CIA's Tradecraft Review of the 2016 ICA on Election Interference
My top three findings of interest
Three days ago, DCI Ratcliff declassifed a SECRET//NOFORN report for public release entitled “Tradecraft Review of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Election Interference.”
This report is the result of several months of work by the Directorate of Analysis, which was tasked by the DCI to focus on the 2016 report’s most controversial finding (internally); that Putin “aspired” to help Trump win the 2016 Presidential election.
The following excerpts highlight a few of the report’s findings that stood out to me.
FBI forced inclusion of the Steele Dossier against CIA objections
“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. CIA’s Deputy Director for Analysis (DDA) warned in an email to Brennan on 29 December that including it in any form risked “the credibility of the entire paper.”
The High Confidence level was not merited
“The “aspired” judgment did not merit the “high confidence” level that CIA and FBI attached to it.
“NSA and a few other participants were not comfortable with ascribing “high confidence” to the “aspired” judgment. They cited the limited source base, lack of corroborating intelligence, and “the possibility for an alternative judgment” as driving their discomfort.”
No Alternative Analysis
“The ICA did not highlight outlier reporting or present alternative scenarios.”
In fact, the ICA authors “omitted information that conflicted with the “aspired” judgment. The omitted information, as well as a small body of other credibly sourced reporting that also was not cited in the ICA, suggested Putin was more ambivalent about which candidate won the election.”
Summary
In many criminal cases, the finding of guilt or innocence depends on how successful the Prosecution’s theory of what happened plays against the Defense’s theory in the minds of the jury, who will later conduct their version of “Alternative Analysis” in weighing the evidence.
It should be no different when it comes to the serious charge of election interference, a damaging cyber attack, or other significant acts against the United States by foreign agents.
As I point out in the Attribution chapter of my book Inside Cyber Warfare 3rd Ed., an international attribution mechanism has been called for by a number of States because the U.S., the U.K., and Israel do not provide any information about how they attributed responsibility for an attack. They simply make the claim and expect the rest of the world to take their word for it.
This report doesn’t change the finding of election interference by Russia; however, it does point out the serious issue of poor tradecraft practices, which, in the future, could have a more debilitating impact on our national security.
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