Written by Aaron Maté via RealClearInvestigations, Robert Mueller’s failure to find an election conspiracy between Donald Trump and Moscow did not deter the Russiagate narrative. The former Special Counsel alleged that the Kremlin had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” effort to get Trump elected and “sow discord” among Americans.
Newly declassified documents reveal that U.S. intelligence leaders had doubts about the foundational allegation of Russiagate: that Russia stole and leaked Democratic Party material to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. A September 2016 report, kept secret until now, showed that the NSA and FBI expressed “low confidence” in attributing the hack to Russia.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, released these revelations, claiming that President Obama and his cabinet “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to undermine Trump. This evidence challenges the widely accepted claim about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The U.S. intelligence community’s doubts were hidden from the public in reports like the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) and the Mueller report. The newly declassified documents show that the intelligence community lacked hard evidence linking Russia to the hack of Democratic Party material. The FBI and NSA expressed “low confidence” in this core allegation.
The Obama administration, despite the dissent within the intelligence community, pushed the narrative of Russian interference to undermine Trump’s presidency. The joint statement issued by DHS and ODNI in October 2016 claimed that Russia hacked the Democratic Party to interfere with the election process, without acknowledging the doubts within the FBI and NSA. 6 memo, The Washington Post published a report claiming that the CIA had determined Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win. This report, which relied on anonymous sources, was quickly picked up and spread by other major news outlets. The Post article stated that the intelligence community had “identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the DNC.” However, it did not explain how the CIA had reached this conclusion, nor did it mention the doubts expressed by other intelligence agencies.
Similarly, the New York Times published an article on Dec. 9 claiming that Russian hackers had targeted Republican organizations as well as Democratic ones, but had chosen not to release any information from the GOP. This report was also based on anonymous sources and did not provide any evidence to support its claims.
These leaks to the media, which were based on incomplete and selective information from the intelligence community, helped to create a false narrative that Russia had interfered in the election to help Trump. This narrative, which was later amplified by congressional Democrats and the media, has since become accepted as fact by many Americans, despite the lack of conclusive evidence.
As the newly declassified documents show, the rush to produce the January ICA, the exclusion of dissenting voices, and the reliance on unverified information all contributed to the perpetuation of this false narrative. The actions taken by the Obama administration and senior intelligence officials in the final weeks of 2016 helped to shape the public perception of Russian interference in the election, laying the groundwork for the years of investigations and political turmoil that followed. The Washington Post recently published a story claiming that the CIA’s “secret assessment” concluded that Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign aimed to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. However, there was no such assessment or consensus within the intelligence community. Despite this, the Obama administration continued to push the unsupported narrative of Russian interference.
On Jan. 6, 2017, a sanitized version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was released by Obama administration and intelligence officials. This version omitted dissenting opinions on Russian meddling and contained false claims. Newly released documents, including a Downgraded ICA, point to evidentiary gaps and uncertainties in the allegations of Russian interference.
One significant discrepancy highlighted in the Downgraded ICA is the shift from low to moderate confidence in Russian interference allegations to high confidence in January 2017. This change raises questions about the basis for the increased confidence level.
Furthermore, it was revealed that the “further information” cited in the January ICA as evidence of a Putin-ordered effort to defeat Clinton was actually the Steele dossier, despite previous denials by officials.
These new disclosures underscore the suppression of doubts within the intelligence community to present Russian interference as a consensus view. The manipulation of information and lack of transparency in the assessment process call into question the validity of the claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
[Original article source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_russiahack-745p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory] The sentence is not provided. Please provide the sentence you would like me to rewrite.