Miranda Devine: Ex-CIA chief John Brennan may have opened himself up to perjury charges over Trump-Russia hoax
Brennan is understood to be under renewed scrutiny by authorities over discrepancies between his sworn testimony to Congress and his written orders to underlings conducting the Intelligence Community Assessment commissioned by then-president Barack Obama in December 2016 that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
The review, declassified last week, found that Brennan insisted on the inclusion of the discredited Steele Dossier, over the strong objections of the CIA's two most senior Russia experts who said it 'did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.'
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Brennan 'formalized his position in writing, stating that 'my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.' '
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The then CIA Deputy Director for Analysis (DDA) David Cohen warned in an email to Brennan on December 29 that including the dossier in any form risked 'the credibility of the entire paper.'
But Brennan 'formalized his position in writing, stating that 'my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.' '
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The Steele Dossier was a tawdry opposition research document written by a former British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. It contained numerous made-up claims, including the ridiculous lie that Trump, a renowned germaphobe, had paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room. The 2023 special counsel Durham report stated that 'the FBI was not able to corroborate a single allegation contained in the Steele Report.'
Last week's CIA review by the deputy director of analysis found that when Brennan was 'confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two [Russia] mission center leaders — one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background — he appeared more swayed by the Dossier's general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns.'
The decision to include the Steele Dossier in the assessment 'ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.'
A summary of the dossier was included in an annex to the ICA but a reference was also included 'in the main body of the ICA as the fourth supporting bullet for the judgment that Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win,' the review found.
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Including the dossier reference in the main body of the ICA 'implicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment.'
By forcing the dossier into the ICA, the virulently anti-Trump Brennan also elevated the credibility of the vile fictional smear sheet which he had been shopping to Democratic leaders and the press during the 2016 election campaign.
The Review found that former FBI director James Comey also insisted on the dossier's inclusion in the ICA. 'FBI leadership made it clear that their participation in the ICA hinged on the Dossier's inclusion and, over the next few days, repeatedly pushed to weave references to it throughout the main body of the ICA.'
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Yet in congressional testimony under oath on May 23, 2017, Brennan claimed the Steele Dossier 'wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.'
Now we know that is not true. The Steele Dossier was forced into the ICA by Brennan and it appeared not just in the 'annex' but was referenced in the main body of the ICA that ended up triggering the Mueller Special Counsel investigation that crippled the first two years of Trump's first term and served to delegitimize his 2016 election victory.
Brennan continued to play innocent in various media interviews, including those he was paid for as an MSNBC contributor. In 2018 he told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that he first heard 'just snippets about' the Steele Dossier in the 'late summer of 2016.'
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