The firm provides strategic advice, gathers intelligence and conducts cross-border investigations, according to its website. After their conversation, McCain made arrangements to get a copy of the report, Wood told the BBC. "On one occasion, they even stole Lauras favorite shoes - from their flat - just before an official dinner."In a tweet Friday, Trump described the "phony allegations" as having been compiled by his political opponents and a "failed spy afraid of being sued. The official, who worked primarily on Eastern Europe, said he had no other details of Steeles involvement in the case.Wood said US Senator John McCain asked him about the document during a security conference in November because of Woods relationship with Steele.James Hudson, Britains former deputy counsel in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, resigned in 2009 after a film emerged showing him with two women thought to be prostitutes. The person may have been destroyed but the game is over," Nixey said. The material, they said, was more likely to have come from conversations with third parties. The report contains unproven information on close coordination between Trumps inner circle and the Russians about hacking into Democratic accounts - as well as unproven claims about unusual sexual activities by Trump attributed to anonymous sources.Wood is now an associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House and is a consultant for companies with interests in Russia..

Still, British and Russian intelligence agents have a long history of spying on one another and setting traps."Steele was posted by MI6 to Moscow in 1990.Steele, 52, worked for MI6, Britains overseas intelligence agency, and served in Moscow in the early 1990s. in 2009.Wood said it seems unlikely that Russian operatives intentionally lied to Steele."Characteristically she told me that Chris was fine, because hed been sent on the streets to find out what was going on," he said in the eulogy. After leaving the agency, he and a partner started Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd."On the day in 1991 when Yeltsin stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament to defy a coup against Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms, the friend called Steeles wife in Moscow. "I do not think he would make things up." He did not mention Steele by name. The Associated Press has not authenticated any of the claims. He added that it is not surprising that he has gone into hiding."The point about kompromat - the Soviet tradition of having compromising information on individuals - is that its more powerful if it is not used than if it is. Within months, the Soviet Union was collapsing and change was afoot under soon-to-be Russian President Boris Yeltsin. More recently, Britain was involved in a diplomatic flap after a former official under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that British authorities had rigged up a fake rock in Moscow to spy on Russians. Once youve used it, its gone.

The dossier was reportedly produced as opposition research for the 2016 US presidential campaign and was being discussed in Washington as early as October, even though its details werent widely reported until this week."Russians have even coined a word for this type of compromising material: kompromat.""Some of the practices which we know and which are confirmed to have happened during Soviet and post-Soviet times are reported in this dossier," Nixey said, adding that Russias denials were also part of a Cold War pattern in which the Kremlin "would outright deny something which is quite plainly true.Although Steele wasnt a senior figure in MI6, one of the officials said because of Steeles experience on the Russia desk and the high-level contacts he had during his time in Moscow, he was brought in to help with the case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian secret service officer and Kremlin critic who was poisoned in 2006 in London by polonium-210, a radioactive substance.London: Christopher Steele, the aquarium heater one-time British spy who has compiled an explosive dossier on President-elect Donald Trump, is a well-regarded operative who wouldnt make up stories to satisfy his clients, according to diplomatic and intelligence experts who know him."Russia would certainly like to know where he got his information from, assuming his information is basically true and he hasnt just made it up, which I dont think for a moment," Wood said. I dont think he would, necessarily, always draw correct judgment, but thats not the same thing. "And theyre accustomed to take action.

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