President-elect Donald Trump ripped into the media on Wednesday for reporting that the U.S. intelligence community had included in a presidential briefing unverified information about a Russian government operation designed to compromise Trump through sexual and other improprieties. Various news organizations have been aware of the allegations for months and been unable to prove any of them.

Trump said it was "fake news" and tweeted this morning that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had called him "to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated." The Russian government, meanwhile, labeled the blackmail-operation rumors a "hoax" and "pulp fiction."

One of the chief criticisms of the allegations is that they come entirely from one dubious source, a former British intelligence officer who provided opposition research for some of Trump's Republican rivals in last year's presidential primaries.

But on BBC News on Wednesday, Washington correspondent Paul Wood said the "rumors or allegations or whatever you want to call them" do not come solely from the "oppo" reports, which the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets say are the work of Orbis Business Intelligence head Christopher Steele.

Wood reported that the former British spy "is not, and this is the crucial thing, the only source for this" information.

"I was also told by a man I'll call a member of the U.S. intelligence community back in August that he had been told by the head of an East European intelligence service that the Russians had kompromat, or compromising material, on Mr. Trump."

Wood added that it is "very difficult" for foreign reporters to interview U.S. spies because "they're breaking the law if they talk to you," but that he passed a message to American intelligence professionals through a source and "got a message back that there is allegedly more than one tape, not just more than one tape, not just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in more than one place, in both Moscow and St. Petersburg."

The reporter continued: "Now having said all that, nobody [in the media or, presumably, Western intelligence] has seen this tape. We're talking about intelligence here and nobody should believe something just because an intelligence agent says it. ... But it is viewed as credible by the CIA and that's why it landed on President Obama's desk last week, on the desk of the congressional leadership and was given to Mr. Trump as well."

The BBC report provides a fascinating talking point, but of course it doesn't change the fact that absolutely nothing has been proven, that the possibility of Trump being compromised by the Russians is still nothing but wild rumor.

"If the Russians have blackmail material, they're hardly going to release it," Wood said. "So it really comes [down] to the credibility of these FSB sources, these Russian intelligence officers, quoted by a British intelligence officer who was employed by an opposition-research firm" working for Trump's Republican rivals.

The BBC also interviewed Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush.

"One obviously can't dismiss the notion that intelligence services would be interested in kompromat," he said, but he warned that "nothing here fits the mold of proven stuff. ... We're hanging in the air here with all this."

* Listen to the BBC report.

-- Douglas Perry