HOUSE OVERSIGHT 025549 Michael More11, a former acting CIA director, casts light on the sourcing of the dirt in the Steele dossier. "I had two questions when I first read [the dossier]," More11 said in an NBC interview. "One was, how did Chris [Steele] talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries. I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris." Paying ex-FSB officers for sensitive information? As Steele is no doubt aware, there is no such thing as an ex-FSB officer. All Russian intelligence officers, whether currently or formerly employed, if in Russia, operate under the same tough security regime. The selling of secret information by them is espionage, pure and simple. Selling it to someone connected to an adversary intelligence service greatly compounds the crime. Sources A and B (through their intermediaries) knew that they were dealing with an ex-MI-6 man who could use their betrayal of secrets against them. The only safe way for A and B to provide the requested dirt would be to clear it with the security regime at the FSB. This precaution, a required step in such exchanges, would mean that the dirt in the dossier, whether true or false, was curated by the FSB and spoon-fed to Steele. If so, the FSB was the surreptitious provider of this part of the Steele dossier. The third disclosure operation involved stolen emails from the DNC bearing on the unfair treatment by Democratic Party officials of Bernie Sanders, which were posted on the DC Leaks website. President Obama identified the Kremlin as the author of this operation, saying "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government." If so, as in the previous cases, the FSB would have curated the dirt. To be sure, op