2 days ago
CIA review of 2016 Russia election probe finds no major flaws
'The issues that are highlighted in this report are also extremely normal,' said Harding, now director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'It's a luxury when an analyst does not have a compressed time frame.'
While such reviews are not uncommon, it is rare for them to be released to the public.
'The only reason why you would be putting this out into the public domain is for political reasons,' said a former CIA analyst who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the intelligence process.
A review of the 2017 assessment was not conducted until today because 'it was too politically sensitive,' the CIA review read.
After the review was released, Ratcliffe posted on X a characterization of the report that appeared to deviate from its findings.
'All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump,' he wrote in one post. In a second, he said that the 2016 assessment was produced in a process that was 'atypical & corrupt.'
Investigations into the Kremlin's efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's contacts with Russian officials dominated much of the president's first term in office.
A special counsel's investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign sought to collude with that effort.
Trump and his allies have long raged against the investigations, dismissing them as politically motivated witch hunts.
The president has regularly lashed out at the outspoken former CIA Director John Brennan, who led the agency as it probed Moscow's interference efforts, revoking his security clearance in 2018 in an apparent act of revenge.
Brennan did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A major flashpoint for Trump and other critics of the report was the inclusion of the Steele dossier in the annex of the 2016 intelligence community assessment — an unsubstantiated and now largely debunked report that suggested Trump had extensive entanglements with the Russians.
In an extensive review of the 2016 assessment, conducted as part of its wide-ranging Russia investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 found no 'significant analytic tradecraft issues' with U.S. spy agencies' work.
The oversight panel, which was headed at the time by Republican Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC.), also dedicated 'additional attention' to the assessment that Putin 'aspired' to help Trump.
The CIA and FBI had 'high confidence' Putin aspired to help Trump, while the NSA only had 'moderate' confidence in that conclusion. The public version of the assessment released in 2017 referenced all of those judgements.
The Senate panel, for its part, concluded the agencies' disagreement was 'reasonable, transparent, and openly debated.' The fourth volume of their review, which spanned more than 150 pages alone, further stated that all witnesses interviewed by the committee saw 'no attempts or pressure to politicize the findings.'
