In July, ODNI declassified and released 2017 HPSCI(Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) Majority staff report regarding "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election". Below is the link to ODNI press release:
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President Obama directed the creation of this January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment after President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and it served as the basis for what was essentially a years-long coup against the duly elected President of the United States, subverting the will of the American people and attempting to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency.
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The declassified 46-page report in PDF format can be downloaded via the link below:
I'm archiving its text to make it searchable here. This is part 12.
The ICA Also Misrepresented the Unsourced Steele Dossier As Intelligence "Reporting of Russian Plans and Intentions." The ICA included a two-page summary of a series of anti-Trump political opposition research reports - which have collectively come to be known as "the dossier" in the media - that was produced on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign - by former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. The dossier's most significant claims - that Russia launched cyber activities to leak political emails - were little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets prior to the creation of the dossier. Other dossier reports were either proven false or were unsubstantiated, and these largely disparaged candidate Trump's character and alleged collusion between him or his campaign and Russian intelligence in a criminal conspiracy to influence the US 2016 election.(redacted)
Contradicting public claims by the DCIA that the dossier "was not in any way" incorporated into the ICA, the dossier was referenced in the ICA main body text, and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex (see box "Fourth Bullet").(redacted)
What the ICA Says: Fourth Bullet of Evidence Putin Aspired to Help Trump
In the CIA main body text, the key judgment "We assess the influence campaign aspired to help [Trump's] chances of victory" was followed by four bullets of supporting evidence. The fourth bullet referred the reader to a detailed summary and analysis of the dossier:
- For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an FBI Source on Russian Influence Efforts. [ICA p.3]
The ICA "Annex A" summarized the Dossier anti-Trump allegations, and included some analysis that struggled to imply that some dossier findings might have been corroborated by intelligence. The lead author of ICA, a CIA officer said that he drafted the Annex A in coordination with FBI, even though FBI had provided the dossier information via a memo from their Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division.(redacted)
By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports.
The ICA referred to the dossier as "Russian plans and intentions," falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow's influence operations.
Even though the dossier information was unclassified, the dossier summary was only included in the highest classified version of the ICA that was briefed to President Obama and President-elect Trump, and was seen by various national security officials and senior political appointees. It was omitted from both the Top Secret version of the ICA released for Congress, and the unclassified, public-release version.
- By relegating the dossier text to only the highest classified version of the ICA, the authors were better able to shield the assessment from scrutiny, since accesses to that ICA version was so limited.
The DCIA Rejected Requests From CIA Professionals That the Dossier Be Kept Out Of the ICA. ClA analysts and operations officers struggled to explain how the ICA - written for two Presidents and other high-level officials - could have included dossier information without identifying and vetting primary sources and without explaining the political circumstances surrounding why the report was produced and funded.
The ICA sourcing errors involving the dossier violated so many ICD 203 directives, that the text would normally not have passed first-line supervisor review at CIA, FBI or other IC agencies. Moreover, the dossier made outlandish claims and was written in an amateurish conspiracy and political propaganda tone that invited skepticism, if not ridicule, over its content.
Two senior CIA officers - one from Russia operations and the other from Russia analysis - argued with DCIA that the dossier should not be included at all in the ICA, because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards, according to a senior officer present at the meeting.(redacted)
The same officer said that DCIA refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier's many flaws responded, "Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?"(redacted)
CIA veterans noted that they could not imagine any previous director allowing such information in a formal CIA product, much less one intended for two Presidents, and then overriding the objections of experienced senior officers to do so.(redacted)
Every CIA analyst and operations officer who was asked about the "dossier" took pains to emphasize that they had nothing to do with the decision to include Annex A, could not vouch for it, did not believe it should have been included, and some CIA officers blamed FBI officials for adding it to the ICA.(redacted)
Explaining the analytic debate over the dossier, a FBI senior analyst said that CIA didn't want it in the ICA because they "were not comfortable with the sourcing."(redacted)
Echoing comments by CIA officers discussing the three substandard CIA HUMINT reports, the FBI senior analyst said that they were told by FBI leadership that all material, regardless of traditional sourcing standards, was to be made available in drafting the ICA.
"Our instructions were that anything we had was to be used ... _we were to push this."(redacted)
When pressed to explain the decision, the analyst said that FBI leadership decided "it was the right thing to do" but that "we were not able to verify it [the dossier]."
The senior analyst also addressed the poor sourcing, noting that "we were trying to determine who the Steele subsources were. The question is, who are these people? Are they credible? We need to qualify the path of how this got to Steele." He further noted that, "I'm not comfortable that we don't know how this got to Steele."(redacted)d
The analyst did not say that any FBI personnel objected to the inclusion of the dossier in the ICA, as was clearly the case at CIA. The analyst's words were carefully chosen, however, highlighting strong concerns over unverifiable sourcing of dossier reports and their chain of acquisition. The FBI would not allow any other analysts to be interviewed, and it would be interesting to meet with other about their views of the dossier and the ICA.
The FBI Assistant Director of the Counter-Intelligence Division and one of his senior officers, acting on behalf of their Director, pushed to have the Dossier woven throughout the main text of the ICA, according to CIA and FBI analysts.(redacted)
Ultimately, the decision of how to handle the dossier was jointly made by the Directors of CIA and FBI, who overruled the objections from CIA officers, and agreed to reference it with other ICA text bullets describing Putin's intentions, while placing the details of the dossier in the ICA Appendix A, according to senior CIA officials.(redacted)
The decision by the two directors was confirmed by the FBI senior analyst who said, "It was debated for several days ... upper levels [at FBI and CIA] decided to put it in" and by a memo for the record written by Director FBI, in which he told White House officials that "I thought it very important that it be included."(redacted)
d In mid-January, four months before this interview, the FBI met with Mr. Steele's principal subsource, and found that he did not have access to Russian covert action plans, that he was not credible, and most of what he reported was fabricated or poorly sourced hearsay.