Michael Morell

Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell admits 'no evidence' of collusion between Trump and Russia, says Trump Dossier 'takes you nowhere'.

The ‘Russiagate’ scandal received another body blow today when Hillary Clinton’s own pick for CIA Director admitted there was no evidence behind it.

Michael Morell, the former acting CIA Director, who would have been in line to become CIA Director if Hillary Clinton had won, has publicly admitted a point The Duran has repeatedly made: there is no evidence that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia.

Morell’s comments, spoken to an event sponsored by the Cipher Brief, an intelligence web site, could not have been more forthright.

On the question of the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, he is reported to have said the following

On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all.  There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.

Morell has pointed out that former DNI James Clapper has already previously said that he had seen no evidence of any illicit contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians.   As he pointed out

That’s a pretty strong statement by General Clapper.

On the subject of the Trump Dossier, Morell was equally scathing.

Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information — you just can’t.  [The dossier] doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.  I had two questions when I first read it. One was, How did Chris (Christopher Steele, the former MI6 who compiled it – AM) talk to these sources?  I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.  And then 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. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, ‘hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you [because they want to get paid some more].  I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier.

When it was pointed out to Morell that the CIA also sometimes pays for information, he replied as follows

But we know who the source us and we know how they got the information.

Morell is no Russia dove.  He is the same former CIA official who last August made the demented proposal that the US initiate an assassination programme against Russian, Syrian and Iranian officials in Syria.  During the election he called Donald Trump a “dupe of Russia”.  He continues to say that its was the Russians who hacked the DNC’s and John Podesta’s computers and passed on their stolen emails to Wikileaks.

If someone as hardline as this with a background and contacts within the US intelligence community is now publicly saying that ‘Russiagate’ – the allegation that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton – is all a case of ‘smoke without fire’, then it is clear that this story is on its last legs.

Source: The Duran