HOW JOHN BRENNAN LIED TO CONGRESS. The Justice Department is evaluating a criminal referral accusing former CIA Director John Brennan of lying to Congress. In the referral, Republican members of the House allege that Brennan lied to investigators trying to figure out what the nation’s intelligence agencies did in their pursuit of President Donald Trump over the Russia collusion matter. The case is a strong one.
It started back in 2017. Congressional Republicans were trying to trace the FBI, CIA, and other agencies’ activities in what is often known as the “Russia hoax.” One central focus was the Steele dossier, the collection of false and salacious accusations that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
The dossier, as everyone knows today, was a political oppo research job. It was put together by a former British spy who was hired and paid by operatives working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. As an investigative document, it was 100% BS.
That, of course, did not stop the FBI from embracing it. The bureau accepted the dossier as a legitimate source. The FBI included material from the dossier in a secret court application to wiretap a former low-level Trump campaign aide named Carter Page. And it even briefly hired the dossier’s fabricator, Christopher Steele.
Here was where things did not add up for Hill investigators. Given what the FBI was doing, one might have expected that the CIA would also have played some role in the whole dossier saga. But John Brennan, then the head of the CIA, swore under oath that the CIA had nothing to do with the dossier.
A lot of the Republicans’ questions had to do with what was called the Intelligence Community Assessment, the document produced by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other agencies describing their investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The assessment had famously — and controversially — concluded that Vladimir Putin “developed a clear preference” for candidate Donald Trump and “aspired” to help Trump win the election.
GOP investigators wanted to know: Was that conclusion based on the dossier? Republicans knew the FBI wanted to include the dossier’s allegations in the Intelligence Community Assessment. But what about the CIA? Did Brennan’s agency support including the dossier in the assessment? In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan said absolutely not, that the dossier played no role in the CIA’s work. Brennan told lawmakers the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment.”
Six years later, on May 11, 2023, Brennan again found himself answering questions from Hill Republicans, and he again denied CIA involvement with the dossier. “I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all,” Brennan said. “I said the first time I actually saw it, it was after the election. And the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier. … It was [the FBI’s] purview, their area, not ours at all.” Brennan also reiterated earlier testimony when he said, “The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment.”
Now it appears that what Brennan told congressional investigators was false. The current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who used to be one of the House investigators looking into the Russia matter, has declassified documents from Brennan’s time at the agency which show that, far from keeping the dossier at arm’s reach, Brennan actually forced CIA analysts to use it and overruled the analysts who wanted to leave the dossier out of the Intelligence Community Assessment.
Ratcliffe asked the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis (DA) to review the tradecraft used in producing the assessment. First of all, the DA found what it called “multiple procedural anomalies” in the CIA’s preparation of the assessment. There was “a highly compressed production timeline,” too much “compartmentalization,” and “excessive involvement of agency heads,” which led to “departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing” of the assessment. Together, all of the “anomalies” “impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft,” the DA concluded.
There was no doubt the FBI wanted to include the dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment; the CIA self-investigation found that “FBI leadership made it clear that their participation in the assessment hinged on the dossier’s inclusion.” FBI officials “repeatedly pushed” to include the dossier in the assessment.
But career CIA analysts did not want to include the dossier. The CIA’s deputy director for analysis sent Brennan an email saying that including the dossier’s information in any form would threaten “the credibility of the entire document.” That was when Brennan made the decision to overrule his experts. From the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis:
Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the dossier by the two mission center leaders — one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background — he appeared more swayed by the dossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”
Director Ratcliffe has also declassified a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which the CIA had kept under wraps, that outlined Brennan’s involvement in the dossier. The report, based on the committee’s interviews with CIA staff, said that “two senior CIA officers,” both with extensive Russia experience, “argued with [Brennan] that the dossier should not be included at all in the Intelligence Community Assessment, because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards, according to a senior officer present at the meeting. The same officer said that [Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s many flaws responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”
Taken together, these passages show that significant portions of Brennan’s congressional testimony about the dossier and the Intelligence Community Assessment were untrue. When he said the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment” — that was untrue. When he said “I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all” — that was untrue. When he said “the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier” — that was untrue. When he said “The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment” — that was untrue.
Here’s the bottom line, which Republicans have believed for a long time. In the politically supercharged atmosphere of late 2016 and early 2017, the FBI and CIA both knew the dossier was BS. They knew they had no business including it in their assessment of Russia’s 2016 activities. But they included it anyway because it told them what they wanted to hear — that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. And then, under oath before Congress, John Brennan lied about it.
In a letter last week to Attorney General Pam Bondi, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote that the 2020 House report and the CIA’s analysis “confirm not only that the Steele dossier was used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment, but that Brennan insisted on its inclusion.” Brennan’s testimony to Congress, Jordan continued, “was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts.” Jordan asked Bondi to investigate whether Brennan’s statements warrant a criminal charge of making false statements.
Now it is up to the attorney general. Will Brennan contend that he somehow was telling the truth when he made the above statements? Of course he will. But if he is charged, that will be a hard case to make.
