The former CIA senior officer who helped supervise the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections indicates that the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the White House “lie” when they say that it was a sabotage attempt by President Donald Trump.
Susan Miller, a CIA retirement officer who helped lead the team who had produced the report on Russia’s actions during the 2016 campaign, told NBC News that it was based on credible information that showed that Moscow had sought to help Trump win the election, but that there was no sign of the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
“The Director of National Intelligence and the White House, once again,” said Miller. “We definitely had the intelligence to show with a high probability that the specific objective of the Russians was to make the election of Trump.”
She added: “At the same time, we did not find a bidirectional collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at the time.”
Miller spoke to NBC News after Gabbard allegedly allegedly alleged 2017 intelligence assessment was based on “manufactured” information as part of a “betrayal conspiracy” of the Obama administration to Saper Trump and tarnish his electoral victory. Gabbard cited a 2020 Republicans report in the Permanent Chamber Select Committee on Intelligence, which she declassified and released this week, which said that there was not enough information to conclude that Russia had tried to tip the balance in favor of Trump.
Miller said: “It is clear that Trump and his supporters have a script they want to follow, despite the facts.”
She said that when her team had informed Trump and other people about their evaluation in 2017, they clearly indicated that there was no way to assess the impact of the Russian information war on the vote, and that Trump was the legitimate commander of the Chief Country.
“Me and my team easily recognized – Trump and others in the USG [U.S. government] We informed-that we could not say if this attempt by the Russians really worked unless someone interviewed each voter of Trump to see if this disinformation was what led them to vote for Trump, “she said.
“My team and me and dcia [the director of the CIA] said clearly in our relationship to Trump himself and the Intel committees [in Congress] That Trump was our president, “said Miller.
Trump thanked the CIA director for the briefing, said Miller.
“This part was left out by Gabbard,” said Miller.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence rejected Miller’s comments.
“Susan is wrong. And the American people can read hundreds of reasons for themselves for which they are wrong in the HPSCI reported report,” ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said, referring to the intelligence report of the republican house 2020.
The report of the Republican Chamber was categorically rejected at the time by the Democratic legislators of the Panel. But a Bipartisan Senate probe Released the same year Approved the assessment of intelligence agencies That Russia had spread the disinformation and disclosed stolen emails to the Democratic Party to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and strengthen Trump’s prospects. Trump’s current Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the acting president of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time and approved the conclusions of the Panel report.
Asked about Miller’s defense of the intelligence assessment, the White House spokesman Davis Ingle said: “Director Gabbard declared documents on behalf of transparency to show the world that Obama administration was indeed behind Russia, Russia, Russia.
The CIA refused to comment.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally digify the constant nonsense and the disinformation that leaves this white house with an answer,” said Patrick Rodenbush, spokesperson for former president Barack Obama, said in a statement this week. “But these claims are sufficiently scandalous to deserve one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a low attempted distraction.”
Before the 2016 elections, the intelligence reports said Russia was trying to influence the elections by disinformation, Miller said. After the vote, John Brennan – who was director of the CIA at the time and is now a paid contributor to NBC News and MSNBC – asked him to constitute a working group which would rigorously examine the role of Russia in the elections.
Miller, who served Nine visits abroad with the CIA during her 39-year-old career, was the head of the agency’s counterintelligence at the time. She said that she had set up a team with a range of skills and expertise, including analysts and officers working in counterintelligence.
As they started their work on the evaluation, Miller said, she and the rest of her team were very aware of the polarized political climate in the country after the elections. They faced the pressure of those responsible inside and outside the CIA.
“There were people who hated Trump who wanted us to find that Trump was an accomplice. And there were those who loved Trump. They wanted us to find nothing. And we have ignored all of this,” said Miller.
“We just kept ourselves neutral,” she added. “We just decided to let the data talk about itself. … We had to come very, very good data.”
Brennan did not put pressure or microgestioned in the working group, she said. Gabbard, CIA CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the White House accused Brennan of making information about the 2016 elections to Saper Trump. Brennan rejected allegations as “baseless”.
The working group has examined all possible angles, said Miller, especially if Trump and his campaign conspired somehow with the Kremlin to distort the elections. They did not find any intelligence to support this scenario, she said.
After examining all the information and information accessible to the public, the team concluded that Russia had carried out a large -scale information war campaign to undermine the democratic process of America, damage the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and increase the chances of Trump.
“The document lasted several pages, but the summary is 100%, they tried to influence the elections, and 100% we cannot say if it worked unless we interviewed each voter,” said Miller.
When the evaluation ended and a project was published, the director of the FBI, James Comey, asked that the report included a file on Trump by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, according to Miller and a Senate report From 2020, which cited the accounts of several officials, including Comey and Brennan. The file included undeclaged allegations about Trump who had not been corroborated by US intelligence agencies, and CIA officials defended references to the report’s file.
“We had already written the newspaper and that went by changes,” said Miller.
FBIs position bored Miller. His point of view was that “we cannot simply push this” to the evaluation at such a late stage and that “it will take us for another six months to go and try to determine if this is true,” she said.
But the FBI insisted that if the file was not included, the office would withdraw and does not approve of the intelligence assessment, according to Miller. “The FBI said that” unless you are marked at the end, so we are not going to sign on this subject “,” she said.
In the end, the The CIA and the FBI have established a compromise. The file was Included in an annex When evaluating, with a warning that the claims of the file had not been verified by the intelligence community.
Comey could not be joined to comment.
Later during the first Trump administration, Miller was called to the CIA Advocate Board. There, she said, a lawyer for the agency told her that she was facing any criminal accusations concerning his role leading to evaluation.
Miller supposed that it was a joke. “I laughed aloud.” But that was not the case.
Miller decided to hire a lawyer, although he was not clear what was the potential criminal accusation at stake. The administration finally used a special lawyer, John Durham, to investigate how the previous administration had managed probes about the Russian elections and the Trump campaign.
The Durham team questioned Miller for hours. They asked her if she had an anti-republican bias that influenced the way the evaluation was written, said Miller.
“I answered questions like:” Tell us how you hate all the Republicans, and that is why you wrote this document. In fact, if you look at my registration, I am a republican.
Miller has never been charged with any crime and she said that she had never been disciplined in any way on the intelligence assessment. She retired during the Biden administration after 39 years with the CIA.
Earlier this month, Ratcliffe declassified an internal review of “learned lessons” examining how intelligence was written. The internal examination revealed that certain standard procedures have not been followed and that the report was precipitated, but did not question the conclusions of the evaluation.
Miller said that no one in the CIA had contacted it for the internal exam. The CIA refused to comment.
Nine years since the 2016 elections, Russia is probably happy to see even more political acrimony in Washington for what happened, according to Miller.
“Putin and her best friends in the Kremlin are grilled vodka strokes while we are talking about the turmoil that creates,” she said.
