Three Big Lies Clapper And Brennan Told In Their NYT Op-Ed

After declassified documents further exposed their roles in fomenting the baseless Trump-Russia collusion hoax, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are out with a new op-ed effectively trying to tell the public, “Don’t believe your lying eyes.”

Published by The New York Times — a known co-conspirator in the hoax — the rambling screed from the former Obama intel chiefs represents a pathetic attempt to dismiss findings in recently disclosed records released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. In summary, the materials show there was no credible underlying intel demonstrating Russia wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 election and that such falsehoods were forcibly shoehorned into the Obama team’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) at the behest of figures like Brennan.

Brennan and Clapper predictably use their op-ed to try and draw attention away from the bombshell findings. One way they attempt to do this is by citing a past Senate Intelligence Committee report on the drafting of the ICA, which claimed, “analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.” (That talking point was dismantled by The Federalist’s Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway in a recent episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour.”)

The most humorous part of the op-ed, however, comes in the latter half, in which Clapper and Brennan try their hardest to “set the record straight” on several key points regarding the 2017 ICA. Unsurprisingly, none of the major claims they make are anywhere close to the truth.

The first subject they choose to tackle is the Steele dossier — a collection of salacious and unsubstantiated allegations about Trump bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The dossier was foundational in the FBI’s launching of a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016 and was later used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.

Writing about the 2017 ICA in their op-ed, Clapper and Brennan claim — as they have “under oath” — “that the dossier was not used as a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions.”

“At the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insistence, a short summary of the dossier was added as a separate annex only to the most highly classified version of the document that contained the assessment,” write Clapper and Brennan. “That annex also explained why the dossier was not used in the assessment.”

To the contrary, the dossier was used in the ICA. The declassified House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report shows how the dossier was “referenced in the ICA main body text and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex” — “[c]ontradicting public claims by [Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way‘ incorporated into the ICA” [emphasis added].

“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” the HPSCI analysis reads. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow’s influence operations.”

It’s also misleading for Clapper and Brennan to claim that the insistence on a “short summary” of the dossier being included in a “separate annex” came from the FBI. In fact, the HPSCI report reveals how it was Brennan himself who overruled the objections of CIA officials to include the dossier in the ICA.

As The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reported, “Two senior CIA officers contended that the dossier should have been omitted from the ICA ‘because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards,’ a senior officer at the meeting said … But according to the same senior officer, Brennan, when ‘confronted with the dossier’s many flaws,’ said, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”

[RELATED: ‘This Should NOT Be Included’ — Read Intel Officials’ Objections To ‘Extremely Sketchy’ Steele Dossier]

The final major falsehood promoted by the two former intel directors is that “there was no mention of ‘collusion’ between the Trump campaign and the Russians in the assessment, nor any reference to the publicly acknowledged contacts that had taken place.”

Once again, readers can see for themselves that contention is demonstrably untrue. As Just the News’ Jerry Dunleavy highlighted, the ICA’s Annex A mentions an “FBI source” alleging coordination between Trump and Moscow. One of the Annex sentences reads, “The most politically sensitive claims by the FBI source alleging a close relationship between the President-elect and the Kremlin.”

For all of their supposed concern about “misrepresentations and disinformation,” Clapper and Brennan are some of their biggest perpetrators. Much like they’ve been doing for years, the two Obama intel chiefs are lying (and will continue to lie) about their involvement in pushing one of the most damaging hoaxes in U.S. history.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood