Russiagate Releases Lifting a Veil on Surveillance State Abuses

The latest revelations in the Trump-Russia mess increasingly point toward severe systematic abuses, indicative of a true police state

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office released two damning emails yesterday, the first being a letter from former DNI James Clapper to former FBI head James Comey, former CIA head John Brennan, and then-NSA chief Michael Rogers. Dated December 22, 2016, Clapper’s letter explains how the chiefs should approach writing a new Intelligence Community Assessment, whose conclusion — that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump — had already been reported:

Mike John Jim;

Understand your concern. It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page. and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of “that’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it.” This evening, CIA has provided to the NIC the complete draft generated by the ad hoc fusion cell. We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but, more time is not negotiable,” We may have to compromise on our “normal” modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule.

This is one project that has to be a team sport.

Jim

“That’s OUR STORY and we’re stickin’ to it”

Clapper’s email was in response to a note about “concerns” from Rogers, the NSA chief who never upgraded his agency’s confidence level in the “Russia did it for Trump” conclusion from “moderate” to high. The Rogers letter makes it clear that the head of the Pentagon’s most powerful surveillance agency was being asked to sign off on a conclusion without seeing the most “sensitive” intelligence. From Rogers:

I asked my team if they’d had sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence. On both points my team raised concerns… I’m concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments… I do want to make sure that, when we are asked in the future whether we can absolutely stand behind the paper… I’m concerned we are not there yet.

This is a devastating exchange. It shows that in assembling perhaps the most high-profile group analysis since the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD program, four of America’s most powerful enforcement officials said, “To hell with evidence, let’s just put out a tale and stick with it.”

In the specific context of this scandal, it makes a joke of years of public narratives about Trump, Putin, and Russia. Along with more documents funneled from Kash Patel’s FBI to Just The News asserting that senior Justice Department officials squashed Hillary Clinton corruption investigations, and that Comey gave a middleman access to highly classified information to help plead his case to newspapers like the New York Times, the new Gabbard docs further elucidate how years of Russia mania were built on fraud.

But this cascade of revelations is bringing a more disturbing story into focus. A subtext is the unnerving casualness with which procedural rules were broken. Even before Rogers and the NSA were asked to blindly bless a domestic political probe built in part atop “evidence” from an illegal FISA warrant, the FISA court had begun investigating misuse of the surveillance program. Onetime Trump aide Carter Page is not the only American in a politically sensitive position recently monitored under this dubious legal end-around. There was FISA monitoring of campaign manager Paul Manafort, “non-compliant” use of FISA to investigate the January 6th Capitol breach, even FISA tracking of ordinary Americans overseas applying for benefits.

In the coming weeks you’ll be reading (at Racket, among other places) about wholesale abuse of other surveillance programs. It turns out an alarming number of senior Trump campaign officials from the 2024 cycle were notified about prior FBI surveillance (news about Kash Patel, Dan Scavino, and Jeff Clark receiving such notices has already broken, but more names are coming). Widespread surveillance of congressional officials in a 2017 leak probe was the underlying context of recent revelations suggesting two members, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, approved leaks of classified information.

The legacy press is ignoring the releases both because they paint Donald Trump as a victim of overreach and because the press played such a prominent role in the Russiagate corruption. They’re betraying audiences who might be concerned about the larger pattern coming into relief. That story is about intelligence agencies meddling in domestic politics at all — Trump or no Trump — through a list of forbidden practices. We’re about to find out that far more people in the political world were under routine surveillance than previously thought, including mainstream and independent reporters who communicated with political sources of all stripes.

I’m technically on vacation, but there’s more coming on this front, from players now forced to come forward. Please also tune in to America This Week tomorrow for a review of all the new materials with Walter Kirn, before he appears as a guest with Bill Maher.