"TRAPPED IN A WORLD THAT'S A DISTORTED REALITY":

[T]he important part of the McClatchy story isn't the cell phone data, rather indications that friendly spies had information about the reputed Prague trip. As the report states, "[in] late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague." In other words, a friendly spy service picked up signals intelligence that may corroborate the Steele dossier.

In the SIGINT world, such tells are called "reflections" and they happen all the time. They're not hard evidence, yet they are intriguing. If Russians--particularly prominent or well-connected ones--believed that Michael Cohen was visiting the Czech Republic when it's claimed he was, that's an important fact, even if far from decisive proof. That unnamed Eastern European intelligence agency shared their Cohen SIGINT report with American counterparts some time ago, my sources tell me, and it's in the possession of Robert S. Mueller, III and his Special Counsel investigation.

In addition, the National Security Agency, our own eavesdroppers, intercepted at least one similar piece of intelligence back in the late summer of 2016. As an NSA official told me, this SIGINT was highly classified and involved "senior Kremlin types" mentioning that Michael Cohen was in Prague. It was "office chit-chat, really," explained the NSA official, and it included no details of what Cohen was doing in the Czech Republic, yet "these Russians stated it as a fact" that the Prague trip happened when the Steele dossier said it did.

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