Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency should have been included, particularly since it has considerable expertise on the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence agency, which has been blamed for Russian hacking of the DNC emails. <\/p>\n
But DIA, too, has an independent streak and, in fact, is capable of reaching judgments Clapper would reject as anathema. Just one year before Clapper decided to do the rump \u201cIntelligence Community Assessment,\u201d DIA had formally blessed the following heterodox idea in its \u201cDecember 2015 National Security Strategy\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Any further questions as to why the Defense Intelligence Agency was kept away from the ICA drafting table?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Handpicked Analysts<\/b><\/p>\n
With help from the Times <\/i>and other mainstream media, Clapper, mostly by his silence, was able to foster the charade that the ICA was actually a bonafide product of the entire intelligence community for as long as he could get away with it. After four months it came time to fess up <\/a>that the ICA had not been prepared, as Secretary Clinton and the media kept claiming, by \u201call 17 intelligence agencies.\u201d <\/p>\n In fact, Clapper went one better, proudly asserting – with striking naivet\u00e9 – that the ICA writers were \u201chandpicked analysts\u201d from only the F.B.I., C.I.A., and NSA. He may have thought that this would enhance the ICA\u2019s credibility. It is a no-brainer, however, that when you want handpicked answers, you better handpick the analysts. And so he did.<\/p>\n Why is no one interested in the identities of the handpicked analysts and the hand-pickers? After all, we have the names of the chief analysts\/managers responsible for the fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 that greased the skids for the war on Iraq. Listed in the NIE itself are the principal analyst Robert D. Walpole and his chief assistants Paul Pillar, Lawrence K. Gershwin and Maj. Gen. John R. Landry.<\/p>\n The Overlooked Disclaimer<\/b><\/p>\n Buried in an inside page of the Times <\/i>on Jan. 7, 2017 was a cautionary paragraph in an analysis<\/a> by reporter Scott Shane. It seems he had read the ICA all the way through, and had taken due note of the derriere-protecting caveats included in the strangely cobbled together report. Shane had to wade through nine pages of drivel about \u201cRussia\u2019s Propaganda Efforts\u201d to reach Annex B with its curious disclaimer:<\/p>\n \u201cAssessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. \u2026 High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Small wonder, then, that Shane noted: \u201cWhat is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies\u2019 claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission…\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, Shane has evidently realized what side his bread is buttered on and has joined the ranks of Russiagate aficionados. Decades ago, he did some good reporting on such issues, so it was sad to see him decide to blend in with the likes of David Sanger and promote the NYT official Russia-gate narrative. An embarrassing feature<\/a>, \u201cThe Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far,\u201d that Shane wrote with NYT colleague Mark Mazzetti in September, is full of gaping holes, picked apart in two <\/a>pieces <\/a>by Consortium News<\/b><\/em>.<\/p>\n Shades of WMD<\/b><\/p>\n Sanger is one of the intelligence community\u2019s favorite go-to journalists. He was second only to the disgraced Judith Miller in promoting the canard of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003. For example, in a July 29, 2002 article<\/a>, \u201cUS Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option,\u201d co-written by Sanger and Thom Shanker, the existence of WMD in Iraq was stated as flat fact no fewer than seven times. <\/p>\n The Sanger\/Shanker article appeared just a week after then-CIA Director George Tenet confided <\/a>to his British counterpart that President George W. Bush had decided \u201cto remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.\u201d At that critical juncture, Clapper was in charge of the analysis of satellite imagery and hid the fact that the number of confirmed WMD sites in Iraq was zero.<\/p>\n Despite that fact and that his \u201cassessment\u201d has never been proven, Clapper continues to receive praise.<\/p>\n During a \u201cbriefing<\/a>\u201d I attended at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington several weeks ago [in 2018], Clapper displayed master circular reasoning, saying in effect, that the assessment had to be correct because that\u2019s what he and other intelligence directors told President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.<\/p>\n I got a chance to question him at the event. His disingenuous answers brought a painful flashback to one of the most shameful episodes in the annals of US intelligence analysis. <\/p>\n Ray McGovern:<\/strong> My name is Ray McGovern. Thanks for this book; it\u2019s very interesting [Ray holds up his copy of Clapper\u2019s memoir]. I\u2019m part of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. I\u2019d like to refer to the Russia problem, but first there\u2019s an analogy that I see here. You were in charge of imagery analysis before Iraq.<\/p>\n James Clapper:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n RM:<\/strong> You confess [in the book] to having been shocked that no weapons of mass destruction were found. And then, to your credit, you admit, as you say here [quotes from the book], \u201cthe blame is due to intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help [the administration make war on Iraq] that we found what wasn\u2019t really there.\u201d<\/p>\n Now fast forward to two years ago. Your superiors were hell bent on finding ways to blame Trump\u2019s victory on the Russians. Do you think that your efforts were guilty of the same sin here? Do you think that you found a lot of things that weren\u2019t really there? Because that\u2019s what our conclusion is, especially from the technical end. There was no hacking of the DNC; it was leaked, and you know that because you talked to NSA.<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> Well, I have talked with NSA a lot, and I also know what we briefed to then-President Elect Trump on the 6th of January. And in my mind, uh, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT [signals intelligence] business, the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There\u2019s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever. The Intelligence Community Assessment that we rendered that day, that was asked, tasked to us by President Obama – and uh – in early December, made no call whatsoever on whether, to what extent the Russians influenced the outcome of the election. Uh, the administration, uh, the team then, the President-Elect\u2019s team, wanted to say that – that we said that the Russian interference had no impact whatsoever on the election. And I attempted, we all did, to try to correct that misapprehension as they were writing a press release before we left the room.<\/p>\n However, as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn\u2019t have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election.<\/p>\n RM:<\/strong> That\u2019s what The<\/em>New York Times<\/em> says. But let me say this: we have two former Technical Directors from NSA in our movement here, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; we also have forensics, okay?<\/p>\n Now the President himself, your President, President Obama said two days before he left town: The conclusions of the intelligence community – this is ten days after you briefed him – with respect to how WikiLeaks got the DNC emails are \u201cinconclusive\u201d end quote<\/em>. Now why would he say that if you had said it was conclusive?<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> I can\u2019t explain what he said or why. But I can tell you we\u2019re, we\u2019re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks<\/em> got those emails. I\u2019m not going to go into the technical details about why we believe that.<\/p>\n RM:<\/strong> We are too [pretty sure we know]; and it was a leak onto a thumb drive – gotten to Julian Assange – really simple. If you knew it, and the NSA has that information, you have a duty, you have a duty to confess to that, as well as to [Iraq].<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> Confess to what?<\/p>\n RM:<\/strong> Confess to the fact that you\u2019ve been distorting the evidence.<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> I don\u2019t confess to that.<\/p>\n RM:<\/strong> The Intelligence Community Assessment was without evidence.<\/p>\n JC:<\/strong> I do not confess to that. I simply do not agree with your conclusions.<\/p>\n William J. Burns<\/strong> (Carnegie President): Hey, Ray, I appreciate your question. I didn\u2019t want this to look like Jim Acosta in the White House grabbing microphones away. Thank you for the questioning though. Yes ma\u2019am [Burns recognizes the next questioner].<\/p>\n The above exchange can be seen starting at 28:45 in this video.<\/a><\/p>\n Not Worth His Salt<\/b><\/p>\n Having supervised intelligence analysis, including chairing National Intelligence Estimates, for three-quarters of my 27-year career at CIA, my antennae are fine-tuned for canards. And so, at Carnegie, when Clapper focused on the rump analysis masquerading as an \u201cIntelligence Community Assessment,\u201d the scent of the duck came back strongly. <\/p>\n Intelligence analysts worth their salt give very close scrutiny to sources, their possible agendas, and their records for truthfulness. Clapper flunks on his own record, including his performance before the Iraq war – not to mention his giving sworn testimony to Congress that he had to admit was \u201cclearly erroneous,\u201d when documents released by Edward Snowden proved him a perjurer. At Carnegie, the questioner who followed me brought that up and asked, \u201cHow on earth did you keep your job, Sir?\u201d<\/p>\n The next questioner, a former manager of State Department intelligence, posed another salient question: Why, he asked, was State Department intelligence excluded from the \u201cIntelligence Community Assessment\u201d?<\/p>\n Among the dubious reasons Clapper gave was the claim, \u201cWe only had a month, and so it wasn\u2019t treated as a full-up National Intelligence Estimate where all 16 members of the intelligence community would pass judgment on it.\u201d Clapper then tried to spread the blame around (\u201cThat was a deliberate decision that we made and that I agreed with\u201d), but as director of national intelligence the decision was his.<\/p>\n Given the questioner\u2019s experience in the State Department\u2019s intelligence, he was painfully aware of how quickly a \u201cfull-up NIE\u201d can be prepared. He knew all too well that the October 2002 NIE, \u201cIraq\u2019s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction,\u201d was ginned up in less than a month, when Cheney and Bush wanted to get Congress to vote for war on Iraq. (As head of imagery analysis, Clapper signed off on that meretricious estimate, even though he knew no WMD sites had been confirmed in Iraq.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s in the Russians\u2019 DNA<\/b><\/p>\n The criteria Clapper used to handpick his own assistants are not hard to divine. An Air Force general in the mold of Curtis LeMay, Clapper knows all about \u201cthe Russians.\u201d And he does not like them, not one bit. During an interview <\/a>with NBC on May 28, 2017, Clapper referred to \u201cthe historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.\u201d And just before I questioned him at Carnegie, he muttered, \u201cIt\u2019s in their DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n Even those who may accept Clapper\u2019s bizarre views about Russian genetics still lack credible proof that (as the ICA concludes \u201cwith high confidence\u201d) Russia\u2019s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created a \u201cpersona\u201d called Guccifer 2.0 to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee. When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the G.R.U. \u201crelayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks,\u201d the assessment said.<\/p>\n At Carnegie, Clapper cited \u201cforensics.\u201d But forensics from where? To his embarrassment, then-FBI Director James Comey, for reasons best known to him, chose not to do forensics on the \u201cRussian hack\u201d of the DNC computers, preferring to rely on a computer outfit of tawdry reputation hired by the DNC. Moreover, there is zero indication that the drafters of the ICA had any reliable forensics to work with.<\/p>\n In contrast, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, working with independent forensic investigators, examined <\/a>metadata from a July 5, 2016 DNC intrusion that was alleged to be a \u201chack.\u201d However, the metadata showed a transfer speed far exceeding the capacity of the Internet at the time. Actually, all the speed turned out to be precisely what a thumb drive could accommodate, indicating that what was involved was a copy onto an external storage device and not a hack – by Russia or anyone else.<\/p>\n WikiLeaks<\/em> had obtained the DNC emails earlier. On June 12, 2016 Julian Assange announced he had \u201cemails relating to Hillary Clinton.\u201d NSA appears to lack any evidence that those emails – the embarrassing ones showing that the DNC cards were stacked against Bernie Sanders – were hacked.<\/p>\n Since NSA\u2019s dragnet coverage scoops up everything on the Internet, NSA or its partners can, and do trace all hacks. In the absence of evidence that the DNC was hacked, all available factual evidence indicates that earlier in the spring of 2016, an external storage device like a thumb drive was used in copying the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks<\/em>.<\/p>\n