On Tuesday, Dianne Feinstein, the Ranking Member of Senate Judiciary Committee, released the transcripts from a closed door interview between Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, his lawyer Josh Levy and congressional investigators.
The testimony shed some light on the controversial dossier that Fusion GPS put together leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The shocking dossier was passed around to multiple media outlets and politicians before Buzzfeed posted it online. While the dossier itself was filled with wild claims about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia, the media was unable to verify the authenticity of all the claims in the report.
While the some of the claims were questionable and did not stand up to scrutiny the people who fed Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent who put together the dossier, the information were taking a risk by talking to him about sensitive matters.
During the testimony, Levy made a shocking admission, saying that "somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier." Levy did not elaborate, but warned that Simpson "wants to be very careful to protect his source" because he believes that "no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work."
Intelligence agencies are very protective of their sources, both for the safety of the sources who could be killed for sharing sensitive or classified information, and to ensure the source will continue to feed them information, even after they leave the government and get jobs in the private sector.