You tell me.
'There's something not right here': British spies warned the US about 'extensive' contact between Trump team and Russia
Britain's Government Communications Headquarters became aware of suspicious "interactions" between associates of Donald Trump and suspected or known Russian operatives in late 2015, The Guardian reported on Thursday.
The Guardian's report — which said other intelligence agencies in Germany, Estonia, and Poland also picked up communications between Trump's associates and Russian agents — is consistent with earlier revelations about what spurred the US intelligence community to launch its investigation last summer into Trump's ties to Russia.
The European agencies shared the intelligence with their American counterparts between late 2015 and mid-2016, The Guardian reported. But the FBI and the CIA "were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of the US election," the report said.
"It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep," a UK intelligence source told The Guardian. The European agencies "were saying: 'There are contacts going on between people close to Mr. Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.' The message was: 'Watch out. There's something not right here.'"
The FBI did not open its investigation into Russia's interference in the US election — and the Trump campaign's possible complicity — until July 2016, FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee during a public hearing last month. That was more than six months after British intelligence officials were first alerted to the interactions between Trump's associates and known or suspected Russian operatives, according to The Guardian.
US officials were "very late to the game" when it came to examining those contacts, a source told the British newspaper.
The BBC's Paul Wood reported earlier this year that the investigation began in earnest in the spring of 2016 when an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic states passed former CIA Director John Brennan a recording that alleged money from the Kremlin had made its way into Trump's campaign coffers.
Brennan reportedly established a counterintelligence task force, which included the FBI and the National Security Agency. That summer, Robert Hannigan, then the chief of the GCHQ, passed Brennan more material related to conversations Trump associates had with suspected or known Russian agents, according to The Guardian.
'It has become clear that you possess explosive information'
In August — more than eight months after British officials were alerted to the Trump-Russia contacts — Brennan briefed the US's top lawmakers on the material, which he said showed that Russia had interfered in the US election to help Trump win, The New York Times reported last week.
Whereas the CIA was fairly confident by late August that the Russians were working to boost Trump, the FBI did not publicly draw that conclusion until early December. Because the CIA deals exclusively with foreign intelligence, it did not have the authority to announce the evidence it apparently had of such collusion.
One of the lawmakers, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, wrote two letters to FBI Director James Comey between August and October urging him to go public with the information.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan participates in a session at the third annual Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington, U.S., September 8, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-agencies-were-asleep-were-155016516.html
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