12/01/2017 Newsnight

The leaked Trump dossier - what did the British authorities know?

Who in Whitehall saw it, and who knew what impact it

We'll talk to a former MI6 officer and a man who's been personally

Also tonight, we report from Cyprus, where signs are that

But in some quarters, wounds still run deep.

I don't believe a solution will come in the next two

If they start changing the education system, if they start

changing the Dhekelia, even now they are spreading

We ask the Northern Cypriot Representative to the UK

And we talk to choreographer Wayne McGregor about how

Some people like to dance when when no-one's looking

I think what's interesting, everybody has a personal

A salacious memo - slapped down as fake news

and vehemently denied by President-elect Trump

yesterday at his first news conference since July.

Today, he tweeted that the US Intelligence Service said it was

In fact, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence,

effectively distanced the US Intelligence Agency

from the unverified video, saying it didn't leak it and hadn't

Since then, the spotlight has been shone on the man credited

with producing the memo - Christopher Steele, a former MI6

officer respected by British intelligence agencies,

The focus is now on what British intelligence knew and whether

anything made its way onto ministers' desks.

But the wider question persists - is this a scandal of Watergate

proportions, or one of the biggest smears in the history of politics?

Here's our Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban.

We're learning more about the world of private intelligence gathering

and how information gleaned from across the globe -- Globe was

assembled in the Trump files, and what was done with them. There was a

London connection. The offices of Orbis, a small private firms set up

by a former company of MI6 officers, commissioned in this case by

American paymasters to dig the dirt on Trump. A series of reports was

filed by August between June and December last year. Taken together,

they presented such a serious catalogue of alleged wrongdoing is

surrounding Mr Trump and his campaign, that those in receipt of

the reports decided they would have to be sent to the FBI. And people

here, I've been told, Kimberly conclusion that meant MI6 would also

have to be put in the picture. The reports were put together by

Christopher Steele, who had served as an MI6 intelligence officer in

Russia and France. He and a partner founded August business intelligence

when he left the service in 2009. He is reported to have provided

information on the Fifa corruption case to the FBI. So evidently, they

regarded him as sound. Yesterday though, Trump trashed several of the

most extraordinary claims in the memos. I think it's a disgrace that

information would be let out. I saw the information, I read the

information outside of that meeting. It's all fake news, it's phoney

stuff, it didn't happen. But while Donald Trump yesterday claimed James

Clapper had denounced the report, today the director of national

intelligence without a public statement saying something quite

different. Leaving aside the private

intelligence gathering with all its apparent faults, the official US

intelligence community view, presented at Trump Tower last week,

was of a gross violation of American democracy in favour of the Trump

campaign by Russia. A verdict that his own nominee to run the CIA

endorsed today. Everything I've seen suggests to me that the report has

an analytical product that is sound. But as Mr Pompeo and the other

inductees move into position, Trump supporters expect the way

intelligence is presented to change. It is very convenient for them to

delegitimise ties -- delegitimise Donald Trump. They don't like him,

they don't want him, they want Mrs Clinton and they want Barack Obama,

who appointed them. But remember, you can have a whole new group of

people running these agencies as soon as his appointees are confirmed

by the Senate. With that happening, you are good to see a change in tone

and temperament. What did MI6 do with the reports it received? The

government today was remaining tight-lipped. But one person

familiar with the service's procedures told me that MI6 wouldn't

normally circulate such material if it wasn't aware of the identity of

sources from which it was drawn. So the answer seems to be, they kept it

largely to themselves. I think it would have been a pretty borderline

case if the material was not well sourced, if the source wasn't

identified, and if the source couldn't be assessed in terms of

reliability or access and credibility. I think the agency is

quite likely have been pretty cautious about putting it out. Since

the Butler report, since the Chilcot Report, they have become much more

rigorous, much more prudent in the way they present intelligence. As

for the fallout from this, the former MI6 man, Christopher Steele,

was not at home to chorus today. The focus though is shifting, back from

the credibility of his reporting, to the bigger question about the spies

and how they deal with Trump. about the spies and how

they deal with Trump. Let's talk to our Political Editor

Nick Watt, who has more details Good evening. Christopher Steele

passed this on to MI6. What happened next? I can only echo what was said

in the film. I understand these documents were not passed on to

ministers, neither were ministers briefed about them when they were

passed over. Whether they have been briefed in recent days, that is

another matter. You might have thought that a bin and century

reports like this ends up add MI6, it would end up on the desks of

senior ministers and at the White House. But what happened was a

judgment was made that these reports were not really compiled to the

standard you would expect of MI6, and with that in mind, MI6 had to

make a judgment about whether it would be helpful or Makkonen helpful

to briefed ministers. Clearly they reached something of a political

judgment based on those procedures mark was talking about, that was

best to put some distance between ministers and these reports. What is

the feeling in Whitehall that you are sensing about what has been

revealed? It's a bit sniffy, really. What I'm hearing is he is not an

intelligence agent. He is a businessman. He runs a business

model. He is essentially saying to clients, I can dig deeper and find

lots of information about rivals or political opponents. There is a

feeling that the reports are showing off. That there is one sensational

claim after another. There are very few of the caveats you would expect

in an official intelligence report. We know all about caveats. The

Butler report into the use of intelligence in the lead to the Iraq

war said that the Blair government, the joint intelligence committee,

had perhaps stripped out some of the caveats in the intelligence

presented. Let me add my own little caveat. It's not a great surprise

that officially we are finding a bit of a sniffy UK response. Obviously

macro Britain needs to big -- build bridges with the incoming Trump

bridges with the incoming Trump administration.

Let's talk now to Harry Ferguson, who is a former MI6 officer.

Thank you for joining us. We were just hearing their that Christopher

Steele is a businessman, a man respected by many intelligence

agencies. Your take on him? Yes, I have met Chris once as an

intelligence and Security Conference. He always struck me as a

very affable and very reliable sort of guy not given to flights of

fancy. I also know him through mutual friends. Another work of his

company. They are a reliable agency. Chris was a strong middle ranking

SAS officer. I don't quite agree that this was a subpar report. It

seems to me that Chris has been quite careful to try to find as many

sources as possible, but also to make it clear that these are stories

and that what his report has at the moment, it lacks that killer

evidence. What kind of stories are there? Joe Public, Wii, don't see

reports like this. What scale do we put it against, the National

Enquirer, or something as -- akin to a government led report? It's not

quite the Premier League that an SAS report would be. It's more a leading

Championship side. One of the things that's missing from this report that

you would normally find in an MI6 report is an indication of just how

long these sources have been in contact, and how reliable their

reporting has been in the past. That sort of caveat is missing. But the

intelligence included in this document really falls into three

parts. The first is to suggest that the Russians have been feeding

intelligence about the Democrats to the Trump campaign. The second is

one particular incident which appears to have occurred in 2013,

the one involving supposedly Russian prostitute in Moscow. Chris has

managed to dig up four different sources, because he wants to back

that up. There is another story that the Russians have been collecting

compromising intelligence about Trump for a very long time. That

also has a certain amount of credibility. I think Trump was

surprised to become president now. I don't think he was thinking about it

ten years ago. He is a wealthy man used to getting his own ways. Chris

has found these stories, tried to corroborate them and he has put them

out there. But he does not have that final piece of evidence. The reason

we have not seen either the SAS, the CAA or the FBI move on it is that

they don't have it either. Nobody can quite find the definitive story.

If the information is out there but can't be corroborated, why wouldn't

the intelligence services here have passed that to ministers, or is the

implication that it has already been discussed? Well, that's just it.

Chris worked in SAS for 20 years. Most of the sources he is using

would be once he built up. You would assume that in the seven years since

he left, other sources have recruited. He would have tried to

add sources himself. SYS should have already been aware that this

information was out there. I was at a Conference last week for

intelligence professionals and there was a love of gossip about this

story before it broke. People said they had heard rumours last year at

times. I think they looked at it and said, we haven't got anything new

that we are not already reporting. It doesn't enhance what we have put

out there. There is no need to let ministers know. They might have led

the Americans know what Chris was working on. A question was made

about not knowing what his sources were. They could have gone to him.

They could have asked him. I suspect they already knew. Harry Ferguson,

thank you for your time. Harry Ferguson, thank

you for your time. Someone else caught up in the Trump

memo scandal is Rick Wilson, a Republican party strategist

and Trump critic. He was accused of being

behind the Trump memo, and of leaking it to the CIA -

a charge he has denied. Rick now joins us from

Tallahassee, Florida. Thank you for joining us. How did

you get caught up in this? Well, I've been a prominent person in the

anti-Trump movement and a critic of Donald Trump for well over a year

now and when the online forum decided to claim that they had

written the memo as a prank, they put my name into the chain of

accusations, that they had leaked it to me and I had taken it to the CIA

and John McCain. It is readable and absurd but we live in an era, in

American journalism, the post-fact are, so Conservative journalists

took off with the story, believing it verbatim, even though it came

from an anonymous forum, easily demonstrated to be false and my

alleged role was easily demonstrated to be false, mainly because these

folks don't understand how politics and media and journalism works in

the US. How does politics and media work over there? You've denied any

relationship to the memo and you've established that but the fact is, as

a person who's worked in opposition research, your job is to dig dirt,

isn't it, on the opposition, in order to sully their reputation,

isn't that how it works? I'm actually the guy who hires the

opposition researchers and yes, we use opposition research to establish

a fact in a campaign so you can look at another candidate and say that

their message doesn't fit with what they are claiming, their record

doesn't fit with what they're claiming, their behaviour doesn't

fit and to go after the predicates of their candidacy. Donald Trump

claims to be a multi-billionaire, a successful international businessman

but he's been very careful about hiding his relationships in the

business community, so folks like me in the primary, well before this

silly fabricated version came out, and well before the Christopher

Steele report came out, we were looking at those relationships and

that's where a lot of the pursuit was, looking at the secrets behind

the opacity established by Trump hiding his tax returns and going

after the business relationships, overseas in particular. Why do you

think this has come out now? Many said that there were rumours last

autumn, last fall as you might say, but why now? The first contact I had

was a major investigative reporter for a TV network reached out and

said, do you know anything, can you check with your people? This was in

discussion last summer and there were rumours before that. Even some

jokes in pop culture on the Howard Stern Show before that. Why it pop

now is simple. The intelligence community has been told by Donald

Trump that they are one of his enemies, he has declared war on the

US intelligence community, questioning their judgment,

professionalism, and patria Chisholm. This is something you're

going to see when they are up against the wall like this --

patriotism. They will play with elbows out, and I don't blame them,

he has put much more trust in VanderMeer Putin and the FSB rather

than the CIA -- Vladimir Putin. Has he successfully batted this away? It

is the biggest political bet he's going to make, that he can bluster

his way out of this, that there is nothing there, that at no time in

his trips to Russia did he engage in any behaviour that was caught on

tape and that's a big bet. If he's right, he's right, but if not it

will have significant consequences for his credibility. Thank you for

joining us. The pressure and strain that the NHS

is under has been well It's experiencing its worst ever

winter crisis, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College

of Nursing has warned. Many patients are not receiving

care when they need it. The government's target

for A patients to be treated within four hours,

hasn't been met for 16 months - a target that is speculated

will be soon adjusted. Beds are being blocked,

causing much-needed operations to be delayed, with the head of NHS

England calling for extra funding for social care so that

patients can be released. Chris Cook, Policy Editor,

is tracking the problems There's a documentary that is

reflecting the challenges that NHS is facing. That's right, Hospital,

BBC Two on Wednesday, it is excellent and we are going to show

you a clip which illustrates the important challenge facing the NHS,

the delayed transfer of care, called a Detoc, meaning a patient who needs

care, but the hospital would like to be delivered by somebody else,

cannot be moved out because the next person in the chain of care is not

ready to take them. These Detocs are a serious problem because it means

there are not enough beds in the hospital, the patient can get stuck

in the wrong place and it can gum up everything. If you can't admit new

patients, that is difficult for because the two to deal with and it

feeds into the A problems. The case were about to see is from the

documentary, a patient called Dolly. 91-year-old Dolly is waiting to find

out if she can be discharged today. When we saw you earlier

on this morning, you were As you know, we'd hoped to get

you home later, well, not home, but to Willesden Community Hospital

this morning for a bit of rehabilitation and

some convalescence. But I think given that

you had your collapse this morning, we should probably keep an eye

on you here. So what I think we're going to do

is hang on to you for at least another 24-hours and then we'll send

the referral again But unfortunately, because they've

given the bed up to another patient this morning,

we might end up having to keep you in here for a few more days

while we wait for it The problems that we face can only

be solved really by social services creating spaces for people

in accommodation, be that for homeless drug users

or for people awaiting rehousing There's a big disconnect

between the NHS and social services and the NHS gets blamed quite a lot

for problems in the community which are rarely slightly outside

of our remit and outside You can see the concern. It is on

the consultant's face. I wonder how big a problem this is and how it is

reflected in the NHS. This morning we got a big dump of data from the

NHS which included the results of the monthly survey they do, one

night they go around and check how many Detocs are happening across NHS

England. We can show on a graft. This is the number of delayed

transfers of care on that night each month going back to 2011. There's

quite a clear pattern. If we draw a line in 2013 it becomes more

obvious. On the left-hand side, it bombs around and there is a clear

seasonal pattern but it is basically flat. Since 2013 it has been riding

very steadily and it has been accelerating recently. It may help

to understand more if we pull out a number for 2013 and the number for

November, 2016. The number has gone from about 4200, to 6000, a 60%

increase in the number of people stuck in hospital overnight on

census day. The reason for the rise is quite complicated but broadly

speaking, 10% of people are waiting for the residential care and 25% are

looking to go to a nursing home and others are looking for some kind of

support package. Of the extra, the big rise that's causing the

problems, about is caused by local authority social services not being

able to cope and 40% is the internal problems within the NHS. Thank you

for joining us. No doubt we will talk about this again.

Cyprus is a country that has been split since 1974 -

an island that many of us know as a popular holiday destination

bathed in Mediterranean sun - not overshadowed by a history

UN peacekeeping forces estimate that 165,000 Greek Cypriots fled

or were expelled from the north, and 45,000 Turkish Cypriots from

the south, during the conflict - others say the figures

Greece and Turkey are now working towards the reunification

of the island, with talks in Geneva bringing the two sides

But there will be many sticking points during the negotiations.

Selin Girit has this report from the island.

There is something very eerie about this place.

This used to be the main International Airport in Cyprus.

Now it's been abandoned for over 40 years.

I'm in the middle of the buffer zone.

Nicosia is Europe's the last divided city.

Its ghost airport, a monument to the scars it bears.

In 1974, a Greek inspired military coup in the South was met

with a Turkish invasion of the North.

But it has led to almost half a century of ethnic division.

The internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government controls

the south of the island, while Turkish Cypriots

The 66-year-old Turkish Cypriot lives on the border town of Morphe.

The 60s and 70s saw hundreds of thousands forced to relocate.

Moved north in a population exchange.

You are taken from your house, from your village.

You are being moved to some unknown town.

Like many people living in Morphe he was given a house that used

The Geneva talks could see the town change hands and people

Despite nearly half a century here, he's remarkably philosophical.

I can't say that I will be so sad to give the house

I don't want my children to live the wars that we have lived.

So it is more important to find a solution, to have peace,

than to move from one house to another.

He tells me, "if I have to move out from here,

I will have another garden in the new home that I make."

But his attitude is not shared by everyone in Morphe.

For some, any change will be painful and bitterly opposed.

A few miles down the road, at an orthodox cemetery,

there is a reminder that many lost more than their homes.

Here, Greek and Turkish Cypriot archaeologists work side-by-side,

digging deep trenches to find and identify people who went missing

They have already dug out the remains of 25 people

It's a big deal for both communities.

And by finding these people you are delivering them back

to the family so they can have a proper burial,

they can have their family visiting the grave.

And so this trauma will close, it will heal.

Once bodies are found, they are brought here.

At the lab at the Committee of Missing People, the process

Sometimes it takes a long time to reconstruct it from small pieces.

At the end, I think we have a good result.

So far we have identified about 720 individuals on both communities.

And the total number of the missing people is about 2,000.

But that means over 1,000 still lie in the Cypriot soil.

If there was not a coup, was there an invasion?

One of them is one victim's younger brother, George.

He was a nice, good-looking young man.

This is a very deep wound which will stay there.

The wound may close but the big scar will stay there

I don't believe a solution will come in the next two

If they start changing the education system,

if they start changing things, even now they are spreading

So what we have here is exceptional, if you think of what this country

Half of this table is Turkish Cypriot and the other

They are drinking their traditional drink and toasting to

This is not the last chance for peace.

We, the new generation, we create the piece.

I am waiting for this all of my life.

I'm so excited and the same time, emotional.

This time, they woke up from the ten years sleeping and now it's time

for us to have a change in our island.

In Geneva, a game of diplomacy is on, which move to make?

Here in Cyprus, the hope is neither side loses.

We are joined by the North Cyprus Representative

We did ask the Cypriot government for an interview,

but they were not able to give us anyone.

Welcome. We have just understood that the talks finished a short time

ago in Geneva without agreement. They will reconvene on January 18.

There seem to be some sticking points. What do you think they might

be? I think right now the Turkish Cypriots side is determined to

continue with the talks in Geneva until we reach a final solution.

What would be the sticking points? There may be more than one sticking

point. Each and every item will be considered. Let's talk about one

that has been brought up. Grease once its territory increased. It

would mean that Turkey's portion of land would be diminished. Is that

realistic to expect the Turkish Cypriots side to agree to that? I

think the Turkish Cypriots side is there to negotiate the issue of

territory as well as any other issue. And yes, both sides will make

their demands. I think the Turkish Cypriots side really wants to do a

minimal uprooting of people when the issue of territory will be

discussed. How much of an effect would 6% have? I wouldn't be able to

tell you that. But we will -- there will be percentages discussed and

with they will reach a mutually agreeable solution. But the most

important thing for Turkish Cypriots is to have a minimal number of

people uprooted from their current homes. The reason I ask you about

this is that President Erdogan has been quite reluctant to exceed any

land or change this percentage and this will be a sticking point. We

don't want this, surely, to be this the state of play moving forward? I

think the Turkish Cypriots side really wants to move on because the

negotiations have started in 1968. 448 years, we have been negotiating,

to reach a final agreement, a settlement agreement, which will

hopefully be taken to a referendum by both sides simultaneously. Before

we talk about the referendum and when they may take place, there are

30,000 troops come Turkish troops, patrolling the north. How open is

the negotiating table from the Turkish Cypriot side to them being

removed, being made part of the UN peacekeeping force? As you know, the

UN peacekeeping force arrived in March 19 64. Turkish troops came in

1974. Things have happened between the two dates. If any issue of

troops is going to be discussed, I'm sure it will be discussed. What do

you think the likely conclusion is? I cannot guess. No one can guess.

I'm sure even people in Geneva cannot guess. It's a question of

discussions. People may have expectations. But when you are doing

negotiations, you are trying to reach something mutually agreeable.

How likely do you think there will be success? There is a specific

timetable. There is hope the referendum can take place by the end

of April. Is that likely to happen? If things continue in Geneva, why

not? It's all a question of intent. So we could see a reunified Cyprus

by the end of this year? I hope so. If possible. Thank you very much for

joining us. Thank you. Wayne McGregor has now been resident

choreographer at the Royal Ballet in London for a decade -

the first person in that role to come from a contemporary

dance background. A high accolade, on top

of his already impressive He has collaborated

with high-profile musicians such as the White Stripes,

Paloma Faith and He's also choreographed films

including Fantastic Beasts, Our Special Correspondent,

Katie Razzall, has been hearing According to him, there

is a dancer in us all. What's amazing about dance is it's

connected to everybody As likely to work with Radiohead

as the Royal Ballet, at his best Wayne McGregor's

choreography fuses dance, Not bad for a boy from

Stockport who found early What was it about John Travolta that

got you into this whole thing? I think it was just his

passion for dancing. He just kind of came

alive on the dance floor. And you see this physical

kind of vitality. It's just amazing when you see

somebody kind of live So I started ballroom

dancing lessons, disco Some people like to dance

when no one is looking. I think what's interesting

is everybody has a personal So when I came in the room and met

you today, I already have a sense of something about you,

the way in which you greeted me, the way in which you had eye

contact, the way in which your body How far or how distanced

you started to communicate, In a way choreography or dance

making is about that. It's about that

transaction of energy. There's just something primal

about ideas of physicality that A one-time research fellow

at Cambridge University, McGregor's fascination with science

and technology has seen him collaborate with neurologists

to understand more about how mind And what that means for the creative

process. It is partly just a fascination of what happens

cognitively when you are moving. In the olden days we would have this

idea that the brain and body This kind of sense that

we're all just walking But actually we know, and we know

this because of in-body technology, the way in which we are using

technology now, that actually And I'm just interested to find

out more about that. What does it mean to

think about something? If I'm about to reach

and touch your shoulder, already I've got a sense of how far

I have to reach before I touch you, All those things happen intuitively

in my brain before I do it. And that's a version

of physical thinking. And what we're doing

as dancers is doing a more A decade into his role

as resident choreography at London's the Royal Ballet,

McGregor is rehearsing a revival There you go, there

you go, you do it. You already have a kinaesthetic

response to that. That sense of sound shapes the

dynamic. My job in a way is to recognise

what that special signature is, what that feel is, and use it

to develop something that says something about our ideas,

that says something about you. What are you trying

to say about the world? I think I'm trying to say

that the world isn't complete. It's a partial view,

it's fragmented. There are a lot of those

old-fashioned traditional ballet They can keep thinking there are,

but why would there be? And we don't want an art

form that is dying. We want an art form that

truly vibrant and alive, I mean, are there

issues you care about? I think making art is

political in itself. Education is political,

empowering people to think creatively and challenge

the system is political. This is one of the big challenges

of the stem argument, this reduction of arts

education in schools. It's really important

first of all to get those One of the drivers to get

them into school is very And then to see the crosstalk

between maths and music, rhythm and mathematics,

organisation and spatial organisation, really

important terms of geometry. There are some important

ways in which these In his quest for crosstalk, McGregor

has collaborated with a whole host From Mark Wallinger

and the White Stripes, to Mark Ronson, Paloma Faith

and Radiohead's Thom Yorke. And he has an amazing ability to be

really real and just be himself. That's why you get this

amazing raw physicality. I guess when you're working

with somebody like that, my job is to recognise it,

find it, and just It's not to go, "Well,

let's move like this." The technological process

of that is very different. That pushes some of your

buttons, doesn't it? And it was one shot,

you probably noticed. So the camera shows four

and a half minutes. And then that really,

really long technological process. Please join me in welcoming

the lovely ladies... As movement director

on this Harry Potter, But there's a Wayne McGregor

signature to Alexander Skarsgard's performance in The Legend of Tarzan,

if you look carefully. And his latest endeavour

was Fantastic Beasts. When you're working

on something like the obscurus in Fantastic Beasts,

how can you make some physical activity that then

is motion-captured that But it's also about

characterisation, finding small physical detail,

and so there is a huge amount of choreographers working in film,

or movement directors in film, What we do physically

and constantly, we get into habits. We live our lives in

a very habit-formed way. I think to remain curious

and open to the world, you really have too actively change

something about yourself, whether that's watching the kinds

of films you never normally watch, whether that's going to a gig

you never normally go to, whether that's watching dancing

the way that you wouldn't, whether that's picking up poetry,

it doesn't really matter. And I think that keeps you really

engaged and alive, and all your And I think that's what we always

want in life, to be highly attuned. And you can watch Katie Razzall's

full interview with Wayne McGregor James O'Brien will be here tomorrow

night. Goodbye. Good evening. A wintry night out

there. Sleet and snow showers pushing south during the course of

the night. First thing in