National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard pushed to declassify documents on Russia's interference in the 2016 election last month despite objections from CIA officials, who argued details should remain secret to protect spying sources and methods, a new report revealed.
The Washington Post detailed that Gabbard, with support from President Donald Trump, ignored arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, who claimed the documents should have remained private.
Some former intelligence officers told the outlet they were alarmed at the detail revealed in the declassified document. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, has also warned that the move could put intelligence-gathering efforts at risk. He later called Gabbard a threat to national security and said she should be fired.
Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Attorney General Pam Bondi have released a series of intelligence and law enforcement reports over the last month that they claim prove that spy agencies' finding that Moscow intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump was a "hoax" concocted by the Obama administration.
The document that Gabbard ordered released on July 23 is a 46-page report stemming from a review begun in 2017 by a majority of Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. It takes issue with U.S. intelligence agencies' finding earlier that year that Russian President Vladimir Putin developed a preference for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton and aspired to help him win the election.
The declassified version of the report included relatively few redactions, and it included references to eavesdropping and an "established clandestine" human source with insights into Russian President Vladimir Putin's view of the U.S. presidential contest.
Michael van Landingham, a former CIA analyst who helped write the 2017 intelligence community assessment, said he was taken aback at the detail exposed in the declassified document.
"I was shocked to see the declassification detailing the dates the US IC [intelligence community] gathered material, naming specific Russian actors, and quoting at length from both raw and serialized intelligence reports of Russian leadership discussions," he told NBC News. "This sort of information would allow for Russian authorities to easily find potential sources of the leaks, which would complicate the job of the US IC keeping America safe."
Likewise, Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior CIA and White House official told the podcast "SpyTalk," "I almost felt like I was going to get in trouble for having read that document. Sources and methods could be easily inferred in almost every instance... I don't know if I've seen a document of that sensitivity so lightly redacted."
Multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found that Putin intervened in part to help Trump win the 2016 election. Two former CIA officials who led the intelligence agencies' assessment also told The Post they stood by their sourcing and analysis.
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