FYI
[{"sender": "Edward Epstein", "recipients": ["Jeff Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "8/18/2017 1:23:10 PM", "subject": "FYI", "body": "Hi Jeff\nI thought this might interest you\n\nThe 2016 presidential campaign was marked by three disclosure operations, all of which appear to\nhave had a single author. “Oppo research” is the euphemism commonly used in elections for such\noperations. The mechanism is fairly simple: dirt is obtained from wherever it can be found to\ndiscredit an opponent. It is then “leaked,” usually either anonymously or on background, to targeted\nmedia channels. What makes the 2016 campaign particularly interesting from a counterintelligence\nperspective is not that both sides had their own disclosure operations, but that both sides were\noffered the dirt for them by a common source: Russian intelligence.\n\nAs we now know from the emails of Donald Trump Jr., a thinly veiled intermediary, Natalya\nVeselnitskaya, offered the Trump campaign documents that putatively would show that Hillary\nClinton had received illegal donations from Russian financiers; in the event, no such documents\nwere proffered. But it is a reasonable assumption that Veselnitskaya could not have made such an\noffer, especially in a meeting attended by three other Russians, unless the move was approved by\nthe FSB, the Russian security service.\n\nA second disclosure operation, this one involving supporters of the Clinton campaign, was more\nlayered. The proximate intermediary was Fusion GPS, a research firm used by the law firm Baker\nHostetler, and the secondary “cut-out” was the British firm Orbis, co-founded by former MI-6\nofficer Christopher Steele. We know something about this sub-contractor from the depositions\nSteele gave in defending a libel suit in London. According to Steele, Fusion GPS not only had him\nprepare the so-called “dossier” on Trump but also directed Steele to “leak” it to specified reporters\nat Mother Jones, Yahoo, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and CNN. In\nsome cases, Steele was directed to brief the selected journalists personally. The dirt in these “leaks”\nrelied heavily on information supplied by two Russian government sources: Source A, whom Steele\ncalls “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure”; and Source B, “a former top-level intelligence\nofficer still active in the Kremlin.” Sources A and B provided information supposedly exposing a\nlong-time Russian FSB operation to get compromising information that could be used to control\nTrump. The idea that two Russian intelligence sources would reveal a long-time Kremlin-backed\nFSB operation bears further examination."}]