Brennan and Clapper: Let’s Set the Record Straight on Russia and 2016
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the Central Intelligence Agency director, have over the past month claimed that senior officials of the Obama administration manufactured politicized intelligence, silenced intelligence professionals and engaged in a broad “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. That is patently false. In making those allegations, they seek to rewrite history. We want to set the record straight and, in doing so, sound a warning.
Let’s recap. The Trump administration’s claims focus on the intelligence community’s findings about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which were published in January 2017. The assessment found that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had ordered an influence campaign to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm the electability and potential presidency of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
The assessment also found that the Russians had developed a “clear preference” for Mr. Trump and aspired to help his election prospects. It further stated that the Russians employed a variety of tactics as part of this campaign, including hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party organizations and officials and publicly releasing the stolen data through digital allies. Those covert activities were complemented by the overt but disguised efforts of Russian government intelligence agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users. As stated in the assessment, Mr. Putin himself ordered Russian intelligence to conduct the campaign.
While some external critiques have noted that parts of the Russia investigation could have been handled better, multiple thorough, yearslong reviews of the assessment have validated its findings and the rigor of its analysis. The most noteworthy was the unanimous, bipartisan, five-volume report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose Republican members at the time included Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state, and Senator Tom Cotton, now the committee chairman.
“In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the [assessment], the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions,” the Senate report said. “All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.”
Every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election.
Although the misrepresentations and disinformation of the administration are too numerous to address here, let us set the record straight on three. To be clear, we are writing here in our personal capacities, and our views don’t imply the endorsement of any federal agency.
First, the so-called Steele Dossier, a series of memos, now largely discredited, about purported Trump-Russia links written by a former British intelligence agent. Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Ratcliffe have claimed it played an integral role in formulating the assessment. We have testified under oath, and the reviews of the assessment have confirmed, that the dossier was not used as a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions. At the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insistence, a short summary of the dossier was added as a separate annex only to the most highly classified version of the document that contained the assessment. That annex also explained why the dossier was not used in the assessment.
Second, the assessment made no judgment about the impact of Russian information operations on the outcome of the election. While some state and local electoral boards and voter information and registration systems were accessed by Russian intelligence, the assessment made clear that none of those types of systems were involved in counting votes. Russian influence operations might have shaped the views of Americans before they entered the voting booth, but we found no evidence that the Russians changed any actual votes.
Finally, and contrary to the Trump administration’s wild and baseless claims, there was no mention of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians in the assessment, nor any reference to the publicly acknowledged contacts that had taken place.
The sole focus of the assessment was on Russia’s actions, not on whom they might have been interacting with in the United States. Although Mr. Trump, during the 2016 campaign, publicly encouraged the Russians to find and expose Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails — to which Russian cyber actors apparently responded in a matter of hours — we left that inappropriate public entreaty unmentioned.
There is a remarkable irony about this whole affair. Despite claims by Trump administration officials of a nefarious political conspiracy, we did everything we could at the time to prevent leaks of intelligence reports, including Russia’s preference for Mr. Trump, a requirement that President Obama regularly emphasized. We knew such reports would be political dynamite. And despite substantial reporting on the matter, we succeeded in preventing such leaks before the election.
In keeping with this solemn obligation to avoid entanglement in American politics, the Obama administration released a written statement one month before the election warning about Russian interference. The statement deliberately said nothing about Mr. Putin’s preferred candidate, despite the evidence already accumulated by U.S. intelligence agencies about his preference.
The real politicization is the calculated distortion of intelligence by administration officials, notably Mr. Trump’s directors of national intelligence and the C.I.A., positions that should be apolitical. We find it deeply regrettable that the administration continues to perpetuate the fictitious narrative that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. It should instead acknowledge that a foreign nation-state — a mortal enemy of the United States — routinely meddles in our national elections and will continue to do so unless we take appropriate bipartisan action to stop it.
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Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe and a cast of scores should leave their gaseous revisionism to historians.
We probably don't yet know for sure if Tulsi Gabbard is secretly a Russian agent-- although IMO she frequently acts like one!
I see a mass exodus from the US of trump family and officials on the horizon, for reasons of self preservation ...
Ivanka seems to have figured it out. Maybe she really is the smartest Trump spawn.
she's on her way to becoming a saudi royal's penile accessory after her husband gets packed into a cooler ...
If the " former" communist John Brennan was a Russian agent tasked to sew discord and destroy confidence in the US, would he have acted any differently?
You left out muslim in your character smeers.
Brennan has never been a Muslim to my knowledge, nor is it a character smear to be one.
However, supporting the Communist Party is no different than supporting the American Nazi Party, and neither should ever be put in charge of an intelligence service.
IIRC, John Brennen not a Communist.
IIRC, John Brennen not a Communist.
(In fact, truth be told be told, he never even played one on TV!)
If the " former" Democrat Donald Trump was a Russian agent tasked to sew discord and destroy confidence in the US, would he have acted any differently?
Putin's goal was to sow discord and undermine democracy in the US and Trump made all of Putin's dreams come true regardless of whether there was collusion or a pee tape. Apparently, Putin didn't even need that kind of leverage to get Trump to undermine democracy all on his own. And of course, Trumps loyal sycophants followed suit and did exactly what Putin wanted them to.
Which progressives uncritically believed and spent years tearing the country apart over a phantom menace, and the most gullible to this day call Trump a russian agent and traitor. What more could Putin ask for?
The Russians' most successful activity of their whole interference campaign was organizing an anti-Trump protest that 25,000 thousand progressives attended.
Putin in place was a POS potUS, whose plethora of painfully pitiful peoples permitted the perplexing pull off of spectacular events, that has put US in this place that we are evidently parked in, place, though not bored by the walk, just astonished by the amount of peoples talk, as they continue as stubborn as the mule, to prove igknorantz , continues for far too many, to be the Rule, as forced to drive the busses, to take to task and to school, the hills on the fool….whilst we achieve knew depths to parts unknown, as Putin in this place has been the confusion infusion that perpetuated a new pseudo reality so easy to see through, unless won prefers not to look, per the spreader of the alternate facts, the crook, who told them they were not allowed to look, so yet to see, what’s so blatant to you and me, yet multitudes of minions were not allowed to see ad hear aloud, that which can’t make America Proud, as the shroud that covers, like a sister between brothers, smothers
a once great country led down by a bullshitin clown, and his fealty fevered felines, grabbed by the one Putin place to have stabbed , as Trumps ankles, were firmly grabbed, while fckd has been the rest of US, cause what’s all this bout a bipartisan conclusion fuss, nothing to see here though in this tuss
So, 2 criminal fucktards saying they aren't criminal fucktards.....I'm shocked.
Émile Zola you are not.
Heheheh
So, 2 criminal fucktards saying they aren't criminal fucktards..
So if they aren't "fucktards" . . .and never even POOTV-- what are they anyway?
Totally honest fucktards?
If the US ever needed a sample of Putins DNA for comparison purposes, all they would have to do is swab Brennans mouth or ass.
There has only ever been one criminal fucktard saying he wasn't a criminal fucktard, and that would be the guy a bunch of sad bitter losers elected to the office of President in the last election. There isn't a bigger criminal fucktard than Donald Trump.