Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe Reveal Putin “Was Counting on” a Trump Win
It’s funny, reading the two rehashes of the 2017 ICA that John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard released in the last weeks.
There are parallels and common judgments between them (probably in part because the CIA one was limited to “CIA materials provided to congressional oversight investigations”). Both say the confidence level for the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the election was too high. Both say John Brennan big-footed the process in a problematic way. Both complain about the short timeline. Both complain that “the highest classified version of the ICA had been shared with more than 200 US officials;” neither acknowledge that that was neither anticipated nor, presumably, the fault of Obama appointees, who were long-gone by the time Trump’s appointees disseminated it that broadly (and in fact other documents Tulsi released suggest that ICA drafters intentionally planned a less-classified version to be disseminated at that level, to avoid the problem Trump’s appointees complain about). Both complain about how the Steele dossier was added as an appendix, though (as I’ll show in a follow-up) they’re inconsistent about how they claim it was.
But there are differences. the document from Ratcliffe — who released the first of the SRV documents contemporaneously with the HPSCI report that obsessed about them — doesn’t appear to mention them at all.
The two reports treat three pieces of intelligence on which the “aspired” judgment was based differently (the CIA one may not treat one of the HPSCI complaints at all). As I’ll note in my main post on the HPSCI report, CIA treats one document that HPSCI considers problematic as reliable but compartmented in a way that made inclusion problematic.
Perhaps the most interesting detail you get from reading both in tandem pertains to one phrase in a document about which “a senior CIA operations officer observed, ‘We don’t know what was meant by that’ and ‘five people read it five ways,'” basically, about whether that phrase hade been read the correct way. As of a few weeks ago, in Ratcliffe’s report, the CIA was still trying to protect this intelligence, but not Tulsi. She declassified most of four pages of discussion about the phrase, with information about the access — the source was well-established, had authoritative access to something but second-hand access to this information, but for some reason the CIA was not able to clarify what the source meant by the phrase. The HPSCI Report complains that the ICA didn’t note that this person had an “anti-Trump bias” (emphasis original).
And Tulsi declassified what the intelligence said (even though she hadn’t in the less classified version of the ICA she had released a day earlier).
Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails in July] after he had come to believe that the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [Trump], whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.
The HPSCI memo goes on to complain that Brennan included this. It invents a number of other readings this could have meant, besides that Putin wanted to help Trump win. Maybe Putin expected Trump to win, in July 2016 when no one else did? Maybe Putin counted on a Trump win at the RNC? They even tried to undermine the intelligence by claiming that all the things Putin did to tamper in the election could have served the other goals he also had.
None of the confirmed activities — leaks, public statements, social media messaging, and traditional propaganda — corroborate the ICA interpretation of the fragment, because these activities were all consistent with Putin’s objectives to undermine faith in US democracy, without regard for candidate Trump’s fate.
Putin approved the DNC leak because he was counting on Trump to win, the fragment said, and HPSCI Republicans want to believe that maybe Putin just wanted to undermine faith in democracy.
Well, anyway, as I said, Ratcliffe didn’t declassify any of that. He did send analysts back to review the underlying intelligence, and here’s what they said.
The DA Review examined the underlying raw intelligence and confirmed that the clause was accurately represented in the serialized report, and that the ICA authors’ interpretation of its meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence.
And Ratcliffe also backs the quality of the source behind this claim.
The DA Review does not dispute the quality and credibility of the highly classified CIA serialized report that the ICA authors relied on to drive the “aspired” judgment.
So between them, Tulsi and Ratcliffe provided us something genuinely new. According to a reliable but ambiguous intelligence fragment, CIA got intelligence that said Putin approved the DNC leak “because he was counting on” Trump’s victory.
Update: I’ve fixed the quotation mark in the title: just the “counting on” is a direct quote.
Links
A Dossier Steal: HPSCI Expertly Discloses Their Own Shoddy Cover-Up
Think of the HPSCI Report as a Time Machine to Launder Donald Trump’s Russia Russia Russia Claims
Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe Reveal Putin “Was Counting on” a Trump Win
Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up with Russian Spies to Wiretap and Unmask Hillary Clinton
The Secrets about Russia’s Influence Operation that Tulsi Gabbard Is Still Keeping from Us
Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Kash Patel of Covering Up for the Obama Deep State
Thank you, EW, for such a careful reading of the documents released by Ratcliffe and Gabbard over the past month. The ICA report says Putin made his decision to intervene in the US elections in “the summer of 2016” (pp. 84 and 88) and the CIA Note says “July” (p.3). For Putin’s hopeful aspirations to become countings of future election wins, the Russians needed a willing Trump campaign to take advantage of the prior hacks and stolen data. Two dates from that summer of 2016 stand out about the Trump campaign’s willingness to turn Putin’s aspirations into countings: June 9, when Don Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met the Russians at Trump Tower, and the July 27 news conference, when Trump said, “Russia, if you are listening…”
I feel like I am having Déjà vu with the news cycles as these fools try to retcon the past over and over until it fits their narrative.
I really appreciate you staying on top of the facts.
I so agree.
That is their attention.
Rehash after rehash, ad infinitum
An alternative possibility is that Putin could skew some(?) vote counts to assure victory but Trump and Putin had to make it a sufficiently close race to make Trump “winning” the race plausible.
We know that (later) Dominion was contimuously slandered about the security of their voting machines. Was the underlying purpose of that slander to drive election officials to favor the (compromised?) voting machines of Dominion’s competitors?
One concerning aspect of how the OBBB was crafted and voted on in congress is that the party in power essentially shafted a significant portion of their own constituents, with seemingly no concern as to the repercussions at the next elections. Do they know something that we don’t?
I want to note that of all the comments published up to yours, there weren’t targeted troll attacks.
This ^^ comment drew a troll attacking Democrats though the comment never mentions Democrats. What about this comment is different?
“Maybe Putin expected Trump to win, in July 20216 when no one else did?”
Oh, no! We’re still going to be dealing with these fools in 18,000 years!? This is truly the dumbest timeline.
Trump’s intelligence people concede “Putin’s [2016] objectives to undermine faith in US democracy,” but seem desperate to sever that from objective from Dear Leader, concluding that Putin pursued this “without regard for candidate Trump’s fate.” Yeah, right.
Leaving aside Putin’s known animus for Hillary Clinton, this conclusion not only denigrates Putin’s intelligence (in both senses) but that of whatever audience they’re dumping this garbage before. Because even in 2016 (I remember; I was there) Trump already grumped about not recognizing election results he didn’t like; he already accused primary opponents of cheating; he was already threatening to pursue profoundly anti-democratic policies upon election.
Any autocrat wishing to undermine US democracy would rejoice at the nomination of Donald Trump as GOP candidate, and back his candidacy to the fullest extent possible. Only Trump’s vast and now-dementing narcissism has turned this obvious conclusion into anything contested as a “hoax.” The collusion in one anti-democratic crisis after another of the party that once reviled Trump is Putin’s reward for the best long game of his KBG career.
I find Putin’s stance towards Trump fascinating and have begun to suspect 2016 wasn’t so much about electing Trump but trying to keep Hillary Clinton out of the oval office.
In 2016 Trump was a useful idiot; now he’s not so useful.
And at some point Trump will stop being useful, or no longer worth carrying, for the people who over the last 4 years harnessed his sociopathy to their christian nationalist Project 25 ends. Trump knows this. Vance knows this. They can 25-47 any time they like.
Off topic , I now but I follow you on Twitter and I’m not seeing your posts !
Is it personal …lol
Thanx Ben
Twitter?
What year do you think this is, Mr. Van Winkle? ;)
You must be new here, they were being polite.
People here often call it “Xitter” using the Chinese pronounciation, it pronounced “shitter”. Marcy originally came up with this.
Refusing to call it ‘X’ is just a way of giving it the disrespect it so richly deserves.
Me? heh.
I’ve been here long enough to know Dr. Wheeler doesn’t post at Elmo’s Nazi bar, whatever you want to call it.
I guess he hasn’t heard about Bluesky, which is where a lot of people went.
You can find Marcy at https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social.
She also cross posts to Mastodon using a bridge; you can find her there at: https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]
Great read. Thank you.
I note the obvious about this document that it was a “political” review of intelligence products. It puts on a fig-life stating that they used ICD 203 Analytic Standards. One standard is to “Incorporate analysis of alternatives”. Voicing alternative viewpoints is a technique to avoid group-think. The IC also uses a method called “Structured Analytic Technique” which also counts on differing viewpoints to minimize bias. Some of the content of this document looks cherry-picked from those divergent viewpoints. As much as this document reveals, I wouldn’t trust it to be a true representation of facts or consensus thinking.
I’ll bet that somewhere at ODNI there is a comprehensive assessment of the 2016 election. This document seems to be limited to HUMINT. Other intelligence disciplines, e.g. signals intelligence, could shed light on the veracity of the HUMINT.
A fig-life would be what—roughly 2 seasons long?
Half-life of a fig measured in units of leaf decay.
There was reporting by The Guardian in 2021 that Putin authorized Russian government interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in a closed session of Russia’s national security council on January 22nd, 2016. Apparently all of his spy chiefs were there, Trump was called “mentally unstable” and the Russian agencies were charged to use “all possible force” to achieve the objectives of creating “social turmoil” in the U.S. and weakening America’s international bargaining positions. [Seems pretty on-the-mark, in retrospect.] I am just going to leave this link here without further comment:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house
This post and its comments has now drawn trolls attacking specific comments. Usually trolls are a bit more scattershot.
One went after Patrick (G)’s comment; another went after Joberly1954’s comment.
Both trolls mention Democrats even though the two comments don’t mention Democrats. Both comments targeted discuss Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Both trolls used IP addresses inside the US. Does this suggest an influence operation — including Tulsi Gabbard’s cherry-picked distortion of intelligence — is under way to manipulate MAGA and change the subject from the Epstein files to attacks on Democrats?
ADDER: Yet another troll arrived to snipe on Joberly1954’s comment. There’s a consistency between these attacks —
— the use of word “collusion”
— blaming Democrats, singular and collectively
— claims of lies, falseness, dishonesty
And a pointed avoidance of the post’s topic, Trump’s relationship to Epstein and how it spawned the sloppy retcon disinformation campaign by Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe.
I don’t think you need a question mark.
I wonder what phrases they’re triggering on. Maybe “Dominion”, “June 9”, “July 27”, and “Russia, if you’re listening”.
I wish we could set up a tarpit full of bait to keep them busy.