CIA Not Providing Congress With Info on Russian Hacking
When will the CIA explain its leaked findings?
The House and Senate have become agitated with the CIA as the agency has continued to deny both sectors with briefings or information on claims that Russia hacked into America’s election, but passed information to the mainstream media.
Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) told a radio station in his home state that the CIA just denied his request for a briefing:
“I’m not happy they denied a briefing to me,” the Wisconsin Republican told a public radio interviewer in his home state on Friday morning. “I need information from the administration, and right now they’re withholding it.”
He added in a statement: “It is disappointing that the CIA would provide information on this issue to the Washington Post and NBC but will not provide information to elected members of Congress.”
On December 9, The Washington Post published an article about the CIA assessment. One senior official told the publication “that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”
Johnson attended a briefing in September with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, FBI Director James Comey, and White hHouse counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco along with 11 other top lawmakers about possible interference. President Barack Obama wanted his three officials to convince to lawmakers to show “solidarity and bipartisan unity” and sign a statement to urge state officials to accept federal help to protect voting systems:
“They were assuring everybody there was no way Russia could hack our voting machines,” Johnson told Wisconsin Public Radio. “I don’t know what changed from that briefing to this in terms of additional information.”
Earlier this week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) criticized the intelligence community after they canceled a briefing with the House Intelligence Committee:
“All we’ve heard from the intelligence community over the last several months is that they could not say that there was any attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton [or] to help Donald Trump,” King told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on “The Kelly File.” “The consensus was that there was an attempt by the Russians to put a cloud over the election, to create disunity. Well, that’s what’s happening right now, but it’s the intelligence community that’s doing it.”
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“Somebody has the time to leak it to the Washington Post and the New York Times, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress,” said King, a member of the committee. “It’s their job to come. They don’t have any choice. They have to come in, especially when they have created this.”
Despite what the Post wrote, King said that no lawmakers “received any assessment from the CIA.” He brought up the fact that NSA Director James Clapper said the community “couldn’t prove it, that there was an attempt to favor one candidate over the other.” He continued:
“This violates all protocols and it’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the president-elect of the United States,” the congressman added. “It’s absolutely disgraceful and if they’re not doing it, then it must be someone in the House or the Senate who’s leaking false information and there should be a full investigation of this.”
“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the CIA are great,” King concluded. “There’s somebody here, though, that’s behind something that’s totally irresponsible.”
Three sources told Reuters that the intelligence community has briefed congressional leadership on the assessment, but not the full congressional committees, “which is the standard procedure for briefing Congress on sensitive intelligence.” But that has not stopped lawmakers from wanting briefings:
Nevertheless, Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and is a member of President-elect Trump’s transition team as well as the Gang of Eight, has called for a briefing for his entire committee on the CIA assessment.
“The committee is vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign, and in particular we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us,” Nunes said
Nunes also shared Johnson’s disbelief over Clapper’s sudden change of heart:
Nunes, a member of the Trump transition team’s executive committee, previously had complained to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the failure of the intelligence community to keep his committee informed.
“I was dismayed that we did not learn earlier, directly from you, about reported conflicting assessments and the CIA’s reported revision of information previously conveyed to this committee,” Nunes wrote Clapper several days ago.
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Comments
“it’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the president-elect of the United States”
Not “almost”, they are trying to influence the result of a national election.
Congress needs to grow a spine and tell CIA this is “put up or shut up” time. Either you have vital information that establishes a threat to the security of the nation, or they are a security threat themselves for 1) attempting to destabilize our Republic and 2) falsely accusing a foreign nuclear power of actions that constitute an Act of War.
And if it’s the latter? They should not only be fired, they should be tried and imprisoned for treason.
How does either cracking or leaking the DNC’s email constitute an act of war?
Milhouse: How does either cracking or leaking the DNC’s email constitute an act of war?
That’s a dishonest remark. You know very well that POTUS and Democrats in Congress are accusing Russia of tampering with our election, even implying the *election* was hacked.
I’m all for a robust debate argued in good faith, and will remain civil despite the outcome. But you are beginning to wear my patience with this pattern of disingenuous sophistry.
It constitutes an act of war if it actually affected the election. If is doesn’t constitute and act of war, it didn’t affect it. The Left and you are trying to have it both ways.
Providing the truth about HRC and the DNC is what our news media should have been doing. The Dems are upset that they couldn’t keep this further evidence of their dishonest hidden. The news media are upset that their side lost.
The Intel Community or IC is a pretty broad swath of humanity. Some, not all dedicated Americans.
I spent 20 years as a 1630/1635. A Naval Intelligence Officer. I highly recommend you read “Joe Rochefort’s War.”
http://www.usni.org/store/books/fall-great-book/joe-rocheforts-war?view=newest
I’m trying to figure out how to put this. Because unlike the anonymous CIA leakers blabbing freely to the press, when I took my oath to keep my mouth shut, I meant it. So I refer you to Joe Rochefort’s story. If you’re at all familiar with the Battle of the Coral Seat and the Battle of Midway, you’ll know his name. If you aren’t, you need to be.
Please keep in mind that Joe Rochefort’s concept of his job description was to tell combatant commanders “today what the Japanese are going to do tomorrow.” And the Inside-The-Beltway types hated him for not playing their game.
So sez some anonymous guy on the intertubes, who wishes to remain just that
He wasn’t perfect. But who is. Where he went wrong was going up against the entrenched Inside-The-Beltway bureaucratic forces. And yes some of that bureaucracy is part of the military. And part of the IC.
I wish I could tell you why, if I were king, I’d plow CIA headquarters under the earth and salt it so that nothing could ever grow there again. This isn’t to imply there aren’t patriots who work among those empire builders, vipers, and self-dealers. There are. But they don’t need a CIA to do their work and most definitely neither do we.
More fake news from the progressive fascist Dems.
As long as there is a willing and duplicitous media to propagate these unsubstantiated assertions, they can be parlayed into a jackpot of besmirchment of Team Trump. Only, whoever is behind this may well be underestimating the incoming administration.
I wouldn’t doubt for a moment if it should turn out to be an Obama appointee who’s the scoundrel.
Coupled with the fellow-traveling Republican leadership.
There should be immediate subpoena with immediate appearance dates, followed immediately with contempt proceedings for any failure to appear.
So let me see if I’ve got this right. Them pesky Russians interfered in the election by making sure people got to see the utter corruption of the DNC and HiLIARy for themselves thus allowing the American public to make an informed choice on the 8th of November!!!
The deeeeeerty little commie rat bastards!!
Interfered in a sovereign nations elections? You mean like when obama sent his election staff to England to try to defeat the conservatives?
Maybe you mean when he sent a team to Israel to try to unseat Netanyahu?
Or do you mean the team he sent to England to influence the Brexit vote?
The dimicrat party is an ongoing criminal conspiracy and should be outlawed.
Yes. Since when it is at all illegal to try to influence another country’s elections? Pretty much every country in the world has a strong interest in US elections, so it makes perfect sense for them to do what they can to try to influence voters their way. I’m not seeing the cause for outrage.
Sounds like the CIA needs to be disbanded entirely. They’ve had far too much practice at fomenting rebellions all over the world, particularaly when they figure they can pull off a coup d’etat right here at home.
“Sensitive information”. Too sensitive for Congress, but not too sensitive for the NYT and WaPo. (What’s the matter, is CIA having a tiff with the Worker’s World Weekly?)
There’s very little that Congress can do to investigate Russia. But Congress can do rather a lot to investigate the CIA.
I think that CIA knows darn well that what they have is flimsy at best and the Congress will eat them alive.
The CIA will leak to the press but won’t talk to the Senate Chairman of Homeland Security? If the Senate has any interest in maintaining any political authority it needs to issue a 8am monday morning summons to Brennan ASAP to explain to the Senate why he should still have a job.
I suppose I should be charitable. I received a nice letter of appreciation from ADM Studeman when he was Deputy Director of the CIA back in the ’90s. It was a period of “hightened tensions” because of the NORKS (So, since when haven’t the “unpredictable” NORKs been raising the tensions like clockwork?). So the DDCIA was on a tour of the Far East and he stopped by my (and I’m not joking) condemned-as-unfit-for-human-habitation intel command that supported Seventh Fleet, and I briefed him on our assessment of the situation.
Naval Radio Relay Facility (NRRF) Kamiseya.
I think I still have the letter. Not out of any particular reverence. I have records of all the “Outstandings” I did on the physical fitness test. I kept everything because, as my dad the sainted Senior Chief told me, and as bitter experience soon confirmed, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.
So if you didn’t (back in ancient times shortly after the earth’s crust cooled and we amphibians crawled onto land and everything was done on paper) want to have to redo every vaccination you should have had since the age of five make copies of your medical record because they will lose it when you transfer from one duty station to the next, and if you have your own copy of your medical record you can put a stop to that kind of BS.
Same went with your pay. Man, could they screw with your pay.
But I digress. William Studeman was, is, a true gentleman. But that doesn’t change my opinion of the CIA. Which remains as “worse than useless.”
Have I mentioned that the HQ at Langley needs to be plowed under and the earth salted so nothing ever grows there again? I believe I have.