In July, ODNI declassified and released 2017 HPSCI(Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) Majority staff report regarding "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election". Below is the link to ODNI press release:
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President Obama directed the creation of this January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment after President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and it served as the basis for what was essentially a years-long coup against the duly elected President of the United States, subverting the will of the American people and attempting to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency.
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The declassified 46-page report in PDF format can be downloaded via the link below:
I'm archiving its text to make it searchable here. This is part 19.
Directly Contradicting the ICA Judgment That Pro-Trump Russian Propaganda Confirmed Putin Preferred Trump, the ICA Itself Offered Evidence Supporting the Opposite Conclusion. Following Trump's victory, the ICA notes that the Russian media began to immediately spin the surprise election results as a "popular indictment of US policies" and an "obvious sign of the ideological bankruptcy of globalization and liberalism," per the ICA. Statements that suggest Moscow's priority of undermining faith in US elections, rather than rejoicing at Trump's election.(redacted)
Although the ICA fails to examine the alternative hypothesis that Russian state media was exploiting candidate Trump to portray him - after his expected defeat - as a victim of a corrupt American democratic process, the ICA section on "Russian propaganda efforts" lays out that this was, in fact, what was happening.
The ICA noted that Putin's chief propagandist, Dmitriy Kiselev, used his "flagship" program to cast Trump "as an outsider victimized by a corrupt political establishment and faulty democratic election process that aimed to prevent his election because of his desire to work with Moscow."(redacted)
The ICA also observed that "pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton's victory." Such plans fit perfectly with the theme that candidate Trump, had he lost the election, was a victim of a corrupt American political system.(redacted)
The ICA further omitted key intelligence of Russian operations shortly after the election to organize anti-Trump rallies, actions that directly contradicted claims that Putin preferred Trump:
After Trump's election, the Russians employed false US Facebook personas "to organize and coordinate rallies protesting the results of the 2016 election" according to the indictment filed by Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.
In November 2016, about four days after Trump's election, a Russian group organized a "Trump is NOT my President" rally in New York. A similar Russian-organized rally occurred a week later in Charlotte, North Carolina.(redacted)
Finding #8: The ICA Draft Was Unnecessarily Rushed and Subjected to Inadequate Review and Coordination
ICD 203 stipulates that analysis be "Independent of political consideration" and "must not be distorted by, nor shaped for, advocacy of a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint." Yet the ICA was unnecessarily rushed to production based on orders that suggested political, rather than intelligence priorities.(redacted)
On 6 December 2016, almost a month after the election, the President ordered the directors of CIA, FBI, and NSA to review their work to date on the Russian influence campaign, and to quickly produce the ICA - to include an unclassified version - for release in early January, according to CIA officers involved in producing the ICA. By 22 December (16 days later) DCIA was given the final draft for review.(redacted)
The ICA classified and unclassified versions were disseminated on 5 and 6 January 2017 - two weeks before the inauguration of President Trump - suggesting that the rushed work schedule was driven by a political motivation to ensure the ICA was rolled out to the Congress and world media by the outgoing administration.
By finishing the ICA before the new President was inaugurated, the outgoing DCIA retained total control over who could see the raw intelligence cited, who was allowed to review the draft, and what comments would be accepted or rejected.
Senior, experienced CIA officers who objected that the intelligence did not support the key judgment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win, were silenced by the outgoing DCIA in December 2016. Those officers might have had their voices heard if the ICA's publication delayed until after the inauguration, to allow the incoming DCIA to manage the process.
Rushing publication also allowed the outgoing DCIA to lead the briefings to Congress, where he could control the narrative.
Rushing the analytic process is sometimes necessary in the intelligence business, but that did not appear to be the case for the ICA. A comprehensive and authoritative review of Russian activities for lessons learned purposes could have been done at a deliberate pace, to include a second review by other analysts. The election had passed, and with it, the need for current intelligence updates of the sort produced by the Fusion Cell.
Glaring ICA tradecraft errors identified in this investigation might have been caught and corrected by a more unpressured drafting process and a broader based review by additional working-level analysts outside of the tiny circle handpicked by the outgoing DCIA.
Most of the ICA's key points on Russian hacking and leaking - except for the judgment that Putin aspired for Trump to win - had already been disseminated to key officials in the Executive Branch prior to the election, via the Fusion Cell reports. Russia's hacking had also been extensively covered in the media since June of 2016.
The Congressional Intelligence Committees were given classified briefings in September and December 2016 on Russian election interference - primarily covering the hacking and leaking of emails - and Putin's objective to undermine faith in the US electoral process. The judgment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win was not formally briefed to members of the Intelligence Committees until after the publication of the election following the publication of the ICA in early January 2017.
(redacted) The allegation that Putin preferred Trump was only published in one, close-hold President's Daily Brief article on 2 August 2016. In August and September, DCIA also gave oral briefings - conducted separately - to eight senior congressional leaders using sensitive reporting, but with no written product, it was not possible to determine if DCIA provided the same details in each briefing.(redacted)
Virtually all significant classified reports cited by the ICA had been collected prior to the election and the paltry new intelligence the ICA cited from November-December 2016 did not justify rushing the product.(redacted)
CIA officers commented that the process for producing and reviewing the ICA was complicated by the rushed schedule, the use of sensitive, compartmented reporting that few analysts and managers had access to, and by the order to produce an unclassified version. Together, these factors likely created disincentives against objecting to misquoting of sources or challenging questionable analytic reasoning.(redacted)
Just five CIA analysts were directed by the DCIA to write the ICA, with one analyst doing most of the drafting.
Only three of the analysts had been cleared into the compartmented materials in the four months since the Director's Fusion Cell was established in July.(redacted)
The five authors would later express their astonishment to the Committee that management made no significant changes to their draft during the review process, something unheard of for such a high-profile paper.(redacted)
Some reviewers said they only saw select segments that they were cleared for, and did not necessarily know how those segments fit in the larger analysis.(redacted)
One key CIA analytic manager was unaware of the concerns regarding the unclear "fragment" that played such a significant role in the judgments of Putin's intentions. After reviewing the critical report, the manager admitted to not having been read-on to the various compartmented materials until 19 December, three days before the final product went to DCIA, and the officer had thus not read the raw reporting carefully enough to notice the ambiguity of the fragment.(redacted)
A senior operational manager said they did not see the draft ICA until days before it was published, and when they voiced objections about some judgments to DCIA, it was in the context of a fast approaching deadline, and the rush to publish created additional pressure against slowing the process or making significant substantive changes to the draft.(redacted)