The Paranoid Style, 2019

Experiment in trying to imagine the workings of the minds of the Republican conspiratorialists, now led by Attorney General Barr, with a scene from the FBI investigation as Fox News might imagine it, if they tried to imagine it in any detail, and the consequences of trying to believe simultaneously that (a) FBI agents worked to prepare an "insurance policy" to make sure they could depose Trump in the unlikely event he was elected; (b) everything in Christopher Steele's "dossier" is fake; (c) the FBI conspirators were completely dependent on Steele's work to commence their investigation (though it had already begun); and (d) everybody agreed that the best way to get started was by putting a FISA order on Carter Page, Ph.D.

US Embassy, Rome, photo by DPA.

Early August 2016. Tracking shot follows two men with briefcases and upscale water bottles, Gaeta and Steele, down a corridor in the US Embassy in Rome, Gaeta, FBI’s man in the post, in a rumpled American suit, Steele British, ex-MI6 and now a freelancer, rather more expensively dressed; they enter a small meeting room where two Washington-based agents, McCabe and Strzok, and an FBI lawyer, Page, are concentrated around the middle of a long table, and Gaeta performs the introductions:

GAETA

Andy, Pete, Lisa, this is Chris Steele, who I met in London early July. As I was saying, he’s heard you’re looking for an insurance policy.

STRZOK

Just in case our candidate doesn’t work out and that guy wins the election and we need to overthrow him, like the FBI usually does in these situations, as you know.

STEELE (shaking hands)

Of course, understood. Delighted to meet you.

MCCABE

You’ve been doing some research, we understand?

STEELE

Yes, on behalf of your candidate, I’m told, for Mr. Simpson, who kindly asked me to help out with the Russian government angle.

MCCABE

And you’ve discovered something useful?

STEELE

Heavens no, I just make stuff up. What do you take me for, a spy?

MCCABE (confused and combative)

What are you...

GAETA

Listen to him, Andy…

STEELE

I mean we’ve all done it the other way, I’ve been there too, with the informants and what not, but it’s a cumbersome process at best, isn’t it? And no guarantees at the end? What I always say is, if you want some really satisfactory dirt on a political opponent, you’ve just got to do it yourself.

MCCABE

Oh well, I guess that just makes sense… So what have you got?

STEELE (pulling a folder out of his briefcase and laying it on the table)

Let’s see, I’ve only got the first couple of memos with me... Putin working to split up Western alliance, Russian government cultivating Trump since 2011 at least, trying to do a real estate deal that never comes together, Russian government collecting damaging info on Trump and Clinton, they might give the Clinton stuff to Trump somehow, oh, and the Trump stuff is rather spicy, video where he’s having hookers piss on each other on the master bed in his Moscow Ritz-Carlton suite…

MCCABE

What?!

STEELE

Because he hates Obama so much, and Obama slept in it on some trip, I guess that is a little over the top. I’m going to get rid of it in the later memos, and have him going to more ordinary orgies in St. Petersburg instead, with Aras Agalarov, so it looks as if I’m learning more about the subject as I go on, I think that’s a nice touch. Also very pleased with the part about collecting info on Clinton and using it in the presidential campaign, since that actually turned out to be true, though all the details are wrong of course. It looks just like real intelligence!

MCCABE

Indeed it does! You think we should leak this stuff to the press?

STEELE

Certainly not! That would be insane! I think you should open an investigation!

PAGE

Well, we already have an investigation, you know, of the dirt-on-Clinton angle. There was this Trump guy in London in April, and the Russians made him some kind of offer of thousands of emails, and he told a guy in a bar, and two months later the Wikileaks stuff came out and it had Russian fingerprints—

STEELE

Well, I thought of the Wikileaks and fingerprints myself, it’s gone into the third memo! Good old Source E! But thanks very much, my dear!

PAGE

So we’re—

STEELE 

But what you really need to investigate is Carter Page, Ph.D.!

STRZOK

What, that petroleum-industry guy we’ve been following on and off since Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki tried to recruit him as an agent in 2013 and then he surfaced out of nowhere last April as Trump’s foreign policy adviser and then went to Moscow in July to give a commencement address at the New Economic School on how Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change and met with some Rosneft people and finally made it back in time for the Republican convention in Cleveland where he had dinner with J.D. Gordon, Jeff Sessions, and Ambassador Kislyak? Why on earth would we want to investigate him?

STEELE

Oh, I don’t know, just one of those hunches a seasoned intelligence pro like myself tends to have. Besides, there’s more on him in my dossier.

MCCABE

Well, I don’t know. Didn’t you say you made all that stuff up?

STEELE

That doesn’t mean it’s not true, does it?

MCCABE

I suppose not. But what would we do with it?

STEELE

Take it to the FISC and get a surveillance warrant on him.

PAGE

We’ve had one of those on him before, so it shouldn’t be a problem—

STEELE

And then you could tap his phone and read his email!

STRZOK

And then? How does it help us overthrow Trump if he gets elected?

STEELE

Haven’t a clue, dear chap! But at least you'd feel you were doing something!

MCCABE

Well, then I guess we should get going on it right away!

Everybody titters and Steele drinks deep from his water bottle.