Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation
WASHINGTON
— Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s
ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of
agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of
officials were kept in the dark.
Their
assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the
Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s
advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense
deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials
broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander
Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the
campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.
The
agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to
Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened.
Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago
Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a
small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane.
The name, a reference to the Rolling Stones lyric
“I was born in a crossfire hurricane,” was an apt prediction of a
political storm that continues to tear shingles off the bureau. Days
after they closed their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a
private email server, agents began scrutinizing the campaign of her
Republican rival. The two cases have become inextricably linked in one
of the most consequential periods in the history of the F.B.I.
[Read our briefing on secret government code names]
This
month, the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release
the findings of its lengthy review of the F.B.I.’s conduct in the
Clinton case. The results are certain to renew debate over decisions by
the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, to publicly chastise
Mrs. Clinton in a news conference, and then announce the reopening of the investigation days before Election Day. Mrs. Clinton has said those actions buried her presidential hopes.
Those
decisions stand in contrast to the F.B.I.’s handling of Crossfire
Hurricane. Not only did agents in that case fall back to their typical
policy of silence, but interviews with a dozen current and former
government officials and a review of documents show that the F.B.I. was
even more circumspect in that case than has been previously known. Many
of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Agents
considered, then rejected, interviewing key Trump associates, which
might have sped up the investigation but risked revealing the existence
of the case. Top officials quickly became convinced that they would not
solve the case before Election Day, which made them only more hesitant
to act. When agents did take bold investigative steps, like interviewing
the ambassador, they were shrouded in secrecy.
Fearful
of leaks, they kept details from political appointees across the street
at the Justice Department. Peter Strzok, a senior F.B.I. agent,
explained in a text that Justice Department officials would find it too
“tasty” to resist sharing. “I’m not worried about our side,” he wrote.
Only
about five Justice Department officials knew the full scope of the
case, officials said, not the dozen or more who might normally be
briefed on a major national security case.
The
facts, had they surfaced, might have devastated the Trump campaign: Mr.
Trump’s future national security adviser was under investigation, as
was his campaign chairman. One adviser appeared to have Russian
intelligence contacts. Another was suspected of being a Russian agent
himself.
In the Clinton case, Mr.
Comey has said he erred on the side of transparency. But in the face of
questions from Congress about the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. declined to
tip its hand. And when The New York Times tried to assess the state of
the investigation in October 2016, law enforcement officials cautioned
against drawing any conclusions, resulting in a story that significantly played down the case.
Mr.
Comey has said it is unfair to compare the Clinton case, which was
winding down in the summer of 2016, with the Russia case, which was in
its earliest stages. He said he did not make political considerations
about who would benefit from each decision.
But
underpinning both cases was one political calculation: that Mrs.
Clinton would win and Mr. Trump would lose. Agents feared being seen as
withholding information or going too easy on her. And they worried that
any overt actions against Mr. Trump’s campaign would only reinforce his
claims that the election was being rigged against him.
The
F.B.I. now faces those very criticisms and more. Mr. Trump says he is
the victim of a politicized F.B.I. He says senior agents tried to rig
the election by declining to prosecute Mrs. Clinton, then drummed up the
Russia investigation to undermine his presidency. He has declared that a
deeply rooted cabal — including his own appointees — is working against
him.
That argument is the heart of
Mr. Trump’s grievances with the federal investigation. In the face of
bipartisan support for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, Mr.
Trump and his allies have made a priority of questioning how the
investigation was conducted in late 2016 and trying to discredit it.
“It’s a witch hunt,” Mr. Trump said last month on Fox News. “And they know that, and I’ve been able to message it.”
Congressional
Republicans, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, have
begun to dig into F.B.I. files, looking for evidence that could
undermine the investigation. Much remains unknown and classified. But
those who saw the investigation up close, and many of those who have
reviewed case files in the past year, say that far from gunning for Mr.
Trump, the F.B.I. could actually have done more in the final months of
2016 to scrutinize his campaign’s Russia ties.
“I
never saw anything that resembled a witch hunt or suggested that the
bureau’s approach to the investigation was politically driven,” said
Mary McCord, a 20-year Justice Department veteran and the top national
security prosecutor during much of the investigation’s first nine
months.
Crossfire Hurricane spawned a
case that has brought charges against former Trump campaign officials
and more than a dozen Russians. But in the final months of 2016, agents
faced great uncertainty — about the facts, and how to respond.
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Anxiety at the Bureau
Crossfire
Hurricane began exactly 100 days before the presidential election, but
if agents were eager to investigate Mr. Trump’s campaign, as the
president has suggested, the messages do not reveal it. “I cannot
believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and the pervasive
connections,” Mr. Strzok wrote soon after returning from London.
The
mood in early meetings was anxious, former officials recalled. Agents
had just closed the Clinton investigation, and they braced for months of
Republican-led hearings over why she was not charged. Crossfire
Hurricane was built around the same core of agents and analysts who had
investigated Mrs. Clinton. None was eager to re-enter presidential
politics, former officials said, especially when agents did not know
what would come of the Australian information.
The question they confronted still persists: Was anyone in the Trump campaign tied to Russian efforts to undermine the election?
The
F.B.I. investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in those
early months, congressional investigators revealed in February. The four
men were Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mr.
Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. Each was scrutinized
because of his obvious or suspected Russian ties.
Mr.
Flynn, a top adviser, was paid $45,000 by the Russian government’s
media arm for a 2015 speech and dined at the arm of the Russian
president, Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Manafort, the campaign chairman, had
lobbied for pro-Russia interests in Ukraine and worked with an associate
who has been identified as having connections to Russian intelligence.
Mr.
Page, a foreign policy adviser, was well known to the F.B.I. He had
previously been recruited by Russian spies and was suspected of meeting
one in Moscow during the campaign.
Lastly,
there was Mr. Papadopoulos, the young and inexperienced campaign aide
whose wine-fueled conversation with the Australian ambassador set off
the investigation. Before hacked Democratic emails appeared online, he
had seemed to know that Russia had political dirt on Mrs. Clinton. But
even if the F.B.I. had wanted to read his emails or intercept his calls,
that evidence was not enough to allow it. Many months passed, former
officials said, before the F.B.I. uncovered emails linking Mr.
Papadopoulos to a Russian intelligence operation.
Mr.
Trump was not under investigation, but his actions perplexed the
agents. Days after the stolen Democratic emails became public, he called
on Russia to uncover more. Then news broke that Mr. Trump’s campaign
had pushed to change the Republican platform’s stance on Ukraine in ways favorable to Russia.
The
F.B.I.’s thinking crystallized by mid-August, after the C.I.A. director
at the time, John O. Brennan, shared intelligence with Mr. Comey
showing that the Russian government was behind an attack on the 2016
presidential election. Intelligence agencies began collaborating to
investigate that operation. The Crossfire Hurricane team was part of
that group but largely operated independently, three officials said.
Senator
Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said that after studying the
investigation as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he saw
no evidence of political motivation in the opening of the investigation.
“There
was a growing body of evidence that a foreign government was attempting
to interfere in both the process and the debate surrounding our
elections, and their job is to investigate counterintelligence,” he said
in an interview. “That’s what they did.”
Abounding Criticism
Looking
back, some inside the F.B.I. and the Justice Department say that Mr.
Comey should have seen the political storm coming and better sheltered
the bureau. They question why he consolidated the Clinton and Trump
investigations at headquarters, rather than in a field office. And they
say he should not have relied on the same team for both cases. That put a
bull’s-eye on the heart of the F.B.I. Any misstep in either
investigation made both cases, and the entire bureau, vulnerable to
criticism.
And there were missteps.
Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director, was cited by
internal investigators for dishonesty about his conversations with
reporters about Mrs. Clinton. That gave ammunition for Mr. Trump’s
claims that the F.B.I. cannot be trusted. And Mr. Strzok and Lisa Page,
an F.B.I. lawyer, exchanged texts criticizing Mr. Trump, allowing the
president to point to evidence of bias when they became public.
The
messages were unsparing. They questioned Mr. Trump’s intelligence,
believed he promoted intolerance and feared he would damage the bureau.
The
inspector general’s upcoming report is expected to criticize those
messages for giving the appearance of bias. It is not clear, however,
whether inspectors found evidence supporting Mr. Trump’s assertion that
agents tried to protect Mrs. Clinton, a claim the F.B.I. has adamantly
denied.
Mr. Rubio, who has reviewed
many of the texts and case files, said he saw no signs that the F.B.I.
wanted to undermine Mr. Trump. “There might have been individual agents
that had views that, in hindsight, have been problematic for those
agents,” Mr. Rubio said. “But whether that was a systemic effort, I’ve
seen no evidence of it.”
Mr. Trump’s
daily Twitter posts, though, offer sound-bite-sized accusations — witch
hunt, hoax, deep state, rigged system — that fan the flames of
conspiracy. Capitol Hill allies reliably echo those comments.
“It’s
like the deep state all got together to try to orchestrate a palace
coup,” Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said in January
on Fox Business Network.
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Cautious Intelligence Gathering
Counterintelligence
investigations can take years, but if the Russian government had
influence over the Trump campaign, the F.B.I. wanted to know quickly.
One option was the most direct: interview the campaign officials about
their Russian contacts.
That was
discussed but not acted on, two former officials said, because
interviewing witnesses or subpoenaing documents might thrust the
investigation into public view, exactly what F.B.I. officials were
trying to avoid during the heat of the presidential race.
“You do not take actions that will unnecessarily impact an election,” Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy attorney general, said in an interview.
She would not discuss details, but added, “Folks were very careful to
make sure that actions that were being taken in connection with that
investigation did not become public.”
Mr.
Comey was briefed regularly on the Russia investigation, but one
official said those briefings focused mostly on hacking and election
interference. The Crossfire Hurricane team did not present many crucial
decisions for Mr. Comey to make.
Top
officials became convinced that there was almost no chance they would
answer the question of collusion before Election Day. And that made
agents even more cautious.
The F.B.I.
obtained phone records and other documents using national security
letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one
government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr.
Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a
politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning
whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap
campaign officials.
Looking back,
some at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. now believe that agents
could have been more aggressive. They ultimately interviewed Mr.
Papadopoulos in January 2017 and managed to keep it a secret, suggesting
they could have done so much earlier.
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“There
is always a high degree of caution before taking overt steps in a
counterintelligence investigation,” said Ms. McCord, who would not
discuss details of the case. “And that could have worked to the
president’s benefit here.”
Such
tactical discussions are reflected in one of Mr. Strzok’s most
controversial texts, sent on Aug. 15, 2016, after a meeting in Mr.
McCabe’s office.
“I want to believe
the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s
no way he gets elected,” Mr. Strzok wrote, “but I’m afraid we can’t
take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you
die before you’re 40.”
Mr. Trump says
that message revealed a secret F.B.I. plan to respond to his election.
“‘We’ll go to Phase 2 and we’ll get this guy out of office,’” he told The Wall Street Journal. “This is the F.B.I. we’re talking about — that is treason.”
But
officials have told the inspector general something quite different.
They said Ms. Page and others advocated a slower, circumspect pace,
especially because polls predicted Mr. Trump’s defeat. They said that
anything the F.B.I. did publicly would only give fodder to Mr. Trump’s
claims on the campaign trail that the election was rigged.
Mr.
Strzok countered that even if Mr. Trump’s chances of victory were low —
like dying before 40 — the stakes were too high to justify inaction.
Mr.
Strzok had similarly argued for a more aggressive path during the
Clinton investigation, according to four current and former officials.
He opposed the Justice Department’s decision to offer Mrs. Clinton’s
lawyers immunity and negotiate access to her hard drives, the officials
said. Mr. Strzok favored using search warrants or subpoenas instead.
In both cases, his argument lost.
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Policy and Tradition
The
F.B.I. bureaucracy did agents no favors. In July, a retired British spy
named Christopher Steele approached a friend in the F.B.I. overseas and
provided reports linking Trump campaign officials to Russia. But the
documents meandered around the F.B.I. organizational chart, former
officials said. Only in mid-September, congressional investigators say,
did the records reach the Crossfire Hurricane team.
Mr.
Steele was gathering information about Mr. Trump as a private
investigator for Fusion GPS, a firm paid by Democrats. But he was also
considered highly credible, having helped agents unravel complicated
cases.
In October, agents flew to
Europe to interview him. But Mr. Steele had become frustrated by the
F.B.I.’s slow response. He began sharing his findings in September and
October with journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
New Yorker and elsewhere, according to congressional testimony.
So
as agents tried to corroborate Mr. Steele’s information, reporters
began calling the bureau, asking about his findings. If the F.B.I. was
working against Mr. Trump, as he asserts, this was an opportunity to
push embarrassing information into the news media shortly before the
election.
That did not happen. Most
news organizations did not publish Mr. Steele’s reports or reveal the
F.B.I.’s interest in them until after Election Day.
Congress was also increasingly asking questions. Mr. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, had briefed top lawmakers that summer
about Russian election interference and intelligence that Moscow
supported the Trump campaign — a finding that would not become public
for months. Lawmakers clamored for information from Mr. Comey, who
refused to answer public questions.
Many
Democrats see rueful irony in this moment. Mr. Comey, after all, broke
with policy and twice publicly discussed the Clinton investigation. Yet
he refused repeated requests to discuss the Trump investigation.
Mr. Comey has said he regrets his decision to chastise Mrs. Clinton as “extremely careless,”
even as he announced that she should not be charged. But he stands by
his decision to alert Congress, days before the election, that the
F.B.I. was reopening the Clinton inquiry.
The
result, though, is that Mr. Comey broke with both policy and tradition
in Mrs. Clinton’s case, but hewed closely to the rules for Mr. Trump.
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the
House Intelligence Committee, said that alone proves Mr. Trump’s claims
of unfairness to be “both deeply at odds with the facts, and damaging to
our democracy.”
Spying in Question
Crossfire
Hurricane began with a focus on four campaign officials. But by
mid-fall 2016, Mr. Page’s inquiry had progressed the furthest. Agents
had known Mr. Page for years. Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013,
and he was dismissive when agents warned him about it, a half-dozen
current and former officials said. That warning even made its way back
to Russian intelligence, leaving agents suspecting that Mr. Page had
reported their efforts to Moscow.
Relying
on F.B.I. information and Mr. Steele’s, prosecutors obtained court
approval to eavesdrop on Mr. Page, who was no longer with the Trump
campaign.
That warrant has become
deeply contentious and is crucial to Republican arguments that
intelligence agencies improperly used Democratic research to help
justify spying on the Trump campaign. The inspector general is reviewing
that claim.
Ms. Yates, the deputy
attorney general under President Barack Obama, signed the first warrant
application. But subsequent filings were approved by members of Mr.
Trump’s own administration: the acting attorney general, Dana J. Boente,
and then Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.
“Folks
are very, very careful and serious about that process,” Ms. Yates said.
“I don’t know of anything that gives me any concerns.”
After
months of investigation, Mr. Papadopoulos remained largely a puzzle.
And agents were nearly ready to close their investigation of Mr. Flynn,
according to three current and former officials. (Mr. Flynn rekindled
the F.B.I.’s interest in November 2016 by signing an op-ed article that
appeared to be written on behalf of the Turkish government, and then
making phone calls to the Russian ambassador that December.)
In
late October, in response to questions from The Times, law enforcement
officials acknowledged the investigation but urged restraint. They said
they had scrutinized some of Mr. Trump’s advisers but had found no proof
of any involvement with Russian hacking. The resulting article,
on Oct. 31, reflected that caution and said that agents had uncovered
no “conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian
government.”
The key fact of the
article — that the F.B.I. had opened a broad investigation into possible
links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — was
published in the 10th paragraph.
A
year and a half later, no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr.
Trump’s advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the
Russian government’s disruptive efforts. But the article’s tone and
headline — “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to
Russia” — gave an air of finality to an investigation that was just
beginning.
Democrats say that article
pre-emptively exonerated Mr. Trump, dousing chances to raise questions
about the campaign’s Russian ties before Election Day.
Just as the F.B.I. has been criticized for its handling of the Trump investigation, so too has The Times.
For
Mr. Steele, it dashed his confidence in American law enforcement. “He
didn’t know what was happening inside the F.B.I.,” Glenn R. Simpson, the
founder of Fusion GPS, testified this year. “And there was a concern
that the F.B.I. was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump
people.”
Assurances Amid Doubt
Two
weeks before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, senior American intelligence
officials briefed him at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Russian hacking and
deception. They reported that Mr. Putin had tried to sow chaos in the
election, undermine Mrs. Clinton and ultimately help Mr. Trump win.
Then
Mr. Comey met with Mr. Trump privately, revealing the Steele reports
and warning that journalists had obtained them. Mr. Comey has said he
feared making this conversation a “J. Edgar Hoover-type situation,” with
the F.B.I. presenting embarrassing information to lord over a
president-elect.
In a contemporaneous
memo, Mr. Comey wrote that he assured Mr. Trump that the F.B.I.
intended to protect him on this point. “I said media like CNN had them
and were looking for a news hook,” Mr. Comey wrote of Mr. Steele’s
documents. “I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to
write that the F.B.I. had the material.”
Mr.
Trump was not convinced — either by the Russia briefing or by Mr.
Comey’s assurances. He made up his mind before Mr. Comey even walked in
the door. Hours earlier, Mr. Trump told The Times that stories about
Russian election interference were being pushed by his adversaries to
distract from his victory.
And he debuted what would quickly become a favorite phrase: “This is a political witch hunt.”
Correction:
An
earlier version of this article misstated that news organizations did
not report on the findings of the retired British spy Christopher Steele
about links between Trump campaign officials and Russia. While most
news organizations whose reporters met with Mr. Steele did not publish
such reports before the 2016 election, Mother Jones magazine did.
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