The CIA inspector general has taken more than a year to clear the release of a House Intelligence Committee report that contradicts the key conclusion of the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to the former chief of staff of the National Security Council.
A separate, classified report holed up at the Office of the CIA Inspector General (IG) sheds damning light on the role then-CIA Director John Brennan played in the preparation of the report, former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz learned from House Intelligence Committee staff. A source familiar with the report’s fate would not deny that the report went to the office of the CIA IG.
The report states that Brennan overruled agency analysts who wanted to include strong intelligence in the assessment to show that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election, Fleitz says, citing conversations with House Intelligence Committee staffers. Brennan had also rejected analysts who wanted to strike weak intelligence from the report that suggested that Russia favored Trump, Fleitz said.
“So Brennan actually slanted this analysis, choosing anti-Trump intelligence and excluding anti-Clinton intelligence,” Fleitz told The Epoch Times.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee issued the report in August 2018 and submitted it to the CIA IG in the fall of 2018 to be cleared for public release, according to Fleitz. The former NSC chief of staff says that only the limited circle of GOP members on the intelligence committee had read the report.
In the section of the House Intelligence Committee’s public Russia report, which challenged the analytic tradecraft underlying the assessment that Russia favored Trump, the committee stated that it was “planning additional action regarding this information in early spring 2018.” A source familiar with the report told The Epoch Times, “We did do a classified report on the ICA.”
“I insisted that we bring it to the party, and I was agnostic as to whether it was footnoted in the document itself, put as an annex,” Comey told SSCI. “I have some recollection of talking to John Brennan, maybe at some point saying: I don’t really care, but I think it is relevant and so ought to be part of the consideration.”
The Senate report’s conclusions about the ICA clash with those reportedly in the classified House report. The SSCI found no issues with the process that led to the issuance of the ICA and found no witnesses to support the claim that the process was politicized.
“Every witness interviewed by the Committee stated that he or she saw no attempts or pressure to politicize the findings,” the SSCI report states.
Fleitz said he had personally reached out to acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell about releasing the House report. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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