Monday, February 8, 2021

Can CIA daily briefings be trusted?

C'mon, people.  It's the CIA.
In 2013, during a dramatic standoff between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA, Morgan Muir, then a senior CIA analyst, played a pivotal role that has never before been reported. After the Senate committee found that “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects were not effective, he led a series of tense meetings in which the CIA attacked those findings.

Though the committee’s politically explosive 6,700-page report on the subject was based on the CIA’s own documents, Daniel Jones, the lead author, said Muir continued to defend the value of the torture program, citing information that the CIA would later publicly admit was inaccurate.

[...]

Jones told BuzzFeed News he believes Muir’s statements to the committee should immediately disqualify him from his new role [delivering the president's daily briefing] because he cannot be trusted to “convey accurate information.”

[...]

CIA spokesperson Timothy Barrett called Jones’ characterizations “baseless” and Muir “an exemplary career intelligence officer whose strength of character is unquestionable.”

But former Democratic senator Mark Udall, who was a particularly outspoken member of the Intelligence Committee, expressed caution. “President Biden has assembled a strong national security team, but he should have serious concerns about entrusting his Presidential Daily Briefing to anyone who may have helped cover up this dark chapter in our nation's history,” Udall said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

[...]

The 2013 meetings with the Senate Intelligence Committee took place in a highly charged political climate, after the committee had completed — though not yet published — its report and the CIA had offered its formal response. Muir, who had previously provided the Daily Brief to President George W. Bush, was chosen to lead the CIA’s delegation in a series of discussions with committee members and staffers.

[...]

"As we now know, the CIA and its leadership misled the public, senators, and Senate staff for years about the CIA's systematic and brutal torture of detainees.”

  Buzzfeed
I think what we know now is that Dick Cheney pressured the CIA to cherry pick and mold intelligence to provide "justification" for torture.
The two sides’ perspectives were so far apart, it sometimes seemed impossible to reconcile even basic facts. “We would say, ‘Here’s a piece of paper. It is red. We can all see that it is red,’” Jones said. “And they would say, ‘No, it’s blue.’ ”

Three sources knowledgeable about the interactions corroborated Jones’ account. Jones, who now leads a private research and investigative firm, said Muir defended the CIA’s response to the torture report — even after he was shown copies of the agency’s own records contradicting its claims.

“He continued to double down on the false assertions,” Jones said.

[...]

When the Senate torture report and the CIA's response were released, the CIA also quietly posted three pages of corrections to its response, including the fact that Bush was given inaccurate information [...] . It would be a year before the Senate Intelligence Committee and the public even learned of the existence of the corrections.

[...]

As first reported in the New York Times, Muir was initially tapped to meet with Biden for the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified summary of national security threats around the world.

After BuzzFeed News contacted ODNI for comment, spokesperson Amanda Schoch said Wednesday that Muir’s responsibilities would not include being in the Oval Office “on a daily basis briefing the President.”

[...]

His new role is to be in charge of mission integration, which means he will be responsible for coordinating intelligence collection and analysis across multiple agencies. That includes overseeing the contents of the President’s Daily Brief, which she said will probably be delivered by “a series of expert briefers.” She gave no explanation for the change.
Also, it doesn't make any sense. He'll coordinate the intelligence and oversee the Daily Brief, he just won't personally deliver it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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