This does not inspire confidence in your president. Nor in your national security officials.
The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White
House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is
being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he
is confronted with bad news about Moscow.
Nine current and former
officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become
extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products
make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Perhaps that's actually because she has an agreement with Trump so he can say
things like "it never reached my desk".
Haspel also has been keeping a close eye on the agency’s fabled “Russia
House,” whose analysts she often disagrees with and sometimes accuses of
purposefully misleading her.
Last year, three of the people said,
Haspel tasked the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Elwood, with reviewing
virtually every product that comes out of Russia House, which is home to
analysts and targeters who are experts in Russia and the post-Soviet space,
before it “goes downtown” to the White House. One former CIA lawyer called
it “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this
extent.”
[...]
One administration official explained the reduced Russia-related
intelligence flow from CIA to the National Security Council as a matter of
“quality over quantity.” Another administration official said that while the
CIA is not the only agency that provides intelligence to the NSC, this
official’s perception was that the CIA was “certainly” exhibiting an
“abundance of caution” about the Russia intelligence it was sending to the
NSC, beginning around the time of Trump’s impeachment proceedings. A
whistleblower complaint about Trump from a CIA analyst, which Elwood relayed
to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg at the time, is what sparked Trump’s
impeachment — feeding the mistrust toward Russia-related intelligence inside
the White House and among the agency’s top ranks.
[...]
Trump, who has publicly railed against the intelligence
community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in 2016 to bolster his
candidacy, has also been working to bring the intelligence community further
under his control since his impeachment acquittal in February. He has
installed loyalists in top positions like director of national intelligence
and the senior-most intelligence post on the NSC staff.
[...]
As recently as last Thursday, the president blasted his own FBI
director on Twitter for testifying that Moscow was seeking to “sow
divisiveness and discord” and “denigrate Vice President Biden” in a bid to
influence the 2020 campaign.
[...]
The head of Russia House, whom officials declined to identify by
name because they work undercover, was fired earlier this year, according to
four of the current and former officials familiar with the matter, but
remains at the agency in another mission center. It’s not clear why he was
ousted, but Haspel’s personal dislike of him was clear.
Another
Russia House analyst quit earlier this year after Haspel accused him of
lying about intelligence — an accusation that happens fairly often, several
former officials said. “She calls analysts liars all the time,” said one
former CIA official.
[...]
More recently, Haspel “completely dismissed” Russia House
analysts who brought her intelligence showing a correlation between Russia
and the curious phenomenon of diplomats experiencing brain trauma, according
to one current U.S. official with knowledge of the episode.
[...]
“She had a very defensive reaction, reacted very poorly and made
some comments about needing to clean out Russia House,” the official said.
“We thought her feeling that Russia House was cliquey or insular was grossly
unfair,” said a former senior CIA official. “She had preconceived notions
about it, from her own time at the agency.” Haspel joined the CIA in 1985
and spent nearly her entire career working undercover as a clandestine
officer, serving as chief of station in Europe and Central Eurasia and
focusing at times on Russian operations, according to a CIA-issued
timeline.
[...]
Ryan Tully is the fifth person to hold the senior director role,
which previously had been held by Fiona Hill and Tim Morrison, both of whom
testified in the impeachment inquiry. Joe Wang, who was deputy senior
director for Europe and Russia at the NSC under Tully, left for the State
Department over the summer. All that turnover “has been hard on [Russia
policy],” another administration official said, “because you need someone
driving it who has a consistent view — and it doesn’t seem like working on
[Russia] has been a top priority.”
Critics of national security
adviser Robert O’Brien say he has been prone to highlighting national
security information and intelligence “that he knows the president will
respond well to,” as one former White House official put it. “O’Brien
doesn’t want anyone to touch things Russia-related because of the reaction,”
a second former White House official said. “He just doesn’t want to rock the
boat with Trump.”
He knows he'll be shitcanned.
Some still fear [...] that Haspel’s negative perception of CIA’s Russia
analysts is the result of ongoing political pressure by the Trump
administration to frame them as biased and myopic because of a conclusion
they drew in 2016 that has enraged the president: that Putin ordered an
interference campaign specifically to bolster Trump’s candidacy. That
analysis was based at least in part on information from a highly sensitive
CIA asset in the Kremlin, and is now at the center of [John] Durham’s
probe.
[...]
Trump’s firing of former acting Director of National
Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who made the career-ending decision to allow a
deputy to brief lawmakers on Russia’s ongoing election interference, is
still top of mind for many in the intelligence community who fear they could
land in Trump’s crosshairs if they challenge him in any official setting.
Those
fears played out on Thursday night, when Trump went on a Twitter rampage
against FBI Director Christopher Wray. Wray had testified during a public
congressional hearing about Russia’s ongoing attempts to undermine Biden.
[...]
Wray and other national security leaders, including Haspel, had
specifically sought to avoid Trump’s wrath earlier this year by requesting
that the annual Worldwide Threats hearing before Congress be held behind
closed doors and out of his sight.
[...]
“No one is willing to challenge” Elwood or Haspel, said the former senior CIA official. He added that Haspel’s changes have “been framed by some as an effort to ‘protect the building’ — well, her job is not to protect the building, it’s to protect the country.”
No comments:
Post a Comment