The CIA has publicly released, with some small redactions, a report, dated June 26, 2025, Tradecraft Review of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Election Interference.

I first wrote about the ICA report, released publicly on January 6, 2017, on February 10 of that year in Finding Real News. In that post I summarized the findings of the ICA as:

The election vote was not hacked (though based on at least one poll, more than half of Democrats believe, based on media coverage, that Russia actually did hack into the vote counting).

Moscow was trying to influence the election, as Russia and its Soviet predecessor have done in the past.

In doing so, Russian cyber operations were directed against both parties.

Moscow's goal varied from undermining Clinton's credibility in light of her expected election to helping Trump win the election.

I then posed six questions based upon my reading of the report, none of which seemed to be of interest to the press and largely remain unanswered to this day. One of those relates to the final point in my summary:

2. Regarding the Kremlin's goals in 2016, the phrasing of the report is puzzling. The report states that Russia "aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible" but also that when it appeared Clinton would win the election, "the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency". The language seems to imply that there was an early period when Russia was trying to help Trump win, followed by a switch when the Kremlin thought Clinton would win. Is this a correct reading? Can the agencies tell us when this switch occurred and why? Did it occur before or after Wikileaks released the DNC and Podesta emails (disclosures which the report concludes "did not contain any evident forgeries")? Since Trump trailed consistently in all polls from the time he clinched the Republican nomination through election day, on what basis did the Kremlin make a different assessment at some point? When did the Kremlin not think Clinton was likely to win the election? In other words, during which periods was the Kremlin trying to help Trump win, as opposed to damaging a future Clinton presidency?

Last year I added a note to the 2017 post regarding the process by which the ICA was generated:

UPDATE (October 1, 2024) - I am adding this note regarding information I came across back in 2020 because it is directly related to the odd circumstances around the Intelligence Community Assessment released publicly in January 2017.
The five analysts who compiled the report were personally selected by DNI Clapper, contrary to normal practice which is designed to prevent undue influence towards desired outcomes by those assigning the task. One of those excluded from involvement with the report was the CIA's National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Russia! NIO's are appointed by the Director of the CIA, report directly to the Director, and are responsible for all intelligence matters within their geographical area.
In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on December 5, 2016, the NIO stated her conclusions regarding the election:

"In terms of favoring one candidate or another, you know, the evidence is a little bit unclear."
"It's unclear to us that the Kremlin had a particular - that they had a particular favorite or they wanted to see a particular outcome. That is what the reporting shows."

Before discussing the recently released reassessment of the 2016 assessment, some context is needed.

The question about whether Putin had a preference in the 2016 election and whether, and how, Russia interfered is separate and distinct from whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the campaign (it did not, though there is substantial suggestive evidence that the Russians were able to influence the contents of the Steele Dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign, a subject I've written about on several occasions, most recently in He's Not Your Bro). However, for the reasons discussed below, these issues ended up merged in the public mind due to the collusion of the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, and the New York Times(1) and Washington Post.

The fact that Russia, and its predecessor the Soviet Union, had preferences and interfered in past U.S. presidential elections is not unique, and is directly acknowledged in the 2016 ICA. It's also something I referenced in my February 2017 post:

3. The report places the Kremlin's 2016 influence campaign in an historical context, citing prior Russian and Soviet efforts to influence American presidential elections, though it also concludes the Kremlin took this to an unprecedented level in 2016. I would have liked to see some questions about this aspect of the report. Did the Kremlin seek to influence the 2012 election and, if so, in whose favor? Did the Kremlin seek to influence the 2008 election and, if so, in whose favor (we know that Kremlin spokespersons denounced John McCain, and Republicans in general, during the course of that election)? Do the intelligence agencies have information they can release about the reported contacts in 1983 between Senator Edward Kennedy and Communist Party Secretary Andropov regarding coordinating efforts to defeat President Ronald Reagan in his re-election bid? The report contains this disclosure:

In the 1970s, the KGB recruited a Democratic Party activist who reported information about then presidential hopeful Jimmy Carter's campaign and foreign policy plans . . .
Can the intelligence agencies shed any additional light on this incident? Is there additional information regarding past Russian and Soviet election influencing that can be publicly shared?

In 2008 and 2012 the Kremlin openly supported Barack Obama over his opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney. In 2012, President Obama was caught on an open mic telling then Soviet Premier Medvedev to let "Vladimir" know he'd have more flexibility on policy after the election (a reference to his post-election reneging on commitments to send missile defense systems to Poland and Romania).

In addition, the 2016 ICA directly asserts as firm conclusions that, more recently, the Kremlin supported the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as well as the ongoing anti-fracking efforts of U.S. environmental organizations.

This was my own assessment as of February 2017:

I think it probable that the Kremlin favored the election of Donald Trump. I base that on:

Trump's favorable personal comments about Putin.

Trump's history of favorable views of authoritarian strongmen.

His refusal to condemn Russia for aggression in Crimea and Ukraine or murdering its political opponents.

Trump's view of Russia as a potential ally in the Middle East and the fight against ISIS.

The presence, in the early stages of his campaign, of senior aides known to have favorable views of current Kremlin leadership.
Factors countering that view:

The Clinton Foundation ties to shady Kremlin associated businessmen and the deal regarding Russian control of uranium reserves important to the United States.

The widespread assumption in the American intelligence community that the Kremlin is in possession of the Hillary Clinton emails giving them potential leverage if she were elected.

The controversial dossier about Donald Trump's activities in Russia that was purported to come from Russian intelligence sources and which, though it did not become public until after the election, was in widespread circulation among media hostile to Trump prior to the election.
A possible factor countering that view:

How did the Kremlin rate the chances that a Clinton presidency would continue the policies of the Obama presidency which was ineffective in opposing Russia?
Despite these counter factors, if I were betting, I'd bet on the Kremlin favoring Trump, though I don't consider it a certainty.

I am less certain of that judgement in light of what I've learned reading thousands of pages of source documents since that time, though if I had to make a bet it would still be on favoring Trump at least at some point in the campaign.

Another factor in tempering my earlier judgement is that in February 2017 I did not know that the Clinton campaign had paid for the production of the Steele Dossier, that the contractor (FusionGPS), Steele himself, and the sources for most of the allegations (none of which were ever corroborated) were either actively employed at the time by Putin-connected oligarchs or had close associations with Russian intelligence, and that an internal FBI review in 2018 "showed that the Russians had access to sensitive U.S. government information years earlier that would have allowed them to identify Steele's subsources . . . Steele's subsources could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report" (of course the FBI then instructed its analysts to remain silent about this), raising the possibility that Putin was willing to put into the hands of the Clinton campaign wild stories designed to damage Donald Trump.

What I remain confident of is that Putin's overriding strategy has been to disrupt and weaken American institutions and public confidence in those institutions, regardless of who was president. He has largely achieved that goal with the help of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, the Intelligence Community, Adam Schiff(1), and the leading prestige legacy media outlets(2).

The 2025 Reassessment

The eight page reassessment addresses the process by which the ICA was hastily put together. The document begins by discussing the origin and context of the ICA. During the 2016 campaign there were "conflicting public and private statements" by IC officials about Russia's activities. This prompted President Obama on December 6, 2016 to direct DNI James Clapper to conduct an assessment.(3) The reassessment goes on to state:

However, before work on the assessment even began, media leaks suggesting that the IC had already reached definitive conclusions risked creating an anchoring bias.
On 9 December, both the Washington Post and New York Times reported the IC had concluded with high confidence that Russia had intervened specifically to help Trump win the election. The Post cited an unnamed US official describing this as the IC’s “consensus view".

The new review "identified multiple procedural anomalies in the preparation of the ICA. These
included a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive
involvement of agency heads" leading to "departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing of the ICA. These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment's most contentious judgment" [that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win election].

You can read the report to get the details of these anomalies, so I will focus on just a few.

Generating a final ICA usually take months, not two weeks as this one did. To do so, there were unusual restrictions on the normal process of participation as well as abnormal involvement by agency heads.

While agency heads sometimes review controversial analytic assessments before publication, their direct engagement in the ICA's development was highly unusual in both scope and intensity. This exceptional level of senior involvement likely influenced participants, altered normal review processes, and ultimately compromised analytic rigor.
From the outset, agency heads chose to marginalize the National Intelligence Council (NIC), departing significantly from standard procedures for formal IC assessments. Typically, the NIC maintains control over drafting assignments, coordination, and review processes.
These departures from standard procedure not only limited opportunities for coordination and thorough tradecraft review, but also resulted in the complete exclusion of key intelligence agencies from the process. While sensitive counterintelligence information in community assessments often requires restricted access, the decision to entirely shut out the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from any participation in such a high-profile assessment about an adversary’s plans and intentions was a significant deviation from typical IC practices.

The exclusion was not just of other agencies; as noted above, Clapper and CIA Director Brennan shut the CIA's own National Intelligence Officer for Russia out of the process. Indeed the reassessment notes:

The two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia argued jointly against including the “aspire” judgment. In an email to Brennan on 30 December, they stated the judgment should be removed because it was both weakly supported and unnecessary, given the strength and logic of the paper’s other findings on intent. They warned that including it would only “open up a line of very politicized inquiry.”

The other important aspect was the decision to include a summary of the Steele Dossier in the appendix of the ICA. Even by that date, the CIA knew that the dossier allegations were unsubstantiated and initially resisted including it in the ICA. However, according to the reassessment:

FBI leadership made it clear that their participation in the ICA hinged on the Dossier’s inclusion and, over the next few days, repeatedly pushed to weave references to it throughout the main body of the ICA.
The ICA authors and multiple senior CIA managers—including the two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia— strongly opposed including the Dossier, asserting that it did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.

However, CIA Director Brennan overruled his subordinates:

Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders—one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background—he appeared more swayed by the Dossier's general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

The reassessment concludes:

. . . by placing a reference to the annex material in the main body of the ICA as the fourth supporting bullet for the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump win, the ICA implicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment.

It was important for Brennan and the IC leadership to have a reference to the Steele Dossier somewhere in the report. At that point, many publications had the dossier, but while stories based on individual allegations contained therein had been published, the actual dossier was not yet publicly available. Reference to it helped bolster its credibility with media outlets and because its focus was on the alleged active collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin it allowed the issue of influence to be merged with collaboration.

Bottom line - the 2016 ICA was intended to be a political, not analytical, document.

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(1) The new California senator continues to lie about this, stating on CNN in January 2025 that "the fact that we didn't find proof beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean there wasn't evidence of conspiracy." I've read the same testimony he heard as ranking member of the House Intelligence Community. He knew then, and knows now, that not only was there not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but that there was NO evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, though we now know there is evidence of a possible conspiracy between the Clinton campaign and Russia. Part of the disgrace of the Russia Collusion Hoax was that those who promoted it have never paid any price for the damage they've done to this country. In fact, Schiff leveraged his role to advance from Representative to Senator. For more on Schiff and the testimony he heard read Right Move and the 53 Transcripts series.

(2) The New York Times continues its mendacious role in the collusion hoax. Its headline on the new report reads,

C.I.A. Says Its Leaders Rushed Report on Russia Interference in 2016 Vote

But the new review of the earlier assessment does not dispute the conclusion that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump.

The subheading is not supported by the text of the report.

I've been unable to find any coverage of the CIA report by the Washington Post.

(3) The language here is directly from the reassessment. However, my own take is a bit different. What prompted the 2016 ICA was the unexpected election of Donald Trump and the alarm it raised in the White House and the IC. The information contained in the IC was already known prior to the election and had been the subject of ongoing discussions between the IC and the White House during the campaign. I think the White House and IC were genuinely concerned about the prospect of a Trump presidency and the purpose of the ICA was to prepare a document that could be quickly released publicly and be used to undermine the incoming administration. I believe that is the best explanation for the deficiencies noted by the 2025 reassessment.

Things Have Changed

Friday, July 4, 2025

Thanks, America

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Reassessing The Assessment

C.I.A. Says Its Leaders Rushed Report on Russia Interference in 2016 Vote

Luka On Steroids

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Good Eating

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Thought For The Day