Today CNN reporters dropped a bit of a bombshell.
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN...
The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN...
The Russian intelligence was just a small part of the collection of documents in the binder, described as being 10 inches thick and containing reams of information about the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
I want to focus on the part of the binder that contained "Russian intelligence" because I'm pretty sure that I know the source of that material. In the past, I've referred to it as the "Brennan dossier." Here's what Greg Miller wrote in his book The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy (emphasis mine).
In the months leading up to the 2016 election, senior [CIA] officials held a series of meetings...seeking to make sense of disconcerting reports that Moscow had mounted a covert operation to upend the U.S. presidential race.
By early August, the sense of alarm had become so acute that CIA Director John Brennan called White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “I need to get in to see the president,” Brennan said, with unusual urgency in his voice.
Brennan had just spent two days sequestered in his office reviewing a small mountain of material on Russia…There were piles of finished assessments, but Brennan had also ordered up what agency veterans call the “raw stuff” — unprocessed material from informants, listening devices, computer implants and other sources. Clearing his schedule, Brennan pored over all of it...
Brennan’s...call to the White House was driven by...extraordinary intelligence that had surfaced in late July and reached deep inside the Kremlin, showing that Putin was himself directing an “active measures” operation aimed not only at disrupting the U.S. presidential race but electing Trump.
Some of the material Brennan reviewed probably came from our allies, as The Guardian reported back in 2017.
GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.
Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said...
The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.
Miller and his colleagues at the Washington Post documented what happened next.
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
As the latest CNN report noted, this was the intelligence that informed the "government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election."
When former Attorney General Bill Barr initiated the Durham investigation, an attempt was made to blame the so-called "Russian hoax" on Brennan. As an example, here's what Margot Cleveland wrote about that at The Federalist:
The evidence suggests that the CIA and intelligence community—including potentially the intelligence communities of the UK, Italy, and Australia—created the contacts and interactions [between Russian agents and the Trump campaign] that they then reported to the FBI as suspicious…
These are the questions Barr and Durham should be asking themselves to arrive at the bottom line: Were the Russia connections contrived by the CIA, and was Brennan the plotter-in-chief hoping to prevent a President Trump—or to destroy him later?
In the end, Durham came up with nothing on Brennan - so he simply smeared Hillary Clinton in a not-so-veiled attempt to blame her for the whole thing.
Today we learned that when Trump left the White House, the Brennan dossier - with all of its raw intelligence data - disappeared. Nine months later, the CIA was reporting that a concerning number of U.S. informants were being captured and executed. We can only hope that the two events are not connected.
For his part, Brennan - who served under three different presidents - made his views about Trump's relationship with Putin perfectly clear back in 2018.
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018
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