CIA Watchdog Sitting on Secret House Report Allegedly Critical of Brennan’s Role ...

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CIA Watchdog Sitting on Secret 
House Report Allegedly Critical 
of Brennan’s Role in Russian 
Meddling Assessment

BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV AND JAN JEKIELEK
 
May 4, 2020 Updated: May 6, 2020



The CIA inspector general has taken more than a year to 
clear the release of a House Intelligence Committee 
report that contradicts the key conclusion of the 
intelligence community’s assessment of Russian 
interference in the 2016 election, according to the 
former chief of staff of the National Security Council.

The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), 
prepared at the behest of President Barack Obama, 
claimed that Russia interfered in the presidential election 
in order to help candidate Donald Trump. 
The House Intelligence Committee’s public report (pdf) 
on Russia had already challenged the analytic tradecraft 
behind this central claim and suggested that the process 
of arriving at the assessment wasn’t free of 
political interference.

A separate, classified report holed up at the Office of the 
CIA Inspector General (IG) sheds damning light on the 
role then-CIA Director John Brennan played in the 
preparation of the report, former National Security 
Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz learned from 
House Intelligence Committee staff. A source familiar 
with the report’s fate would not deny that the report 
went to the office of the CIA IG.

The report states that Brennan overruled agency analysts 
who wanted to include strong intelligence in the assessment 
to show that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted 
Hillary Clinton to win the election, Fleitz says, citing 
conversations with House Intelligence Committee staffers. 
Brennan had also rejected analysts who wanted to strike 
weak intelligence from the report that suggested that 
Russia favored Trump, Fleitz said.

A separate, classified report holed up at the Office of the 
CIA Inspector General (IG) sheds damning light on the 
role then-CIA Director John Brennan played in the 
preparation of the report, former National Security 
Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz learned from 
House Intelligence Committee staff. A source familiar 
with the report’s fate would not deny that the report 
went to the office of the CIA IG.

The report states that Brennan overruled agency 
analysts who wanted to include strong intelligence 
in the assessment to show that Russian President 
Vladimir Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 
election, Fleitz says, citing conversations with 
House Intelligence Committee staffers. Brennan 
had also rejected analysts who wanted to strike 
weak intelligence from the report that suggested 
that Russia favored Trump, Fleitz said.

In the section of the House Intelligence Committee’s 
public Russia report, which challenged the analytic 
tradecraft underlying the assessment that Russia 
favored Trump, the committee stated that it was 
“planning additional action regarding this information 
in early spring 2018.” A source familiar with the report 
told The Epoch Times, “We did do a classified report 
on the ICA.”

The existence of the House report on the ICA, which 
hasn’t been previously reported, comes to light less 
than one month after newly declassified documents 
revealed that the FBI was aware that a key part of the 
infamous Steele dossier could have been the product 
of disinformation by Russian intelligence services. 
The dossier—a compilation of unverified allegations 
against Trump—played a key role in the FBI’s decision 
to obtain a surveillance warrant to spy on Trump 
campaign associate Carter Page. The Hillary Clinton 
campaign and the Democratic National Committee 
funded the dossier.

A summary of the dossier was included in a top-secret 
attachment to the ICA—Annex A. The FBI pushed to 
include the dossier in the ICA, according to a Senate 
intelligence committee report (pdf) on the assessment 
released last month. The FBI told the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) that they “would 
have had a major problem if Annex A had not been 
included.” Former FBI Director James Comey told 
the SSCI that he personally insisted that the dossier 
be included.

“I insisted that we bring it to the party, and I was 
agnostic as to whether it was footnoted in the document 
itself, put as an annex,” Comey told SSCI. “I have 
some recollection of talking to John Brennan, maybe 
at some point saying: I don’t really care, but I think 
it is relevant and so ought to be part of the consideration.”

The Senate report’s conclusions about the ICA clash with 
those reportedly in the classified House report. The SSCI 
found no issues with the process that led to the issuance 
of the ICA and found no witnesses to support the claim 
that the process was politicized.

“Every witness interviewed by the Committee stated 
that he or she saw no attempts or pressure to politicize 
the findings,” the SSCI report states.

The CIA IG office is currently led by acting Inspector 
General Christopher Sharpley, a holdover from the 
Obama administration who was reappointed by 
President Donald Trump. Sharpley withdrew his 
nomination after allegations surfaced that he misled 
the Senate about his awareness of whistleblower 
reprisal complaints against him.

Fleitz said he had personally reached out to acting 
Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell about 
releasing the House report. The Office of the Director of 
National Intelligence didn’t respond to a request 
for comment.



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