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Potential Clash Over Secrets Looms Between Justice Dept. and C.I.A. Potential Clash Over Secrets Looms Between Justice Dept. and C.I.A.
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A., effectively stripping the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden. WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A. It effectively strips the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden.
On Friday, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said the agencies under his purview would give the Justice Department “all of the appropriate information” for its review. But Mr. Coats, a seasoned politician, also included a not-so-subtle warning that his agency’s secrets must be protected. Mr. Trump said on Friday that he wanted Mr. Barr to “get to the bottom” of what the intelligence agencies knew about the investigation into his campaign. He promised, “We’re exposing everything.”
“I am confident that the attorney general will work with the I.C. in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” Mr. Coats said, referring to the intelligence community. The president raised questions about C.I.A. involvement in the origins of the Russia investigation, and other officials said Mr. Barr wanted to learn more about sources in Russia, including a key informant who helped the C.I.A. conclude that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the intrusion on the 2016 election. Mr. Trump also invoked two close allies, Australia and Britain, telling reporters he wanted the attorney general to examine their roles in sharing intelligence about Russia’s interference.
Mr. Trump granted Mr. Barr’s request for sweeping new authorities to conduct his review of how the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The president ordered the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies to cooperate, granting Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents and thus significant leverage over the intelligence community. The declassification order served as Mr. Trump’s counterpunch to the special counsel’s investigation. Since the release of the Mueller report, the president has been trying to focus attention on his accusations that the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies spied on his campaign. The new order, former officials said, could be intended to give more ammunition to that effort.
Mr. Trump defended his decision earlier on Friday, telling reporters as he left for a trip to Japan that the declassification would be sweeping. “What are we doing, we are exposing everything,” he said. “We are being transparent.” He expressed no qualms about national security implications. The intelligence agencies signaled on Friday that they would not easily give up their secrets. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, pledged to cooperate with the review but also warned that the secrets of the intelligence community, or I.C., must be protected.
As Mr. Coats’ comments suggested, intelligence officials believe the danger of the move by Mr. Trump, was that it could endanger the agency’s ability to keep the identities of its sources secret. “I am confident that the attorney general will work with the I.C. in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” Mr. Coats said in a statement.
The most prominent of those source among them may well be a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the C.I.A. about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference. Though the ultimate power to declassify documents rests with the president, Mr. Trump’s delegation of that power to Mr. Barr effectively stripped Mr. Coats and the C.I.A. of control of their secrets. The move could endanger the agencies’ ability to keep the identities of their sources secret, former intelligence officials said.
The concern about the source, who is believed to be still alive, is one of several issues raised by Mr. Trump’s decision to use the intelligence to pursue his political enemies. It has also prompted fears from former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers that other sources or methods of intelligence gathering — among the government’s most closely held secrets — could be made public, not because of leaks to the news media that the administration denounces, but because the president has determined it suits his political purposes. Mr. Coats and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, will fight hard to ensure that their most valuable secrets — the identities of sources — are protected, former officials have said. Ms. Haspel has been described as a fierce political infighter, but she has also been careful to cultivate a strong working relationship with Mr. Barr, former officials said.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify combat. But Mr. Trump’s decision is different. Traditionally, the C.I.A. has been effective at intramural governmental fights, in large measure because its power comes from its information and its closely guarded secrets. By taking that power from the intelligence agencies, Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr may have weakened the C.I.A.
It allows Mr. Barr, who has used the charged term “spying” to describe efforts to investigate the Trump campaign, sole discretion to declassify the intelligence behind the F.B.I.’s decision to begin investigating whether any Trump aides or associates were working with the Russians. It also raises the specter that officials ranging from the F.B.I. to the C.I.A. to the National Security Agency, which was monitoring Russian officials, will be questioned about their sources and their intent. The intelligence agencies already have a degree of unease over the Justice Department’s ability to keep the identity of sources secret. The name of the F.B.I. informant involved in the initial investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia was inadvertently made public.
The order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “If you compromise agents, lives can be lost. That is why this is so sensitive,” Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. “It is important to be exceedingly careful in this area. That is my only concern, and I hope Mr. Barr realizes that.”
Mr. Barr asked Mr. Trump for the declassification authority, a Justice Department official said on Thursday. He has not detailed the information he is seeking, but some officials have said he is interested in how the C.I.A. concluded Mr. Putin ordered the interference campaign in 2016.
The most prominent of the C.I.A.’s sources of intelligence on Russia’s election interference was a person close to Mr. Putin who provided information about his involvement, former officials have said. The source turned over evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that President Barack Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign, the officials said.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated, according to the officials. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
But Mr. Trump’s promise to declassify a broad swath of documents suggests that Mr. Barr’s mandate is more extensive than investigating any single source. Mr. Trump’s comments mentioning Britain and Australia appeared to be a reference to the F.B.I.’s investigation of George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide.
An Australian diplomat told the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016 that Mr. Papadopoulos had said that Russia had made an offer to help the Trump campaign by releasing stolen Democratic emails. The F.B.I. enlisted an informant, Stefan Halper, to talk with Mr. Papadopoulos, an investigative technique that prompted Mr. Trump to accuse the bureau of spying on his campaign.
Mr. Barr has picked up on the term “spying,” invoking it multiple times in recent weeks to describe steps the F.B.I. took to investigate the Trump campaign but stopping short of alleging that the bureau acted improperly.
It would have been improper for the intelligence agencies to sit on the information from Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. King said.
“If someone came and told that to the C.I.A. or F.B.I. and they didn’t open a counterintelligence investigation, they would be guilty of malpractice,” he said. “If they had ignored that, it would have been unacceptable law enforcement, especially when we are dealing with an adversary trying to undermine our country.”
He also said the Intelligence Committee looked at both the F.B.I.’s and the C.I.A.’s role in the origins of the Russia inquiry. He said the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency played roles in the inquiry, but said that was proper.
Some revelations about intelligence operations around the 2016 campaign have angered officials in Britain, Australia and other closely allied countries, according to former officials. Exposing further information about British or Australian cooperation in the investigation could deepen tensions with two of America’s closest intelligence partners.
“It is yet another step that will raise questions among our allies and partners about whether to share sensitive intelligence with us,” said Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the C.I.A. and host of the “Intelligence Matters” podcast.
Mr. Morell said Mr. Coats, not the attorney general, was in the best position to determine what information would be damaging if declassified.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify the 2003 invasion.
But Mr. Trump’s order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.
Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,’’ at various points accusing former President Barack Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory. Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,” at various points accusing Mr. Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory.
He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election, even though the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems. He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election. But the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and the publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to lift Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems.
But it is the human source that particularly worries some former and current intelligence officials. Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign. Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would closely monitor Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
The source provided evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that Mr. Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
John Sipher, a former C.I.A. official who led Russia operations for the agency, expressed concern that giving the president names of sources or agency officials who oversaw those informants could put those secrets at risk because they would inevitably be more widely disseminated.
“If the president of the United States asks for a name, it would be hard not to provide a name,” Mr. Sipher said. “It wouldn’t do him any good unless he sent it around to people to look into it, and that is where the security problem is, obviously.”
Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would pay close attention to all of Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said.