Left I on the News

This New York Times article—original title “How Russian Meddling Gave Us This Year’s World Cup”, later changed to the noncommittal “Did Russia Steal the World Cup?”)—is the latest manifestation of Russiamania, featuring none other than Christopher Steele. Yes, that’s Christopher Steele of Trump dossier and “pee tape” fame, as the article’s subtitle immediately reminds us. Spoiler alert — the answer to the revised title is “No”.

The story is that in 2010, Steele became suspicious because Russia was trying to get the 2018 World Cup. Why was he suspicious? Because Russia doesn’t “have a great soccer tradition” and hadn’t even qualified for the 2010 World Cup. You know who also doesn’t have a great soccer tradition, didn’t qualify for this year’s World Cup, and just won the bid for the 2026 World Cup (for the second time)? That’s right, the U.S., the only country in the world who doesn’t even call it “football”! Seeking prestigious sporting events like the World Cup or the Olympics is a perfectly normal activity for big countries and even small ones (Qatar hosts the next World Cup), so right off the bat I’m suspicious of the motivations of anyone who claims it was “suspicious” that Russia was seeking the World Cup.

But armed with his suspicions, Steele began investigating, and soon had “a growing pile of intelligence [note: not “evidence” but “intelligence”, kind of like the still unproven “intelligence” in the Trump dossier] suggesting that Russian government officials and oligarchs close to Mr. Putin had been enlisted to push the effort [a completely normal activity by any country seeking the Cup], cutting shadowy gas deals with other countries in exchange for votes, [and] offering expensive gifts of art to FIFA voters. [those would definitely be illegal, if true]”

Now there definitely was corruption and outright bribery in FIFA on a large scale, and the investigations in multiple countries resulted in multiple convictions and eventually forced long-time FIFA President Sepp Blatter from office. So was Steele (and the author of this hit piece in the Times) right? Did Russian “meddling” (by implication, illegal in nature) win Russia the World Cup? When you get to the 15th paragraph of the article, here’s what you learn:

“But there is one glaring hole in what even the vanquished defense attorneys who had corrupt soccer officials as clients called a breathtakingly meticulous and exhaustive federal investigation and prosecution: any mention of Russia. Court records from the case run into the thousands of pages, and prosecutors spent weeks laying out every tangled intricacy of their digging in a six-week criminal trial in federal court in Brooklyn late last year. But Russia, strangely, seems to have been completely absent from any of it.”

Oops! There’s no there there! Not a shred of evidence that was actually credible enough to be introduced in court had anything to do with Russia. No matter, though — mission accomplished with this article. Russia smeared in the pages of The New York Times on the eve of the World Cup, on the basis of…absolutely nothing other than Christopher Steele’s “intelligence”. Maybe the proof is in the “pee tape”.