The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has issued the fourth volume of its bipartisan report examining Russian interference in the 2016 elections. This fourth volume specifically focused on reviewing the US Intelligence Community’s (IC) assessment of that interference. The SSCI, in this fourth volume, has validated the IC’s sources, methods, and findings. They also found that multiple intelligence disciplines were used to attribute the hacking to Russia, which debunks the conspiracy theory that someone created the computer evidence to frame Russia. In short, the US IC had multiple sources and used multiple methods to come to this conclusion. The SSCI found that the investigation was properly predicated and undertaken and that there was no political pressure placed on the analysts. The SSCI report noted that the Steele Dossier was not used by the IC as source material for its analysis and assessment and that it is only included in an annex because the FBI insisted it had to be based on the directive the FBI received to conduct its part of the investigation. Finally, and just as importantly, the SSCI has concluded that not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, they did so specifically to elect Trump president.
This report undercuts Attorney General Barr’s repeated lies about the investigation into Russian efforts in the 2016 campaign and its efforts to both support the President’s 2016 campaign to ensure his election and to make contacts with the campaign to do so. It also undercuts the basis that AG Barr has provided to US Attorney John Durham as the predicate for his investigation into whether senior Obama administration officials, including Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence Brennan, and Director of the FBI Comey, as well as other senior officials such as Deputy Director McCabe, acted illegally in an attempt to prevent Trump from being elected president. The SSCI’s findings all confirm DOJ IG Horowitz’s own findings, which AG Barr has both misrepresented and ignored. I do not think that this will stop the bogus investigation that AG Barr has tasked US Attorney Durham with conducting.
Here are the findings (bold dashes indicate redacted materials – the big black bars didn’t copy and paste):
I. (U) INTRODUCTION
(U) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledges the impressive accomplishment in drafting and coordinating the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which was completed as a “Memorandum for the President” on December 30, 2016, – and a declassified version dated January 6, 2017, and made available to the public on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) website. The Committee’s review focused on the highly compartmented “Memorandum to the President.”
II. (U) FINDINGS
1. (U) The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidentialelection. On the analytic lines of the ICA, the Committee concludes that all lines are supported with all-source intelligence, although with varying substantiation. The Committee did not discover any significant analytic tradecraft issues in the preparation or final presentation of the ICA.
(U) The ICA reflects proper analytic tradecraft despite being tasked and completed within a compressed time frame. The compact time frame was a contributing factor for not conducting formal analysis of competing hypotheses.
(U) The differing confidence levels on one analytic judgment are justified and properly represented. Those in disagreement all stated that they had the opportunity to express differing points of view. The decision regarding the presentation of differing confidence levels was the responsibility of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan and the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Admiral Michael Rogers, both of whom independently expressed to the Committee that they reached the final wording openly and with sufficient exchanges of views.
(U) Multiple intelligence disciplines are used and identified throughout the ICA. Where the Committee noted concerns about the use of specific sources, in no case did the Committee conclude any analytic line was compromised as a result.
(U) In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions. All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.
2. (U) The Committee found that the agencies responsible for the !CA-CIA, NSA, and FBI, under the aegis of ODNI-met the primary tasking as directed by President Obama, which was to assemble a product that reflected the intelligence available to the Intelligence Community (IC) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
3. (U) The Committee found that the ICA provides a proper representation of the intelligence collected by CIA, NSA, and FBI on Russian interference in 2016, and this body of evidence supports the substance and judgments of the ICA.
– Regarding FBI, the ICA states, in its “Scope and Sourcing” introduction, that “[w]e also do not include information from ongoing investigations.” – The Committee found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments. However, a summary of this material was included in Annex A as a compromise to FBI’s insistence that the information was responsive to the presidential tasking.
4. (U) The Committee found the ICA makes a clear argument that the manner and aggressiveness of the Russian interference was historically unprecedented. However, the ICA and its sources do not provide a substantial representation of Russian interference in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, as the Committee understands was part of the President’s original tasking.
5. (U . . – ) The Committee found that the ICA did not provide a set of policy rec~ations on how to respond to future Russian active measures, which was part of the tasking the President conveyed to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. The ICA did include, in the compartmented version, an unclassified section independently produced by OHS, FBI, and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “OHS/FBI/NIST Recommendations : Options to Protect and Defend US Election Infrastructure and US Political Parties.”(U) The absence of policy recommendations was deliberate, due to the well-established norm that the IC provides insight and warning to policy makers, but does not itself make policy.
6. (U) The Committee found the ICA would benefit from a more comprehensive presentation of how Russian propaganda-as generated by Russia’s multiple state-owned platforms-was used to complement the full Russian influence campaign.
(U) Open source collection is a long-standing discipline for CIA and other elements of the IC, and open source reporting is used throughout the ICA to support specific analytic assertions. However, open source reporting on RT and Sputnik’s coverage of WikiLeaks releases of Democratic National Committee (DNC) information would have strengthened the ICA’s examination of Russia’s use of propaganda. On this point, the Committee finds that Annex – of the ICA — “Open Source Center Analysis: Russia: Kremlin’s TV Seeks to Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US,” published December 12, 2012-should have been updated to provide a summary of Kremlin propaganda in 2016, thereby making a more relevant contribution to the ICA. An update to this assessment was not produced by the Open Source Enterprise until after the publication of the ICA.
7. ———————————————————————————————————————————————– The role of social media has been a significant focus by the Committee and is discussed in a separate volume of this report.
Someone is going to need to do a welfare check on GG and the Intercept crowd. Whomever it is should demand both hazard and danger pay!
Open thread!
Baud
I suppose we’ll have to wait for Biden for an accounting of the New York FBI.
Adam L Silverman
I’ve done some light editing for clarity. Not for typos!
ChrisS
Huh … I’m sure the next report is totally going to nail all of those deep state traitors to the wall.
Tom Levenson
Welp. I was just about to post something, bigfooting bigfoot.
I guess I’ll wait an hour or so…
Tdjr
Who you tellin’?
danielx
Exploding heads, anybody?
Adam L Silverman
@Tdjr: Huh?
Benw
It won’t stop Barr’s “investigation” from totally zonerating Trump and blaming Obama or the forthcoming “investigation” into the Bidens “successfully” uncovering Hunter’s many CRIMES
Ohio Mom
I went to the linked report, hoping to find a list of the Senators on the committee — would like to especially know which Republicans had to face the truth.
I didn’t see a list but as long as I was there, took a quick scan of the report and my, an awful lot of it is redacted.
I’m guessing there is some sort of rule of thumb, the more black lines, the more earth shattering the report.
Adam L Silverman
@Ohio Mom: Here you go:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov
West of the Rockies
Here’s the $64,000 question, Adam. Will this matter? Will Trump angry-Tweet, and will Fox News dissemble, and that’s the end of it, or might there be any genuine (even small) consequences based on this bipartisan committee finding?
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies: It matters. It won’t matter to the President, the sycophants he’s surrounded himself with, his surrogates, his enablers in the conservative and right wing news and social media ecosystem, or to his base. But the truth always matters.
Barb 2
Could the release of this report be one of the reasons for the Orange monster ‘s current bazaar behavior?
Barr is also acting unhinged so the department of justice is going to do something something about the Governors for closing their states. The jackasses have the right to infect and get infected? I was waiting for the rest of the story – this may be it.
Adam L Silverman
@Barb 2: Who knows at this point.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Some of the truth telling and quixotic legislative efforts should be for the history books – to remind people that we weren’t all MAGAts.
Emma from FL
Aren’t we all surprised? *raised eyebrow emoji
Ohio Mom
Adam L. Silverman: Thanks!
Now for the unanswerable question: How do Richard Burr, James Risch, Marco Rubio, Susan Collins, Roy Blunt, Tom Cotton, John Coryn and Ben Sasse deal with the cognitive dissonance? Well, except for Collins, we know that sad shakes of the head work for her.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: Although I didn’t watch the entire interview, Sen. Warner was asked if this was the most important document, and he said no. There’s one more and that is the one that should be read by all.
piratedan
well it means that, in short, Trump and the GOP are traitors to the Republic. They willingly enlisted and used intelligence from an outside country and worked with them against his Democratic Party challenger in order to subvert and win the election.
If this was 1950, they’d either be serving time in prison or already hung and buried in an unmarked grave outside some federal prison somewhere.
but we elected a black guy once, so all bets are off
Skepticat
I’ll bet even the Russians have been surprised by how exceptionally well they succeeded in damaging this country.
Ohio Mom
Omnes Omnibus: Did you catch the Steve in the Wherever sighting in the “Are you my mommy” thread? As I recall, you asked about him the other day.
Adam L Silverman
@Ohio Mom: You really don’t want me to answer that publicly.
WaterGirl
@Skepticat: Just like Bin Laden got way more than he could have hoped for because of our insane reaction to Sept 11. We did it to ourselves.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: I think they’re preparing the fifth and final volume. I’m guessing that’s the one he’s referring to. I’ve done posts on the previous three here as well.
Kent
So if Biden wins, what are some reasonable (or fucking unreasonable) ways that he can sanction the Russians so forcefully that they will never again think to do this kind of shit?
I would think some MONSTER sanctions are in order that strip the wealth of every Russian oligarch linked to Putin and make them persona non grata in the western world. Make the fuckers bleed for ever messing in our elections.
8 man shell
Here’s a news flash for our extremely online friends:
https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1252611949969498113
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom: I didn’t see it. But I am always happy when my fellow Boatshoe-Americans show up.
John Revolta
So, NOW we get a do-over, right?
wjs
To be fair, Matt Taibbi really crapped the bed on this subject as well.
I used to wonder if watching all those Maddow presentations was a waste of time. From the looks of it, I guess not.
West of the Rockies
@Kent: Man, I’d love to see that smug, tiny-membered Putin figuratively gutted and his wretched kingdom reduced to rubble.
japa21
Wasn’t Durham’s report supposed to be finished, oh, several months ago?
Baud
@japa21:
Still manufacturing evidence.
Redshift
@Ohio Mom: I have been very pleased with the work of my senator, Mark Warner, going all the way back to when Chairman Burr proposed ending the Senate investigation at the same time Nunes ended the House. Warner said hell no and made it stick.
debbie
@West of the Rockies:
I’ll tell you what matters: This came from the Senate, not that Pelosi-plagued House. //
StringOnAStick
Adam, any ideas on when the fifth and final report will be released? Will it be classified or just heavily redacted?
Also, I could really use a pony.
WaterGirl
@StringOnAStick: Ponies are sold out, just like everything else at the store.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: To be fair, I think ponies are back-ordered; unicorns are sold out.
Adam L Silverman
@wjs: He has his own reasons for not wanting anyone to talk about what happens in Moscow.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: No. Barr told Hugh Hewitt yesterday on the latter’s radio show that he expects it will be completed and that any indictments made shortly before the election.
Adam L Silverman
@StringOnAStick: I do not.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: Interesting. Isn’t there a DOJ policy about doing things during an election campaign?
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: Barr made it clear that as far as he knows and is concerned none of the potential targets are candidates or close to the candidates, so it’s fine. He’s using the “they’re more like guidelines really” approach to the rules in the US Attorney’s Manual.
Ohio Mom
Redshift: I imagine that for your Senator Mark Warner and the other Democrats on the committee, working on this series of reports reminds them of all the group projects of their youthful schooling, when half the kids in the group didn’t do their share and the other half did twice as much work because they cared about their grade.
Jean
@Redshift: I agree! He’s done a great job and continues to do so.
Geminid
@Redshift: of course with his recent stock sales Senator Richard Burr’s name is “Mudd.” And I know that in general anytime anyone says anything at all good about any Republican people here start grabbing their pitchforks. But Richard Burr, unlike every other Senate committee chair, did his duty in this investigation. He could have stonewalled it, would have had the support of the Intelligence Committee majority, and all Ranking Minority Member Warner could have done was complain. I am reminded of another instance when Burr broke ranks with his party: in the lame duck session in the fall of 2010, legislation to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell” and allow open military service by gay people finally made it to a vote in the Senate and passed. Burr was one of the handful of Republicans who voted for the rights of gay service members. The others, like Collins of Maine, were from the Northeast or Midwest, but Burr was from socially conservative North Carolina. NC is also home to Army Fort Bragg and Marine Camp Lejeune, and at the time I wondered what he had learned from his military constituents.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
Thread is probably dead at this point, but I agree with Geminid at #45. Burr tried to do something, unlike the rest of the Rs. If anyone can disabuse me of this idea, I’d be happy to learn more.
Second point is that Durham is, from what I’ve heard, fairly honest. He may find some faults with procedural issues, as is inevitable with every bureaucratic process (eg. FISA applications) but on the whole, this should be no different from Horowitz. Again, any thoughts?