Another day, a new Russia-spy fest on Capitol Hill. Today it was the turn of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Department of Justice acting Attorney General Sally Yates to testify.
The first thing to note is that Trump was largely peripheral to today’s proceedings. Senators repeatedly asked Clapper and Yates whether they had seen evidence of Trump-campaign/Trump-himself collusion with Russia. Clapper stated that he had not. Yates refused to comment. This, perhaps, is why Trump didn’t live-tweet the proceedings.
For short-lived National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, however, this was a bad day. Yates suggested that Flynn was compromised by Russia. In a serious way. We know this not simply because of what Yates said but how she said it.
The “how” matters immensely. While intelligence community-speak sometimes seems indecipherable, there are certain keywords that stand out. As I explained after the November 2015 downing of a passenger plane over Egypt, knowing the keywords and the context, we can assess what’s going on.
Thus consider how Yates described Flynn’s Russian connections.
Yates described two meetings with Trump’s White House counsel. In those meetings she and another DOJ official expressed their belief that Flynn “was compromised” by the Russian government, had engaged in concerning “underlying conduct” and “really concerned” the DOJ.
“Was compromised” is the first intelligence alarm bell. Its definitive simplicity: “was” rather than “may have been” or “was likely” compromised suggests that the DOJ assessed with high confidence (the highest possible credibility attachment for intelligence assessments) that Flynn was compromised.
In turn, Yates’ follow-on “underlying conduct” statement suggests that the DOJ had concerns on Flynn’s conduct toward Russia reaching beyond the specific blackmail concern. Was Yates referencing Flynn’s payments from Russia Today television? His dinner gala with Putin? Or something else? So far, we don’t know. But it should raise eyebrows.
But when we combine these two elements with Yates’ “really concerned” affirmation, it strongly suggests Flynn’s ongoing conduct was serious rather than peripherally concerning. At the very least, it suggests that what we do know – that Mike Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the topic of sanctions – was the tip of the iceberg.
Still, there were other interesting intelligence hints from the testimony. For one, Clapper described “very sensitive” intelligence provided by Britain on meetings between Trump surrogates and Russian officials. Here, “very sensitive” suggests signal intelligence collection (bugged meetings, tapped calls, etc.) by Britain’s NSA-equivalent, GCHQ, or human penetration of meetings by Britain’s CIA-equivalent, SIS. “Very sensitive” suggests more than, for example, a U.K. intelligence service reporting that Trump folks and Russian folks had been seen together. Regardless, that Clapper confirmed U.K. intelligence sharing will greatly upset the British government (which is focused on winning Trump’s trust).
Ultimately, today proved three things. Flynn has a problem (and was always a poor choice for national security adviser), Democrats smell blood, and the intelligence community knows a lot more than has yet been made public.
The Trump-Russia saga is far from finished.
Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a foreign policy columnist for National Review, a domestic policy columnist for Opportunity Lives, a former panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute.
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