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Thursday, February 13, 2020

NYT To The Defense!

Of the CIA. Who'd ya think?

Just out this evening, a major NYT story all about John Durham's wrongheaded investigation of the CIA's role in propagating the Russia Hoax. And, of course, central to Durham's inquiry is the whole question of the Intel Community Assessment (ICA) that claimed Russia pervasively "meddled" in the 2016 election:

Justice Dept. Is Investigating C.I.A. Resistance to Sharing Russia Secrets
The prosecutor was assigned by the attorney general to scrutinize the agents and analysts who sought to understand Russia’s covert operation to help Donald J. Trump win the 2016 election.

There's actually some useful information about the direction Durham's investigation is taking, once you get past the disinformation. You can also see how complex it is. Some highlights:

A federal prosecutor may be investigating whether Mr. Brennan had preconceived notions about Russia and hid intelligence from other agencies.

WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry.
Note that--"Moscow's covert operation," as if it's a known fact. And "Trump administration officials." Durham is a career prosecutor, not an official of any particular administration.
Questions asked by Mr. Durham ... suggest that Mr. Durham may have come to view with suspicion several clashes between analysts at different intelligence agencies over who could see each other’s highly sensitive secrets, the people said.
Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular resultand was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said.
 Durham sounds like an intelligent guy.
But officials from the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency have told Mr. Durham and his investigators that such an interpretation is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions, the people said. National security officials are typically cautious about sharing their most delicate information, like source identities, even with other agencies inside the executive branch.
...
The Durham investigation has rattled current and former intelligence officers. Little precedent exists for a criminal prosecutor to review the analytic judgment-making process of intelligence agencies, said Michael Morrell, a former acting C.I.A. director who left the government in 2013.
...
But other intelligence officials, according to an American official, are reserving judgment about Mr. Durham, who previously spent years investigating the C.I.A. over its torture program and its destruction of interrogation videotapes without charging anyone with a crime. Two detainees died in the agency’s custody.
Mr. Durham is a longtime federal prosecutor who has repeatedly been asked, under administrations of both parties, to investigate accusations of wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Mr. Trump appointed him as the United States attorney for Connecticut in 2018. 
The Justice Department has declined to talk about Mr. Durham’s work in meaningful detail, but he has been said to be interested in how the intelligence community came up with its analytical judgments — including its assessment that Russia was not merely sowing discord, but specifically sought to help Mr. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. 
... 
Mr. Durham’s questions shed additional light on where he may be going.
In recent months, Mr. Durham and his team have examined emails among a small group of intelligence analysts from multiple agencies, including the C.I.A., F.B.I. and National Security Agency, who worked together to assess the Russian operation. Investigators have interviewed those analysts and their supervisors about the motivations behind several episodes in which some sought access to delicate information from the other agencies and were told — initially, at least — that they could not see it. 
One fight, they said, concerned the identity and placement of a C.I.A. source inside the Kremlin. Analysts at the National Security Agency wanted to know more about him to weigh the credibility of his information. The C.I.A. was initially reluctant to share details about the Russian’s identity but eventually relented.

But officials disagreed about how much weight to give the source’s information, ...
...
Mr. Durham has interviewed F.B.I. officials and agents who worked on the bureau’s Russia investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, and for the special counsel who took over the inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III. They have also interviewed C.I.A. analysts.
Mr. Durham and his team also interviewed around a half-dozen current and former officials and analysts at the National Security Agency, including its former director, the retired Adm. Michael S. Rogers, last summer and again last fall. The Intercept first reported the interviews of Admiral Rogers.
But Mr. Durham has not interviewed the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, his onetime deputy Andrew G. McCabe or Mr. Brennan. Mr. Durham has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A. to learn what he told other officials, including Mr. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.
...

23 comments:

  1. Roscoe Davis' take

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1228121803316453381.html

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    Replies
    1. He's got some good sources there, if it's even half correct--and he doesn't go off half cocked as far as I can tell. I figured this was about the big picture conspiracy, and that seems to be it.

      The stuff about Powers and Brennan sharing the datasets was quite fascinating. Also about the stolen messages.

      The conclusion is point on:

      "This makes Rudy taking down the five families in NYC look like arresting the girl scouts."

      It's also part of what's behind Barr's reaction today--they're working as hard and as fast as they can, but this is some complicated stuff.

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    2. I wonder if one key passage there is a typo:
      "But intelligence people in the know, that are honest realize Durham is NOW rookie at dealing with the spooks."
      Does he mean "NO rookie"?

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    3. Yes. I suppose I can fix that for them.

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    4. Davis's comment about the woman that destroyed the enhanced interrogation tapes is, of course, Gina Haspel, now CIA Director.

      >>I'm hearing Powers was hand delivering datasets to foreign people outside FVEY. Her claim of she didn't unmask to 328 people in 2016, is falling short. The three part authentication is hard to fake for a reason. <<

      This is the "weak link," IMHO -- the person Durham should squeeze until she sings like canary, and gives up who told her to do it. If she's lied to investigators about the unmaskings, they have her dead to rights on a 1001 charge, among many other things. Use it to squeeze her until she becomes a cooperating witness and proffers the whole story to stay out of jail for the rest of her sorry life.

      There is so much juicy stuff in that article I can hardly keep track of all of it.

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    5. That's some "thread" tying it all together! I'd say there's not much that is new, except that Davis presents a clear picture of the pace, process, and direction of the investigation, which is extremely clarifying. There were/are so many pieces to this hoax/coup enterprise by people motivated by their political partisanship "doing their part," that it's not so much a conspiracy (agreement), as a concerted effort by those sharing a belief (stopping Trump), with a wink and a nod.

      If they want to prosecute a conspiracy, they probably have to start with FusionGPS, where the enterprise started by creating a narrative that eventually "leaks" to media who will run 24/7 stories about Trump and Russia such that Trump loses, Trump resigns, Trump is impeached, and/or Trump is handcuffed for four years.

      Like Dan Rather's gambit in 2004, "Fake, but true," this replay went much further, played out much longer, was much harder to debunk, yet, just as fake--except government (FBI/DOJ/CIA) was co-opted into running the hoax, instead of a fake document.

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    6. Count on it--Durham is scrutinizing DoJ and FBI interaction with the Hillary campaign in toto re the Russia Hoax--her lawyers (Sussman, et al.), her oppo research (Fusion, Simpson, Steele, Ohr), and everything and everyone related.

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  2. Interesting thread - the so called Russian asset I think has an unlisted # and is known...

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    Replies
    1. For sure he's living openly in the US, no new identity or any of the usual stuff.

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    2. "They have kept him from Durham and his investigators."
      How can they possibly get away with that, and we have any hope, that Durham can do anything worthwhile vs. the D.S.?

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  3. If he's living openly in the US, it means he doesn't know anything that the Russkies are worried about him sharing with the US. Some source, eh?

    This was Brennan's special source, or should I say "special sauce." Like most of the Steele Dossier, the guy probably told Brennan whatever he thought Brennan wanted.

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  4. "Mr. Durham has not interviewed the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, his onetime deputy Andrew G. McCabe or Mr. Brennan."

    Targets.

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    Replies
    1. Yes. But at this point I suspect he's looking for ways to get past them, to the WH.

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    2. If I was younger I'd go to DC and start stringing crime scene tape around O's house/neighborhood and post it to internet.

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  5. One way is right through them.

    Find. Fix. Flank... Finish.

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  6. Took me a while to find where I read this. NY Times must think we are fools. Oleg Smolenkov is the spy's name.

    The Sketchy Russian Spy Exfiltration Story…
    Posted on September 10, 2019 Conservative Treehouse

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  7. He wants to get into the WH? I know how to do it.

    ;-)

    Pardon Joe Biden!

    Then haul his ass in-front of a Grand Jury and asked him to spill the beans. He cannot refuse to answer, because his criminal liability was eliminated by the pardon, and hence the 5th Amendment is not available to him.

    His answers must be truthful, or he risks prosecution for perjury, which is not covered by the pardon, because it only applies to past crimes.

    "Sing, or swing.?"

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  8. On one of my blogs, I have published an article titled The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier.

    In this article, I speculate that CIA officials familiar with the CIA-Smolenkov relationship must have recognized indications in the Dossier that Steele seemed to be receiving information similar to the information that the CIA was receiving from Smolenkov.

    In particular, much such information described activities within the Kremlin's so-called Presidential Administration. The CIA's informant Oleg Smolenkov worked for Yuri Ushakov, a member of that Presidential Administration. Eight reports in Steele's Dossier report activities in the Presidential Administration.

    My article speculates about implications from the CIA's recognition of the Dossier's reporting about Presidential Administration.

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    Replies
    1. I figured you'd pick up on that.

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    2. All contingent upon the ridiculous notion that an accomplished former KGB agent who operated in the DDR was openly discussing what would be one of the most closely guarded state secrets in Russian history.

      Did former "not such a hotshot MI6 agent" Steele include reports of pigs observed flying over the Kremlin?

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    3. Exactly. One of his "sub-sources" supposedly has personal knowledge of those pig sightings.

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