Tag: intelligence community

The Intelligence Community Needs To Be Dismantled

At the direction of President Barack Obama in late 2016, our intelligence agencies pulled off what can only be described as a coup and a treasonous conspiracy against President-elect Donald Trump — a conspiracy that continued throughout his entire first term in office, hobbling his presidency and thwarting the will of the American electorate.

That’s what the bombshell documents released this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal: a criminal scheme, at the highest levels of the federal government, to deprive Trump the fruits of his electoral victory and, by extension, the American people of meaningful self-government.

At the center of this scheme was President Obama and his intelligence chiefs, who in December 2016 launched a conspiracy to prevent Trump from taking office or, failing that, to hamstring his presidency. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” Gabbard said Wednesday, adding that her office has forwarded all documents to the Justice Department and FBI “to investigate the criminal implications of this.”

It’s possible that those responsible for this long-running coup will face some kind of criminal prosecution and possibly conviction, but it’s highly unlikely. No one should hold their breath waiting for an Obama mugshot, as well-deserved as that might be given what he and his top officials did.

However, that doesn’t mean that nothing at all can be done. The conspiracy that these documents reveal should lead to a thorough reform of our intelligence agencies — not for the sake of political retribution, but for the survival of our republic. Simply put, our intelligence agencies as currently constituted are incompatible with republican self-government and the rule of law. They now function here in America much as they have functioned abroad for decades: as coup machines, undermining national sovereignty and imposing their will over and against the will of the electorate.

If nothing else comes of this scandal, it should be this: the complete dismantling of the intelligence community and its total reconstitution into agencies that can be held accountable to democratically-elected leaders. Right now, it’s accountable to no one, as the recent revelations demonstrate.

What makes such reform difficult isn’t just the power and insularity of these agencies, but that in this particular case they were weaponized by an outgoing president, Obama, who gave his intel chiefs a directive to push out a narrative, backed by official intelligence assessments, that Moscow stole the election for Trump. If a corrupt president is able to use the intel agencies like this, then reform of the agencies is necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

The ins and outs of how all this happened, and what exactly Obama and his intelligence chiefs did in November and December of 2016, is admittedly a bit confusing, especially for those who never followed or perhaps have forgotten what happened back then and why we should care now, more than eight years later.

My colleagues here at The Federalist have in recent days done the heavy lifting of laying it all out in clear and unmistakable terms: Mollie Hemingway explained how top intelligence officials were overruled by Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who insisted on the “key judgment” in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russia had interfered in the election because Moscow “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” The intelligence officials knew there was no evidence to substantiate that claim, which became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative that Trump conspired with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election.

Shawn Fleetwood wrote about newly declassified records showing that “the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.” That report, the above-mentioned ICA, relied on the infamous Steele dossier as evidence that Trump colluded with Moscow. Why? Because that was the only evidence they had to substantiate the explosive claim. The Steele dossier was of course an outlandish piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, and everything in it was fabricated.

Keep in mind the key part of all this is that after Trump won the 2016 election, but before he took office, Obama, Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, along with other top intel officials, deliberately manipulated the ICA so they could claim that Moscow had helped Trump steal the election. Russia has for a long time meddled in our elections, seeking to sow chaos and undermine the democratic process. But in 2016, Obama and his intel chiefs decided to manufacture a narrative that this time Russia didn’t just want to sow chaos, it wanted to help Trump win and then intervened to make that happen. That’s the central claim of the Russia collusion hoax, and what we learned this week is that it was all based on totally bogus evidence — evidence that was cobbled together at the behest of Obama himself.

But the Obama team didn’t stop there. As my colleague Sean Davis has explained, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body. The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA.”

Keep reading

Russiagate Explained: The Sins Of The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment

A key part of the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) review is about then-CIA director John Brennan’s reliance on an obscure fragment to determine in the 2017 ICA that Putin “aspired to help Trump’s chances of victory when possible.”

The fragment, which is in bold below, comes from a raw human source intelligence report, or HUMINT in intelligence-speak.

“Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails) after he had come to believe t h a t 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.”

You might think that means Putin wanted Trump to win. That’s one interpretation.

But there were five different interpretations among the five people who wrote the ICA.

A senior CIA operations officers remarked: “We don’t know what was meant by that,” and “five people read it five ways,” the HPSCI reports says.

Usually that’s no problem, because as the Intelligence Community Directive standards (ICD 203) make clear, alternative interpretations should be included. Incredibly, the ICA failed to do that even though there was great disagreement on the fragment’s meaning.

The significance of this fragment to the ICA case that Putin “aspired” for candidate Trump to win cannot be overstated. The major “high confidence” judgment of the ICA rests on one opinion about a text fragment with uncertain meaning, that may be a garble, and for which it is not clear how it was obtained. This text-which would not have been published without DCIA’s orders to do so—is cited using only one interpretation of its meaning and without considering alternative interpretations.

The HPSCI gives some examples of alternative interpretations for “whose victory Putin was counting on.” Since the information was acquired in July 2016, it could have meant Putin “expected” a Trump victory at the upcoming Republican National Convention. The HPSCI notes that the convention’s outcome “was still uncertain to do active efforts to deny Trump a majority of convention delegates. This was a headline issue for the US political media at the time, though many pundits nonetheless expected — or ‘counted on’ — a Trump victory.”

Keep reading

Russiagate’s Architects Suppressed Doubts To Peddle False Claims

Although Robert Mueller failed to find an election conspiracy between Donald Trump and Moscow, the former Special Counsel threw a lifeline to the Russiagate narrative by alleging that the Kremlin had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” effort to get Trump elected and “sow discord” among Americans. 

Six years later, that questionable but enduring claim continues to unravel.

According to newly declassified documents, U.S. intelligence leaders concealed high-level doubts about one of Russiagate’s foundational allegations: that Russia stole and leaked Democratic Party material to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. In a September 2016 report that was never made public until now, the NSA and the FBI broke with their intelligence counterparts and expressed “low confidence” in the attribution to Russia.

The previously undisclosed dissent about Russia’s alleged hacking activities in the 2016 election is among several revelations released last week by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. According to Gabbard, President Obama and senior members of his cabinet “manufactured and politicized intelligence” in its waning months to wage “a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Gabbard’s material adds to a body of evidence previously reported by RealClearInvestigations that challenges the widely parroted claim about the quality of evidence and the extent of Russian “interference operations” in the 2016 election. These conclusions – based on questionable assertions presented as hard facts – have been falsely portrayed as an intelligence consensus. When Trump, the nation’s commander-in-chief, cast doubt on the Russian interference allegations in a July 2018 news conference, former CIA chief John Brennan denounced him as “nothing short of treasonous.”

It turns out that Trump was not out of sync with the U.S. intelligence community he was accused of betraying. 

“Low Confidence” in Core Allegation

Until now, the purported U.S. intelligence consensus on Russian meddling has been conveyed to the public in three seminal reports. 

The first was a January 2017 intelligence community assessment (ICA) released in the final days of the Obama administration under the direction of Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The ICA accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering an “influence campaign” to “denigrate” Democratic candidate Clinton and “help” Trump win the 2016 election. Some of this effort involved propaganda on Russian media outlets and messaging on social media. 

The larger component hinged on the allegation that the GRU, Russia’s main intelligence agency, stole emails and documents from the Democratic Party and released that material principally via two online entities, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, as well as the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has long denied that Russia or any other state actor was his source. Nevertheless, the January 2017 ICA stated that U.S. intelligence had  “high confidence” that Russia engineered the hack. 

Keep reading

Case closed after ‘Russian disinfo’ claims led to persecution of NZ journalist

Until two years ago, Mick Hall was a fairly obscure journalist publishing wire copy for Radio New Zealand (RNZ), far-removed from media capitals like Washington and London where international opinions are shaped. But in June 2023, Hall suddenly became the target of Five Eyes intelligence agencies when he was accused by Western sources – including his own employer – of inserting “Russian disinformation” into wire stories. 

What started with a dispute of Hall’s copy edits turned into an investigation by New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS), which briefed top government officials about its probe. For months afterward, major Western media outlets fretted that Kremlin agents had infiltrated New Zealand’s national broadcaster.

But Hall insisted he had been unfairly accused and defamed by a pro-war element driven into the throes of paranoia by the Ukraine proxy war. In November 2024, he lodged a formal complaint against the NZSIS, demanding to know whether Wellington’s primary intelligence service “acted lawfully and properly” and followed “correct procedure” in its investigation, and if any information gathered about him “was shared appropriately, including with overseas partners.”

On April 9, New Zealand’s intelligence watchdog, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), published the results of the investigation triggered by Hall’s complaint. The Inspector General report noted its investigation lasted between June 10 and August 11 2023, and was closed due to “no concerns of foreign interference” being identified.

The Inspector General acknowledged the intelligence services’ probe was initiated purely due to public “allegations [emphasis added] of foreign interference,” rather than substantive evidence of any kind, and expressed sympathy that Hall found it “disconcerting to discover” he had “come to the attention of an intelligence agency…particularly as a journalist reporting on conflicts where different views can validly be expressed.” However, it concluded NZSIS’ actions were “necessary and proportionate”, and the agency acted “lawful [sic] and properly.”

Hall’s name had been cleared, but he had been denied any recompense for being smeared as a Kremlin agent, and having his career in national media effectively destroyed.

Keep reading

CIA Whistleblower Reveals How Intelligence Agencies Gather Blackmail on Politicians Without Them Suspecting It

The ex-CIA officer who blew the whistle on torture just shared a chilling story about how the intelligence community will go to any lengths to blackmail people in power for the secrets they want.

On Patrick Bet-David’s podcast, John Kiriakou revealed that his CIA operational trainer was rewarded with a promotion and a medal for recruiting a copy machine repairman.

At first, Kiriakou laughed, but then he realized the brilliance of the plan when he learned that the repairman secretly sent every document from a prime minister’s office straight to the CIA.

How did he do it? By planting a tiny device on the copy machine.

“He [my trainer] said, all of us want to recruit the prime minister. We’re not going to recruit the prime minister. We’re not even going to have access to the prime minister. But the prime minister’s got a copy machine in his office.

“And every once in a while, that machine is going to need to be cleaned and serviced. So you recruit the copy machine repairman. And when he goes in there to make his repair or to clean the drums or whatever, he installs a little device that we give him so that every time somebody makes a copy, it transmits a copy back to the CIA.”

What happened next?

He said, “I got a promotion. I got a medal. I got a photo op with the director. It made my career…”

Because this flow of information was pure leverage for the CIA:

“You know what they’re thinking. You know their next move. You know who their enemies are and who their allies are. Maybe it’s their position on trade negotiations. Maybe the prime minister has a health problem you need to plan for. You never know what might come through,” Kiriakou explained.

“That ONE critical nugget is all it takes.”

Keep reading

French Intelligence Chief: US Overstated Iran Strike Impact & We Don’t Know Where The Uranium Is

The head of France’s foreign intelligence agency stated Tuesday that last month’s Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran had destroyed only part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, though the reality is that the exact whereabouts of the remaining material are unknown.

Chief of the country’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) Nicolas Lerner said in a televised interview the strikes had merely delayed Iran’s nuclear program by several months.

“Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged,” he said. “The nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months,” he added.

While France has some indications of where Iran’s uranium might be, Lerner emphasized in the remarks that definitive confirmation would only be possible once the UN’s atomic watchdog resumes inspections in the country; however, the problem is that Tehran just formally booted IAEA inspectors from the country.

“Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It’s very important. We won’t have the capacity to trace it (the stocks),” Lerner said.

Iranian officials have accused IAEA officials of actually spying on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, secretly passing information on to Tel Aviv and Washington, which helped with targeting in the recent 12-day war.

Lerner’s assessment somewhat partially aligns with the view of US intelligence and the military, given that last week Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the strikes likely pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by one to two years.

But the Trump admin has consistently claimed that Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan had been destroyed, amid conflicting reports and some international pushback on his assertions.

Other Western officials have indicated a setback of merely “months”. And even some US intelligence officials have been quoted in CNN and the NY Times giving a similar assessment.

Keep reading

Tulsi Gabbard Declassifies Biden Admin Documents, Exposes Weaponization of Intelligence Against Americans

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s task force, charged with carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive orders related to the intelligence community (IC), is interviewing “whistleblowers” who could expose Russian collusion hoaxers, analyzing previous election processes to investigate vulnerabilities, and more as part of the administration’s goal to maximize transparency.

The Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG), established by Gabbard in April, was launched with the mission of “rebuilding trust in the IC,” starting with “investigating weaponization, rooting out deep-seeded politicization, exposing unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence, and declassifying information that serves a public interest.”

“The DIG is also leading assessments of IC structure, resourcing, and personnel to improve efficiency and eliminate wasteful spending,” Gabbard’s office said at the time. 

The task force was created to get the IC into compliance with several of Trump’s executive orders, including Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, and Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information.   

In a three-month update to Breitbart News, an ODNI official revealed what the DIG has already accomplished, and what it is working on next. 

According to Gabbard’s office, former DNI James Clapper and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan worked together to create the “deep state” within the IC and bake politicized and weaponized intelligence into its folds.

Keep reading

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE MUST BE OBJECTIVE, NOT POLITICAL

In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the UN regarding Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program. “Every statement I make today is backed up by solid sources,” he said. “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.” After the invasion, it was found that the US case for WMD’s was false. However, the war could not be stopped and would cost the US trillions and thousands of servicemember lives.1

On 15 February 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor. Initial intelligence concluded that it was sunk by an external explosion, presumably a Spanish laid mine. ‘Remember the Maine, and the hell with Spain’ quickly became a rallying cry and the US soon was at war with Spain. In the 1970s, new evidence pointed to a more likely cause of the explosion – an internal fire in the coal bunker. The ultimate cause may never be known, but at the time, the US was eager to have a war to gain control in Cuba and overseas territories so objective investigations were not possible at the time. The USS Maine was a convenient excuse to finally go to war.

In September 1944, the Allies tried to execute Operation Market Garden, a bold gambit to have airborne forces seize a series of bridges deep into the Netherlands to allow swift victory in the war. Eisenhower allowed Montgomery tremendous resources for the plan, which ultimately failed due to a multitude of factors including ambitious timelines and ignoring intelligence on German strength, particularly at Arnhem, the final objective. The 1977 movie A Bridge Too Far depicts how Allied politics overcame prudence and ignored intelligence:

Lt. Gen. Frederick Browning: Only the weather can stop us now.

General Stanislaw Sosaboski: Weather. What of the Germans, General Browning. Don’t you think that if we know Arnhem is so critical to their safety that they might know it too?

Lt. General Frederick Browning: See here, General Sosaboski, I should think you would have more faith in Field Marshal Montgomery’s plan.

General Stanislaw Sosaboski: Faith? I will tell you how much faith I have. I am thinking of asking for a letter from you stating that I was ordered to go on this mission in case my men are massacred.

Lt. General Frederick Browning: I see… I do see. Do you wish such a letter?

General Stanislaw Sosaboski: No… In the case of massacre: what difference will it make?

Last week, the US executed a complicated bombing mission to destroy three Iranian nuclear sites. From a technical standpoint, the mission seemed nearly flawless. No aircraft were lost and direct hits with large bombs were achieved at all of the planned objectives. However, as with any bombing mission, exact bomb damage assessment is impossible unless the US is physically on the ground where the bombs detonated. Damage assessment is complicated and the intelligence community still has assessment of the impact of the bombing on the Iranian nuclear effort ongoing. In short, the strategic impact of the raid remains to be seen.

Keep reading

Report: Initial US Intelligence Assessment Says US Didn’t Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Sites

CNN reported on Tuesday that an initial US intelligence assessment has found that the US bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites didn’t destroy the core components of the sites and likely set back the nuclear program by only a few months.

The assessment was prepared by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was based on a battle damage assessment from US Central Command, and it could change as the US gathers more intelligence. “So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” a source told CNN.

The report also said that the US strikes didn’t destroy Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and the centrifuges were largely “intact.” The assessment contradicts President Trump’s claims that the bombing of the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites “totally obliterated” the facilities.

The White House confirmed the existence of the assessment but said it didn’t agree with the findings. “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,” Leavitt added.

Keep reading

Former Intel Officer Drops Truth Bomb – CIA and ODNI Covered Up 2020 CCP Election Interference, Fired Him for Speaking Out

A former National Intelligence Officer for Cyber under President Trump and Joe Biden has come forward with explosive allegations: the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) deliberately buried evidence of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in the 2020 presidential election—and fired him when he refused to play along.

The whistleblower’s damning post came in response to General Mike Flynn’s tweet Monday questioning why foreign election interference by the CCP wasn’t exposed back in 2020:

“So there was foreign interference by the CCP in the 2020 presidential election. Who was running the USIC at that time and why didn’t this get exposed back then? @CIADirector.

Can we get four years of our lives back!?” Flynn asked, tagging President Trump and former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.”

Former intel officer Christopher Porter didn’t mince words in his reply:

“Sir, I WAS in charge of election analysis and DID call it out. CIA and ODNI tried to cover up the evidence and when I wouldn’t go along with it, terminated me.”

Keep reading