FBI Director Now Supports CIA Position That Russia Interfered In US Election To Help Trump

FBI Director James Comey

The FBI now supports the findings by the CIA that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. presidential election to throw the win to Donald Trump.

From The Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. have backed a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials.

Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.

“Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.

“The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI,” Brennan’s message read.

Former CIA Director: "I Will Vote For Hillary Clinton"

Michael J. Morell, former deputy director of the CIA who served under three presidents, penned an op-ed for the New York Times wherein he strongly endorses former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president.

Morell prefaces the piece by saying he's voted for both parties in the past, and that he's always stayed silent on his position regarding a president - until now.

After extolling Hillary Clinton's depth of qualifications, Morell offered cutting observations of Republican Donald Trump's dangerous lack of foreign experience and knowledge.

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump’s character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.

[snip]

In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

Sen. John McCain Speaks To CIA "Torture" Report

Sen. John McCain took to the Senate floor today to denounce torture as an "interrogation technique" in light of the newly released Senate investigation report concerning the use of "water boarding" and more.

McCain was taken captive and tortured during the Vietnam War. If anyone knows the effects of torture, he would.

(h/t JMG)

US Senate Report Details CIA Interrogation Program

A report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee detailing interrogation techniques and the detention of suspects by the CIA has been released this morning. The report, which took five years to compile, examines whether the methods of interrogation were more brutal than previously described:

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”

The Senate report eventually concludes that the detention and interrogation techniques used on dozens of prisoners often did not result in providing the government “unique” intelligence information that the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies could not get from other means.

The full report is over 6,000 pages, but only the 524 page summary has been released to the public.

The summary also includes a rebuttal by Republican members of the committee which states the reasoning behind the report is to smear the Bush White House and the C.I.A.

Read the full article at the New York Times.