You may remember in the closing weeks of the election, Hillary Clinton and Friends (including 99% of the mainstream media) were reciting the supposedly-damning fact that Russia interfered in the election and that they did so to make sure Donald Trump was elected president. And they said they were confident in this fact because all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies were in unanimous agreement about it. Case closed. No more argument to be had. So if Trump is still out there saying there’s some doubt about it, well then you know that he’s obviously hiding something. Probably, hint-hint, that he was in collusion with the Russians the whole time.
This was a fraudulent claim, but only now are we finally starting to see some of our so-called guardians of truth admit it.
On June 25, the New York Times published an article that once again repeated the false stat. This time, however – perhaps spooked by CNN’s recent troubles and their own impending court battle with Sarah Palin – the Times decided they’d better correct the record.
“The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency,” they wrote in their correction. “The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”
Now, you say, okay, what’s the big deal? All 17 or just the four biggest? It still basically amounts to the same, right?
Well, for that you should check out Robert Parry’s terrific analysis on Consortium News, where he explains why there is an enormous difference between a full intelligence community assessment and the cherry-picked, 4-agency conclusion that actually happened. Here’s a sample:
[Former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community,” the former DNI said.
Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking were “hand-picked” from the CIA, FBI and NSA.
Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you “hand-pick” the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.
And that, my friends, has been what many skeptics of the Russia story have been claiming all along. And the fact that the media and the Democrats have gone out of their way to make this “hand-picked” selection of analysts look like full, 17-agency unanimity just adds more suspicion to the fire.
There is a scandal here. It’s just not the one the Democrats want us to see.
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