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https://m.theepochtimes.com/durham-reportedly-investigating-whether-cia-withheld-information-from-fbi-in-russia-probe_3237947.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true
U.S. Attorney John Durham, tasked to look into the origins of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, is now “investigating CIA resistance to sharing Russian secrets,” according to a Feb. 13 report in The New York Times.
According to the article, “Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former Director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result—and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal.”
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Additionally, Durham is reportedly looking into “whether and how information from foreign governments or the C.I.A. played any role in stoking suspicions at the F.B.I. about Trump campaign links to Russia.”
It had previously been reported that Durham was expected to seek an interview with Brennan as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, following an expansion of his investigation.
Brennan’s Role in Disseminating Foreign Intelligence
In late 2015, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Donald Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Brennan appears to have played an instrumental role in passing on unofficial foreign intelligence—primarily from the UK, but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia—to the FBI.
Brennan stated that during a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony:
I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI],” Brennan said in his testimony.
Brennan also stated that it was his intelligence that helped establish the FBI investigation:
“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” Brennan said.
According to The NY Times, one area of specific focus for Durham is the Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, which was the last of three reports produced by Brennan and Clapper and was released on Jan. 6, 2017.
The final report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” significantly propelled the allegation that Trump had colluded with Russia into the public sphere. Notably, Adm. Mike Rogers, who at the time was director of the National Security Agency, publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning it only a moderate confidence level.
Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz recently determined that, despite repeated assurances by members of the Intelligence Community to the contrary, “unverified information from Steele’s dossier”—referring to the opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee—was used “in an interagency assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 elections.”
Horowitz did note that the CIA was somewhat reluctant to include Christopher Steele’s reporting in their assessments but that “the FBI, including [Director James] Comey and [Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA [intelligence community assessment].”
While Brennan has publicly denied using the dossier for the ICA, he did attach a two-page summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he, along with Clapper and Comey, delivered to President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.