UPDATE: CBS News:
The Intercept's James Risen first reported Friday that the U.S. intelligence community attempted to recover stolen NSA records related to hacking capabilities, and was working to repossess those records when Russians offered information about Mr. Trump and the 2016 campaign.
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Shortly after The Intercept published its story on Friday, The New York Times reported that a shadowy Russian who claimed to have the NSA cyberweapons and compromising information on Mr. Trump bilked the Americans out of $100,000 last year, citing American and European Intelligence officials.
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"The people swindled here were James Risen and Matt Rosenberg," the CIA said in a statement provided to CBS News. "The fictional story that CIA was bilked out of $100,000 is patently false."
But Rosenberg, who wrote The New York Times story, said in a tweet later on Saturday, "@CIA is denying something we did not write - the @nytimes story does not specify CIA as source of funds, which we write came 'through an indirect channel.'"
CIA calls report of $100K payment to Russian "fictional" (CBS News)
The New York Times details the story of a frustrating U.S. intelligence attempt to recover stole National Security Agency (NSA) cyberweapons from a Russian source and how he repeatedly offered compromising material on President Trump.
The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.
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Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.
The United States intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the American government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.
The NYT report appears to be well-sourced, relying on multiple American and European intelligence officials, as well as the Russian in question.
The United States officials worked through an intermediary — an American businessman based in Germany — to preserve deniability. There were meetings in provincial German towns where John le Carré set his early spy novels, and data handoffs in five-star Berlin hotels. American intelligence agencies spent months tracking the Russian’s flights to Berlin, his rendezvous with a mistress in Vienna and his trips home to St. Petersburg, the officials said.
The N.S.A. even used its official Twitter account to send coded messages to the Russian nearly a dozen times.
The episode ended this year with American spies chasing the Russian out of Western Europe, warning him not to return if he valued his freedom, the American businessman said. The Trump material was left with the American, who has secured it in Europe.
The Russian claimed to have access to a staggering collection of secrets that included everything from the computer code for the cyberweapons stolen from the N.S.A. and C.I.A. to what he said was a video of Mr. Trump consorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, according to American and European officials and the Russian, who agreed to be interviewed in Germany on the condition of anonymity. There remains no evidence that such a video exists.
Full story: U.S. Spies, Seeking to Retrieve Cyberweapons, Paid Russian Peddling Trump Secrets (NYT)