Angry over media leaks and the CIA’s refusal to brief Congress about Russian involvement in hacking Democratic emails, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee announced Friday the panel has planned field trips to the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency in January, “so members can further investigate this issue in the 115th Congress.”
Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., announced the move Friday afternoon, after the publication of another in a series of stories that include leaked intelligence community information about Russian involvement in hacking Democratic emails prior to the election.
Intelligence officers have declined an invitation from Nunes to explain their assessment of the situation to Congress. But on Friday, media outlets reported that unnamed sources say the FBI now agrees with a CIA assessment, also provided by unnamed sources, that the Russians hacked Democratic emails to help President-elect Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
Nunes said the CIA never told him about such an assessment.
“In the course of the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing oversight of cyber-attacks during the U.S. presidential campaign, we have not received any information from intelligence community (IC) agencies indicating that they have developed new assessments on this issue,” Nunes said in a statement Friday. “I am alarmed that supposedly new information continues to leak to the media but has not been provided to Congress despite my letter asking for more information on this topic, and despite the committee’s request to schedule an urgent classified briefing that would set the record straight on the IC’s current assessment.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., announced Friday his panel would hold hearings and investigate Russian hacking, as it has done in the past Congress, and will “include conducting a thorough examination of the underpinnings of the intelligence that prompted the administration to issue the Oct. 7 statement that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of U.S. political organizations.”
