Wednesday 23 September 2020

Is the CIA wary of telling Trump what he should know about Russian interference?

In the intelligence world, secret stuff gets compartmentalised. Depending on what it is, it can also become an obsession for those who are engaged in working the material and sorting it into something meaningful. Take the Russian issue. Trump doesn't like being told that Putin is once again interfering in the US election. He didn't like it, in fact dismissed it, when the US intelligence community all agreed that Moscow DID inerfere in the 2016 election in order to ensure Trump won the White House and not Hillary Clinton. Now, as the 2020 election approaches, the US intelligence community is once again convinced that Putin is up to his old tricks and this time is interfering to do down Joe Biden's chances of winning. The CIA has a very secret department internally called Russia House and the analysts working inside spend every hour of every day focusing on what Moscow is up to. Of course they become obssesed. That's their job. Just as the team that was tasked with finding Osama bin Laden became obsessed with doing just that - tracking down the founder of al-Qaeda and delivering him up. It took them ten years. Now the Russia House is coming up with juicy stuff about Moscow's dirty doings behind the scenes in the 2020 election and according to a brilliant piece in Politico is finding it difficult to persuade Gina Haspel, CIA director, to pass it all onto the White House. Former CIA officials have claimed Haspel is reluctant to believe everything the Russia House is telling her and doesn't want to rock the political boat by revealing all to Trump who, judging by his previous reactions about Russian skulduggery, would bite her head off. So, the argument goes, don't tell Trump anything that will make him shout and scream but just give him stuff that he will be happy with. If this is true, then it's very bad news for the intelligence business because it means that secret material is being suppressed for the sake of keeping the White House happy.I don't know if this is true. I hope it isn't. Gina Haspel is not a political person by nature. She is a career intelligence officer, one who has spent most of her working life in covert operations around the world. But now she is the CIA director she is responsible for making decisions about what should or should not be passed on to the president. There is nothing new about that. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that Russia is trying to interfere in the 2020 election. The Russia House appears to have the evidence. But Trump doesn't want to know. For Gina Haspel it must be tricky as hell to decide what to tell him. But she will surely act with her instincts as a career intelligence officer and tell him what he needs to know, whether or not he scolds her or not.

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