By John O. Brennan and James Clapper | NY Times
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the Central Intelligence Agency director, have over the past month claimed that senior officials of the Obama administration manufactured politicized intelligence, silenced intelligence professionals and engaged in a broad “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. That is patently false. In making those allegations, they seek to rewrite history. We want to set the record straight and, in doing so, sound a warning.
Let’s recap. The Trump administration’s claims focus on the intelligence community’s findings about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which were published in January 2017. The assessment found that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had ordered an influence campaign to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm the electability and potential presidency of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
The assessment also found that the Russians had developed a “clear preference” for Mr. Trump and aspired to help his election prospects. It further stated that the Russians employed a variety of tactics as part of this campaign, including hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party organizations and officials and publicly releasing the stolen data through digital allies. Those covert activities were complemented by the overt but disguised efforts of Russian government intelligence agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users. As stated in the assessment, Mr. Putin himself ordered Russian intelligence to conduct the campaign.
While some external critiques have noted that parts of the Russia investigation could have been handled better, multiple, thorough, yearslong reviews of the assessment have validated its findings and the rigor of its analysis. The most noteworthy was the unanimous, bipartisan, five-volume report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose Republican members at the time included Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state, and Senator Tom Cotton, now the committee chairman.