https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/durham-scrutinizing-john-brennans-handling-of-russian-interference-in-2016

U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly reviewing John Brennan’s analysis of Russian election interference, including scrutiny of the former Obama CIA director’s handling of a secret source said to be close to the Kremlin.

Durham, who was selected by Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and the government’s response to Moscow’s meddling, is investigating whether Brennan’s CIA was attempting to keep other agencies in the dark as he pushed for a specific, preconceived analytic assessment about Russia’s true intentions in 2016, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The top Connecticut prosecutor’s team reviewed emails from the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency analysts who came together to assess Russia’s interference, the new report revealed, and Durham’s investigators pressed for answers about why some agencies at least temporarily denied other agencies access to secretive intelligence about the Kremlin’s active-measures campaign.

Durham interviewed agents and analysts from all three agencies, and the report said he was scrutinizing whether the clash over intelligence-sharing was the typical sort of bureaucratic turf battle over jealously guarded secrets or an effort to cover something up.

Much of this revolves around how the United States government eventually reached its January 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian meddling and whether Brennan was pushing for a biased result.

One major battle was about the identity and credibility of a CIA source allegedly close to the Kremlin. The NSA wanted more details about him, which the CIA resisted before providing them. The NSA then disagreed with the CIA and FBI about how much confidence to place in the source.

At least some intelligence officials were disturbed by a law enforcement officer such as Durham inquiring into the assessments made by intelligence agencies, though Durham played a similar role in his Obama-era investigation into the CIA's destruction of tapes showing the harsh interrogation of detainees.

Durham hasn’t yet interviewed Brennan, though the report said his emails and other records have been requested from the CIA by the U.S. attorney. Retired Adm. Mike Rogers, who was head of the NSA at the time, was interviewed by Durham last summer and fall.

The January 2017 intelligence community assessment in question concluded with "high confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016” and that Russia worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” and “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” The NSA diverged on one aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” that Putin actively tried to help Trump’s election chances and harm those of Clinton by contrasting her unfavorably.

“I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations, and, in the end, I made that call,” Rogers told the Senate in May 2017. “It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.”

It was Brennan’s still-classified “wake-up call” intelligence that prompted the Obama administration to reconsider how it viewed Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed last week. The specifics of the intelligence that jolted Barack Obama's national security team into action is detailed in a blacked-out section, titled “[Redacted] Intelligence Was The ‘Wake Up’ Call.”

Within an hour or two of being briefed on the intelligence, then-national security adviser Susan Rice said Obama needed to know.

Rice said “the president's reaction was of grave concern,” which “prompted her to call the first of a series of restricted small-group Principals Committee meetings on the topic.”

“During the meeting with the President, Director Brennan also advised the President of a plan to brief key individuals, including congressional leadership, but not to disseminate the intelligence via routine reporting channels,” the Senate report stated. ..

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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/durham-calls-on-john-brennan-to-explain-steele-dossiers-use-by-intelligence

U.S. Attorney John Durham is scrutinizing former CIA Director John Brennan as he seeks answers on the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s 2016 meddling.

The federal prosecutor, hand-picked by Attorney General William Barr to lead the inquiry into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia counterintelligence investigation, has asked for Brennan’s electronic communications, phone records, and other documents from the CIA, per a source cited by the New York Times.

Durham wants to know what Brennan thought about British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier and the conversations he had about it, whether it was used in the January 2017 intelligence community's assessment dealing with Russian interference in the race between Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, why former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe insisted upon it being part of the assessment, how allegations from the dossier ended up in the assessment's appendix, and whether Brennan had been misleading in his public statements about the dossier’s use by the intelligence community.

Durham’s scrutiny of Brennan and the dossier is likely connected to new revelations by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz from his investigation into Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI. Horowitz concluded Steele’s dossier played a "central and essential" role in the bureau’s pursuit of surveillance warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The DOJ watchdog also found that Comey and McCabe spent weeks pushing for the dossier to be included in the postelection intelligence assessment ordered by President Barack Obama.

Horowitz said the CIA “expressed concern” about using the former MI6 agent’s salacious and unverified allegations, and the allegations ultimately did not make an appearance in the body of the assessment of Russia’s activities during the 2016 election. The inspector general’s report noted that the CIA believed Steele’s dossier “was not completely vetted and did not merit inclusion in the body of the report,” and an FBI agent told Horowitz the CIA dismissed Steele’s allegations as “internet rumor.”

The 2017 assessment concluded that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election” and that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” while “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Robert Mueller's two-year special counsel investigation concluded the Russian government interfered in a "sweeping and systematic" fashion but did not uncover any criminal collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

Brennan said in 2018 that the dossier “did not play any role whatsoever in the intelligence community assessment that was done and that was presented to then-President Obama and then-President-elect Trump.” The former CIA head said, “There were things in that dossier that made me wonder whether they were in fact accurate and true” and that “it was up to the FBI to see whether or not they could verify any of it.”

The FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency worked jointly to prepare the 2017 report. Horowitz said, "The FBI first shared Steele's reporting with other U.S. government intelligence agencies in December 2016,” during the drafting process. FBI leaders told the CIA that Steele's information was “reliable." Horowitz said, “Whether and how to present Steele's reporting” in the assessment was “a topic of significant discussion” among the drafters.

Ultimately, Horowitz said the final intelligence report “included a short summary and assessment of the Steele election reporting” in an appendix as a compromise between the bureau and other intelligence agencies, concluding there was "only limited corroboration of the source's reporting” and that Steele's allegations were not used “to reach analytic conclusions.”

Brennan said in late October that “John Durham has a very good reputation” and “I would like to believe that any such review or investigation will be conducted in a professional, fair, and apolitical manner.”

"I look back on it, and I feel good about what it is we did as an intelligence community, and I feel very confident and comfortable with what I did, so I have no qualms whatsoever about talking with investigators who are going to be looking at this in a fair and appropriate manner," he said. ..