A former MI6 officer who produced a dossier making lurid allegations about Donald Trump is now terrified for his safety after he was unmasked by a US
A former MI6 officer who produced a dossier making lurid allegations about Donald Trump is now terrified for his safety after he was unmasked by a US publication. Christopher Steele, 52, fled from his home in Surrey on Wednesday morning after realizing it was only a matter of time until his name became public knowledge. He now fears a prompt and potentially dangerous backlash against him from Moscow.
Steele, the co-founder of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, prepared the 35- page document that alleges that Kremlin colluded with Trump’s presidential campaign and that the Russian security services have material that could be used to blackmail him, including an allegation that he paid prostitutes to defile a bed that had been slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.
Trump had earlier branded the allegations in the dossier fake and has said he feels as though he is living in Nazi Germany. With his cover blown, Steele who spied in Moscow for the Secret Intelligence Service hurriedly packed his bags and went underground, hours before his name was published.
For months, he had been playing a dangerous game; tipping off journalists about what he said he had discovered from his sources in Russia about Donald Trump’s alleged dealings with the Kremlin, as well as claims that the FSB had hugely compromising information about Trump’s activities during visits to the country. Steele had been hired by a Washington firm to gather information on Trump’s connections to Russia, funded at first by anti-Trump Republicans and, later, by Democrats. He also shared the information with the FBI.
The existence of the dossier, which ran to 35 pages in total, comprising several reports filed over the course of six months, had been common knowledge among journalists in the US for more than half a year, but it was only given credence when the US news network CNN reported that Donald Trump and President Barack Obama had been given a two-page summary of its contents by the FBI.
CNN also reported that the dossier had been put together by a British former intelligence agent, thus compromising Steele’s anonymity. Steele was said to be horrified when his nationality was published and is now terrified for his and his family’s safety.
Steele is understood to have worked as an expert on Russia for 20 years during his time at MI6, and was sent to Moscow as a spy in 1990. After leaving MI6, Steele founded Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd with his business partner Christopher Burrows in 2009.
The company’s website says that it was ‘founded by former British intelligence professionals’. Based in Grosvenor Gardens, near Victoria railway station, Orbis says it has a ‘sophisticated investigative capability’ and mounts ‘intelligence-gathering operations and conduct complex, often cross-border investigations’. It also offers ‘real-time source reporting on business and politics at all levels’.
