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Rh MR. GOWDY: How was he able to accumulate information in Russia if he didn't go?

MR. SIMPSON: Well, so to be clear, he really would not be safe if he went to Russia. He's been exposed as a former undercover British Intelligence officer who worked in Moscow. So it wouldn't be wise for him to go to Russia.

Five minutes, Mr. Gowdy.

MR. SIMPSON: So, to answer your question, you know, generally speaking, his line of work is very different from mine and that was why I hired him. So I do mostly public records and we don't do much interviewing.

But I'm familiar with how his work is done. And generally, you have a network of sources who live in or came from the place that you're interested in. So, you know, generally speaking, you would have -- you would run a network of subsources or subcontractors who travel around and gather information for you. And so without getting into who his sources are, I can say generally, he hires people who can travel and talk to people and find out what's going on.

MR. GOWDY: Were you able to vet or corroborate or contradict any of the sources or subsources?

MR. SIMPSON: We did get into assessing the credibility of the sources and whether they were in a position to know the things that they were saying. I didn't ask for the specific identities of specific people. Some people, I think I know who they are for other reasons. But that's about as much as I can say.

We did a lot of -- when the first reports came in, we did a lot of discussing of whether this was credible information. And obviously, evaluating human intelligence is not the same thing as looking at documents. And so it's a much trickier process and the thresholds are different. And so what you're really trying UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE