Many reports about Russiagate made the news when released in the last weeks, but others were only released after a fight, and attracted less attention. What follows is a summary of my efforts to obtain core Russiagate documents through Freedom of Information requests and litigation:

A government statement made a month before the 2016 presidential elections was shocking. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued the first formal accusation against Russia for the hack of the DNC that summer.

The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.

But what intelligence supported the government’s joint-attribution statement? The agencies didn’t provide any. In 2022, I first tried to find out by filing a FOIA for any reports or memoranda, then sued. It wasn’t until this spring, in 2025, that those reports and memoranda were provided. The government heavily relied on a September 16, 2016, Intelligence Community Assessment that provided little insight into any potential Russian influence.

There was, however, a much stronger version of that same ICA produced four days earlier, but we only know that because it was recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Here’s a breakdown of the four reports I received through my FOIA lawsuit:

Intelligence Community Assessment

This ICA is labeled version 2616-37D and dated September 16, 2016:

2016 37d Ica Report

671KB ∙ PDF file

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As noted above, this is not the same September ICA report that Gabbard declassified on July 18. That report is instead version 2016-37HC, and dated September 12th, 2016. The distinction appears to be signified by the letters “D” for “declassified” or public and “HC” for “highly classified.”

Despite being drafted four days earlier, the version released by Gabbard is more robust, with additional sections on Russia’s interest in disrupting the U.S. presidential election, an evaluation of China’s plans to influence the election, and evaluations of other state and non-state actors.

The September 16 version supporting the October 7, 2016, joint-attribution statement contains little insight into any potential Russian influence on the election, but offers the conclusion that foreign adversaries “do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks on the diverse set of information technologies and infrastructures used to support the November 2016 US Presidential election.”

The draft version released by Gabbard has a completely different assessment and offers it with high confidence under a header of “Targeted Attack Within the Reach of Many Adversaries”:

“We judge that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea can execute a variety of disruptive cyber attacks, including data corruption, distributed denial of service, and even data modification on some election infrastructure.” (Pg 3, Key Judgment #3).

Another distinction between the two reports seems to be that Gabbard’s version contains contributions from DHS, CIA, CTIIC, and other entities. The September 16 version lists only reflects the work of the National Intelligence Council.

Both ICA report versions were prepared for the National Intelligence Council (NIC) by the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber issues.

National Intelligence Council memorandum

An August 26, 2016 NIC memorandum was drafted by the National Intelligence Officers for Russia and Eurasia, Cyber Issues (including a preparer of the ICA), and Counterintelligence.

National Intelligence Council Memo

2.03MB ∙ PDF file

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The report is somewhat inconsistent with what the NIO for Cyber Issues would draft as ICA version 2016-37D only weeks later. The heavily-redacted memorandum offers pointed suggestions that Russia has “moved to escalate” its use of intelligence and cyber capabilities against the United States and that Moscow will “probably consider” additional cyber operations to meddle in U.S. elections. The report does not indicate a preference between Trump or Clinton, and instead offers that Russia was seeking to weaken the next U.S. President’s standing.

DHS Talking Points

The third document supporting the 2016 joint attribution is an undated memo and talking points from the Department of Homeland Security.

Dhs Talking Points

1.73MB ∙ PDF file

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It suggests that the hack of the DNC and the disclosures are consistent with “Russian-directed efforts” and suggests that only “Russia’s senior-most officials” could have authorized these activities.

Against a list of background questions, it provides talking points that the intelligence community has “high confidence” in the attribution of the hacks of the DNC and DCCC based on Crowdstrike’s reports (Spoiler: Crowdstrike had not provided all of the forensic data or images yet) and the intelligence community’s understanding of the Russian government. The context of the talking points suggests they were drafted in proximity to the joint-attribution statement and for that purpose.

CTIIC Report

A Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center report dated September 14, 2016, summarized state boards of election hacking activity, with the sources completely redacted.

Ctiic Sboe Hacks

3.04MB ∙ PDF file

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CTIIC Memo

A separate CTIIC memo dated August 3, 2016, is heavily redacted, offering us only that “Russia has the capability and probably the intent” to commit the DNC hack. This appears to be a conclusion of exclusion.

Ctiic Memorandum

3.44MB ∙ PDF file

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The FOIA production omitted only one document, with no indication as to what it is. As it stands, the factual record supporting the joint attribution statement based on the produced reports is somewhere between sparse and redacted.

All of these documents will likely end up being crucial background, when it comes time to make the case that the Obama administration manipulated intelligence. As a reference, it’s important that the public have access to them.

Racket has received FOIA documents in big bunches lately, including another 1,000+ pages from a West Coast school just yesterday. We’re going through them and writing them up as efficiently as we can. Today, you’ll be reading two stories about documents delivered to us from the University of California system: one by James Rushmore, and one by Matt Taibbi. Be on the lookout for those in the next minutes.

Both stories reference this new addition to the Racket FOIA library. While we suggest reading the writeups first, please of course feel free to go through the raw documents. Here are 1,400+ pages from the University of California, Irvine:

• July 2023 FOIA Files (Batch 1)

• July 2023 FOIA Files (Batch 2)

• July 2023 FOIA Files (Batch 3)

Below are all 440 pages of the FOIA disclosures pertaining to Arizona State University.

• December 2023 FOIA Files

Below are all 250+ pages of our FOIA productions pertaining to Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

• June 2023 FOIA Files (Batch 1)

• June 2023 FOIA Files (Batch 2)

• November 2023 FOIA Files

Last June, in the Washington Post, University of Washington academic Kate Starbird complained that outside queries about work in the anti-disinformation field were taking a toll. “The political part is intimidating, to have people with a lot of power in this world making false claims, false accusations about our work,” said Starbird, her quote nestled between plaintive photo portraits.

“Right now, there’s a lot of bad actors who are using freedom of information requests to harass academics working at public universities,” added Alice Marwick of the University of North Carolina. “And that wasn’t something we saw until a few years ago.”

In the last year, newspapers, magazines, and even broadcast programs like 60 Minutes have been aggressively arguing that civic-minded “anti-disinformation researchers” are suffering under assault by outside investigators, who misuse tools like congressional subpoenas and the Freedom of Information Act to slow or halt their crucial work. The “bad actors” are almost always described as “right-wing activists,” “conservatives,” “Trump’s allies,” and so on, who attack beleaguered protectors of the informational realm out of “bias” and bad faith.

Bullshit. These are publicly funded researchers who’ve spent years developing tools for suppressing or deamplifying the speech of the very people paying their salaries. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to use FOIA to find out what these programs do or how they’re funded, but a look under the hood makes clear why they want things that way:

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On April 22, 2021, the Aspen Institute — an influential civil society group that draws funding from several federal agencies and in recent years has become an odd hodge-podge of boutique-left ideas and hardcore security-state rhetoric — announced that a “Commission on Information Disorder” would be preparing a major report, one that:

Aims to identify and prioritize the most critical sources and causes of information disorder and deliver a set of short-term actions and longer-term goals to help government, the private sector, and civil society respond to this modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.

The Institute released names from its anti-disinformation Hall of Justice. Their technical advisors were digital censorship all-stars, a group including Stanford’s Renee DiResta, Harvard’s Joan “Deplatforming Will Work” Donovan, Senate Intel Committee consultant and Johns Hopkins Russia hawk Thomas Rid, Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, his Facebook opposite Nathaniel Gleicher, and others.

The list of Commissioners was headlined by Katie Couric, Prince Harry, and Chris Krebs, the founding director of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, a central figure in recent high-profile media features condemning congressional and journalistic investigations of anti-disinfo programs, would join as well. Thanks to a FOIA request Racket submitted to Starbird’s employers, we know world chess champion Garry Kasparov was at some point on the Commission. He would not remain on it for long:

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After learning in the Twitter Files that many if not most federal contracts for anti-disinformation work are not public, in some cases not even in Inspector General reports, Racket hooked up with the Substack author to find out what we could via Freedom of Information requests. A year and hundreds of requests later, the handful of researcher names we began with proved more ubiquitous than expected.

“The thing that I found shocking,” says UndeadFOIA, “is how the same people seem to be involved in every facet of the anti-disinformation space. It doesn’t matter what University you go to or what program name it’s under, it’s the same people that pop up over and over.”

The Twitter Files gave us names like Renee DiResta of Stanford, Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, Darren Linvill of Clemson, Joan Donovan* at Harvard, Caroline Orr of the University of Maryland, and perhaps two dozen other key figures, many of whom move freely from academia to officialdom to the private sector and back. Someone who was senior official at a federal agency like CISA ten minutes ago might now be Director of Information Integrity at Microsoft or a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Reading these emails, the lines between enforcement agencies, publicly funded university research outlets, and the internal trust and safety departments of private platforms seem blurred beyond recognition. It’s a blob.

Racket readers will be able to access files in the form in which we received them at this FOIA library. Stories coming out on Racket today are based on results from two requests to UW. The full document sets are posted below. We have roughly twenty more like this and more on the way. We’re currently in litigation for two requests involving the Department of Homeland Security, and Undead believes “we’re going to get productions on those next month.”

Readers who spot things we fail to highlight in upcoming articles should feel free to let us know, or share materials as you please. These documents, after all, belong to the public. This library section will not be paywalled and these materials will always be available. If you have any questions about these documents or the FOIA process in general, please don’t hesitate to ask me or . Thanks again, and stay tuned:

• December 2023 FOIA Files

• March 2024 FOIA Files (Batch 1)

• March 2024 FOIA Files (Batch 2)

• June 2024 FOIA Files

• July 2024 FOIA Files

• August 2024 FOIA Files

An original version of this article listed “Joan Shorenstein.” It is Joan Donovan, formerly of the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard. Racket apologizes for the error.