A CIA review released Wednesday is critical of how the agency arrived at the assessment that Russia sought to sway the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump — but finds the overall conclusion was sound.
The initial assessment, which has been condemned by Trump and his allies, was done too quickly and featured excessive involvement by intelligence agency leaders, according to the review commissioned by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
The eight-page review is the latest episode in a long-running saga over a Russian influence campaign that officials have said sought to damage Hilary Clinton and aid Trump in an election that he ultimately won by a narrow margin in a political upset that still reverberates.
The review questioned the CIA and FBI’s high confidence in the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump, noting that it was based on a single source and not the multiple sources that would typically underpin such a conclusion. It did not take issue with their assessments that Putin was trying to damage Clinton’s chances.
The review noted that it did not dispute “the quality and credibility” of a CIA report that was used to inform the high confidence assessment.
“Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” Ratcliffe said in a press release Wednesday. “Under my watch, I am committed to ensuring that our analysts have the ability to deliver unvarnished assessments that are free from political influence.”
Still, the review largely vindicated the 2016 assessment — and many former U.S. officials involved in its production cast it as a vote of confidence in their work.
“People have been asking whether they can trust Intelligence Community analysis given the politicized environment,” said Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration. “This is a fair question, and there should not be a timestamp on asking it. But this report suggests that the answer, for now, remains yes.”
Reviews of intelligence analyses are not uncommon, said former CIA analysts.
“After action reviews are very normal,” especially if it pertains to something high profile or controversial, said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst.
“The issues that are highlighted in this report are also extremely normal,” said Harding, now director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s a luxury when an analyst does not have a compressed time frame.”
While such reviews are not uncommon, it is rare for them to be released to the public.
“The only reason why you would be putting this out into the public domain is for political reasons,” said a former CIA analyst who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the intelligence process.
A review of the 2017 assessment was not conducted until today because “it was too politically sensitive,” the CIA review read.
After the review was released, Ratcliffe posted on X a characterization of the report that appeared to deviate from its findings.
“All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump,” he wrote in one post. In a second, he said that the 2016 assessment was produced in a process that was “atypical & corrupt.”
Investigations into the Kremlin’s efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials dominated much of the president’s first term in office.
A special counsel’s investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign sought to collude with that effort.
Trump and his allies have long raged against the investigations, dismissing them as politically motivated witch hunts.
The president has regularly lashed out at the outspoken former CIA Director John Brennan, who led the agency as it probed Moscow’s interference efforts, revoking his security clearance in 2018 in an apparent act of revenge.
Brennan did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A major flashpoint for Trump and other critics of the report was the inclusion of the Steele dossier in the annex of the 2016 intelligence community assessment — an unsubstantiated and now largely debunked report that suggested Trump had extensive entanglements with the Russians.
In an extensive review of the 2016 assessment, conducted as part of its wide-ranging Russia investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 found no “significant analytic tradecraft issues” with U.S. spy agencies’ work.
The oversight panel, which was headed at the time by Republican Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC.), also dedicated “additional attention” to the assessment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump.
The CIA and FBI had “high confidence” Putin aspired to help Trump, while the NSA only had “moderate” confidence in that conclusion. The public version of the assessment released in 2017 referenced all of those judgements.
The Senate panel, for its part, concluded the agencies’ disagreement was “reasonable, transparent, and openly debated.” The fourth volume of their review, which spanned more than 150 pages alone, further stated that all witnesses interviewed by the committee saw “no attempts or pressure to politicize the findings.”
CIA review of 2016 Russia election probe finds no major flaws
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
0 Comments