Two analysts who helped Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan discredit President Donald Trump through weak or phony intelligence on Russian election interference continue to cash paychecks from the agency, according to a former CIA operations officer.
“At least two still do work there. That doesn’t mean that all of the other people have left. Those are just the two that I’m aware of,” former CIA Operations Officer Bryan Dean Wright told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
One of former authors remains in possession of a “blue badge,” meaning they remain a CIA employee, while another possesses a “green badge” and continues to do work for the agency as a contractor, Wright said. Others may retain their security clearances.
Wright has not held back his opinion about his former boss: He said in a recent op-ed that he should “rot in prison” for undermining the integrity of the Republic.
“These men thought they knew what was best for America, and they didn’t give a damn what voters like you thought,” he wrote.
Brennan — whose tenure at CIA spanned decades — likely cultivated generations of like-minded CIA employees, Wright said. The former CIA director’s influence probably continues to shape the agency’s culture by way of mentorships, friendships, promotion panels and hiring offices.
The CIA did not respond to requests for comment. A request for comment from Brennan through his consulting firm WestExec Advisors did not receive a reply.
Documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in recent days have revealed that President Barack Obama’s intelligence chiefs spun, cherrypicked and in some cases wholly manufactured raw intelligence reports to support the narrative — predetermined in leaks to the media — that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a “clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help his election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”
The resulting 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment touched off years of Russiagate media frenzy. Though technically endorsed by the “big three” — the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency — just five CIA analysts under Brennan wrote the assessment, according to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report declassified on July 23. The analysts were plucked from a “Fusion Cell” Brennan had formed months earlier to examine Russian election interference, according to a CIA self-assessment declassified on July 2.
Those analysts worked hand-in-glove with Brennan, churning out an assessment in less than a week in the days leading up to Christmas. Brennan hid the “sensitive intelligence” — the unverified, slanted and irrelevant raw intelligence reports — from other elements of the intelligence community until a two-day review process. The review happened using a card copy that was shuttled between Langley, Washington, DC, and Fort Meade, the report indicates.
Despite the revelations, there have been few assurances that analysts whose names are unknown and may remain embedded in the Deep State no longer play a role in U.S. national security.
It’s not atypical for the CIA to conduct internal investigations of its personnel, from audits of timecards to counterintelligence probes to ensure foreign spies do not infiltrate U.S. intelligence, Wright said.
Yet the CIA assessment of its own “tradecraft” in assembling the ICA omitted full details about the significant flaws of the raw intelligence reports underlying its judgements. The deputy director of CIA for analysis, who is unnamed in the report, wrote that CIA analysts were subject to “procedural anomalies” and Brennan’s outsized influence. The CIA assessment also concedes its ICA was weakened by the inclusion of the Steele dossier, a salacious Democratic opposition research file on Trump. Yet the report also claims the ICA had “analytic rigor” which “exceeded that of most IC assessments.”
The report conceded that the CIA’s “high confidence” that Russian authorities “aspired” for Trump to win was unwarranted given it was based in only one report. But the CIA’s self-assessment did not give full insight into the weaknesses of that report.
“While the DA Review identified specific procedural and tradecraft issues with the one judgment, these issues should not be interpreted as indicative of broader systemic problems in the IC’s analytic processes or standards,” the CIA deputy director wrote.
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford proclaimed the report a “whitewash” within hours of its release, setting in motion the declassification of his committee’s more strident report.
“The report was produced in the 116th Congress under Devin Nunes despite extraordinary restrictions placed by the CIA. Among those restrictions are a prohibition on transporting the document to secure spaces on Capitol Hill,” Crawford said.
It would only become apparent when the congressional investigation’s report was declassified three weeks later that the “aspired” judgement relied on a fragment of a sentence from a single human intelligence report.
“Putin had made this decision [to leak the DNC emails] after he had come to believe that the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [candidate Trump], whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory,” the report read.
The “aspired” judgement hinged on the clause “whose victory Putin was counting on,” which five CIA officers interpreted five different ways, the report states.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe himself called attention to a lack of accountability around intelligence failures and deceptions in a 2023 op-ed. CIA senior bureaucrats hold lifetime appointments, maintaining their rank and pay even when overseeing major failures — a practice Congress should move to end, Ratcliffe wrote.
“Officials who betray the public trust—either by bad acts in office or by politicizing their credentials after leaving—should be stripped of their security clearances,” Ratcliffe wrote.
But experts told the DCNF that Ratcliffe could encounter a hostile CIA culture in implementing any reforms.
CIA officer training includes a video of drafters of an intelligence estimate alleging Iraqi weapons of mass destruction expressing regret, according to Wright. Few analysts would want to see themselves as responsible for an intelligence failure that could set back their careers.
At the same time, a lack of accountability could contribute to a culture of stagnation and decline in professionalism in Langley.
“The CIA has become so severely politicized that it has fundamentally lowered its standards of integrity in collecting and assessing intelligence, and analysts come up with what are often very weak intelligence assessments,” said J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy. “I used to think it was grossly irresponsible hyperbole to compare the CIA to the KGB, but you really have to wonder, have the CIA and other intelligence community elements become a state within a state?”
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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
