he would have turned it into a giant show and i think this is another one of their plays, like the former nunes memo and the unmasking scandal and all the other things that they have played out as cards over the last year that have failed and failed again and again because the substance of this, the fbi was playing by the rules. they were going by the book this. wasn t something that was, you know, as general hayden said this was normal. you want a counterintelligence service. you want your counterintelligence services to go after hostile foreign intelligence operations of which there was one targeting this campaign. john, and i ll ask steven as well. you may know, this but since this is something that general hayden said could have been a standard operating counterintelligence operation, do you think that the fbi at any point should have approached the president ahead of time and told him, hey, we re doing this because we think your campaign may have somebody inside or may have been
the fact it is under questioning of the united states and russian involvement and the fact mr. trump has questioned the fbi must have driven federal officials to say if we don t tell the president-elect this is swirling and he finds out elsewhere, we have a bigger problem. i will accept phil mud s characterization it is gossip, yet i still want to ask john cypher, does it nevertheless fit the m.o. of putin that he seems to gather this kind of data on business leaders, for example, that come to moscow? this is where i might disagree a little with phil. i think that information is completely invalidated, unvetted information, that the public has no way of finding out whether it is credible or not. however, the fbi and professional investigative intelligence services can look at that information, cross reference it, interview people, find out who sources are, find out what the information is. to your question, yes, those of us that lived and worked in
you need to be sure who you re dealing with. president of russia for last 17 years just shown he plays the dirty game. marina, we wish you good things. thank you for being here. thank you. more on the man that prepared the dossier on trump. former british spy christopher steele worked undercover in russia and paris. joining me, retired cia agent, john stiefr, 28 year veteran, ran the cia russian program three years, and counter terrorism official, phil mud. john cypher, i know by reputation you know mr. steele. what is his reputation within the intelligence community? i reached out to friends who know him in british service and our service and he is a very credible person. a serious person. lived in russia, worked on