OBAMA IS DONE!
The NSA Released The Evidence Trump Was Looking For!
WASHINGTON - In the Obama administration's last days, some White House officials scrambled
to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election - and
about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians
- across the government.
Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn't duplicated
in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence
for government investigators.
American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing
meetings in European cities between Russian officials - and others close to Russia's president,
Vladimir V. Putin - and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American
officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.
Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian
officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.
According to a former senior American official, he met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey
I. Kislyak, twice in the past year.
The details of the meetings were not clear, but the contact appeared to contradict testimony
Mr. Sessions provided Congress during his confirmation hearing in January when he said
he "Did not have communications with the Russians."
Mr. Sessions said in a statement late Wednesday that he "Never met with any Russian officials
to discuss issues of the campaign."
Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials, and at
one point he openly suggested that American spy agencies had cooked up intelligence suggesting
that the Russian government had tried to meddle in the presidential election.
At the Obama White House, Mr. Trump's statements stoked fears among some that intelligence
could be covered up or destroyed - or its sources exposed - once power changed hands.
What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which
the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from
Moscow.
Sean Spicer, the Trump White House spokesman, said, "The only new piece of information that
has come to light is that political appointees in the Obama administration have sought to
create a false narrative to make an excuse for their own defeat in the election."
He added, "There continues to be no there, there."
As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence
was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government
could see it, even if people without security clearances could not.
Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers
would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators - including the Senate Intelligence
Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence
the election.
At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible
into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure
as wide a readership as possible across the government - and, in some cases, among European
allies.
This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki
used by American analysts to share information.
"When the intelligence community does that type of comprehensive review, it is standard
practice that a significant amount of information would be compiled and documented."
The opposite happened with the most sensitive intelligence, including the names of sources
and the identities of foreigners who were regularly monitored.
More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the
effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention
to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress.
Separately, the House and Senate intelligence committees are conducting their own investigations,
though they must rely on information collected by the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, a Justice Department official confirmed that Mr. Sessions had two conversations
with Ambassador Kislyak last year, when he was still a senator, despite testifying at
his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians.
He added that if there was, "It is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend,
cannot make this decision about Trump."
At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, former Senator Dan Coats, Mr. Trump's nominee
for director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "I
think it's our responsibility to provide you access to all that you need."
Some Obama White House officials had little faith that a Trump administration would make
good on such pledges, and the efforts to preserve the intelligence continued until the administration's
final hours.
This was partly because intelligence was still being collected and analyzed, but it also
reflected the sentiment among many administration officials that they had not recognized the
scale of the Russian campaign until it was too late.
As WikiLeaks was pushing out emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee through
online publication, American intelligence began picking up conversations in which Russian
officials were discussing contacts with Trump associates, and European allies were starting
to pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the
Netherlands, Britain and other countries.
It wasn't until after the election, and after more intelligence had come in, that the administration
began to grasp the scope of the suspected tampering and concluded that one goal of the
campaign was to help tip the election in Mr. Trump's favor.
In early December, Mr. Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of
the Russian campaign.
In the weeks before the assessment was released in January, the intelligence community combed
through databases for an array of communications and other information - some of which was
months old by then - and began producing reports that showed there were contacts during the
campaign between Trump associates and Russian officials.
The New York Times, citing four current and former officials, reported last month that
the American authorities had obtained information of repeated contacts between Mr. Trump's associates
and senior Russian intelligence officials.
Since the Feb. 14 article appeared, more than a half-dozen officials have confirmed contacts
of various kinds between Russians and Trump associates.
The label "Intelligence official" is not always cleanly applied in Russia, where ex-spies,
oligarchs and government officials often report back to the intelligence services and elsewhere
in the Kremlin.
Steven L. Hall, the former head of Russia operations at the C.I.A., said that Mr. Putin
was surrounded by a cast of characters, and that it was "Fair to say that a good number
of them come from an intelligence or security background.
Once an intel guy, always an intel guy in Russia."
The concerns about the contacts were cemented by a series of phone calls between Mr. Kislyak
and Michael T. Flynn, who had been poised to become Mr. Trump's national security adviser.
The calls began on Dec. 29, shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department
and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling
35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions.
A day later, Mr. Putin said his government would not retaliate, prompting a Twitter post
from Mr. Trump praising the Russian president - and puzzling Obama White House officials.
American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts
of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations
would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, according to multiple current and former officials.
American intelligence agencies made it clear in the declassified version of the intelligence
assessment released in January that they believed Russia intended to use its attacks on the
United States
as a template
for
more meddling.
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