Talk:Steele dossier/Archive 28

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Apparently apocryphal

User:Valjean, regarding this revert of yours, what subsequent reliable source contradicts the reliable source cited? Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:58, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Much of that is one journalist's opinions, so anything would have to be attributed if we use it at all. We already have a lot of similar trash talk claims about the dossier in this article, even though they contradict the fact that little, if anything, has been proven untrue, and most is just uncorroborated. Unfortunately, after the Mueller investigation started, the FBI turned everything over to him and they stopped all attempts to verify the allegations and just left it hanging. Nothing has been done about that since then, so many of those allegations are still in limbo. They hang there as unproven, but likely true. Nothing indicates they are apocryphal or untrue, even if some sources use such words.

Unproven does not mean false or apocryphal. That is unproven trash talk. Some claims are unprovable, unless one can interview the source, and those sources are scared to talk. They said things that explain events that happened, but such background info has to be confirmed with the source to prove the source said them, and those sources won't talk. Even Danchenko was so scared, after he was doxed by William Barr, that he minimized his role, but that didn't mean he wasn't basically honest or providing good info.

See this paragraph about Danchenko's alleged lies:

Right-wing columnist and attorney Andrew C. McCarthy reacted to what he described as the "if not irrational, then exaggerated" reactions by Trump supporters to these reports of arrests. He urged them to be cautious as John Durham's "indictments narrowly allege that the defendants lied to the FBI only about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself."

Sources still gave Danchenko plenty of good info for many claims that are proven true. The FBI later found their own sources agreed with Steele's sources. Those claims are confirmed. He was hired by the FBI for a nearly four-year period, from March 2017 to October 2020, and got the highest praise as a confidential human source. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

You say, without citation, that “The FBI later found their own sources agreed with Steele's sources. Those claims are confirmed.” But you just deleted an October 2022 Politico article which said the opposite: “Many of the stories in the so-called Steele Dossier appear to be apocryphal and FBI personnel who testified at the trial said they were unable to corroborate any of it.” Nevertheless, I would be willing to soften the well-sourced “apocryphal” to “unreliable” if doing so is necessary. See the NYT:

Was the dossier a reliable source of information? No. It has become clear over time that its sourcing was thin and sketchy. No corroborating evidence has emerged in intervening years to support many of the specific claims in the dossier, and government investigators determined that one key allegation — that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the campaign — was false. When the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Danchenko in 2017, he told the bureau that he thought the tenor of the dossier was more conclusive than was justified; for example, Mr. Danchenko portrayed the blackmail tape story as rumors and speculation that he was not able to confirm. He also said a key source had called him without identifying himself, and that he had guessed at the source’s identity.

Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:LEAD, the lead has to summarize the body. And at least skimming the body, we seem to cite a wide range of opinions on the dosser, which don't all say the same thing (see the "Dossier's veracity and Steele's reputation" section.) The lead could possibly summarize this better but it has to be a summary of the entire thing - dropping a single source into the first sentence of the lead and treating it as the last word in a situation where there is clearly conflict between sources is giving it WP:UNDUE weight, even for a source as high-quality as the NYT. If you want the lead to just flatly say (even with attribution) that it's generally unreliable, and nothing else about its reliability, then you'd also need to rewrite the entire massive "Dossier's veracity" section so that that's a reasonable summary of it, which it certainly isn't at the moment. --Aquillion (talk) 18:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I’ll take a closer look at the pertinent section of the article body. My initial impression is that it needs to be edited to clarify how views of the dossier have evolved. For example, the Durham Report had a big effect on that. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Aquillion. In fact, I'd warn not to touch the lead with any changes the slight bit controversial. Like the leads in many controversial articles, especially large and complicated ones like this, every word has been discussed, sometimes for months for changing a single word(!), and there is a balance to be maintained. Due weight considerations weigh heavily, and one must remember that single journalists (especially Cohen and Savage) sometimes are not careful with their words. Some aren't fully informed about all the issues, not nearly as well as many Wikipedia editors who edit these various Trump Russia election interference topics.

That many consider it disappointing and unreliable is largely attributable to their initial mistaken impression that "This is going to be a wonderful source of proven, incriminating, information." Well, they were disappointed, and instead of blaming themselves, they blame the dossier. It is an unfinished draft, a collection of unvetted information not designed to ever see the light of day! It was intended to be vetted thoroughly before anyone else saw it. In that sense, it is of course not a "reliable source". We can't check most of the sources, but they exist. Unproven does not mean untrue. Even the mistaken claim that the Prague allegation is proven "false" is itself a false claim, even though made by some RS. Look at all the evidence and every government investigation that mentions it, and you won't find any evidence it's false, just unproven. So some idiot made the mistake of writing in an official document it was "false". So even RS can be misleading. Many RS find confirmation for many of the allegations, contrary to what Savage says, especially in the intelligence community. It's most important allegations are proven very true, and are described as "prescient".

The dossier's infamous and unproven pee tape allegation can be analyzed to some degree without even mentioning the dossier, as there is conclusive proof, independent of and years before the dossier, that the rumor existed long before the dossier was a twinkle in Steele's eye. Cohen testified that he knew of it, and other similar salacious allegations about Trump in Russia, long before the dossier, and that he told Trump about those allegations. Cohen was Trump's "fixer", and that knowledge started Cohen on a hunt to protect Trump's reputation, a hunt that enlisted the aid of others who also knew about the rumor, until the alleged tapes were found and "stopped" in late October 2016. It's all in court records.

You mention the Durham report, and I have already mentioned that to you. It's a pile of shit. You'd be better off forgetting it ever existed and not read it. It's very misleading, which is one of the reasons that political hit job failed so miserably. Durham lost everything and slunk off with his tail between his legs like a dog who discovered his mother was a bitch. (Yes, I played on that word. ) It's very unreliable. He said things in his trials that he didn't dare repeat in the final report. His political agenda just didn't stand up to the facts. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:12, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

What do you think "apocryphal" means, in this connection? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, that's the normal definition, and one that would be used by those skeptical of the claim. The problem with using that word is that it implies that "unproven" is likely "untrue", which is not a logical conclusion. We don't know. That's our ignorance, and the ignorance of sources and investigators. It puts too much weight on the "untrue" possibility, when a neutral treatment would not put weight on either "true" or "untrue". Neutral words, in this case, are "unproven" or "uncorroborated". That's why I'm cautious about using "apocryphal", and definitely not in wikivoice, or even as a thought allowed in my head. That would be self-deception.

I don't trust a RS that uses that word about any dossier allegations that are still "unproven", and possibly can never be proven. The author's personal bias is showing too much, especially in the face of a lack of evidence. "Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack". It's their attributed opinion, not even the opinion of the RS (like The New York Times, so your appeal to authority there is wrong.). Those journalists are shoddy researchers, at least on this topic. NPOV warns us that we must not confuse opinions for facts, and editors should not take sides by asserting opinions as facts. These are misleading opinions that should be attributed solely to the author, not the source. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:14, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Newspapers that are reputable and reliable label opinion as opinion, and label news as news. When one of their reporters is the author of a news article, the newspaper does not allow the reporter to express personal opinion. Sometimes opinion does creep into RS news reports, but we must presume otherwise lest Wikipedia editors label every news report they don’t like as “opinion”. Anyway, when I get some free time, I will look at what RS say about the dossier AFTER the Durham Report was released in 2023. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

After they are poisoned by the misleading Durham report? Be cautious. You would need to know about all the debunking and criticism of that report, and then recognize when those bad parts of the report have poisoned some careless journalist's writings. Those who think the Durham report is good and have championed it are dubious sources. Andrew C. McCarthy, Matt Taibbi, and John Solomon are a few that come to mind who likely defended Durham. Apologists for Russia and MAGA tout it, so right there you've got a way to recognize if they are fringe or not. Basically any source that defends Trump and/or pushes conspiracy theories and ignores facts can't be trusted. Wikipedia does not consider them to be RS because they reveal that they don't know how to vet sources and information for reliability.

In defense of McCarthy, who was previously a good researcher, he did warn Trump supporters about part of the Durham report:

Right-wing columnist and attorney Andrew C. McCarthy reacted to what he described as the "if not irrational, then exaggerated" reactions by Trump supporters to these reports of arrests. He urged them to be cautious as John Durham's "indictments narrowly allege that the defendants lied to the FBI only about the identity or status of people from whom they were getting information, not about the information itself."

So that was good of him. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:45, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the Durham indictments had much narrower scope than the Durham Report. Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:20, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

One of the problems with the whole mess was that Durham, as a prosecutor, went into the court cases as a typical lawyer, where one can carry out personal vendettas, and use ones personal political agendas. In this case he was carrying out Trump's and Barr's job for him to find fault with Clinton and Ukraine, and clear Trump and Russia. (Assange was also offered a pardon by Trump if he would clear Russia and blame Ukraine.) Objectivity and full honesty are not part of a lawyer's methods. The result was a disaster, and he lost everything.

Then he made a huge mistake, and reading it is painful. It's filled with obvious mistakes. He took all those losing ideas and losing conspiracy theories behind his losing trials and made a report out of that. He should have left out all the losing stuff. There are some things from the trials that were so obviously bad that he did leave them out, and the stuff about Dolan is part of it. He had no solid evidence that Dolan was behind the salacious allegation in the dossier, so that was not part of the report, IIRC. Dolan denied that very strongly, but he did admit he was behind some of the stuff about Manafort. Danchenko had other sources for the salacious stuff, and Steele had other sources than Danchenko, which explains why Danchenko didn't recognize some things. He wasn't the only source for some of the same topics. Anyway, the point is that one cannot trust anything remotely related to Durham. We have an article dealing with some of it: Russia investigation origins counter-narrative. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:12, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Your opinion may be correct, maybe not, but we should try to follow what reliable sources say about the Durham Report and its analysis of the Steele Dossier. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

References

Attribution needed for "not established facts...."

So as not to clutter this Talk page, I hope no one objects to me adding two further issues I've spotted in the opening paragraphs.

1. In the very first sentence of the article, it should be made clear that the quote characterising the dossier as "not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation" actually comes from Steele himself. See expanded quote from the New York Times: "Mr. Steele has made clear to associates that he always considered the dossier to be raw intelligence — not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation." [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/steele-dossier-mueller-report.html

BostonUniver (talk) 20:52, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Done. See here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:56, 21 September 2024 (UTC)