Thread by @NatashaBertrand

NEWS, and a thread: The CIA has made it harder for intel about Russia to reach the White House, stoking fears among officials that info is being suppressed to appease Trump. Dir. Gina Haspel also has a very contentious relationship w/CIA’s Russia House.
politico.com/news/2020/09/2…

In an “unprecedented” move, in the words of one former CIA lawyer, Haspel last year, around the time of impeachment, tasked CIA’s general counsel Courtney Elwood with reviewing virtually every product that comes out of Russia House before it goes to the White House.

Elwood has a very close working relationship with John Eisenberg, the NSC’s top lawyer. Recall that Elwood called Eisenberg last year to inform him of the CIA whistleblower complaint about Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian president Zelensky.

Another former CIA official said Elwood has showed “a lot more interest” in CIA’s counterintel unit than previous general counsels, and had that unit’s attorney begin reporting to her deputy. “No one is willing to challenge” Elwood or Haspel, said the former senior CIA official.

Coming back to Russia House: Haspel’s scrutiny of intelligence coming out of that unit has led to some recent dust-ups. The head of Russia House was fired earlier this year. Another analyst there quit earlier this year after Haspel accused him of lying about intelligence.

Haspel actually accuses analysts of purposefully misleading her fairly often, several former officials said. “She calls analysts liars all the time,” said one former CIA official.

More recently, Haspel “completely dismissed” Russia House analysts who brought her intelligence showing a correlation between Russia and the curious phenomenon of diplomats experiencing brain trauma, according to on US official w/knowledge of the episode.

Haspel then made some comments about needing to “clean out” Russia House. Another former official said she has raised disbanding it altogether.