FBI Blacked Out Some of Its Worst Moments in Its Steele Report Interview

Bureau Tried to Hide Embarrassing Details, Not National Security Secrets

PPSA has obtained proof that the FBI heavily redacted a document about the discredited Steele report not for national security purposes, but to avoid political embarrassment.
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Comparing two releases of the same document, it is clear that the FBI initially violated Executive Order 13526, issued by President Obama in 2009 to promote declassification. This presidential order expressly prohibits agencies from using classification to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or to “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.” 

The FBI also violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows redactions for national security, to prevent exposure of personal privacy and to restrict exposure of interagency communications. Again, the law doesn’t allow redactions to hide missteps and mistakes.

When we received the FBI’s initial response to our FOIA request about the Carter Page case in October 2024, the report was almost entirely redacted (blocked out). This document concerned the FBI’s interview of former British MI-6 agent Christopher Steele, founder of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence.

That interview, or “302” as it is known in FBI parlance, concerned the origin and uses of the report that Steele produced for the Hillary Clinton campaign. This Steele report did double duty, since it was also used by the FBI to secretly justify four secret surveillance orders of Trump campaign aide Carter Page before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Through Page, the Trump campaign and perhaps the candidate himself were subject to FBI surveillance for alleged “Russian interference.”

But after PPSA explained that it planned to challenge these redactions in court, the FBI updated its release, removing nearly all redactions and showing that the earlier redactions were plainly unlawful.

The largely unredacted version shows instance after instance in which there is no apparent reason to redact material in the original response except to save the FBI embarrassment.

For example, the 302 document explains why Steele defied FBI orders and took his report, which alleged that candidate Donald Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence, to the press while the FBI was secretly presenting it as evidence to the secret FISC court.

• “STEELE and [redacted] apologized for going to the press back in the fall of 2016, but STEELE explained that as the election season went on, they as the company were riding ‘two horses’ – their client and the FBI – and after FBI Director James COMEY’s reopening of the Hillary Clinton investigation, they had to pick ‘one horse’ and choose the business/client relationship over the relationship with the FBI. They followed what their client wanted, and they spoke to the press.”

 

• “STEELE and [redacted] described President TRUMP as their ‘main opponent’ and indicated that they were fearful about how TRUMP’s presidency negatively impacted the historical US-UK alliance and the US-UK special relationship.”

 

• “STEELE said that GLEN SIMPSON of Fusion GPS was knowledgeable that STEELE was sharing reports and information with the FBI.” (Simpson and Fusion GPS were retained by Hillary Clinton’s law firm.)

Another set of formerly redacted material shows how Steele cooperated with Obama Justice Department official Bruce Ohr to seed the Steele report with the national press before the 2016 election. The FBI interview also details pressure that Fusion GPS put on Steele to share his “intelligence” with Mother Jones magazine.

The full 302 report highlights how Steele sold the FBI on the notion that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen went to Prague, ostensibly to meet with Russian handlers. This contention was later rejected by the special investigative report signed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

• One tidbit in the 302 characterizes the quality of the Steele Report. Steele told the FBI: “People would start talking in bars, and the primary subsource could easily elicit information.”

 

• Or, as Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) said to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz during the latter’s testimony before Congress, when the sources of some of the more lurid accusations in the Steele report were tracked down, it came down to an informant who said, “I heard it in a bar.”

It is easy to understand why the FBI would want to withhold these embarrassing details, including that it predicated an investigation of a presidential candidate and campaign on a bunch of bar jokes. But none of these redactions covered anything remotely resembling matters of national security or any other legitimate reason to redact a response to a lawful FOIA request.

It is, however, a sign of the times that this FBI was willing to be so forthcoming on its second response to our FOIA request. Let’s hope that this new spirit of openness and obedience to the law prevails in future FOIA responses.

A copy of the FBI’s two FOIA responses are listed below for you to compare.

• REDACTED
• UNREDACTED

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