NEWS – “without comment”

Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists A booming, renegade private intelligence industry is increasingly shaping (and misshaping) the news.

By Barry Meier

May 15, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html

Some journalists are happy to knock on the doors of strangers. I was never one of them, but Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy behind the infamous Trump dossier, left me no choice.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Steele had been hired by an investigative firm called Fusion GPS to gather dirt about Donald J. Trump and Russia. The firm’s founders, two former Wall Street Journal reporters, made it clear they would not talk to me for a book I was writing about the business of private intelligence. So on an early summer morning in 2019, I arrived at Mr. Steele’s home in Farnham, a picturesque English village.

In photographs, the retired MI6 agent was always dressed impeccably in business suits, his greying hair freshly coifed. When he opened his door, he was wearing plaid boxer shorts and a blue T-shirt and had a serious case of bed head. “I can’t talk today,” he said. “It’s my birthday.”…..

Full Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html

Barry Meier’s recently published book “SPOOKED” opens up the interesting ‘revelation’ into “The Secret Rise of Private Spies and exposes the rather strange background to the “TRUMP DOSSIER”

(The writer Ian (D. Withers) was privileged to have assisted Barry in his UK research for this amazing story reaching into the heart of US Politics)

‘SPOOKED’ – The Secret Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier.

Published by Sceptre ISBN 978-1-529-36590-0 Available on Amazon