ICA Part 2: House Intel Committee Briefing, December 5, 2016
Origin of Russiagate ICA - Part 2
On December 5, 2016, while the SSCI, CIA and White House were coordinating the ICA, the House Intel Committee held a hearing on the nascent allegations of Russian interference, but with a very different outcome than at the Senate committee hearing the previous week. The briefers for the House Intel Committee appear to have been Bill Priestap, the senior FBI counterintelligence official (and Strzok’s boss) - or maybe Strzok himself - and Julia Gurganus, the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Russia at Clapper’s ODNI.
The primary sources for this meeting are transcripts of subsequent House Intel Committee interviews with Clapper1 and a seminal Washington Post article2 on December 10, 2016.
ICA series: Part 1; Part 3; Part 4
Prior to the December 5 House Intel Committee, its Democrat members (notably Adam Schiff) had fully informed by their Senate colleagues about the disconcerting CIA assessment about Russia’s supposed intentions to help Trump presented to them the previous week (November 29, 2016), an assessment described to the Washington Post as “direct and bald and unqualified” by “one of the officials” who attended the House briefing.
However, the FBI gave a very different briefing to the House Intel Committee, according to the Nakashima and Entous article:
The FBI is not sold on the idea that Russia had a particular aim in its meddling. “There’s no question that [the Russians’] efforts went one way, but it’s not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of goals,” said one U.S. official.
The net result was that the Democrats tried over and over to pin the “senior FBI counterintelligence official” into agreement with the CIA, but the FBI official didn’t budge:
Sitting before the House Intelligence Committee was a senior FBI counterintelligence official. The question the Republicans and Democrats in attendance wanted answered was whether the bureau concurred with the conclusions the CIA had just shared with senators that Russia “quite” clearly intended to help Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton and clinch the White House.
During the nearly two-hour briefing, the Democratic lawmakers in the room, again and again, tried to pin the FBI official down on whether the bureau believed that Russia had a preference in who won the election.
The official who leaked this classified information to the Washington Post purported to be shocked that the FBI official was agnostic about “Russian intentions and activities”:
“It was shocking to hold these [CIA] statements made about Russian intentions and activities, and to hear this guy basically saying nothing with certainty and allowing that all was possible,” said an official who attended the briefing. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
The Entous and Nakashima reporting didn’t mention that senior ODNI official Julia Gurganus gave a similar agnostic/skeptical assessment at the December 5 House Intel Committee briefing. According to a direct quotation by Rep Wenstrup in Clapper’s July 17, 2007 interview (heavily redacted) with the House Intel Committee, Gurganus had stated that “in terms of favoring one candidate over another, the evidence is a little bit unclear”. Wenstrup asked Clapper whether her agnosticism was “an accurate and complete assessment”:
Clapper responded that NIO Gurganus’ information wasn’t accurate, because she (despite being the senior DNI officer on Russia) “and many others in the community were not aware of this very, very sensitive information [redacted]”
Wenstrup followed up with another quote from Gurganus’ briefing, where she had said: “It’s unclear to us that the Kremlin had a particular --- that they had a particular favorite or they wanted to see a particular outcome. That is what they reporting shows,” and asked Clapper whether this assessment was accurate.
Once again, Clapper responded that the assessment was not accurate at the time, explaining that “evidence all kind of came together there about that --- at about that time, as I recollect”. The key sentence in Clapper’s answer was redacted.
What exactly was this “very, very sensitive information” that was so sensitive that even the National Intelligence Officer for Russia had not been read in as of December 5, 2016? Whatever it was, it was not disclosed in the 2020 SSCI Report, in which vast swathes were totally redacted.
Nunes Response to CIA Leaks
On December 9, 2016 (as discussed in companion article - link), the Washington Post publicly reported that the contradictory CIA assessment had been briefed to the Senate SSCI and on December 10, 2016, reported the contradiction between briefings provided to House and Senate.
House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes immediately sought a reconciliation from intel agency leaders. Conflicting accounts are given from Nunes’ perspective in Lee Smith’s Plot Against the President and from Brennan’s perspective in Undaunted.
According to both narratives, after the Washington Post story, Nunes demanded a briefing (to take place on December 15) to explain the inconsistency from Brennan and Clapper:
Brennan and Clapper refused. Nunes issued a statement3 on December 14, 2016 reporting the Intelligence Community refusal and expressing concern that “intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes”:
It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign. The legislative branch is constitutionally vested with oversight responsibility of executive branch agencies, which are obligated to comply with our requests. The Committee is vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign, and in particular we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes. The Committee will continue its efforts and will insist that we receive all the necessary cooperation from the relevant leaders of the Intelligence Community.”
In Nunes’ narrative: Plot, the “social media attacks on Nunes” became constant after he announced the Intelligence Community refusal of a briefing to explain the contradiction:
Needless to say, Brennan’s perspective in his memoir was different. Brennan perceived that “the Republicans were already pushing back on reports that Russians had been trying to help Trump win the election”. On December 14 morning, Brennan called Clapper to coordinate that neither of them “do any briefings until the intelligence assessment was completed”. Brennan said that he called Nunes in the afternoon (following the refusal) to try to “explain”, but Nunes refused his call, “opting instead to issue a public statement, blasting us, in what would become his dishonest fashion, for refusing to brief the committee”. (As an editorial comment, Brennan did refuse to brief the committee, so it’s hard to see exactly what was “dishonest” about Nunes’ public statement.) Brennan then contacted then Speaker Paul Ryan, who undercut Nunes, telling Brennan “not to worry about Nunes”.
The “Reconciliation”
On December 16, 2016, Entous and Nakashima announced at the Washingington Post4 that the FBI (and ODNI) were in agreement with the CIA assessment after all and that it was all a misunderstanding.
Nakashima and Entous, Dec 10, 2016. https://archive.md/PcXGL; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-and-cia-give-differing-accounts-to-lawmakers-on-russias-motives-in-2016-hacks/2016/12/10/c6dfadfa-bef0-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html According to Nakashima and Entous (in a Dec 10, 2016 article)
https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=738
FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed to help Trump win White House, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blames-putins-personal-grudge-against-her-for-election-interference/2016/12/16/12f36250-c3be-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html; https://archive.is/oKHLH