How the Senate intel committee screwed up its analysist of the CIA questionable theory of Russian interference in 2016 campaign

Fred Fleitz:

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Accusing the intelligence community of improper “analytic tradecraft” in analyzing Russia’s strategic intentions is an extremely grave indictment for a congressional oversight committee to make. In my opinion, there is no question the House Intelligence Committee is right for the reasons in its 2018 report and other subsequent findings.

The House committee found the intelligence community assessment violated protocols for drafting such assessments. This major finding shows why America needs strong legislative oversight over the intelligence services.

For example, although the protocols require intelligence community assessments to be “community products” and vetted with all intelligence agencies and analysts with equities in a given subject, only three intelligence agencies were asked to draft this assessment: the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI.

With the 14 other intelligence agencies left out, the three participating agencies included only two dozen “handpicked” analysts. Other intelligence agencies working on this issue, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, were excluded.

In addition, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed the actual drafting of the intelligence community assessment was done by three close associates of former CIA Director Brennan, who has proven to be the most politicized intelligence chief in American history.

Contrary to common practice for controversial intelligence community assessments, Brennan’s team allowed no dissenting views or even an annex with reviews by outside experts.

These were extraordinary violations of intelligence community rules to ensure that analysis is accurate and trusted. The Senate committee reports ignored these foundational violations.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report falsely claims that “all analytical lines are supported with all-source intelligence” and that analysts who wrote the intelligence community assessment consistently said they “were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.”

House Intelligence Committee staff members found the opposite. They told me there was conflicting intelligence evidence on Russian motivations for meddling in the 2016 election.

More gravely, they said that CIA Director Brennan suppressed facts or analysis that showed why it was not in Russia’s interests to support Trump and why Putin stood to benefit from Hillary Clinton’s election. They also told me that Brennan suppressed that intelligence over the objections of CIA analysts.

House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election.

Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment.
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...it is more reasonable to regard any bipartisan report on this subject as suspicious. Democratic lawmakers have been fanatically united in promoting the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative. So it is impossible to believe that a Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee member would allow any references in the panel’s reports that intelligence was slanted and weaponized to undermine Trump’s presidency.

If information ever reached the Senate Intelligence Committee about Brennan suppressing intelligence in the intelligence community assessment that Putin favored Clinton instead of Trump, its Democratic members and staff certainly would have demanded that those crucial facts never be known.

Third, it is well known that Sen. Burr has been an extraordinarily weak Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. Some on Capitol Hill quip that the CIA oversees Burr, not the other way around.

Burr basically has allowed Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., to run the committee. Burr refused to cooperate with President Trump’s attempts to name a new director of national intelligence last summer because of Warner’s objections.

Finally, intelligence officers likely told different stories to Republican House Intelligence Committee and bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigators because of the strong political bias within intelligence agencies against President Trump.
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I have a low regard for Brennan and for Democrats on the intel committees of both the Hosue and Senate.  Burr does not appear up to the job as chairman.   Democrats have been pushing the false Russian collusion hoax since the results of the 2016 election came in.  They are just not credible on the issue.  We will see what Durham's investigation reveals.  Indications are that indictments will be returned against those responsible for the hoax.  It is possible this Senate report was pushed by Democrats in the Senate to defend the actions of Brennan who was primarily responsible for p[ushing the hoax.

See also:

Even The Manipulated Senate Intel Report Can’t Hide FBI Spies And Lies

A close reading of the report—or at least those portions of the report that could be read—cements the reality that the FBI intentionally snowed the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump.

Andrew McCarthy puts it succinctly:

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We know Russia interfered in our campaign. Given Moscow’s long history of meddling in American politics, it would only have been a story if Russia did not meddle. The principal argument by President Trump and other intelligence agency critics has not been that Obama officials undermined Trump’s candidacy and presidency “by investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling.” The argument is that they undermined Trump’s campaign and presidency by claiming that Trump and his campaign were complicit in Russia’s 2016 election meddling.

On that key question the Useless Committee is, as is its custom, mum.
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The real question is whether the Obama administration and its officials held over by the new administration fabricated a tale about the Trump campaign’s complicity in Russia’s hacking. Did they peddle that tale to the FISA court while willfully concealing key exculpatory evidence? Did they continue the investigation under the guise of counterintelligence after Trump was elected, in the hope of finding a crime over which he could be impeached? Did they consciously mislead an American president about whether he was under investigation? Did they purposefully suggest in public testimony that the president was a criminal suspect, while privately assuring him that he was not one? And finally, when the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense was collapsing in a heap, did they open a criminal obstruction case — based on an untenable legal theory and facilitated by a leak of investigative information that was orchestrated by the just-fired FBI director — in order to justify continuing the probe under the auspices of a special counsel?

On these questions, the Useless Committee’s report is silent. Indeed, the report says right up front, in the findings section, that the intelligence agencies, over the FBI’s objection, did not include information from the infamous Steele dossier in its December 30, 2016, assessment on Russian interference — though, “as a compromise to the FBI insistence,” dossier allegations were included in an annex to the assessment. The Senate-report findings do not get into why the FBI was pushing so hard on the preposterous dossier. Nor do they mention that, by the time of the assessment, the bureau had already heavily relied on the dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant from the FISA court, and was even then preparing a submission to get yet another warrant — telling the federal judges the bureau believed that the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Kremlin.
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This committee as run by Burr is a disgrace.  It has allowed itself to be used as an excuse for bad conduct by the Obama administration and its CIA-FBI operations.