The man behind the sensational story concerning information the Russian government had supposedly collected about Donald Trump is a former British intelligence operative and was a longtime intelligence source for the U.S. government who had assisted the FBI during an investigation into corruption by FIFA, the world soccer association, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The operative — identified today by the Wall Street Journal as Christopher Steele, a former Russian operations officer for Britain's MI6 intelligence agency — had worked as a consultant for the FBI's Eurasian organized crime section, helping to develop information about ties between suspected Russian gangsters and FIFA, said one of the sources, who is directly familiar with Steele's work.
Steele had been hired originally to investigate Trump by his political opponents, and he decided to share his information with the FBI last year. The preexisting relationship between Steele and U.S. officials is one reason the FBI took the operative's allegations seriously when he first turned over a written dossier, filled with uncorroborated ”raw intelligence" about Trump, to one of the bureau's agents in Rome last summer, the sources said.