Politicization problems exist in U.S. spy agency assessments on foreign influence in the 2020 U.S. election, including analysts who appeared to hold back information on Chinese meddling efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration's policies, according to an intelligence community inspector.
Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, issued a 14-page report obtained by the Washington Examiner to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, revealing his investigation was “conducted in response to IC complaints regarding the election threat issue." In addition, he lamented the “polarized atmosphere has threatened to undermine the foundations of our Republic, penetrating even into the Intelligence Community.”
The intelligence community’s classified assessment on foreign influence in the 2020 election, which will not focus on claims of mail-in fraud or unfounded allegations of voting machines flipping millions of votes, was also submitted to Congress on Thursday. Expected in December, the assessment was delayed as senior intelligence officials clashed over the role played by China, and as director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe sought to include more viewpoints in the final analysis.
“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf concluded, saying this behavior violated analytic standards requiring independence from political considerations.
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The ombudsman shared a number of recommendations he said had been accepted by Ratcliffe, including to “reinforce through direct leadership communications from ODNI to the workforce as a whole, and from agency heads to all IC agencies, the importance of protecting analytic integrity and a renewed commitment to analytic objectivity and avoiding politicization in both policy and practice."
Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas, signed a three-page unclassified letter on Thursday, also obtained by the Washington Examiner, in which he contended that “from my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence on the People’s Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by the Intelligence Community analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections." The ombudsman report, Ratcliffe added, "includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”
A senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner that “inside the IC, we’re going to have to wrestle with the issues outlined in this report and the revelation that our own internal umpire basically said Ratcliffe was right and some of our career people, even CIA management, were politicizing China intelligence.”
This comes four years after an assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which is still contested by some, and the backdrop of the debate is laden with rising concern about China's influence over U.S. lawmakers, a massive SolarWinds hack assessed to have been likely conducted by Russia, and the chaos on Wednesday as supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol and attempted to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes certifying President-elect Joe Biden win.
>https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/intelligence-analysts-downplayed-election-interference-trump-inspector