me. Is he credible according to CNN or BuzzFeed or some other media organization? General Clapper, the director of national intelligence, gave a statement in which he said that the intelligence community has made no judgement about the reliability of this document or the claims therein.

So they seem only to have acknowledged that it’s out there, not that it’s true or even likely true.

I think a common assumption is that if the intelligence agencies thought the document was serious enough to justify briefing President Obama and President-elect Trump about it, they must consider it minimally credible.

I’d push back a little on that. How do we know that they didn’t simply notify the president and president-elect that this document is floating about? Even if they’re skeptical about the veracity of the claims, they still have an obligation to inform government officials about their existence.

Trump is likely compromised in some capacity, given his business dealings around the world, and he’s been going to Russia since the 1980s. So it’s feasible that Russia has some dirt on Trump, and there’s good reason to brief him about this even if we can’t be sure that it’s accurate.

Even if we can verify that this source is credible, is it possible to determine if the source’s sources are credible?

You could do a couple of things. For one, you could interview Christopher Steele and ask him who his sources are, and if he’s willing to disclose that information, you can match it up against classified databases and make a judgement about its reliability. There are also claims in the report that suggest certain relationships between people, and again you can match that up with information from other assets in order to verify these connections.

None of this is likely to give you 100 percent confidence, but it does present a clearer picture. And often that’s as good as it gets in this world.

Given everything you’ve said, would you consider this dossier to be meaningful evidence of anything?

One of things we try to guard against in intelligence is confirmation bias. If you don’t like Trump and you think he’s a corrupt and despicable guy, you’re going to want to believe what’s in the dossier. If you’re a pro-Trump person, you’re inclined to disbelieve it. Analysts try, often unsuccessfully, to avoid letting their opinions shade the facts.

We saw this in the run-up to the Iraq War. There was a narrative about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, and that narrative bled into the interpretation of the facts. In this case, absent any other evidence, all we’re left with is people interpreting this dossier in accordance with their preexisting opinions of Trump.

We just don’t know what’s true or false. This dossier, by itself, is not conclusive.

As you know, Trump has been openly dismissive of the CIA and other intelligence organizations. Is there any chance this dossier was deliberately leaked by the intelligence community to damage Trump?

First, it’s not an intelligence product; it’s a private unclassified document. According to the Clapper statement, journalists and members of Congress had this document before the intelligence agencies did. So it’s not like the intelligence community sub-contracted a former MI6 agent in order to produce this report and then leaked it to the press.

The intelligence community isn’t made up of angels, but I doubt they’re responsible for this. It just doesn’t add up.

There’s a lot of debate about BuzzFeed’s decision to publish this dossier. Their argument was that Americans had a right to see it and to judge for themselves. Do you agree with that?

I personally believe in more transparency and more information. I believe people should be allowed to make up their own minds. At the same time, doing this is like putting raw intelligence into the system without describing what’s going on. If you do that, people run off the deep end with it. I realize that’s a muddled answer, but it’s obviously a complicated question.

I understand both sides of this argument, but ultimately I’d rather read this for myself and come to my own conclusions, and I suspect most people feel the same way.