[Peace-discuss] FW: Ray McGovern - A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate

[David Johnson]

A Look Back at Clapper’s Jan. 2017 ‘Assessment’ on Russia-gate


January 7, 2019 •
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/07/a-look-back-at-clappers-jan-2017-asse
ssment-on-russia-gate/#respond> 0 Comments\

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/07/a-look-back-at-clappers-jan-2017-asses
sment-on-russia-gate/


 
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/07/a-look-back-at-clappers-jan-2017-asse
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<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/07/a-look-back-at-clappers-jan-2017-asse
ssment-on-russia-gate/> A Look Back at Clapper’s Jan. 2017 ‘Assessment’ on
Russia-gate – Consortiumnews

The banner headline atop page one of The New York Times two years ago today,
on January 7, 2017, set the tone for two years of Dick Cheney-like
chicanery: “Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report ...

consortiumnews.com





Save

 

On the 2nd anniversary of the “assessment” blaming Russia for “collusion”
with Trump there is still no evidence other than showing the media
“colluded” with the spooks, says Ray McGovern.



 <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ray-mcgovern/> By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ray-Headshot-cropped.
jpeg> Image removed by sender.The banner headline
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/donald-trump-wall-hack-russi
a.html>  atop page one of The New York Times two years ago today, on January
7, 2017, set the tone for two years of Dick Cheney-like chicanery: “Putin
Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says.”

Under a media drumbeat of anti-Russian hysteria, credulous Americans were
led to believe that Donald Trump owed his election victory to the president
of Russia, and that Trump, according to the Times, “colluded” in Putin’s
“interference 
 to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when
possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

Hard evidence supporting the media and political rhetoric has been as
elusive as proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002-2003. This
time, though, an alarming increase in the possibility of war with
nuclear-armed Russia has ensued — whether by design, hubris, or rank
stupidity. The possible consequences for the world are even more dire than
16 years of war and destruction in the Middle East.

If It Walks Like a Canard


The CIA-friendly New York Times two years ago led the media quacking in a
campaign that wobbled like a duck, canard in French.

A glance at the title of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which
was not endorsed by the whole community) — “Assessing Russian Activities and
Intentions in Recent US Elections” — would suffice to show that the widely
respected and independently-minded State Department intelligence bureau
should have been included. State intelligence had demurred on several points
made in the Oct. 2002 Estimate on Iraq, and even insisted on including a
footnote of dissent. James Clapper, then director of national intelligence
who put together the ICA, knew that all too well. So he evidently thought it
would be better not to involve troublesome dissenters, or even inform them
what was afoot.

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Obama-Clapper-1.jpg>
Image removed by sender.

Clapper: Showing handpicked evidence? (White House Photo)

Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency should have been included,
particularly since it has considerable expertise on the G.R.U., the Russian
military intelligence agency, which has been blamed for Russian hacking of
the DNC emails. But DIA, too, has an independent streak and, in fact, is
capable of reaching judgments Clapper would reject as anathema. Just one
year before Clapper decided to do the rump “Intelligence Community
Assessment,” DIA had formally blessed the following heterodox idea in its
“December 2015 National Security Strategy”:

“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for
regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in
Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the
crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian
President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of
U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

Any further questions as to why the Defense Intelligence Agency was kept
away from the ICA drafting table?

Handpicked Analysts

With help from the Times and other mainstream media, Clapper, mostly by his
silence, was able to foster the charade that the ICA was actually a bonafide
product of the entire intelligence community for as long as he could get
away with it. After four months it came time to
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/29/nyt-finally-retracts-russia-gate-cana
rd/> fess up that the ICA had not been prepared, as Secretary Clinton and
the media kept claiming, by “all 17 intelligence agencies.”

In fact, Clapper went one better, proudly asserting — with striking naiveté
— that the ICA writers were “handpicked analysts” from only the FBI, CIA,
and NSA. He may have thought that this would enhance the ICA’s credibility.
It is a no-brainer, however, that when you want handpicked answers, you
better handpick the analysts. And so he did.

Why is no one interested in the identities of the handpicked analysts and
the hand-pickers? After all, we have the names of the chief
analysts/managers responsible for the fraudulent NIE of October 2002 that
greased the skids for the war on Iraq. Listed in the NIE itself are the
principal analyst Robert D. Walpole and his chief assistants Paul Pillar,
Lawrence K. Gershwin and Maj. Gen. John R. Landry.

The Overlooked Disclaimer

Buried in an inside page of the Times‘ Jan. 7, 2017 report was a cautionary
paragraph by reporter Scott Shane. It seems he had read the ICA all the way
through, and had taken due note of the derriere-protecting caveats included
in the strangely cobbled together report. Shane had to wade through nine
pages of drivel about “Russia’s Propaganda Efforts” to reach Annex B with
its curious disclaimer:

“Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete
or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. 
 High
confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a
certainty; such judgments might be wrong.”

Small wonder, then, that Shane noted: “What is missing from the public
report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to
back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the
election attack. This a significant omission.”

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Shane.jpg> Image
removed by sender.

Scott Shane (Twitter)

Since then, Shane has evidently realized what side his bread is buttered on
and has joined the ranks of Russia-gate aficionados. Decades ago, he did
some good reporting on such issues, so it was sad to see him decide to blend
in with the likes of David Sanger and promote the NYT official Russia-gate
narrative. An embarrassing feature
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interfere
nce-election-trump-clinton.html> , “The Plot to Subvert an Election:
Unraveling the Russia Story So Far,” that Shane wrote with NYT colleague
Mark Mazzetti in September, is full of gaping holes, picked apart in two
<https://consortiumnews.com/2018/09/21/the-new-york-times-as-judge-and-jury/
>
<https://consortiumnews.com/2018/10/10/the-shaky-case-that-russia-manipulate
d-social-media-to-tip-the-2016-election/> pieces by Consortium News.

Shades of WMD

Sanger is one of the intelligence community’s favorite go-to journalists. He
was second only to the disgraced Judith Miller in promoting the canard of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
For example, in a July 29, 2002 article
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq
-option.html> , “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option,” co-written
by Sanger and Thom Shanker, the existence of WMD in Iraq was stated as flat
fact no fewer than seven times.

The Sanger/Shanker article appeared just a week after then-CIA Director
George Tenet
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/text-of-downing-street-memo> confided to
his British counterpart that President George W. Bush had decided “to remove
Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism
and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
At that critical juncture, Clapper was in charge of the analysis of
satellite imagery and hid the fact that the number of confirmed WMD sites in
Iraq was zero.

Despite that fact and that his “assessment” has never been proven, Clapper
continues to receive praise.

During a “briefing
<http://carnegieendowment.org/2018/11/13/intelligence-brief-with-james-clapp
er-event-7007> ” I attended at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington several
weeks ago, Clapper displayed master circular reasoning, saying in effect,
that the assessment had to be correct because that’s what he and other
intelligence directors told President Barack Obama and President-elect
Donald Trump.

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/clappercriminalwrayal
li.jpeg> Image removed by sender.

McGovern questions Clapper at Carnegie Endowment in Washington.(Alli
McCracken)

I got a chance to question him at the event. His disingenuous answers
brought a painful flashback to one of the most shameful episodes in the
annals of U.S. intelligence analysis.

Ray McGovern: My name is Ray McGovern. Thanks for this book; it’s very
interesting [Ray holds up his copy of Clapper’s memoir]. I’m part of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  I’d like to refer to the Russia
problem, but first there’s an analogy that I see here.  You were in charge
of imagery analysis before Iraq.

James Clapper: Yes.

RM: You confess [in the book] to having been shocked that no weapons of mass
destruction were found.  And then, to your credit, you admit, as you say
here [quotes from the book], “the blame is due to intelligence officers,
including me, who were so eager to help [the administration make war on
Iraq] that we found what wasn’t really there.”

Now fast forward to two years ago.  Your superiors were hell bent on finding
ways to blame Trump’s victory on the Russians.  Do you think that your
efforts were guilty of the same sin here?  Do you think that you found a lot
of things that weren’t really there?  Because that’s what our conclusion is,
especially from the technical end.  There was no hacking of the DNC; it was
leaked, and you know that because you talked to NSA.

JC: Well, I have talked with NSA a lot, and I also know what we briefed to
then-President Elect Trump on the 6th of January.  And in my mind, uh, I
spent a lot of time in the SIGINT [signals intelligence] business, the
forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever.  The Intelligence
Community Assessment that we rendered that day, that was asked, tasked to us
by President Obama — and uh — in early December, made no call whatsoever on
whether, to what extent the Russians influenced the outcome of the election.
Uh, the administration, uh, the team then, the President-Elect’s team,
wanted to say that — that we said that the Russian interference had no
impact whatsoever on the election.  And I attempted, we all did, to try to
correct that misapprehension as they were writing a press release before we
left the room.

However, as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the
Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the
different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches
credulity to think they didn’t have a profound impact on election on the
outcome of the election.

RM: That’s what the New York Times says.  But let me say this: we have two
former Technical Directors from NSA in our movement here, Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; we also have forensics, okay?

Now the President himself, your President, President Obama said two days
before he left town: The conclusions of the intelligence community — this is
ten days after you briefed him — with respect to how WikiLeaks got the DNC
emails are “inconclusive” end quote.  Now why would he say that if you had
said it was conclusive?

JC: I can’t explain what he said or why.  But I can tell you we’re, we’re
pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.
I’m not going to go into the technical details about why we believe that.

RM: We are too [pretty sure we know]; and it was a leak onto a thumb drive —
gotten to Julian Assange — really simple.  If you knew it, and the NSA has
that information, you have a duty, you have a duty to confess to that, as
well as to [Iraq].

JC: Confess to what?

RM: Confess to the fact that you’ve been distorting the evidence.

JC: I don’t confess to that.

RM: The Intelligence Community Assessment was without evidence.

JC: I do not confess to that. I simply do not agree with your conclusions.

William J. Burns (Carnegie President): Hey, Ray, I appreciate your question.
I didn’t want this to look like Jim Acosta in the White House grabbing
microphones away.  Thank you for the questioning though.  Yes ma’am [Burns
recognizes the next questioner].

The above exchange can be seen starting at 28:45 in this video.
<http://carnegieendowment.org/2018/11/13/intelligence-brief-with-james-clapp
er-event-7007> 

Not Worth His Salt

Having supervised intelligence analysis, including chairing National
Intelligence Estimates, for three-quarters of my 27-year career at CIA, my
antennae are fine-tuned for canards. And so, at Carnegie, when Clapper
focused on the rump analysis masquerading as an “Intelligence Community
Assessment,” the scent of the duck came back strongly.

Intelligence analysts worth their salt give very close scrutiny to sources,
their possible agendas, and their records for truthfulness. Clapper flunks
on his own record, including his performance before the Iraq war — not to
mention his giving sworn testimony to Congress that he had to admit was
“clearly erroneous,” when documents released by Edward Snowden proved him a
perjurer. At Carnegie, the questioner who followed me brought that up and
asked, “How on earth did you keep your job, Sir?”

The next questioner, a former manager of State Department intelligence,
posed another salient question: Why, he asked, was State Department
intelligence excluded from the “Intelligence Community Assessment”?

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/US_Navy_031016-N-3236
B-043_A_marine_patrols_the_streets_of_Al_Faw_Iraq.jpg> Image removed by
sender.

U.S. Marine patrols the streets of Al Faw, Iraq, 2003. (U.S. Navy photo by
Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Ted Banks.)

Among the dubious reasons Clapper gave was the claim, “We only had a month,
and so it wasn’t treated as a full-up National Intelligence Estimate where
all 16 members of the intelligence community would pass judgment on it.”
Clapper then tried to spread the blame around (“That was a deliberate
decision that we made and that I agreed with”), but as director of national
intelligence the decision was his.

Given the questioner’s experience in the State Department’s intelligence, he
was painfully aware of how quickly a “full-up NIE” can be prepared. He knew
all too well that the October 2002 NIE, “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction,” was ginned up in less than a month, when
Cheney and Bush wanted to get Congress to vote for war on Iraq. (As head of
imagery analysis, Clapper signed off on that meretricious estimate, even
though he knew no WMD sites had been confirmed in Iraq.)

It’s in the Russians’ DNA

The criteria Clapper used to handpick his own assistants are not hard to
divine. An Air Force general in the mold of Curtis LeMay, Clapper knows all
about “the Russians.” And he does not like them, not one bit. During an
<https://observer.com/2017/05/james-clapper-russia-xenophobia/> interview
with NBC on May 28, 2017, Clapper referred to “the historical practices of
the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt,
penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.” And
just before I questioned him at Carnegie, he muttered, “It’s in their DNA.”

Even those who may accept Clapper’s bizarre views about Russian genetics
still lack credible proof that (as the ICA concludes “with high confidence”)
Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created a “persona”
called Guccifer 2.0 to release the emails of the Democratic National
Committee. When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient
attention, the G.R.U. “relayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and
senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks,” the assessment said.

At Carnegie, Clapper cited “forensics.” But forensics from where? To his
embarrassment, then-FBI Director James Comey, for reasons best known to him,
chose not to do forensics on the “Russian hack” of the DNC computers,
preferring to rely on a computer outfit of tawdry reputation hired by the
DNC. Moreover, there is zero indication that the drafters of the ICA had any
reliable forensics to work with.

In contrast, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, working with
independent forensic investigators,
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evid
ence/> examined metadata from a July 5, 2016 DNC intrusion that was alleged
to be a “hack.” However, the metadata showed a transfer speed far exceeding
the capacity of the Internet at the time. Actually, all the speed turned out
to be precisely what a thumb drive could accommodate, indicating that what
was involved was a copy onto an external storage device and not a hack — by
Russia or anyone else.

WikiLeaks had obtained the DNC emails earlier. On June 12, 2016 Julian
Assange announced he had “emails relating to Hillary Clinton.” NSA appears
to lack any evidence that those emails — the embarrassing ones showing that
the DNC cards were stacked against Bernie Sanders — were hacked.

Since NSA’s dragnet coverage scoops up everything on the Internet, NSA or
its partners can, and do trace all hacks. In the absence of evidence that
the DNC was hacked, all available factual evidence indicates that earlier in
the spring of 2016, an external storage device like a thumb drive was used
in copying the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks.

Additional investigation
<https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/13/too-big-to-fail-russia-gate-one-year-
after-vips-showed-a-leak-not-a-hack/>  has proved Guccifer 2.0 to be an
out-and-out fabrication — and a faulty basis for indictments.

A Gaping Gap

Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama
on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2007, the day before they briefed President-elect
Trump. At Carnegie, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had
serious doubts.  On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw
fit to use lawyerly language to cover his own derriere, saying: “The
conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian
hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in
being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were
leaked.”

So we end up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial
point. In other words, U.S. intelligence does not know how the DNC emails
got to WikiLeaks. In the absence of any evidence from NSA (or from its
foreign partners) of an Internet hack of the DNC emails the claim that “the
Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks” rests on thin gruel. After all,
these agencies collect everything that goes over the Internet.

Clapper answered: “I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can
tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how
WikiLeaks got those emails.”

Really?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year CIA
career he supervised intelligence analysis as Chief of Soviet Foreign Policy
Branch, as editor/briefer of thePresident’s Daily Brief, as a member of the
Production Review Staff, and as chair of National Intelligence Estimates. In
retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).

 

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