A two-year standoff over a top counterintelligence nomination ended this week after a Senate Republican said the nation’s spy chief and attorney general provided long-sought transparency for congressional investigations.
William Evanina, a former FBI special agent, has led the National Counterintelligence and Security Center since 2014 and in February 2018 was nominated by President Trump to be the first Senate-confirmed director of the center. But since June of that year, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has blocked the nomination as a form of protest against Department of Justice leadership and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for not providing Congress documents related to the government’s investigation into Russian election interference and Trump’s presidential campaign.
That impasse ended on Monday with Grassley withdrawing his objection, citing “recent actions” by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell to “finally respond to my very longstanding oversight requests.”
Grenell told the Washington Examiner he believed a commitment to transparency was integral if the intelligence community wants to be trusted.
“When I arrived at ODNI, there were several Hill requests for information that were stalled and sitting stagnant. It didn’t make any sense to me. Why weren’t we able to provide more transparency to the public?” Grenell said. “I actually think the intelligence community must find ways to show the American people we are working for them — and being accountable and accessible, where possible, is one way to show that commitment.”
The acting spy chief added: “We, of course, must also fiercely protect our sources and methods, so finding these ways to be forthcoming is crucial.”
Grassley said he faced resistance from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. More recently, he said, he “voiced my concerns” to Barr and Grenell.
“Thanks to their commitment to transparency, I have received access to the types of documents that I asked for almost two years ago, the senator said, emphasizing how the two “have gone multiple steps further by declassifying much of the information that I had sought access to” and “credit should be given when it is due.”
During his time as acting spy chief, Grenell has insisted he is “not a seat warmer” as he pursued key goals, including beginning to restructure the spy office by returning intelligence assets to their original agencies and the field and ordering spy agencies to review their unmasking policies. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has clashed with Grenell repeatedly.
John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican congressman and Grenell’s likely successor, testified in a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Grassley’s office informed the Washington Examiner that while some of the material in question remains under wraps, much of it has been declassified and made public. Other material unrelated to the Evanina hold, like recent DOJ watchdog footnotes, were also recently released.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December report criticized the DOJ and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm.
In response to a push by GOP senators, Barr and Grenell greenlighted further declassifications of the Horowitz report, revealing that the FBI was aware of Russian disinformation efforts, which may have compromised Steele’s dossier along with other troubling details about the bureau’s actions. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham also released slightly more declassified versions of the Page FISA filings along with transcripts from FBI confidential human sources who targeted Trump’s campaign.
Some members of the intelligence community, along with House Republicans, have pushed Schiff to release dozens of witness interviews from his committee’s Russia investigation.
Grassley said this week that some of the information previously concealed from the Senate Judiciary Committee had, however, been provided to the House Intelligence Committee, including records related to DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who served as a back channel for Steele. Grassley said he learned that Rosenstein took the position that Coats was not allowed to share this info with the Senate. Grassley called this explanation “your typical bureaucratic blame game.”
In February, Evanina helped shepherd through the Trump administration’s national counterintelligence strategy, which called for a “whole-of-society approach” to combat threats from foreign adversaries. He said to “remember that Xi Jinping has one goal: to be the global leader geopolitically, militarily, and economically, and he and his communist party will stop at nothing to get there.”
In March, Evanina conducted the ODNI’s portion of an election security briefing for Congress, informing them that the intelligence community has not concluded Russia is backing any particular 2020 candidate while warning about meddling from multiple countries.
Evanina warned in April that “medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The NCSC told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday it was hopeful Evanina would soon be confirmed by the Senate.
When placing the hold on Evanina in 2018, Grassley cited his name appearing in texts between fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, though he said then and repeated this week that he wasn’t questioning Evanina’s credentials.
“I also want to remind everyone, especially future administrations, that the Senate Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction extends to the Intelligence Community,” Grassley said. “Let this also be a reminder that when it comes to congressional oversight, I will use all the tools at my disposal to get to the truth of the matter and get access to the records that I believe are necessary to advance my investigations.”
