Friday night, during her last show on Fox News, Megyn Kelly
asked
former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra whether he
accepted the conclusion by 17 intelligence agencies in a recently
released declassified
report
that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and that this
interference came at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Hoekstra gave an answer many viewers of "The Kelly
File" did not anticipate. He noted that the declassified report
represents the views of only three intelligence agencies, not seventeen.
Hoekstra also questioned why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not co-author or clear the
report and why it lacked dissenting views.
The declassified report issued on January 6 is an
abridged version of a longer report ordered by President Obama that
concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to
undermine the 2016 president election, hurt Hillary’s candidacy and
promote Donald Trump through cyber warfare, social media and the
state-owned Russia cable channel RT. Although the report’s authors said
they have high confidence in most of these conclusions, they were unable
to include any evidence for classification reasons.
As someone who worked in the intelligence field for
25 years, I share Congressman Hoekstra’s concerns about Friday’s
declassified Russia report and a similar
Joint DHS and ODNI Election Security Statement released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and DHS on October 7, 2016.
I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and
its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective
intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that
the president could release before he left office to undermine the
legitimacy of Trump’s election.
I am concerned both intelligence assessments were rigged for political purposes.
You may remember when Hillary Clinton claimed during
the final presidential debate on October 19 that based on the October 7
ODNI/DHS statement, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had determined the
WikiLeaks disclosures of Democratic emails were an effort by Russia to
interfere with the election.
Clinton’s remark was not accurate. Although the
October memo said “the U.S. Intelligence Community” was confident that
the Russian government was behind the alleged hacking, the October memo
was drafted by only two intelligence organizations – ODNI and DHS.
Since it came out only a month before the
presidential election and was co-authored by only two intelligence
agencies, the October memo looked like a clumsy attempt by the Obama
White House to produce a document to boost Clinton’s reelection
chances. Its argumentation was very weak since it said the alleged
hacking of Democratic emails was “consistent with the methods and
motivations of Russian-directed efforts” but did not say there was any
evidence of Russian involvement.
Friday’s declassified intelligence report on Russia
hacking is even more suspicious. As Congressman Hoekstra noted, this
report was drafted and cleared by only three intelligence agencies, not
17. DHS, which co-authored the October statement, added a brief tick to
the new report, but did not clear it. The Office of Director of
National Intelligence, which co-authored the October memo, did not draft
or clear Friday’s report, nor did other members of the U.S Intelligence
Community with important equities in this issue such as DIA and the
State Department’s Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR).
The declassified Russian report also lacks standard
boilerplate language that it was coordinated within the U.S.
Intelligence Community. This language usually reads: “This memorandum
was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was coordinated
with the US Intelligence Community” or “this is an IC-coordinated
assessment.”
Given how politically radioactive the issue of
Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election has become, why
wasn’t the January 6 Russia report an intelligence community-coordinated
assessment? Why were several important intelligence agencies and their
experts excluded?
It also is important, as Hoekstra indicated in his
Fox interview, that intelligence community assessments on extremely
controversial issues include dissenting views, such as those added by
INR to
the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD program. A declassified version of this estimate was released in 2002 that included INR’s dissent.
The content of the declassified report was
underwhelming. Although the report made serious accusations of Russian
interference in the election, it did not back them up with evidence.
And, as Hoekstra also noted in his Fox News interview, the report made
some dubious arguments that Russia succeeded in influencing the election
using its RT cable channel, a Russian propaganda tool that is only
taken seriously in the United States by the far left.
It’s also troubling that the unclassified report does
not mention the extremely weak internet security of Clinton’s private
email server, the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign
chief John Podesta. This makes it impossible to determine whether the
alleged hacking and leaking of Democratic emails was more Russia and
other hostile actors exploiting this carelessness rather than a
deliberate and robust Russian operation to interfere with the election.
This is not to say the new CIA/NSA/FBI report is
without value. I believe the classified report probably includes solid
evidence on the intensive and broad-based cyber warfare efforts that
Russia, China and other states have been conducting against the United
States for the last eight years that President Obama has ignored.
I am encouraged that President-elect Trump responded
to this report by stating that will take aggressive action against cyber
warfare against the United States in the early days of his
administration.
At the same time, I believe President-elect Trump and
his team are justified in questioning the January 6 report as
politically motivated.
I am concerned that the exclusion of key intelligence
players and the lack of dissenting views give the appearance that the
conclusions of this report were pre-cooked.
I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and
its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective
intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that
the president could release before he left office to undermine the
legitimacy of Trump’s election.
Adding to the Trump team’s concerns time intelligence
agencies were are playing political games over possible Russian
interference in the election is the fact that at the same time these
agencies were refusing to brief Congress about their findings on this
issue they were constantly being leaked to the news media. The most
recent press leaks, some by intelligence officials, occurred this week
on the classified contents of the new Russia report before they were
briefed to Mr. Trump.
The new intelligence report on Russian interference
in the 2016 presidential election broke so radically with the way
objective and authoritative intelligence community assessments are
supposed to be produced that it appears to have been rigged to support a
pre-ordained set of conclusions to undermine President-elect Trump. I
believe the October 2016 memo and related developments support this
unfortunate conclusion.
It is vital that the Trump administration and U.S.
intelligence agencies move beyond this situation by working together to
forge new policies to protect our nation against the many serious
threats it faces, including radical Islam, cyber warfare, nuclear
proliferation, Russia, China and other threats.
Intelligence agencies were led astray by the Obama administration’s partisanship and national security incompetence.
I am confident that over time, the outstanding men
and women Trump has named to top national security posts will ensure
that America’s intelligence agencies have Trump’s confidence and produce
the hard hitting and objective intelligence he will need to defend our
nation.