Oh, the irony! Amid all the accusations of foreign interference in the election, the first solid indication of it showed up with the publication of a slanderous unsourced memo written by a "former" British intelligence agent accusing Donald Trump of various "perversions" and claiming he's vulnerable to blackmail by those evil Russkies. The "ex"-MI6 agent, one Christopher Steele – how's that for a name straight out of a James Bond novel? – works for "Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd.," a high-toned Londo-based "private" spook agency usually hired by big corporations out to spy on their competitors or those pesky environmentalists.

According to press reports, Steele worked undercover in Russia for several years, cultivating a wide network of contacts who, today, regularly feed him information. It was through these contacts that he concocted a series of memos first reported by CNN and later published by BuzzFeed, the product of rumor, gossip, and innuendo – in short, the stuff "raw" intelligence is made of.