Ex-CIA analysts say former Obama officials’ actions serve another blow to U.S. intel agencies

The intelligence community is taking another blow to its credibility, former CIA analysts say, after newly released declassified material alleges that top Obama administration officials deliberately misled the public into believing President Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. 

The newly released tranches of information, declassified by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and turned over as evidence to the Department of Justice for criminal referrals, show how much the intelligence community became politicized and weaponized against its opponents, starting with former President Obama and later former President Biden, analysts say.

Ms. Gabbard says top Obama administration officials manufactured a bogus intelligence report about Russian interference a month after the 2016 election, and that officials must be held accountable for using it to try to undermine the Trump administration.

These former Obama officials, Ms. Gabbard has said, include Mr. Obama himself, former National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper, former CIA Director John O. Brennan, and former FBI Director James B. Comey.

Mr. Brennan said after the report’s release that he has “lawyered up.”

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who spent nearly two decades with the spy agency, said he thinks “the whole thing really undermined the reputation of U.S. intelligence, not just CIA.”

“It made it look like it’s a big political game. There’s always some politics, but it was never as bad as it was until Trump became president,” he said, citing alleged partisan misuse of intelligence by then-Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, and Mr. Brennan. “There always [were] some guardrails that people wouldn’t cross, but they were all broken when Trump became president, and I still don’t think it’s recovered.”

Since making her announcement, Ms. Gabbard said intelligence community whistleblowers are “coming out of the woodwork” to deliver more about what happened.  

“We have whistleblowers … coming forward now, after we released these documents because there are people who were around, who were working within the intelligence community who are so disgusted by what happened,” Ms. Gabbard said recently on Fox News. “We’re starting to see some of them come out of the woodwork here because they, too, like you and I and the American people, want to see justice delivered.” 

Mr. Fleitz told The Washington Times that his friends in the IC “really despise Mr. Brennan.”

“I think he was a political hack who did a lot of damage to the agency, not just with this Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA], and with his promotion of the Steele dossier, [named after British MI6 officer Christopher Steele], but with years of political commentary on MSNBC attacking Trump,” he said. “As a former CIA officer, that’s just not done. It’s not dignified, and it really angered Trump, and it made Trump distrust American intelligence even more.”

The Washington Times reached out for comment from Mr. Brennan.

The FBI earlier this month launched criminal investigations into Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey over possible wrongdoing related to the Trump-Russia investigation, including alleged perjury to Congress.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe earlier this month sent evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate for potential prosecution.

The referral described Mr. Brennan’s and Mr. Comey’s interactions as a “conspiracy,” which could open up a wide range of potential prosecutorial options.

The Brennan investigation came following a report from the CIA that condemned the way intelligence agencies, including the CIA under Mr. Brennan, concluded that Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Ultimately, the report hit at the inclusion of the summary of the Steele dossier, a 2017 now-debunked report that made salacious allegations of misconduct and cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Ratcliffe report called the dossier “unsubstantiated” and said that using it “implicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment.”

Mr. Ratcliffe said the reason for the anomalies is that “agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy.”

The latest DNI declassified report, prepared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in 2020, was based on an investigation launched by then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, California Republican, and dated Sept. 18, 2020. Mr. Nunes is a close ally of Mr. Trump.

However, the public never saw the report because Democrats took control of the lower chamber by the time GOP staffers completed it, and Mr. Schiff became the committee chair. Instead, it stayed classified within the intelligence community.

Now declassifed, the committee’s report showed in the ICA of 2017 that Mr. Brennan pressured officials for the inclusion of the anti-Trump Steele dossier, despite knowing it was based on an “internet rumor.”

According to the report, the ICA was a “high-profile product ordered by the President [Mr. Obama], directed by senior IC agency heads, and created by just five CIA analysts, using one principal drafter.”

“Production of the ICA was subject to unusual directives from the President and senior political appointees, and particularly DCIA,” the report says. “The draft was not properly coordinated within CIA or the IC, ensuring it would be published without significant challenges to its conclusions.”

Mr. Brennan was key to having the right IC people in place to come to these conclusions. He initially served as an early national security campaign adviser to Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, and Mr. Obama later brought him into the administration as an aide within the National Security Council. By the time Mr. Obama entered his second term, he tapped Mr. Brennan to be the CIA director.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou told The Times that Mr. Brennan was “politicizing intelligence” if he overrode CIA analysts who told him there was never any Russian interference in the 2016 election but insisted on the conclusion that Russian interference happened anyway.

“We were always taught that that was absolutely forbidden. We could never ever do that. And then to … add insult to injury, the Steele dossier, the analysts said that they gave it no credibility at all,” he said. “And then [Mr. Brennan] demanded that they include it in the report. [The analysts] stood up to him and didn’t, and then he ended up ordering that it be attached as an appendix, again, politicizing the intelligence.”

Mr. Kiriakou said that Mr. Brennan’s rise to become Obama’s CIA director occurred after a wave of CIA retirements between 2006 and 2007.

“Half the people who retired went to the McCain campaign, half of the people went to the Hillary campaign. And for whatever reason, John [Brennan] was the only person that went to the Obama campaign,” Mr. Kiriakou said. “And so he became the guy on intelligence. And the rest is history.”

Mr. Fleitz said Mr. Brennan worked to prove his credentials with the Obama campaign and with Mr. Obama.

“It paid off for Obama, because when this intelligence committee assessment was commissioned by Obama,” he said, “there were five drafters all hand-chosen by Brennan, and the top guy was a partisan Obama staffer in the NSC, also chosen by Obama.”