Who is the “Primary Sub-Source” of the Steele Dossier?
Stephen McIntyre, Hans Mahncke, “Fool Nelson” and “Walkafyre”
The Steele dossier has upended U.S.
politics for nearly four years. While the
golden showers scene attracted the most
attention, the dossier was the primary basis
for allegations of collusion between Russia
and the Trump campaign and thus to the
Mueller inquiry.
Yet remarkably little is known (or has
been publicly disclosed) about the origin
of the information/disinformation in the
dossier. Did it originate from Russian
intelligence services? Or from Fusion GPS
operatives in the U.S.? Or from Ukraine?
The Horowitz Report (or “Horowitz”)
recently stated that Steele’s information
was provided to him through a single
supplier (Horowitz’ Primary Sub-Source),
who was said to have a “network of sub-
sources”:
Steele himself was not the originating source
of any of the factual information in his
reporting. Steele instead relied on a Primary
Sub-source for information, who used his/her
network of sub-sources to gather information
that was then passed to Steele (pdf,9)
The “network” supposedly included sub-
sources at the highest level of Russian
state apparatus and within the Trump
campaign.
Horowitz reported that Christopher Steele
refused to disclose the identity of the
Primary Sub-Source (or, more neutrally,
the “PSS”) to the FBI, but, nonetheless,
the FBI determined his identity prior to
January 12, 2017 and interviewed the PSS
three times in first half 2017. Somewhat
unusually, there have been no FBI leaks on
his identity or even nationality.
But without knowing the identity, motives
and nationality of the PSS, it is impossible
to fully understand the structure and
purpose of the Steele dossier.
Much open source speculation has
assumed that the PSS was Russian or
“Russian-based”. These assumptions
appear to be incorrect. It appears far more
likely that the PSS was based in the US
and of Ukrainian origin. If, as we surmise,
the PSS is a Ukrainian partisan, then the
FBI’s disinformation analysis of the Steele
dossier was astoundingly incompetent.
Prior known details
The PSS was someone previously known
to Steele and with whom Steele had
worked in the past, including, most
recently, his 2014-2015 memoranda on
Ukraine and Russia that had been
disseminated within State Department by
Jonathan Winer and Victoria Nuland.
The Nunes Report1, published in March
2018, relying on information provided by
FBI to FISA court, stated that Steele’s
“primary subsource” was “Russia-based”:
Fusion subsequently hired former British
Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher
Steele for $160,000 to obtain information on
candidate Trump via a Russia-based primary
subsource and numerous sub-sub-sources
network who were purported to be current and
former Russian government officials.
Corn and Isikoff,2 also in March 2018,
reported that Glenn Simpson of Fusion
GPS understood that Steele’s primary
subsource was a “Russian émigré living in
the West who travelled frequently to
Moscow” who submitted his original
report to Steele in person in a “European
city”.
Steele got in touch with one of his chief
sources in Russia – or, as he called him, the
1
Nunes Report, March 22, 2018. Report on
Russian Active Measures, p112 https://republicans-
intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_russia_i
nvestigation_report.pdf
2
Michael Isikoff and David Corn, March 17, 2018.
Russian Roulette: the real story behind the Steele
dossier on Donald Trump https://www.afr.com/life-
and-luxury/arts-and-culture/russian-roulette-the-
real-story-behind-the-steele-dossier-20180315-
h0xj4g
 -2-
"collector" – and instructed him to start
seeking information on Trump. Steele guarded
the collector's identity as a top secret. But
Simpson understood that the collector was a
Russian émigré living in the West who
travelled frequently to Moscow and was
acquainted with well-informed Russian
professionals and officials. He was Steele's
undercover operative, working his own
Russian sources for whatever nuggets they
might yield. Two weeks or so later, Steele flew
to meet his chief collector in a European city.
In August 2018, John Solomon, who
appears to have had access to an
unredacted version of Bruce Ohr’s
handwritten notes memorializing his
conversations with Simpson and Steele,
wrote3 that Ohr reported to FBI that,
according to Simpson, “[m]uch of the
collection about the Trump campaign ties
to Russia comes from a former Russian
intelligence officer (?not entirely clear)
who lives in the U.S.”
According to the book4 by Simpson and
Fritsch of Fusion GPS, published in
November 2019, the PSS was an
“individual known to US intelligence and
law enforcement”, a “Russian who wasn’t
in Russia” and a “remarkable person with
a remarkable story who deserves a medal
for service to the West”. However,
Simpson also claimed not to know the
identity of the PSS.
In April 20195, according to an apparently
well-sourced New York Times article, the
PSS was said to be “a Russian speaker
3
John Solomon, August 9, 2018. The handwritten
notes exposing what Fusion GPS told DOJ about
Trump. https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/401185-the-
handwritten-notes-exposing-what-fusion-gps-told-
doj-about-trump. An FBI 302 dated 12/12/2016,
which appears to reference the notes which are the
source of the Solomon quotation, contains a
redaction that is the correct length to be consistent
with Solomon’s quotation.
4
Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, November
2019. Crime in Progress. ISBN: 9780593134153.
5
Shane et al, Apr 19, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/m
ueller-report-steele-dossier.html (“according to a
Justice Department document and three people
familiar with the events”)
from a former Soviet republic who had
spent time in the West”.
These details are not entirely consistent.
Was the PSS from Russia or perhaps from
Ukraine (“former Soviet republic”)? A big
difference. Was the PSS living in Europe
or in the U.S.? Again, a big difference.
Key new details in Horowitz Report
The Horowitz Report provided key new
details which both strongly indicated that
the PSS was living in the U.S. and that, by
at least March 2017, the FBI knew that the
PSS was not “Russian-based”, but still
perpetuated the false information in its
FISA renewals.
The PSS attended three interviews with the
FBI in first half 2017, all of which appear
to have been in Washington DC, with the
first interview scheduled on relatively
short notice. While this does not
conclusively prove that the PSS was living
in the U.S., it strongly supports this
conclusion.
The first interview with the PSS (on
January 13, 2017) was attended by two
FBI agents (Case Agent 1, Supervisory
Intel Analyst) and two DOJ lawyers. It
took place a mere three days after
Buzzfeed’s publication of the full Steele
dossier. There is circumstantial evidence
(from a previously released Jan 10, 2017
text message from FBI agent Peter Strzok
text to FBI attorney Lisa Page6) that
publication of the dossier gave a
reason/pretext for interviews which had
not previously been arranged (for one
reason or another) and thus, that the
interview with the PSS may have been
arranged with only a couple of days of
notice. The first part of the interview was
attended by David Laufman of DOJ, the
latter part of the interview by his deputy.
There is no indication whatever that the
meeting took place overseas.
6
http://thespygateproject.org/?query=pretext%20C
NN
 -3-
The second and third interviews (in March
2017 and May 2017) were with an FBI
agent from the Washington Field Office.
Although Horowitz did not explicitly
locate the interviews in Washington DC,
the context overwhelmingly suggests that
the interviews took place in or near
Washington.
While it is possible that the PSS could
have traveled to the U.S. for his FBI
interviews, it is hard to contemplate
circumstances under which he would have
voluntarily traveled to the U.S. under short
notice and on multiple occasions for an
FBI interview.
Accordingly, we conclude that the PSS
was living in the U.S., as Ohr’s notes from
December 2016 had indicated.
The “Russian-Based” Misdirection
The Horowitz Report almost certainly
shows that, as of March 2017, the FBI
knew that the PSS was not “Russian-
based”. However, there are key (and
unwarranted) redactions to the Horowitz
Report which appear to have no purpose
other than to conceal this important
finding.
On page 190, Horowitz provided an
unredacted quotation from the second and
third Carter Page FISA renewal
applications, which said of the PSS that
"the FBI found the Russian-based sub-
source to be truthful and cooperative."
On page 243, Horowitz once again also
directly quoted this sentence, but, in this
second quotation, the phrase “Russian-
based” (which has been shown to exactly
fit into the redaction using appropriate
font7) was redacted:
7 8
https://twitter.com/walkafyre/status/120427348514
2482944
However, this information appears to be
overturned through the most plausible
interpolation of redacted Horowitz
footnote 389 on page 245. The most
plausible interpolation of the redacted
sentence (see exact fit as described8) is that
the Supervisory Intel Analyst (who was
one of two FBI agents who interviewed the
PSS on January 12, 2017) “provided
comments to the OGC Attorney, including
advising him that the Primary Sub-source
was not “Russian-based” as stated in the
FISA applications, and asking whether a
correction should be made”.
The OGC Attorney who failed to
implement this important correction has
been identified as FBI employee Kevin
Clinesmith, already notorious (but thus far
uncharged) for the astonishing allegation
of altering an email in order to
misrepresent Carter Page. Despite its
importance, it was not included in
Horowitz’ list of seventeen errors and
deceptions. While the misinformation may
have been an error in the first two
applications, it was a deception in the final
two applications and applied even in
Nunes Report. The origin of the
misinformation in the original FISA
application is presumably from Steele
himself, though this does not appear to be
presently documented.
Unique Alter Egos
While most individuals in the Horowitz
Report are identified by anonymous
https://twitter.com/walkafyre/status/120441749957
3313538
 -4-
nomenclature (Case Agent 2, Russian
Oligarch 1, Source 3 etc.), the Horowitz
Report appears to have adopted a policy of
not using two alter egos for the same
individual. This can be useful when trying
to “reverse engineer” identities of various
Horowitz alter egos.
Winnowing and New Directions
We’ve considered most, if not all, of the
names thus far suggested for Steele’s
Primary Sub-Source, including the
following: Stefan Halper, Oleg Deripaska,
Adam Waldman, Konstantin Kilimnik,
Sergei Skripal, Cody Shearer, Sidney
Blumenthal, Nellie Ohr, Edward
Baumgartner, among others, but none
plausible meet known criteria for the PSS.
Most are obviously not former Soviet
intelligence officers or even from a former
Soviet republic. In addition to other issues,
Deripaska and Halper are firmly identified
with other alter egos in the Horowitz
Report (Russian Oligarch 1, Source 2
respectively). But most definitely, none of
the above were plausibly interviewed by
FBI in the U.S. in January, March and
May 2017 (with the FBI failure to
interview Kilimnik while he attended the
inauguration in January 2017 being a
source of chagrin to Peter Strzok.)
Thus far, open source researchers have
tended to look for the Primary Sub-Source
among the names already known in the
controversy. But there is no reason to
believe that the Primary Sub-Source will
be among those names.
Oleg Tsarov Article, Oct 13, 2016
In October 13, 2016, Ukrainian politician
Oleg Tsarov9 (a former member of the
Party of Regions) published a previously
unnoticed article10 describing a meeting in
which an individual named Yuri Shvets
9
See http://olegtsarov.com/biografiya.html
10
http://olegtsarov.com/novosti/novosti-oleg-
tsarov/ukraina-v-amerikanskix-vyiborax.html;
http://www.stalkerzone.org/2622-2/
was reported to have been seeking “dirt on
Trump and his team members”, especially
Paul Manafort, on behalf of the Clinton
campaign. The article (translated to
English below) is excerpted in full below
(emphasis added):
Today I talked with a former colleague in the
Party of Regions. My friend worked at the
headquarters of the Party of Regions and was
involved in elections.
SBU officers asked him to meet with a man
who introduced himself as Yuri Shvets. Yuri
said that he studied with Putin, was a lawyer
for the polonium-poisoned Litvinenko, and
now works at Clinton’s campaign.
They got into a conversation. Yuri considers
himself a Ukrainian, but the reason for the
meeting was not in Ukraine, but in the United
States. According to Yuri, the task of finding
dirt on Trump and his team members is
very urgent (since, according to Clinton’s
campaign, at the time of the conversation,
Trump’s rating was higher than Clinton’s
rating). In particular, Yuri was interested in
any information on Manafort, the political
consultant of the Party of Regions and its
lobbyist in the United States. The fact is that
although Manafort was forced to leave
Trump’s headquarters after he was accused of
working with Yanukovych and the Party of
Regions for many years, anyway, if any
incriminating facts were discovered, it would
hit Trump.
What conclusions can be drawn from this
meeting? It can be assumed that since the SBU
helps Yuri organize meetings, then most likely
this is a request from the CIA. And this proves
that the Litvinenko case was originally under
the control of the CIA. In addition, this
meeting emphasizes once again that, despite
the fact that the attention of the world media is
mainly focused on the events in Syria, what is
happening in Ukraine is still important and
influences the formation of the world agenda.
For the purposes of this article, we will
focus only on Shvets himself, who has, to
say the least, a curious and interesting
background, disregarding Tsarov’s claim
that Shvets’ inquiry was “most likely… a
request from the CIA”.
Yuri Shvets
Shvets is a former Soviet intelligence
officer who sought political asylum in the
 -5-
U.S. in 1993 and who is now living in
northern Virginia, near Washington DC. In
1995, he wrote a colorful chronicle entitled
“Washington Station: My Life as a KGB
Spy in America”11. Shvets’ background is
Ukrainian, not Russian. His background
perfectly fits the available profile of
Steele’s Primary Sub-Source.
It is almost certain that Shvets would have
had prior contact with Steele through the
investigation into the 2006 death of former
KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko by
polonium poisoning. At the time, Steele
was head of MI6’s Russia desk and was
reportedly designated12.by MI6 to lead
their investigation.
At the time of Litvinenko’s death, Shvets
was subcontracting for Litvinenko in the
preparation of due diligence dossiers.
Indeed, Shvets argued that the supposed
motive for poisoning Litvinenko was a
memo prepared by Shvets, which asserted
that Putin and Viktor Ivanov had protected
criminal drug gangs in St Petersburg in the
early 1990s.
In a 2007 witness statement, Shvets stated
that he had a “network of sources” in
former Soviet Union countries (a claim
obviously parallel to the network later
ascribed to the PSS):
Due Diligence investigations are necessary as a
direct result of widespread corruption and the
activities of Organized Crime elements within
the Countries of the former Soviet Union. I
have been conducting such investigations, on
behalf of clients, since 1997. I do this through
my network of sources in the Countries of the
former Soviet Union who conduct these
investigations on my behalf. I am obviously
paid by the client for these investigations, from
which I fund my network of sources …
On receiving each assignment, I requested
inquiries to be made on the subject(s)
11
https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Station-
Life-KGB-America/dp/0671883976
12
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2019/nov/01/trump-russia-dossier-author-
gave-evidence-to-uk-intrusion-inquiry;
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/h
ow-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke
background through my network. Roughly ten
days later, I received a communication from
my network detailing the results of the Due
Diligence investigation.13
Documents from the Litvinenko Inquiry
also included a 2004 report by Shvets on
Igor Sechin, who, of course, makes a
conspicuous appearance in the Steele
dossier as the chairman of Rosneft who
supposedly offered an enormous bribe to
Carter Page in a secret meeting in Moscow
in early July 2016.
According to a public affidavit14 executed
in 2019, Shvets stated that his
consultations with the Litvinenko inquiry
were authorized by the U.S. intelligence
community, with which he claimed to have
worked since at least 2000 and probably
earlier. In the 1990s, Shvets had partnered
with Robert Levinson, who was
notoriously kidnapped in Iran in 2007
while on a mission for the CIA (and
remains imprisoned.) In 2002, Shvets, on
contract to exiled Russian oligarch Boris
Berezovsky, had uploaded secret
audiotapes to a website in order to
influence a Ukrainian election15.
He appears regularly on the popular online
Ukrainian news program of Dmitry
Gordon16 to discuss intelligence matters,
consistently advocating a very anti-
Russian policy. Shvets claims to have
attended KGB school with Putin, whom he
despises. His commentary is laced with
disparaging personal vindictiveness about
Putin’s height and appearance.
FBI Disinformation Analysis
According to the Horowitz Report, the FBI
limited its assessment of the possibility
that the Steele dossier was
13
In his 2007 statement to the inquiry.
14
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts
.nysd.500468/gov.uscourts.nysd.500468.65.0.pdf
15
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160
613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/
2015/04/INQ015647wb.pdf
16
https://m.gordonua.com/tags/jurij-shvets.html;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Gordon. See
also television channel 112.ua.
 -6-
“disinformation” to whether it was Russian
disinformation.
Bill Priestap explained to Horowitz that
“the FBI …assessed the possibility that
Russia was funneling disinformation to
Steele, and the possibility that
disinformation was included in his election
reports” (p. 172), that he “recognized that
the Russians are ‘masters at
disinformation’” and that “the Crossfire
Hurricane team was aware of the potential
for Russian disinformation to influence
Steele's reporting” (p. 193).
Priestap told Horowitz that he “tried to
explain to anybody who will listen” that, if
the Russians were attempting a
disinformation campaign through the
Steele dossier, then he was “struggling
with what the goal was”. Priestap
wondered:
why the Russians would try to denigrate an
opponent that the intel community later said
they were in favor of who didn't really have a
chance at winning, I'm struggling, with, when
you know the Russians, and this I know from
my Intelligence Community work: they
favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate
Clinton, and they wanted to sow chaos. I don't
know why you'd run a disinformation
campaign to denigrate Trump on the side.
The FBI appears to have totally neglected
the possibility that the Steele dossier was
disinformation from Ukraine or other non-
Russian entity.
The identity and nationality of the PSS is
obviously essential to the assessment of
disinformation possibilities. The FBI has
thus far been extremely coy, to say the
least, on the nationality of the PSS. Should
the PSS turn out to be a Ukrainian partisan
– a distinct possibility, then the FBI’s
disinformation analysis will have been
embarrassingly incomplete and, perhaps
worse, the FBI’s concealment of the
nationality of the PSS will have obstructed
public understanding of the full
dimensions of the Steele provocation.
Shvets’ Article, January 25, 2017
Two weeks after Buzzfeed’s publication of
the Steele dossier, Shvets provided a
remarkably accurate appraisal of the Steele
dossier in a lengthy interview17 with
Shvets by Dmitry Gordon in a Ukraine
podcast18.
Drawing on his own experience, Shvets
completely rejected the accuracy of the
Steele dossier. As an important example,
he pointed out that cultivation of a single
medium-level source was extremely
difficult and could take an entire career;
thus, Steele’s claims to multiple sources at
the highest levels of Russian government
were totally implausible and, according to
Shvets, would immediately discredit the
document in the eyes of any professional
organization. Shvets describes the dossier
as having “zero” reliability, the same term
used by the PSS in his May 2017 FBI
interview. Even at this early stage, Shvets’
assessment was that “the sources indicated
in the dossier did not say what was
attributed to them” – an assertion that was
confirmed in the Horowitz Report, which,
if anything, under-stated the
inconsistencies.
Shvets pointed to an entirely different
purpose for the dossier. He predicted that it
would be used as a cudgel to immobilize
the incoming Trump administration.
Shvets predicted (correctly) that the
dossier would lead to irresistible demands
by the “50% of Americans who voted
17
https://m.gordonua.com/publications/shvec-
putin-s-luchshimi-prostitutkami-rossii-mozhet-
sdelat-zolotoy-dozhd-dlya-trampa-na-luzhayke-
belogo-doma-vot-i-vse-%20realnye-vozmozhnosti-
kremlya-170748.html
18
Coincidentally (or potentially not), this interview
was published exactly 20 minutes before
Christopher Steele’s first WhatsApp message was
sent to DOJ official Bruce Ohr (previously released
under FOIA). Later in the day, Ohr noted that
Steele told him that the PSS was “now semi-
emerged”.
 -7-
against Trump” for an investigation so
comprehensive that it would feel to its
subjects “like going to the Last
Judgement”:
The people are amazed, at least 50% of the
Americans who voted against Trump, demand:
"We want to know if this is true or not!" In
accordance with the wishes of the workers, two
official investigations begin. The first is
carried out by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and
the financial crime department of the US
Treasury. The court gives them the broadest
powers, including the right to receive any
information, including all electronic
interceptions by the NSA, the number of which
is in the billions, as well as to request
information on all banking transactions. And
then it smelled fried.
The Senate began the second investigation
with the right to forcibly (if necessary) call
anyone and conduct an interrogation under
oath. For Americans, suspected of some bad
deeds, it’s almost like going to the Last
Judgment.
While Shvets appears to have had little
expectation that such an investigation
would produce evidence of collusion
between Russia and the Trump campaign,
he was hopeful that such an open-ended
investigation would produce something
that would be fatal to the Trump
presidency (which he perceived as adverse
to Ukraine):
Formally, these investigations relate to ties
with the Russian Federation of Trump's closest
aides. But who knows what it will result in?!
Watergate also began with an investigation
into some small bipod. And Trump will not be
able to stop these investigations. President
Nixon once tried to do this, and the case ended
with his resignation.
Shvets’ overall analysis of the Steele
dossier was uncannily accurate – far more
accurate and far more prescient than any
contemporary US observer. We cannot
help but wonder if, like an arsonist on the
scene of a fire, he knew more about the
dossier than he was letting on.
Conclusion
It is scandalous that neither the identity nor
even nationality of the Primary Sub-
Source has been disclosed by the FBI,
despite its central importance to the
Russiagate hoax. Nonetheless, enough
information has been disclosed to indicate
that the Primary Sub-Source is living in
the U.S., that it is much more likely that he
is from a “former Soviet republic”
(Ukraine) than Russia itself and that Kevin
Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer already facing
charges for falsifying documents, played a
key role in perpetuating the false
understanding that the Primary Sub-source
was “Russian-based.”
In 1995, the late and lamented Christopher
Hitchens, in an interesting review19 of
Shvets’ and other books, commented on
the difficulties faced by “a journalist and a
free citizen of the Anglo-American world”
seeking to find out “what was really done
in the Cold War dark”:
My ‘own side’ has no intention of enlightening
me, and the spook industry has built up such
an oligopoly in journalism and publishing that
no untainted rival – such as the old-fashioned
idea of full disclosure – has been permitted to
challenge the self-interested ghouls who pay
out their ration of ‘secrets’ in a niggardly and
mysterious fashion as a form of individual and
collective welfare.
Twenty-five years later, our “own side”
still has no intention of enlightening us on
key details of the Russiagate hoax; “full
disclosure” is nowhere on the horizon; and
the collection of “self-interested ghouls”
has grown to envelop nearly all U.S. and
western news and cable news.
Postscript
We contacted Oleg Tsarov, who confirmed
that the information in his October 15,
2016 article was valid and remained
unchanged. We attempted to contact Yuri
Shvets through all known public emails
and through the Atlantic Council (where
he appeared in 2018) but were
unsuccessful. We contacted Sergei Millian,
who was alleged to be Person #1 in the
19
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-
paper/v17/n04/christopher-hitchens/lucky-kim
 -8-

Steele dossier in contact with the PSS;

Millian said that he had no knowledge of
Shvets or, to his knowledge, of any contact
with any person who might be the Primary
Sub-Source.

March 18, 2020