By Jerry Dunleavy | Just the News
The GOP House Intelligence Committee Chairman is critiquing the Trump CIA director's review of the Intelligence Community's assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And the CIA is pushing back.
The Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) has sent a letter directly to President Donald Trump telling him that CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent memo – which offered some critiques of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – was a “whitewash” that “protects the deep state,” Just the News learned Thursday.
Ratcliffe on Wednesday morning released a “lessons learned” review of the December 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian influence in the November 2016 election, including critiquing the “high confidence” assessment by the FBI and the CIA that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had “aspired” to help Trump win the race against Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But the CIA’s review – put together by the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis (DA) at Ratcliffe’s direction – also stated that the review’s findings “should not be interpreted as indicative of broader systemic problems in the IC’s analytic processes or standards.”
Rep. Rick Crawford, chairman of the House Intelligence panel, took his concerns with the review’s conclusions directly to Trump in a letter Wednesday evening that contained rare but stark criticisms of the Republican CIA director by the Republican intelligence panel chairman.
“While I am pleased to see CIA take the first step of acknowledging the political abuse and tradecraft problems associated with the 2016 ICA, I am disappointed that the Agency was permitted to whitewash the full extent of their problems,” Crawford wrote to Trump, adding that “I write to report to you that this review fails to disclose critical information, offers misleading judgements, and protects the deep state.”
Crawford sent a copy of his letter to Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio.
A spokesperson for the CIA told Just the News that Ratcliffe had exposed “the gross political bias behind the 2016 Election ICA” and that he would continue to push for transparency and accountability.
CIA’s “self-review … falls short of the full truth”
Ratcliffe’s review criticized then-CIA Director John Brennan for allegedly joining since-fired FBI Director James Comey in pushing to include British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier in the ICA and concluded that “the decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”
“The procedural anomalies that characterized the ICA’s development had a direct impact on the tradecraft applied to its most contentious finding. With analysts operating under severe time constraints, limited information sharing, and heightened senior-level scrutiny, several aspects of tradecraft rigor were compromised—particularly in supporting the judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” the lessons learned report from the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis (DA) found.
“The DA Review identified multiple specific concerns, including: a higher confidence level than was justified; insufficient exploration of alternative scenarios; lack of transparency on source uncertainty; uneven argumentation; and the inclusion of unsubstantiated Steele Dossier material.”
Ratcliffe tweeted on Wednesday that Trump “has trusted me with helping to end weaponization of U.S. intelligence” and that “today’s report underscores that the 2016 IC Assessment was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments” of Brennan & since-fired FBI Director James Comey.
CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis also tweeted Wednesday that newly-declassified documents “show how Brennan and Comey personally intervened to insert the Steele dossier’s lies into intelligence analysis. We must have zero tolerance for the weaponization of intelligence.”
But the Republican leader of HPSCI told Trump on Wednesday evening that Ratcliffe’s review had not gone nearly far enough. Crawford also told Just the News on Thursday that the CIA’s “self-review … falls far short of the full truth.”