Gabbard Release Threatens Sources and Methods, Top former Intel Official Says
Larry Pfeiffer discussed the ODNI’s attacks on the IC’s Russia 2016 elections report on the SpyTalk podcast
Larry Pfeiffer, a top former official at the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, came on the SpyTalk podcast this week to talk about the attack Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and Trump-world activists made on the Intelligence Community’s 2017 report assessing Russian influence on the 2016 elections.
That report said “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” It added, “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and “We have high confidence in these judgments.” Reports by the Trump Justice Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by then-Repubican Sen. Marc Rubio, concurred in the finding.
Gabbard alleged that the officials who oversaw and wrote the report “manipulated and withheld” key intelligence that contradicted its findings that the Kremlin aimed to hurt Hillary Clinton to the benefit of Donald Trump in the 2016 contest. As part of her campaign to discredit the report, which was begun in late 2016 under President Obama and completed in January 2017 before Trump took office, Gabbard also declassified a 2020 report by the Republican majority on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that largely dismissed the notion that the Russians favored Trump.
Pfeiffer, who served in senior posts under four CIA directors, including as chief of staff to Gen. Michael Hayden, took issue with several aspects of the Gabbard-led campaign against Obama-era intelligence officials—and more. The revelations in the declassified HPSCI report “put liaison relationships at risks” he maintained on the SpyTalk podcast, published Friday. It also likely jarred the confidence of current or potential foreign sources to work with the CIA, he told me and podcast co-host Michael Isikoff.
“I read through that the other day and I almost felt like I was going to get in trouble for having read that document, the amount of detail that remained in that document about tactics, techniques, procedures, sources and methods could be easily inferred in almost every instance with the light redactions,” he said. “I mean, I don't know if I've seen a document of that sensitivity so lightly redacted, a document that was so sensitive that CIA [would say], ‘You can't take that thing out of the building because it's so super classified.’”
“And if it doesn't put the immediate sources at risk,” he added, “because let's say we exfiltrated the source out of Russia or whatever—it absolutely discourages anybody in any sensitive position in a foreign government from coming to one of our case officers and saying, Hey, I would love to share some information with you because I don't like the guys who are running my country.”
“There's definitely some concern that we're gonna lose our ability to collect information from those people,” said Pfeiffer, now director of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University. “because of this kind of gratuitous exposure.”
You can listen to the entire conversation for free here on Simplecast, or wherever you like to hear your podcasts. We’re everywhere.
Trump & Co. are straightforward in their and Putin's long term goal of kneecapping and degrading the US in every area touchable by a President and his Cabinet. The sound of treason they give off is like a Nepalese gong, deep and sour, but clearly discernable.
needs to be said, thank you. yes loyalty trumps knowledgeable