Gabbard releases more Russia documents, prompting concerns over intelligence sources

CBS News

4 days ago

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday declassified additional materials on the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's actions in the 2016 election, claiming in a social media post and at a White House press briefing that they showed Obama administration officials "manufactured" information in order to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump.
Her statement on X said the documents show Obama officials "manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election."
Democrats disputed her claims and accused Gabbard of misrepresenting the intelligence findings. Wednesday's report follows a separate set of declassified documents on the matter released by Gabbard Friday. In a memo accompanying those documents, she similarly accused Obama administration officials of plotting a "years-long coup" against Mr. Trump.
Obama's spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement regarding the first set of materials, "These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction," and he said nothing in last week's documents "undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes." Rodenbush has not responded to the most recent release of material.
The Wednesday release was a declassified report that was compiled in 2017 by the House Intelligence Committee's Republican majority — where FBI Director Kash Patel was a lead staffer at the time, according to two sources familiar with the matter. It focuses at length on the intelligence community's judgment that Russian president Vladimir Putin aspired to help President Trump to win the 2016 election.
It includes discussions of raw intelligence provided by a human source to the CIA, as well as Signal intercepts gathered by the National Security Agency, prompting concerns from current and former intelligence officials and condemnation from Democrats about the risks it could pose to sensitive intelligence sources and methods.
But the report does not fundamentally change previous assessments by the U.S. intelligence community — or the multiple reviews that followed.
"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," Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner 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."
At the White House briefing Monday, Gabbard accused President Obama of "leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment." She told reporters that the documents would be sent to the Justice Department and FBI for investigation of "criminal implications."
Asked by CBS News correspondent Ed O'Keefe whether she thinks Obama is guilty of treason, Gabbard responded that she would leave criminal charges to the Justice Department, but said what occurred "can only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people."
She declined to directly answer another question from O'Keefe about how the latest declassified documents change previous assessments, given that the Senate Intelligence Committee — which included then-Sen. Marco Rubio — dedicated an entire volume of its five-volume investigation to the intelligence community's analysis..
"[W]e are ensuring that the intelligence community is not being politicized, Gabbard said. "Look at the evidence and you will know the truth."
The House committee's Republican-authored report criticizes the review of the analysis underlying the assessment that went into the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, for several reasons, including that its production was rushed to be released before Mr. Trump took office. It also claimed analysts failed to consider plausible alternative explanations for Putin's intentions and questioned whether they sufficiently took into account the human source's motivations, proximity to Putin or bias towards Trump.
The GOP House committee report zeroes in on a piece of intelligence contained in a report from a human source that it contends was subjected to "questionable interpretation" by analysts.
"The unclear fragment (shown in bold) is part of a sentence in a [redacted] that reads, 'Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails] after he had come to believe that the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [candidate Trump] whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory,'" a bullet says on page 4 of the report.
It adds that a senior CIA operations officer said at the time, "We don't know what was meant by that" and "five people read it five ways."
The findings align in many areas with a separate tradecraft review released earlier this month by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, which determined that the confidence level in the assessment that Putin aspired to help Trump win should have been "moderate" instead of "high," chiefly because it was derived from one source instead of multiple. The CIA's report, however, did not include any detailed discussion of the sensitive sources or methods involved.
The CIA's own review of the intelligence that informed the finding on Putin's preference "confirmed that the clause was accurately represented…and that the ICA authors' interpretation of its meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence." It more broadly found that much of the tradecraft underlying the 2017 assessment was "robust and consistent" with analytic standards.
The CIA declined to comment on the report released by Gabbard.
Democrats seized on the timing of the disclosures — which they pointed out could have been made at any time during the first Trump administration or since he took office for a second time.
"It's appropriate that this shoddy and partisan report was released by Director Gabbard on the day that House Republicans are quite literally fleeing Washington, D.C., for six weeks rather than releasing the Epstein files that Trump is so desperate to cover up," said House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes.
"Given the rushed and unusual 'declassification' process the DNI has implemented, I fear that the public release of this report could compromise sensitive sources and methods and endanger our national security," Himes said. Ed O'Keefe
contributed to this report.