On CIA Director Ratcliffe and the Politicization of Intelligence
Russia's interference wasn't a hoax and wasn't a Deep State conspiracy
A friendly reminder that Rant! is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for making this newsletter possible!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT!
Last week, the CIA released a review of its analytic assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. CIA Director John Ratcliffe commented on X, “All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump.” His comments came as he retweeted a New York Post story with the headline: “Obama’s Trump-Russia collusion report was corrupt from start: CIA review.”
Wow, that sounds bad.
Except, that’s not at all what the review actually says.
In fact, the review concluded the CIA analysts did a good job and confirmed the findings: that Russia interfered in our elections. I was going to write a detailed takedown of the report, but then John Sipher wrote a really good one for
, so I’ll just recommend that one instead.
I will point out, however, that both the Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report about 2016 also found that Russia interfered, and assessed that Trump’s dealings with Russia posed one of the biggest national security threats of our lifetime.
It is our conclusion . . . that the Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 US electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.”
—US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence bipartisan report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 US Election, Volume 5, p. 948
The review was never meant to be a real review
It was hard from the beginning to believe that Ratcliffe ordered this review simply to know if the assessment was done in good faith and done well. This is the Trump administration, after all. Furthermore, Ratcliffe has already in the past politicized intelligence to please Dear Leader and set a public narrative divorced from reality and the empirical evidence.
In the first Trump administration, during his short tenure as Director of National Intelligence, he released Russian disinformation claiming Hillary Clinton, in 2016, planned to smear Trump by inventing a scandal involving Russian interference to help Trump get elected. Put more succinctly, he released what he and other Trump minions said was proof Clinton created the “Russia Hoax.”
I therefore had concluded that Ratcliffe’s review of how the CIA did its job in 2016 wasn’t going away too soon. Why would Ratcliffe order this effort and then be ready to accept the confirmation that the intelligence community did a good job in its assessment that Russia interfered?
On cue, this week, Ratcliffe sent a criminal inquiry to the FBI, which launched a criminal investigation into John Brennan and James Comey, for their alleged political interference in the intelligence assessment that, in fact, they did not interfere in.
The tactic has worked in the past, both to put pressure on individuals and ruin their reputations, and to shift the narrative. A lot of people really do believe Russian interference in 2016 was a hoax, despite all the evidence and despite the bipartisan Senate report, signed off on by Republicans including Marco Rubio who is now carrying Trump’s water.
Also of note: Russia is carrying out influence operations and interfering in elections everywhere. This is precisely why I chose to focus on Russian influence operations not aimed at the US when I launched my Foreign Influence Operations course. I wanted to remove the politics and simply draw attention to Russia’s actions. Most of my posts on this substack and most of the classes in the course look at the same methods that Russia employs in other countries to achieve the same objectives: to cause chaos and break democracy.
So don’t believe the bullshit that the Russia investigation was flawed or political, and don’t believe for a second that Russian interference is a hoax. We can see it with our own eyes, all across Europe and the US.
The Further Consequences of Ratcliffe’s Moves
I want to touch on one more point here. Ratcliffe’s cynical maneuvering to try to (again) paint a Deep State conspiracy has effects far beyond this particular issue of Russia’s interference. It adds to the public’s distrust of government. The FBI using polygraph tests to check for loyalty among employees is another sign of how incredibly fucked up things are at the moment. With zero public trust in government, everything becomes a conspiracy. Democracy cannot survive that.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
EUROPE MOVES ON FROM THE US
Contours of European Strategic Autonomy: Europe is moving on without the US, and the US does not seem to like it after all. (Northern Flank Notes, from
)Ukraine: A European Vision of Victory? (RUSI)
EXCELLENT RESOURCES!
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
Thanks for reminding us that we once knew the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and how it was part of a larger anti-democracy effort around the world.
https://open.substack.com/pub/growingupaspen/p/kgb-in-the-usa-how-to-fight-the-real?r=2g93c&utm_medium=ios