Thread by @DariusVolket

According to the newspaper, in the summer of 2016, CIA Director John Brennan convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.” bit.ly/2JVvupy via @BreitbartNews

The Post described the unit as so secretive it functioned as a “sealed compartment” hidden even from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; a unit whose workers were all made to sign additional non-disclosure forms.

The unit reported to top officials, the Post documented:

They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their ...

...subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.
The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, The Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved: Brennan, Director of ...

...National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey. Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings, The Post stated.
Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others. Agendas sent to...

... Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon — arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open. Sometimes the agendas were withheld until participants had taken their seats in the Situation Room.

Adding another layer of secrecy, the newspaper reported that when the closed Cabinet sessions on Russia began in the White House Situation Room in August, the video feed from the main room was cut off during the meetings.

The feed, which allows only for video and not audio, is usually kept on so that senior aides can see when a meeting takes place.
The blacked-out screens were seen as an ominous sign among lower-level White House officials who were largely kept in the dark about the Russia ...

...deliberations even as they were tasked with generating options for retaliation against Moscow.
The compartmentalization may help to explain why it was only Brennan’s CIA, Comey’s FBI and the NSA that penned the January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report alleging ...

...Russian interference in the presidential race. Numerous news media reports originally falsely claimed the report was authored by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.