John Durham has questions for the CIA about the Steele Dossier and John Brennan’s ICA, and NSA’s Mike Rogers will be crucial to getting the answers.
WASHINGTON, DC: US Attorney John Durham is looking at the Intelligence Community Assessment from October 2016. And Durham is asking CIA officials some pointed questions. About how it came to its discredited, partisan conclusions? Who was involved? How did they manipulate the process? Who is part of the origins of the Russia hoax conspiracy? Does Mike Rogers have the answers?
You remember John Brennan’s Intelligence Community Assessment. This is the document where 17 US intelligence agencies all “unanimously” concluded that Vladimir Putin personally authorized FSB operations designed to favor Donald Trump and harm Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The implication was, of course, that Trump was possibly a Russian agent.
The manipulation of the Intelligence Community Assessment
Except it wasn’t 17 agencies as only four were involved in making the actual assessment. The CIA, DNI, DOJ, and NSA. Only three people were part of formulating the document. John Brennan, James Clapper, and the infamous Peter Strzok.
Strzok keeps popping up at every phase of the Russia hoax. The Mifsud, Downer, Halper frame job of George Papadopoulos. Launching the counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump.
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The weaponization of the Steele Dossier with the FISA court.
Strzok was reportedly James Comey’s ongoing liaison with John Brennan. He apparently is the principal author of the Intelligence Community Assessment, with input from Brennan and Clapper. How convenient.
Preventing input from critical agencies
The report was never circulated to the other 13 intelligence agencies for comment. Most significantly the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the State Department intelligence services were all excluded from the review process.
The DIA has enormous expertise in Russia and cyber warfare. Presumably the focus of the Intelligence Community Assessment. Brennan and Strzok clearly didn’t want anyone messing with his special partisan garden party. Or contradicting their strident and deliberately defamatory conclusions.
Flies in the ICA ointment
But there were enormous flies in the ointment that were overlooked when the “unanimous” estimate was leaked to the press in October of 2016. It wasn’t “unanimous” at all.
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Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Strzok, on behalf of the CIA, DNI and DOJ, had “high confidence” in the extremely volatile and partisan conclusions. But Admiral Mike Rogers at the NSA had only “moderate confidence” in the conclusions. He had good reason to doubt the Intelligence Community Assessment.
Mike Rogers knew that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey had been illegally accessing NSA programs to spy on American citizens on behalf of the Obama White House since 2012.
Using NSA surveillance to illegally spy on Americans
James Comey had specifically authorized 3 CIA/DNI contractors ongoing illegal access to the surveillance systems. In March of 2016, Rogers was alerted to the illegal use, cutting off access to the 3 contractors in April 2016.
Rogers ordered an investigation. He found that of 40000 inquiries made since 2012 that 85% of them were illegal. 32500 illegal queries by CIA and DNI contractors authorized by James Comey to use FISA 702 authority to access the NSA surveillance systems, including PRISM.
Rogers took the findings of his investigation to FISA Court presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer four days after the FISA court had approved the first FISA warrant on Carter Page. Two years ago, in April of 2017, Collyer delivered a ruling to the Attorney General stating that spying on Americans was systematic, illegal, and an abuse of FISA 702 authority and the 4th amendment.
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The Steele Dossier and the ICA
Rogers knew further that the Steele Dossier was the principle support document for both the FISA warrant applications and the ICA intelligence estimate. Brennan vouched repeatedly for the veracity and reliability of Steele and his phony dossier. When he knew it was a lie.
We now know it to be the discredited bag of Kremlin disinformation garbage that Steele and Sydney Blumenthal had compiled on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the DNC. That Hillary had paid more than 9 million dollars for.
That Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Strzok had weaponized as the genesis of the Russia Hoax.
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Brennan and Ash Carter try to eliminate Rogers
The Intelligence Community Assessmentwas just another piece of the puzzle in the overwhelming conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump. To stop his candidacy. Then once he was in the Oval Office, to derail his Presidency. Mike Rogers knew the underlying motive of the Intelligence Community Assessment. Rogers made sure there was distance between himself and the report’s conclusions.
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Remarkably, just after the election, Brennan and Defense Secretary Ash Carter took steps to get the White House to fire Rogers as NSA director. What was the defense secretary doing in league with Bond villain Brennan?
Brennan believed he was James Bond. Without the good looks or class
This happened one day after Rogers had privately briefed President Elect Trump in Trump Tower without Brennan knowledge. The next day Trump moved his transition operation to his Bedminster Golf Club. Trump Tower was obviously not secure from surveillance.
Brennan: Lying about the Steele Dossier
Brennan says in sworn testimony that the Steele Dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence communities estimate.”
This is a claim he repeats numerous times. Brennan is lying through his Bond villain teeth.
Brennan is not only openly contradicted by Rogers. James Clapper inadvertently confessed in a CNN interview that the ICA was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier”. Someone isn’t telling the truth. It would appear to be John Brennan.
John Durham has some questions about the ICA
So now, among the many items on John Durham’s plate, is how the Intelligence Community Assessment came to be. Moreover, why did include so many aspects that were peculiar? Why were procedures for dissenting comments and distribution being ignored?
How did Clapper and Brennan handpick the consultants who participated, except to ensure a predetermined outcome? Why certain agencies and participants, DIA, DHS, were excluded from the process? The report is completely missing dissenting views or views of outside review groups, as is usually customary.
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According to CIA analyst Fred Flietz, “it should have been thoroughly vetted with all relevant IC agencies”. It was not. Fleitz is sure the process was “manipulated” to reach a “predetermined political conclusion” that Trump was compromised by Russia.
“I’ve never viewed the ICA as credible” Fleitz added. Fleitz worked as a CIA analyst for 19 years and helped draft numerous national security estimates.
ICA understatement: “Not independent of political considerations”
Admiral Rogers noted that a two-page index summarizing the Steele dossier and listed as “Christopher Steele information” was added to the ICA index. Brennan had been pushing the Steele dossier all over town for months. Leaking it to the media.
Briefing Harry Reid, who leaked it to the media. Smearing Donald Trump and laying the foundations for the Russia hoax, the three-year national nightmare of an ongoing attempted coup.
The House Intelligence Committee found that the ICA did not “properly describe the “quality and credibility of underlying sources” and was “not independent of political considerations”.
Mike Rogers: American Hero
Rogers was certain that Russian espionage was a daily and ongoing occurrence. Russia has been trying to interfere in our affairs for 100 years. That they may have hacked the DNC and John Podesta, but they also provided Kremlin disinformation to Christopher Steele.
While the Wikileaks disclosures certainly hurt Hillary Clinton, they were also the truth. The Steele dossier, like the Russia hoax, was a pack of lies, and a calculated smear campaign. On the one hand, the truth about Hillary Clinton is telling.
Clinton campaign collusion with Russia
On the other hand, the Clinton campaign creates a rat’s nest of lies and Kremlin disinformation. An apparatus weaponized by the Obama White House and the highest levels of the government against Donald Trump
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So the Russians clearly interfered, but I would dare say that their most important collaborators or co-conspirators in upending the American political system and sowing chaos were John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, James Comey, and Barack Obama.
The Intelligence Community Assessment was yet another weapon in an extensive arsenal being deployed against the President. To frame the President. Make him a patsy.
Set him up so they could throw him out.
John Durham: Restoring faith in the rule of law
John Durham is now looking into the Intelligence Community Assessment as one aspect of an expansive investigation into the multifaceted origins of the Russia hoax. On this and other matters, he will have questions for John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey.
He will eventually have questions for the Key players of the Obama White House. Valerie Jarrett. Ben Rhodes. Susan Rice. And Barack Obama. Durham is a smart man, with wide authority.
John Durham certainly knows that none of this could have happened on the scale it involved if Barack Obama had not authorized it. Durham has questions for John Brennan and the rest of the coup plotters. Admiral Mike Rogers, an American hero, is ready to provide many of the answers.
Lead image: White House Image courtesy of The White House Flickr. File photos
L.J. Keith
LJ Keith is a non-partisan commentator taking aim at all aspects of governmental domestic and foreign policy and the American socio-political landscape with an eye toward examining the functional realities of the modern age, how they can be understood, and what context to view the changing face of life in America and its place in the world at large.