{"id":1601,"date":"2017-01-08T21:10:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T02:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1601"},"modified":"2017-01-08T21:10:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T02:10:46","slug":"unconvincing-intelligence-report-russia-us-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/01\/unconvincing-intelligence-report-russia-us-election.html","title":{"rendered":"Unconvincing: Intelligence Report on Russia and the US Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 25 page Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,\u201d<\/a> has just been released. Contrary to the impression that the Democrat-dominated media is anxious to convey, this assessment supplies no substantial evidence for the Democrats\u2019 latest narrative that the Russian government intervened in the election.\u00a0 In fact, what \u201cevidence\u201d it does offer undermines<\/em> this narrative.<\/p>\n

As for the notion, implied but never directly stated, that the Russians essentially handed President-Elect Donald J. Trump his victory, the report is even more telling. But we\u2019ll get to this in due time.<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong>The authors of the ICA inform us in advance that because this is a \u201cdeclassified\u201d version of a \u201chighly classified assessment,\u201d the \u201cfull supporting information\u201d that can (allegedly) be found in the latter to show that the Kremlin launched an \u201cinfluence campaign\u201d is absent from the former.<\/p>\n

To repeat: One needn\u2019t read any further than the first page of this \u201cassessment\u201d to discover that the remaining 24 pages will not provide any more substantiation for the charge against Russia that Trump\u2019s detractors have been making since not long after Election Day.<\/p>\n

That is, there is no<\/em> substantiation disclosed in the version of the ICA that is available to the public.<\/p>\n

But matters are even worse than this.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong>Even the original classified document lacks proof for the charge made<\/em>. The report is an \u201cassessment\u201d based on the \u201cjudgements\u201d of the CIA, FBI, and NSA.\u00a0 On page 13, we are told how our intelligence agencies understand these terms. \u201cJudgements are not intended <\/em>to imply that we have proof <\/em>that shows something to be a fact.\u201d As for assessments, these \u201care based on collected information, which is often incomplete <\/em>or fragmentary<\/em>, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents\u201d (emphases added).<\/p>\n

However plausible is the idea that the Russian government, like the governments of America, China, Israel, and a whole lot of other countries, tried to influence the politics of another nation, the US Intelligence Community admits to having zero<\/em> \u201cproof\u201d that the Russians did any such thing. It also admits that the information on the basis of which it levels this damning accusation against the second most heavily nuclear-armed nation on the planet is \u201cincomplete or fragmentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

(3)<\/strong>Since there was never any intention on the part of our intelligence agencies to supply any proof for their claim, the question arises: Why release this document at all?<\/p>\n

The answer, I submit, is obvious enough.\u00a0 The political hacks who preside over the American intelligence community are motivated by exactly the same aching desire to undermine Trump<\/em> that fuels leftist Democrat politicians and their media propagandists.<\/p>\n

Unless this was the case, the thoughtful must ask, then why, when the report itself concedes that Russia has long sought to intervene in American elections, is the American government only now, after this <\/em>election, making, quite literally, a public case out of it?<\/p>\n

Why has our government permitted this to not only continue but (allegedly) worsen?<\/p>\n

Why, after the most rancorous of election contests and at a time when the country remains as heavily divided as it is, why would anyone at this critical moment during a presidential-transition announce that a foreign government interjected in the election?<\/p>\n

The most plausible answer to all of these questions is that Trump\u2019s opponents want for Americans to think that if not for Russian interference, Hillary Clinton would be preparing to assume the office of the Presidency.<\/p>\n

They want for Americans to think that Trump won 30 of America\u2019s 50 states and 2600 of her 3100 counties because Vladimir Putin cheated for him.<\/p>\n

The ICA is intended to lend a veneer of authority to this insinuation.<\/p>\n

(4)<\/strong>Of course, this is just an insinuation. No one, or at least no one with an IQ above room temperature and the least bit of political savviness, would be willing to explicitly say that the Russian government won the election for Trump. Once stated this baldly, it is seen for the unmitigated nonsense that it is.<\/p>\n

Least of all do our intelligence officials want to be associated with this assertion. In fact, in the report in question, the authors expressly assure us that intelligence agencies do \u201cnot make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome<\/em> of the 2016 election\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

Read this last line carefully.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t just that intelligence agencies provide no evidence that Russia helped to get Trump elected.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t that they withheld information that was in some highly classified assessment regarding the latter.\u00a0 They admit here that they have no such evidence because they never even pursued this possibility!<\/p>\n

The ICA does, however, stress in boldfaced type that the Intelligence Community concludes that \u201cthe types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.\u201d<\/p>\n

(5)<\/strong>That the ICA has nothing of substance to support its position is borne out by what flimsy considerations it adduces.<\/p>\n

For starters, while it does indeed refer to Russia\u2019s \u201ccyber activities,\u201d the report is remarkably speculative in tone on this score.\u00a0 \u201cWe assess with high confidence,\u201d the ICA reads, \u201cthat Russian military intelligence\u2026used the Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com may very well have been front operations for the Russian government. The argument provided for this conclusion in the ICA, though, is scandalously unpersuasive.<\/p>\n

Guccifer has always self-identified as \u201can independent Romanian hacker,\u201d the ICA acknowledges.\u00a0 Then it informs us that \u201che\u201d [Guccifer] \u201cmade multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely <\/em>Russian identity throughout the election,\u201d and that \u201cpress reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 interacted with journalists\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

This is a garbled paragraph if there ever was one. The reasoning seems viciously circular: Intelligence authorities begin<\/em> their assessment with the suspicion<\/em> that Guccifer is \u201clikely\u201d to be Russian or connected with the Russian government.\u00a0 Because he denies this, intelligence authorities determine that he is <\/em>of \u201clikely Russian identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this the authors of the ICA may object that it isn\u2019t Guccifer\u2019s denial of his \u201clikely Russian identity\u201d per se that exposes him but, rather, the \u201cmultiple contradictory statements and false claims\u201d that he made regarding it.\u00a0 As to what this <\/em>means, however, I confess to being oblivious. At a minimum, whether Guccifer 2.0 is one person or multiple parties, as the ICA thinks, nothing that it has provided here points to the Russian government.<\/p>\n

The argument for regarding DCLeaks.com as a front outfit for the Russians is just as circular as this last.\u00a0 The Intelligence Community \u201cassesses\u201d that in March of 2016 \u201cthe GRU [General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or Russian military intelligence]\u201d extracted \u201ccontent\u201d from \u201ce-mail accounts\u201d that, three months later, began appearing at DCLeaks.com.<\/p>\n

So, because our intelligence agencies suspect (on the basis of \u201cincomplete\u201d and \u201cfragmentary\u201d information) that the Russians obtained these emails on this date, and because those emails appeared at website X sometime after this date, website X must be one and the same party as the Russians who initially obtained the emails!<\/p>\n

To see how weak this argument is, consider an analogy.\u00a0 Suppose that the answers to a test that I was planning on giving to my students went missing from my classroom.\u00a0 There is one student in particular who I have reason, good reason, in fact, to suspect is guilty of the transgression.\u00a0 Let\u2019s call him \u201cBob.\u201d\u00a0 Bob has earned a reputation for dishonesty and, given his otherwise poor academic performance, he would likely stand the most to gain from having the answers in advance of the test. Yet try as I may, I can never directly link the stolen answers to Bob.\u00a0 Not long after I search Bob, though, I find the answers in the notebook of \u201cSuzie,\u201d another student of mine. Suzie is respectful, diligent, and the last person who I\u2019d suspect of cheating.\u00a0 But she has the answers and admits that she did, in fact, steal them.<\/p>\n

If I were to conclude from this that Suzie must be in cahoots with Bob, even though both Suzie and Bob staunchly deny Bob\u2019s involvement, or if I concluded that Suzie really is Bob, the illogic could immediately be seen for what it is.<\/p>\n

Yet this is the same reasoning that is exhibited in the ICA report.<\/p>\n

Given that, as we now know, DNC servers were as unsecured as they were, and considering that America is the world\u2019s preeminent superpower, is it not more likely than not that many<\/em> independent entities, state and non-state actors alike, would have had both the capability and the will to acquire emails?<\/p>\n

That the ICA never so much as raises this as a possibility reinforces the impression that its results are cooked.<\/p>\n

(6)<\/strong>Of course, the cooked nature of the ICA is gotten easily enough from the broadness and elasticity of the term\u2014\u201cinfluence\u201d\u2014with which it chooses to label Russia\u2019s activities vis-\u00e0-vis the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cInfluence\u201d functions not dissimilarly in this context to the way in which \u201csexual assault\u201d has been made to function for radical feminist activists who try to show that one in four college<\/a> women are attacked. Just as \u201csexual assault\u201d has been stretched to cover everything from forced sexual intercourse to one fully clothed person rubbing up, \u201cin a sexual way,\u201d against another person, so too \u201cinfluence\u201d is designed to cast as large a net as possible.<\/p>\n

Thus, it is no coincidence that a substantial portion of the ICA is devoted to RT<\/a>. <\/em>The latter is Russia\u2019s first international news channel. Founded in 2005, RT <\/em>has three 24 hour channels that broadcast in English, Arabic, and Spanish. It is available to 700 million people in five continents and 100 countries.<\/p>\n

RT America <\/em>airs straight from Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

According to the ICA, such \u201cstate-owned Russian media\u201d as RT <\/em>\u201cmade increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than one reason, the ICA\u2019s allusion to RT <\/em>is disconcerting.<\/p>\n

First, there is nothing in the least objectionable about the citizens and\/or government of one country expressing judgments\u2014or assessments<\/em>\u2014about the affairs of another country. For anyone, especially American media figures and politicians who find it difficult to only<\/em> comment on foreign affairs, or whose comments typically involve calls for force (sanctions, military operations)against other countries, to suggest otherwise is, at best, the textbook display of national chauvinism.<\/p>\n

Should, lest Russia be guilty of waging war by other means, those in Russian media refrain from expressing any opinion whatsoever regarding the United States election?<\/p>\n

Second, among those who have their own shows at RT America <\/em>are people like Larry King and former MSNBC host Ed Shultz\u2014hardly Trump supporters or Russian apparatchiks.<\/p>\n

Third, it is just patently incorrect that RT America <\/em>has been a Trump propagandist outlet. As the site Zerohedge <\/em>has shown<\/a>, the network has featured such prominent guests as Bernie Sanders, who accused Trump of injecting \u201cbigotry\u201d into the election.\u00a0 RT\u2019s<\/em> own hosts have devoted shows to such topics as, \u201cIs Donald Trump a Traitor or Merely Stupid?\u201d\u00a0 And it publishes news stories with titles like: \u201cPay to play?<\/a> Donald J. Trump Foundation has \u2018dubious\u2019 and \u2018surprising\u2019 practices-report.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, RT <\/em>has aired debates between third-party presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.\u00a0 Whether this was meant, as the US Intelligence Community allegedly believes, to \u201cundermine public faith in the US democratic process,\u201d we can be sure that neither Trump nor any other candidate of either of our two national parties has any sort of interest invested in third-party candidates receiving air time.<\/p>\n

There is more that can be said about this ICA report. Hopefully, from the foregoing, the reader will recognize that it has the marks of any other piece of political propaganda. This is unfortunate, for the Intelligence community has been undermining its credibility repeatedly since it insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

With this latest excursion into politics, it has undercut itself further.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 25 page Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,\u201d has just been released. 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