![]() In those cases, we are talking about, literally, spy versus spy, or rascal versus rascal. It’s like: Okay, I worked for this guy one time. It’s not about animus or revenge or anything like that. So, for him, it’s probably not that surprising. ![]() That’s your reaction to this? And then I realized, Well, that’s fair, because this guy has been playing both sides of the street also. He was sort of like, “Meh, he’s a nice guy.” And I thought, This is crazy. I went to one of those people, and I showed him emails showing that the person who supposedly was working for him, one private operative, was actually working against him. It’s a really weird world, and it’s filled with strange, strange characters. What do you think accounts for its having subsided? People are going to try to follow you.” But my initial sense of terror subsided. People are going to try to hack your computer. Let me talk to this lost soul. But they’re just using it as a way to get you to lower your guard.ĭid you worry about being spied upon yourself when you were doing your own reporting for this book? How do you think that the team is doing this year?” And I’ll think, Oh, another Mets fan. Like someone might write me and say, “Hey, Barry, I hear you’re a Mets fan. Ian Withers, who is a crusty old British private eye you meet at the beginning of the book, when we were out hunting for Christopher Steele, told me that spies will approach you in all kinds of different ways, and a lot of times the approach will be very indirect. Well, probably less than it should have, but it made me more aware of the ruses that people use when they want to get close to you. He got back to me, and he wanted all kinds of identification because he was concerned that maybe I was working with Fusion GPS. So my level of paranoia has not gotten to that point yet, but I do tend to go through a little bit of a screening process. When I was first reporting the book, I knew I wanted to talk to political activist and financier Bill Browder. When we were setting this up and you asked offhand who my editor was, I thought, Is that because he’s worried I might be a spy? Or is his book making me paranoid about whether he’s worried I’m a spy? ![]() firm K2 Intelligence, but the star of the show is Fusion GPS, founded by onetime Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, two figures who in Meier’s telling lose their ethical bearings without noticing it. Meier recently spoke over FaceTime about spooks, Rachel Maddow, and the difficult question of how reporters should guard themselves against being dupes in an unseen game. It is this phenomenon, and in particular the journalistic failures surrounding the Steele dossier, that inspired New York Times veteran Barry Meier to produce his latest book, Spooked, a lively and readable examination of some of the mischief wrought by the business of private spies. There are entertaining sections about the Panama Papers, the Israeli firm Black Cube - famously retained by Harvey Weinstein to investigate his accusers - and the U.S. The Steele dossier is just one recent instance of the media presenting the public with information that originated in a vast and opaque industry of private spies and operatives for hire who do business without all the rules and ethics of traditional media outlets, but who often inject their version of events into the mainstream press by feeding tips and scoops to reporters. Although they were almost certainly specious, these claims spawned countless news stories - including at New York - and prompted government investigations into possible ties between Moscow and Trump. The aim was to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, especially regarding any ties he might have to Russia. Steele delivered, alleging a long-standing conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin and offering details that proved to be as unfounded as they were spectacular: a meeting in Prague between Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Russian officials in 2016, a collaboration between Trump and Moscow to hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee, and, most infamously, a surveillance video of Trump cavorting with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow (a.k.a. The document, penned by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was commissioned in 2016 by the private research firm Fusion GPS, in turn working for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. To pick the worst press failure of the past half-decade would be a daunting assignment, but the coverage of the Steele dossier would have to be high on any list.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |