James Clapper, Mr. October Surprise: How Obama's Intel Czar Rigged 2016 and 2020 Debates Against Trump
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In 2016, Clapper appeared to use his authority as Obama’s chief of intelligence to try to trip up Trump on behalf of Clinton.
But not everyone in the administration was on board with releasing his official statement about supposed Kremlin meddling.
Then-FBI Director James Comey had also met in the Situation Room in early October to discuss the plan. But Comey balked at accusing “Russia’s senior-most officials” of authorizing the "alleged hack" of the Clinton campaign and trying “to interfere in the U.S. election process,” as the two-page document claimed. Conspicuously, the FBI did not sign on to the intelligence.
Still, Clapper implied in his statement that this was the finding of the entire “U.S. Intelligence Community” and that it was “confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails.” Aside from Clapper's Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the only other agency that attached its name to the assessment was the Department of Homeland Security. Also remarkable was the paucity of underlying evidence. The joint ODNI-DHS statement based its conclusion primarily on a report by a cybersecurity contractor hired by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, who later walked back his finding in a sworn congressional deposition, allowing: “We did not have concrete evidence [Russian agents stole campaign emails].”
At best, Clapper’s finding was shoddy tradecraft. At worst, it was manufactured, or simply “dreamed up,” as one former FBI counterintelligence official described it to RealClearInvestigations.
Either way, it came at a highly opportune time for Clinton. The Democratic nominee seized on the intelligence report during her debate with Trump in St. Louis on Oct. 9 to tarnish her Republican opponent as some kind of Russian agent.
“You know, let’s talk about what’s really going on here, because our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin – meaning Putin and the Russian government – are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election,” Clinton asserted, citing Clapper’s warning. “We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election.”
"And believe me, they’re not doing it to get me elected,” she continued. "They’re doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump.”
"Now, maybe because he has praised Putin, maybe because he says he agrees with a lot of what Putin wants to do, maybe because he wants to do business in Moscow, I don’t know the reasons. But we deserve answers,” Clinton went on, clearly reciting a prepared talking point. "And we should demand that Donald release all of his tax returns so that people can see what are the entanglements and the financial relationships that he has with the Russians and other foreign powers."
Some former U.S. intelligence officials say the Oct. 7 intelligence assessment appears to have been cooked up for the benefit of Clinton.
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The 'Laptop Op'
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