Former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of President Trump, found out he had been blocked from accessing his classified notes and records while working on his new memoir.
He writes in his forthcoming book, Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad, that after months of “haggling” he discovered the CIA was abiding by the directive Trump gave in August 2018 “that purportedly forbids anyone in the intelligence community from sharing classified information with me.”
The White House confirmed the directive was being enforced, which is news considering the New York Times reported in May of last year that the president never revoked Brennan’s security clearance.
“The President has constitutional authority to control access to classified information, which he exercised here in view of Mr. Brennan’s erratic behavior and the President’s belief that access to classified information should be solely for the benefit of the government and the American people,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.
Brennan, who acknowledges he is in the “crosshairs” of the criminal inquiry into the Russia investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, claimed he asked the CIA for his official records including his personal notes and any classified CIA documents that he had signed, but the agency denied his request.
Brennan regularly attacks Trump on Twitter, variously calling him “our nation’s premier ultracrepidarian;” “thoroughly, irredeemably, & dangerously broken;” and “increasingly desperate despot.” In turn, the president has often castigated Brennan, labeling him a “political hack” and “the worst CIA Director in our nation’s history.”
The CIA declined to comment to the Washington Post, which reviewed some passages from Brennan’s book that is due to be published on Oct. 6. The book is being published by Celadon Books, and the publisher’s preview begins with Brennan’s “first and only security briefing with President-elect Donald Trump” on Jan. 6, 2017. During this meeting at Trump Tower, Obama administration national security officials briefed Trump on the Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian meddling during the 2016 election.
“I had decided beforehand that I would share the full substance of CIA intelligence and analysis on Russian interference in the election without providing any specific details on the provenance of our knowledge,” Brennan wrote about the meeting where he was joined by FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers. Brennan wrote that “Trump’s alertness never faded during the briefing, but his demeanor, as well as his questions, strongly revealed that he was uninterested in finding out what the Russians had done or in holding them to account.”
Durham, selected by Attorney General William Barr last year to lead an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials before and after Trump was elected to the White House, is looking into whether Brennan took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motivations, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Sources said Durham has been interviewing CIA officials this year, focusing on the National Intelligence Council, a center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the collaboration between the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency in putting together the 2017 assessment. Barr confirmed Durham is scrutinizing the assessment.
The 2017 assessment concluded with “high confidence” that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016,” and Russia worked to “undermine public faith” in U.S. democracy, “denigrate” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “harm her electability and potential presidency,” and “developed a clear preference” for Trump. The NSA diverged on one aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” that Putin actively tried to help Trump win and Clinton lose.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report in April defending the intelligence community assessment, saying that Senate investigators found no evidence of political pressure to reach a specific conclusion and determining that the assessments by the CIA, FBI, and NSA present “a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Those findings clash with a 2018 report from the House Intelligence Committee, led at the time by Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican. That assessment, which was not bipartisan, concluded that “the majority of the Intelligence Community Assessment judgments on Russia’s election activities employed proper analytic tradecraft” but found the “judgments on Putin’s strategic intentions did not.”
Durham is also reportedly scrutinizing Brennan in relation to British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s deeply flawed dossier. In particular, the prosecutor is looking for answers concerning how it was used in the 2017 assessment, why Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe insisted on it being part of the assessment, how allegations from the dossier ended up in the assessment’s appendix, and whether Brennan misled about the dossier’s use. The prosecutor is also reportedly reviewing Brennan’s handling of a secret source said to be close to the Kremlin, and Durham wants to know what role that person’s information played in the assessment.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but his team “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
