New Clues Emerge About Barr’s Investigate The
Investigators Jihad
February
13, 2020
A
new report out Thursday offers new clues about the DOJ investigation into the
origins of the Russia probe that was ultimately led by special counsel Robert
Mueller.
The
federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to conduct the
investigation appears suspicious of Obama-era intelligence officials’ hesitancy
to share information with other agencies about Russian meddling in the 2016
election, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The
Times, citing unnamed people familiar with aspects of the inquiry, reported
that the Trump investigators “appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse
Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis
about Moscow’s covert operation,” in the paper’s words.
Last
year Barr tasked John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, with
investigating the investigators behind the Russia probe. The probe has widened
over time, and Barr himself has gotten involved.
So
far, the Times reported, Durham and his investigators’ questions of various
intelligence analysts imply he may be looking at Trump’s political enemies,
including the former CIA director and Trump critic John Brennan.
The
Times reported:
Mr.
Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former
director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying
to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other
agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the
people said.
Durham
and his investigators have interviewed analysts at multiple agencies who sought
to learn more about Russian meddling in 2016, including the CIA, FBI, NSA and
others. Those agencies concluded that Russia meddled in the election to help
Trump win.
Per
the Times, Durham has focused in on a number of instances in which some
analysts “sought access to delicate information from the other agencies and
were told — initially, at least — that they could not see it.”
Those
episodes included a dispute over a dataset, an NSA request for information
about a CIA source within the Kremlin who was extracted to the United States in
2017, and emails belonging to American officials that had been hacked by
Russians.
The
motives and rationales behind various disputes can be read multiple ways, the
paper caveated:
The
analysts could have been engaged in standard bureaucratic behavior like obeying
the filtering process or hoarding sensitive information. Or perhaps they were
trying to cover something up. The questions asked by Mr. Durham and his team
suggest they are looking for any potential basis to support making the latter
reading, officials said.
No comments:
Post a Comment