Intelligence and politics

Playing politics with intelligence is a dangerous game. That's what's going on in Washington at the moment. The Republican-chaired House Intelligence Committee has produced this memo which outlines how the Justice Department (under Obama) and the FBI (under Jack Comey) carried out a surveillance operation against a Trump campaign aide during the 2016 presidential election after seeing the extraordinary dossier drawn up by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele which detailed a mass of allegations against Trump, including the notorious Golden Shower moment in a hotel in Moscow way back. The dossier had been partly financed by the Hillary Clinton lot. First of all, it is pretty amazing that the FBI should launch an investigation of this kind during an actual presidential election campaign based on such a controversial dossier. But, be that as it may, the point now is whether this Intelligence Committee memo should be made public. The committee, including its Democrat members, agreed it should. But then it turned out that the devious chairman, Republican Devin Nunes, changed some of the wording of the memo AFTER the committee had approved the text. What's that all about? Now the Democrats don't want it published after all. This memo is dynamite. If it's published, the aim of the Republicans is to show the FBI was engaged in abusing its surveillance powers. The FBI said the memo must not be published because it would be damaging to national security. Trump of course who has the right to authorise its publication, wants it out in the open because it will undermine the continuing Russia collusion investigation led by Robert Mueller. It's a huge issue. Personally I think it's always best to be transparent, and the memo should be published, provided every word in it is approved by every member of the House Intelligence Committee. So, Congressman Nunes, get your act together and stop fiddling with the memo. Then let it be published. We do need to know what the FBI was up to in the presidential election just as we need to know what the Russians were doing during the election. But mixing intelligence with politics is always going to have its risks.