by Paul Sperry at RealClear Investigations
The Obama intelligence community’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized dirty tricks to try and help Donald Trump win the 2016 election was based on “one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard [intelligence] reports,” according to a just-declassified report that had been locked away in a CIA vault.
Nevertheless, former CIA Director John Brennan ordered agency analysts to use the claim in the Intelligence Community Assessment issued during the Obama administration’s final days – even though the ICA itself noted that how the information on Putin’s plans was obtained was “not explicitly clear.”
A 46-page report by the House of Representatives released Wednesday found that the source of the claim about Putin – reportedly a Russian defector living in Northern Virginia described as “anti-Trump” – merely speculated to Brennan about something he had been told by somebody else: namely, that Putin was “counting on” Trump winning.
ICA participants interpreted the informant’s phrase “counting on” several different ways, the report said. Many NSA and CIA officials viewed “counting on” as meaning the same thing as “expected,” which is much different than the language – Putin “preferred” Trump – Brennan’s five handpicked drafters used in the ICA.
The congressional review determined that “the ICA did not cite any [classified] report where…
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