Russia attacks Ukraine's recruitment centers to disrupt mobilization
Ukraine's cities are being hit by record numbers of missiles and drones — more than 5,000 in June alone — and the first few days of July have already seen the recruitment centers come under attack five times, killing three and wounding 88, mostly civilians.
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CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
Gabbard releases more Russia documents to accuse Obama of ‘manufacturing' intelligence
One day after President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason over the intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and sought to help Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a highly sensitive congressional report she claimed was more evidence of a 'treasonous conspiracy.' The release of the redacted report, written during the first Trump term by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was the latest step in a multi-faceted effort from Gabbard and other Trump allies to attack the FBI's Russia investigation and the intelligence community's assessment on Russian election interference. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday evening that the Justice Department was creating a strike force to assess the evidence released by Gabbard and 'investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures.' Speaking from the White House podium on Wednesday, Gabbard stopped short of accusing Obama of treason, deferring to Justice Department lawyers. But she alleged that 'the evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.' 'They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,' she said. Gabbard insisted the Russian goal in 2016 was to sow distrust in American democracy — not to help Trump, a key judgment of the 2017 assessment that Republicans have long challenged. But her claims that the Obama administration 'manufactured' the assessment are not supported by the newly redacted House report — or CIA Director John Ratcliffe's own review of the intelligence assessment, which he released earlier this month. Ratcliffe's review argued the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win the 2016 election should not have been a so-called high confidence judgment, which indicates the intelligence community's level of certainty, and it took issue with some of the analytic procedures underpinning the assessment. But Ratcliffe's review found that 'the overall assessment was deemed defensible.' The House report — which involved intelligence so sensitive it was kept in a so-called 'turducken,' or a safe within a safe, at CIA headquarters — took a similar stance on the key judgment that Russia sought to help Trump, arguing that the assessment made analytical leaps based on relatively thin sourcing and failed to weigh contradictory intelligence highly enough, but neither argued that it was 'manufactured.' Still, the release of the House Intelligence Committee review, led by former Rep. Devin Nunes when now-FBI Director Kash Patel was a top aide, was a long-sought victory for Trump — in large part because it pushes back against a similar review conducted by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, which found the intelligence supported the conclusions that Putin interfered to help Trump and there were no 'significant tradecraft issues' in the preparation of the assessment. Gabbard's decision to publicize the report when multiple predecessors had declined to do so, including Ratcliffe during Trump's first term, comes at a moment when her standing within the Trump administration had been in question. In June, Trump publicly undermined Gabbard's assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities and she was absent from at least one major national security meeting to discuss Israel and Iran. CNN reported at the time that the president viewed her as 'off-message.' Democrats accused Gabbard of jeopardizing intelligence community sources and methods by releasing the report. 'The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,' Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. 'And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.' One Democratic congressional source said intelligence agencies were still in the process of proposing redactions to the document ahead of its release, but that Gabbard declassified the report Wednesday before the process had been completed. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. A former senior US intelligence official said they were alarmed by some of the material in the report that remained unredacted, warning it could alert Moscow to how intelligence was collected and potentially endanger sources. The report includes an explanation from the classified assessment that some judgements are based on a human intelligence source with secondhand access for several specifics, including Putin's order to pass collected material to WikiLeaks, Putin's views on Hillary Clinton, and details about 'specific, planned Russian Foreign Intelligence Service efforts.' 'It should also scare the crap out of any source we have who reports on politically inconvenient subjects,' the intelligence official said. 'If I were them, I'd be going dark about now.' In 2017, the US extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government. Trump and his allies in Congress have sought to release the House Intelligence Committee report for years now. The material that was being scrutinized was so sensitive that the CIA would only let congressional staffers view it at CIA headquarters, requiring their work stay locked up at Langley. The committee brought in its own safe for its files — which became known as the 'turducken' — that remained locked away at the CIA during the Biden administration. It's not clear whether the full extent of the classified House Intelligence Committee report was redacted, declassified and released on Wednesday. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump allies pushed Ratcliffe, who was then the director of national intelligence, to release a redacted version of the report. But Ratcliffe ultimately did not so do amid strenuous objections from CIA and NSA officials, who warned it would damage sources and methods and US relationships with allies. Instead, the report was part of a large collection of documents brought to the White House in the final days of the first Trump administration, which were redacted so they could be declassified and released. The redacted documents were not ultimately released before Trump left office in 2021, though he did so in March. But an unredacted copy of the documents — including the highly sensitive intelligence that was redacted from what was released Wednesday — went missing and was apparently never found. US intelligence officials scrambled to assess the potential damage of the binder's contents becoming public after it went missing at the end of the first Trump administration, according to a source with direct knowledge of the events. There are hints at why the intelligence agencies were so concerned with the report in the declassified version released Wednesday. The report includes redacted lines that detail what signals intelligence the assessment had relied upon, as well as what Putin was being told and how it was obtained. The House document provides one of the most detailed glimpses to date into the raw intelligence relied upon by analysts to produce the 2017 assessment — but one that is impossible to compare to the Senate review that reached the opposite conclusion on the judgment that Putin was aspiring to help Trump. Much of the documentation for that panel's reasoning remains classified. The House report accuses Obama administration intelligence leaders of relying on thinly sourced and uncorroborated intelligence to conclude that Putin preferred Trump, while alleging that the assessment suppressed intelligence that Putin did not care who won and that Russia's intelligence services allegedly possessed damaging information about Clinton that was not released before the election. The January 2017 assessment does note there was a disagreement on the level of confidence in that assessment: the CIA and FBI had high confidence, and the NSA had medium confidence. But the GOP report argues that the conclusion was flawed, based upon previously unpublished intelligence reports, including three that were 'substandard.' One report, based on a single human source the House panel said was biased against both Trump and Putin, contained a claim that Putin was 'counting' on Trump's victory, according to the committee. That claim was interpreted in different ways by different analysts but was ultimately used to reach the 'aspire' judgment, the report said. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win,' the report states. The Ratcliffe-led CIA in its review found that the 'aspire' judgment was 'plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams,' noting that it also rested on an assessment of 'the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state- controlled media, and on logic.' It said that the assessment authors had properly interpreted the sentence fragment. The report also details what US intelligence knew about Russian intelligence material collected on Clinton that was not released before the election, including allegations about her health, which Republicans wrote 'would have created greater scandals' than the hacked materials from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks. Republicans questioned why this information wasn't released if Russia was trying to help Trump (CNN was unable to confirm the origin or veracity of any of the allegations). CNN reached out to Clinton aides for comment. The GOP report criticizes the assessment's inclusion of the infamous and discredited dossier written by British intelligence official Christopher Steele, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. A summary of the dossier was included as an annex in the January 2017 assessment, after CIA officials objected to including it in the report itself. The intelligence analysts who prepared the report told the Senate Intelligence Committee the dossier played no role in the analysis of Russia's interference. Special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump's first term, spent four years investigating a wide range of topics, including potential wrongdoing by the FBI and intelligence community during the 2016 post-election period. He never accused any US officials of any crimes related to the 2017 intelligence assessment,
CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
Gabbard releases more Russia documents to accuse Obama of ‘manufacturing' intelligence
National security Russia Donald Trump Tulsi GabbardFacebookTweetLink Follow One day after President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason over the intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and sought to help Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a highly sensitive congressional report she claimed was more evidence of a 'treasonous conspiracy.' The release of the redacted report, written during the first Trump term by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was the latest step in a multi-faceted effort from Gabbard and other Trump allies to attack the FBI's Russia investigation and the intelligence community's assessment on Russian election interference. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday evening that the Justice Department was creating a strike force to assess the evidence released by Gabbard and 'investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures.' Speaking from the White House podium on Wednesday, Gabbard stopped short of accusing Obama of treason, deferring to Justice Department lawyers. But she alleged that 'the evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.' 'They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,' she said. Gabbard insisted the Russian goal in 2016 was to sow distrust in American democracy — not to help Trump, a key judgment of the 2017 assessment that Republicans have long challenged. But her claims that the Obama administration 'manufactured' the assessment are not supported by the newly redacted House report — or CIA Director John Ratcliffe's own review of the intelligence assessment, which he released earlier this month. Ratcliffe's review argued the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win the 2016 election should not have been a so-called high confidence judgment, which indicates the intelligence community's level of certainty, and it took issue with some of the analytic procedures underpinning the assessment. But Ratcliffe's review found that 'the overall assessment was deemed defensible.' The House report — which involved intelligence so sensitive it was kept in a so-called 'turducken,' or a safe within a safe, at CIA headquarters — took a similar stance on the key judgment that Russia sought to help Trump, arguing that the assessment made analytical leaps based on relatively thin sourcing and failed to weigh contradictory intelligence highly enough, but neither argued that it was 'manufactured.' Still, the release of the House Intelligence Committee review, led by former Rep. Devin Nunes when now-FBI Director Kash Patel was a top aide, was a long-sought victory for Trump — in large part because it pushes back against a similar review conducted by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, which found the intelligence supported the conclusions that Putin interfered to help Trump and there were no 'significant tradecraft issues' in the preparation of the assessment. Gabbard's decision to publicize the report when multiple predecessors had declined to do so, including Ratcliffe during Trump's first term, comes at a moment when her standing within the Trump administration had been in question. In June, Trump publicly undermined Gabbard's assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities and she was absent from at least one major national security meeting to discuss Israel and Iran. CNN reported at the time that the president viewed her as 'off-message.' Democrats accused Gabbard of jeopardizing intelligence community sources and methods by releasing the report. 'The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,' Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. 'And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.' One Democratic congressional source said intelligence agencies were still in the process of proposing redactions to the document ahead of its release, but that Gabbard declassified the report Wednesday before the process had been completed. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. A former senior US intelligence official said they were alarmed by some of the material in the report that remained unredacted, warning it could alert Moscow to how intelligence was collected and potentially endanger sources. The report includes an explanation from the classified assessment that some judgements are based on a human intelligence source with secondhand access for several specifics, including Putin's order to pass collected material to WikiLeaks, Putin's views on Hillary Clinton, and details about 'specific, planned Russian Foreign Intelligence Service efforts.' 'It should also scare the crap out of any source we have who reports on politically inconvenient subjects,' the intelligence official said. 'If I were them, I'd be going dark about now.' In 2017, the US extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government. Trump and his allies in Congress have sought to release the House Intelligence Committee report for years now. The material that was being scrutinized was so sensitive that the CIA would only let congressional staffers view it at CIA headquarters, requiring their work stay locked up at Langley. The committee brought in its own safe for its files — which became known as the 'turducken' — that remained locked away at the CIA during the Biden administration. It's not clear whether the full extent of the classified House Intelligence Committee report was redacted, declassified and released on Wednesday. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump allies pushed Ratcliffe, who was then the director of national intelligence, to release a redacted version of the report. But Ratcliffe ultimately did not so do amid strenuous objections from CIA and NSA officials, who warned it would damage sources and methods and US relationships with allies. Instead, the report was part of a large collection of documents brought to the White House in the final days of the first Trump administration, which were redacted so they could be declassified and released. The redacted documents were not ultimately released before Trump left office in 2021, though he did so in March. But an unredacted copy of the documents — including the highly sensitive intelligence that was redacted from what was released Wednesday — went missing and was apparently never found. US intelligence officials scrambled to assess the potential damage of the binder's contents becoming public after it went missing at the end of the first Trump administration, according to a source with direct knowledge of the events. There are hints at why the intelligence agencies were so concerned with the report in the declassified version released Wednesday. The report includes redacted lines that detail what signals intelligence the assessment had relied upon, as well as what Putin was being told and how it was obtained. The House document provides one of the most detailed glimpses to date into the raw intelligence relied upon by analysts to produce the 2017 assessment — but one that is impossible to compare to the Senate review that reached the opposite conclusion on the judgment that Putin was aspiring to help Trump. Much of the documentation for that panel's reasoning remains classified. The House report accuses Obama administration intelligence leaders of relying on thinly sourced and uncorroborated intelligence to conclude that Putin preferred Trump, while alleging that the assessment suppressed intelligence that Putin did not care who won and that Russia's intelligence services allegedly possessed damaging information about Clinton that was not released before the election. The January 2017 assessment does note there was a disagreement on the level of confidence in that assessment: the CIA and FBI had high confidence, and the NSA had medium confidence. But the GOP report argues that the conclusion was flawed, based upon previously unpublished intelligence reports, including three that were 'substandard.' One report, based on a single human source the House panel said was biased against both Trump and Putin, contained a claim that Putin was 'counting' on Trump's victory, according to the committee. That claim was interpreted in different ways by different analysts but was ultimately used to reach the 'aspire' judgment, the report said. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win,' the report states. The Ratcliffe-led CIA in its review found that the 'aspire' judgment was 'plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams,' noting that it also rested on an assessment of 'the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state- controlled media, and on logic.' It said that the assessment authors had properly interpreted the sentence fragment. The report also details what US intelligence knew about Russian intelligence material collected on Clinton that was not released before the election, including allegations about her health, which Republicans wrote 'would have created greater scandals' than the hacked materials from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks. Republicans questioned why this information wasn't released if Russia was trying to help Trump (CNN was unable to confirm the origin or veracity of any of the allegations). CNN reached out to Clinton aides for comment. The GOP report criticizes the assessment's inclusion of the infamous and discredited dossier written by British intelligence official Christopher Steele, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. A summary of the dossier was included as an annex in the January 2017 assessment, after CIA officials objected to including it in the report itself. The intelligence analysts who prepared the report told the Senate Intelligence Committee the dossier played no role in the analysis of Russia's interference. Special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump's first term, spent four years investigating a wide range of topics, including potential wrongdoing by the FBI and intelligence community during the 2016 post-election period. He never accused any US officials of any crimes related to the 2017 intelligence assessment,
CNN
21 minutes ago
- CNN
Ukraine sees first major anti-government protests since start of war
Ukraine sees first major anti-government protests since start of war Hundreds took to the streets after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a new law limiting the autonomy of anti-corruption agencies in his government. 01:03 - Source: CNN Small Irish town confronts its dark past Excavations of the remains of nearly 800 babies have begun at a former so-called mother and baby home in Tuam, Ireland. At least 9,000 infants and children died in more than a dozen of these institutions over the course of eight decades. 02:11 - Source: CNN Fire tornado rips through Turkish forest Turkey's forestry ministry has released video of a fire tornado tearing through the country's woodland. Hundreds of wildfires have gripped Turkey this summer, as well as Greece and other Mediterranean countries. 00:33 - Source: CNN Concerns grow over Australia's toxic algae bloom A harmful algae bloom off the coast of South Australia, caused by high sea temperatures and runoff from flooding, is poisoning marine life and depleting oxygen in the water. The Australian government has stated that there is little that can be done to reverse the rapid rate of the climate crisis. 01:10 - Source: CNN International visitors to US will pay new fee CNN's Richard Quest explains how the Trump administration enacted a bill that will require international visitors to pay a new 'visa integrity fee' of $250 dollars. The fee will apply to all visitors who are required to obtain nonimmigrant visas to enter the US. 01:36 - Source: CNN Mexico City residents furious over gentrification Mexico City saw its second anti-gentrification protest in less than a month on Sunday with demonstrators furious over rising prices in the city and the record number of foreigners applying for a resident visa. The main nationality of those foreigners seeking to move legally to the nation's capital? The United States of America. 01:11 - Source: CNN Child flees Israeli strike on Gaza refugee camp Video shows a child running away as Israeli munitions struck near a UNRWA school in Bureij Refugee Camp behind her. 00:36 - Source: CNN China cracks down on fake "Lafufu" Labubus Fake Labubu plush toys, dubbed "Lafufu," have gained popularity due to shortages of the original dolls made by China's Pop Mart. 02:05 - Source: CNN Jair Bolsonaro denies coup charges as police raid home Police in Brazil raided the home of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and enforced a ruling from the country's Supreme Court that Bolsonaro wear an electronic ankle tag. Bolsonaro is being accused of plotting to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election. 01:17 - Source: CNN Taiwan conducts 10-day military drill The Taiwanese government is preparing for a war they hope will never happen. For the first time this year, Taiwan combined two major civil defense exercises, with the drills lasting ten days. These drills have included urban combat, mass casualty simulations, emergency supply drops and cyber defense that could be enacted if an invasion was to occur. CNN's Senior International Correspondent, Will Ripley, reports. 01:44 - Source: CNN Deadly flooding grips South Korea for days South Korea has been ravaged for days by intense flooding that's left more than a dozen people dead. Reuters reported more than 16 inches of rain fell in one area in just 24 hours, citing the country's Interior and Safety Ministry. 00:48 - Source: CNN Brazil's Lula tells Christiane Amanpour: Trump 'Was not elected to be emperor of the world' Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tells CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview it was 'a surprise' to see President Donald Trump's letter posted to Truth Social, threatening Brazil with a crippling tariff of 50% starting August 1st. Lula says that he initially thought the letter was 'fake news.' Watch the full 'Amanpour' interview on CNN. 01:33 - Source: CNN Gaza's only Catholic church hit by Israeli strike Gaza's only Catholic church was struck by an Israeli tank, killing three and injuring many more, church officials said. It became internationally recognized after reports emerged that the late Pope Francis used to call the church daily. CNN's Nada Bashir reports 00:53 - Source: CNN Prince Harry recreates his mother's historic landmine walk Following in his mother's footsteps, Prince Harry visited Angola's minefields just as Princess Diana did 28 years ago. The Duke of Sussex was in Angola with The Halo Trust as part of the group's efforts to clear landmines. 00:39 - Source: CNN Massive fire destroys Tomorrowland's main stage Tomorrowland's main stage went up in flames just days ahead of the festival's opening in Boom, Belgium. 00:38 - Source: CNN How Trump's image is changing inside Russia Once hailed as a pro-Kremlin figure, President Donald Trump's image is changing inside Russia. It comes after Trump vowed further sanctions on the country if a peace agreement with Ukraine is not reached in 50 days. CNN's Chief Global Affairs Correspondent is on the ground in Moscow with the analysis. 01:41 - Source: CNN Who are the armed groups clashing in Syria? Dozens were killed in Syria this week after clashes between government loyalists and Druze militias in the southern city of Suwayda, prompting Syrian forces to intervene. That, in turn, triggered renewed Israeli airstrikes. 01:57 - Source: CNN Syrian anchor takes cover from airstrike live on TV An airstrike on the Syrian Ministry of Defense was captured live on Syria TV, forcing the anchor to take cover. Israel has been carrying out airstrikes on Syria as part of its commitment to protect the Druze, an Arab minority at the center of clashes with government loyalists. 00:30 - Source: CNN
