The U.S. government said in January 2017 that Russia favored Trump as president. But now, sources reveal for the first time that the CIA "cooked the intelligence" to hide that Vladamir Putin wanted Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, as president. 
CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016, Sources Say
The Russians didn't fear a Hillary Clinton presidency. “It was a relationship they were comfortable with,” CIA analysts believed
by @mtaibbi @Shellenberger and @galexybrane
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Russia's far eastern port city Vladivostok on September 8, 2012. Australian AFP PHOTO / POOL (Photo credit should read MIKHAIL METZEL/AFP/GettyImages)
It was all a lie.
The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal launch on January 6th, 2017, when the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper published what’s called an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or “ICA,” as it’s universally known in Washington.
Release of the ICA dominated headlines, fixed Donald Trump in the minds of millions of Americans as a Manchurian candidate controlled by Vladamir Putin, and upended his in-coming administration.
The report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton and “harm her electability,” thanks to their “clear preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump.”
It was powerful stuff. And it was dead wrong.
“They cooked the intelligence,” says a source close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia scandal, whose full findings are being blocked from release. “They made it look like Putin supported Trump,” the source added. “The evidence points the other way.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan and the ICA authors “embellished” their conclusion by upgrading unreliable sources to reliable, the source said. “They upgraded in the writing of their report to let those sources have more credibility and a higher rating. We caught them on 3-4 items where those people didn’t have a credible historic reporting line and changed the source rating for that Brennan report.”
Dissent, even within Brennan’s group of 24 “hand-picked” analysts — not from 17 agencies but just four, and really just three, when one considers the ODNI is just a coordinating agency — was overruled.
The House investigators, who worked out of a “small room in Langley” and had broad access to classified documentation and witnesses from the CIA and other agencies, found U.S. intelligence analysts had “a lot of stuff about the Russians calling Trump ‘mercurial,’ ‘unreliable,’ and ‘not steady.’”
On the other hand, Russians apparently saw Hillary as “manageable and reflecting continuity. It was a relationship they were comfortable with….there was no real evidence that Russia supported Trump. They were trying to make this bizarre case.”
The effort to manufacture the Intelligence Community claim that Russians had a “clear preference” for Trump was led by CIA Director Brennan, whom sources also implicate in an unprecedented effort to place more than two dozen Trump aides and associates under surveillance prior to the election.
“We looked at the report and the sourcing they used to evaluate the sourcing, and then we dug further to look at the data available to them that they didn’t use, and it overwhelmingly contradicted their conclusions that Russia supported Trump....”
The Russians didn't fear a Hillary Clinton presidency. “It was a relationship they were comfortable with,” CIA analysts believed
by @mtaibbi @Shellenberger and @galexybrane
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Russia's far eastern port city Vladivostok on September 8, 2012. Australian AFP PHOTO / POOL (Photo credit should read MIKHAIL METZEL/AFP/GettyImages)
It was all a lie.
The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal launch on January 6th, 2017, when the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper published what’s called an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or “ICA,” as it’s universally known in Washington.
Release of the ICA dominated headlines, fixed Donald Trump in the minds of millions of Americans as a Manchurian candidate controlled by Vladamir Putin, and upended his in-coming administration.
The report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton and “harm her electability,” thanks to their “clear preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump.”
It was powerful stuff. And it was dead wrong.
“They cooked the intelligence,” says a source close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia scandal, whose full findings are being blocked from release. “They made it look like Putin supported Trump,” the source added. “The evidence points the other way.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan and the ICA authors “embellished” their conclusion by upgrading unreliable sources to reliable, the source said. “They upgraded in the writing of their report to let those sources have more credibility and a higher rating. We caught them on 3-4 items where those people didn’t have a credible historic reporting line and changed the source rating for that Brennan report.”
Dissent, even within Brennan’s group of 24 “hand-picked” analysts — not from 17 agencies but just four, and really just three, when one considers the ODNI is just a coordinating agency — was overruled.
The House investigators, who worked out of a “small room in Langley” and had broad access to classified documentation and witnesses from the CIA and other agencies, found U.S. intelligence analysts had “a lot of stuff about the Russians calling Trump ‘mercurial,’ ‘unreliable,’ and ‘not steady.’”
On the other hand, Russians apparently saw Hillary as “manageable and reflecting continuity. It was a relationship they were comfortable with….there was no real evidence that Russia supported Trump. They were trying to make this bizarre case.”
The effort to manufacture the Intelligence Community claim that Russians had a “clear preference” for Trump was led by CIA Director Brennan, whom sources also implicate in an unprecedented effort to place more than two dozen Trump aides and associates under surveillance prior to the election.
“We looked at the report and the sourcing they used to evaluate the sourcing, and then we dug further to look at the data available to them that they didn’t use, and it overwhelmingly contradicted their conclusions that Russia supported Trump....”
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https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1758218146887213104?s=20
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