John Ratcliffe Pledged to Keep Apolitical. Then He Started Serving Trump’s Political Agenda.

WASHINGTON – During his May confirmation hearing to oversee the nation’s espionage agencies, John Ratcliffe, then a Texas lawmaker, promised senators skeptical of his vocal support for President Trump that he was “totally apolitical as the director of national intelligence.”

A few months into his tenure, Mr. Ratcliffe has proven anything but. He has approved selective releases from intelligence agencies aimed at scoring political points, left Democratic lawmakers out of briefings, accused Congressional opponents of leaks, offered Republican activists top seats at his headquarters, and made public allegations contrary to the assessments of professional intelligence agencies.

None of the moves have shocked its critics or intelligence officials within the CIA and the National Security Agency more than Mr Ratcliffe’s decision last week to release unconfirmed intelligence mentioning Hillary Clinton. Intelligence officials said the material could be Russian disinformation, but even if its substance – Russian intelligence had information that Ms. Clinton’s 2016 campaign was planned to tie Mr Trump to the Kremlin’s election hacks – was true, it barely showed anything shameful to her.

No matter. Republicans claimed it showed that Ms. Clinton was part of a “Deep State” negotiation to undermine the president by investigating his campaign’s relations with Russia, and Mr. Trump was referring to the unconfirmed intelligence agencies in the first presidential debate .

Gina Haspel, the director of the CIA, declined the releases, saying that releasing the unverified raw material could jeopardize the spies’ ability to gather information and compromise their sources, according to two people familiar with the matter. But Mr Ratcliffe, who has the authority to unblock intelligence, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, were in favor of the move, people said.

Mr Ratcliffe’s tenure is the latest example of how the Trump presidency has put the intelligence community into a charged political role. Much of this is due to Mr Trump’s hostility to intelligence and law enforcement control over his 2016 campaign’s relations with Russia.

“We have never seen a high-ranking intelligence official as politicized as Ratcliffe,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, the former head of the CIA’s secret operations in Europe and Russia. “When the head of the CIA asks not to divulge any information, it is extraordinary that he wanted to move forward.”

In the midst of the renewed quest for more disclosure, Ratcliffe is preparing to release more material, according to three current and former American officials. Publications so far have been aimed at discrediting the Obama administration and attempting to undercut the intelligence services assessment, which showed that Russia favored Mr Trump and helped him in his 2016 election.

The president has long questioned this statement, which was released by the secret services in the last days of the Obama administration. His allies, led by Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have long sought to outclass intelligence agencies who they believe are undermining the finding.

A spokeswoman for Mr Ratcliffe declined to comment.

Mr Trump has made disclosure a priority as the election approaches. He claimed on Thursday that he released “everything” related to the Russia investigation last year and then railed against unnamed officials who obstructed the publication of the information. “There’s no document they can’t have, but it’s still not that simple,” Trump told Fox Business Network. “You are in a ‘deep state’; You have a group of people who do not want to view documents. “

Some Republicans accused Mrs. Haspel. Senators Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and Charles E. Grassley from Iowa wrote in a letter released Wednesday that they were “increasingly disappointed” that they had not provided them with documents related to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Russia Relations with Trump wanted campaign.

Mr Ratcliffe released more material this week with little warning to the CIA, sparking a flurry of complaints from Mr Trump on Twitter about the Russia investigation and calling for even more publications.

Some of the additional information that Mr Trump, Mr Nunes and Mr Ratcliffe seek to disclose is contained in classified documents based on the 2018 Republicans of the House report on Russia Election influence campaign according to information from current and former officials.

The report, dismissed as distorted by the Democrats, criticized the craft of the intelligence services, saying Russia’s goals for 2016 were simply to “sow chaos and discord,” not favoring Mr. Trump. Questions have also been raised about this intelligence conclusion.

According to someone familiar with the documents, the secret documents contain Republican allegations of misconduct by high-ranking Obama administration officials. They also have sensitive material about intelligence sources that the CIA relied on to investigate Russia’s meddling campaign, as well as material from the FBI and the National Security Agency, according to two other people familiar with the outline of the documents. Republicans believe the information supports their criticism of the way the CIA and FBI handled the Russia investigation

The information is so sensitive that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are keeping the documents in a safe deposit box in a vault at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. This leads some intelligence officials to call the locker a sucker. Others compared it to a safe deposit box.

Mr. Ratcliffe visited Langley at least once in August to open the locker and read the Republican documents, according to three people familiar with his visit.

Most likely it already had a roadmap in it. A number of Republican veterans on the Intelligence Committee now serve in senior positions in his office and on the staff of the National Security Council. Some would have been sure that they knew at least the main features of the documents.

And Mr Ratcliffe wrote to the committee in June to announce that he was conducting a clearance review and seeking an unedited copy of the 2018 report. In a letter 10 days later, California representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and panel chairman, warned that the Republican report intended to “whitewash” Russia’s interference in the elections and warned Mr Ratcliffe not to revive this misleading attack . ”

Weeks later, in early August, Mr Ratcliffe’s office requested and obtained committee permission to read the classified documents and attachments relating to the report that are being held with the CIA, said one person briefed on the request .

The Democrats on the House Committee would most likely object to the publication of all or part of the documents, leaving Mr Ratcliffe an opportunity not to downgrade the underlying information.

Mr. Ratcliffe, current and former intelligence official, compromised the agencies’ intelligence gathering network with his aggressive releases by risking disclosure of CIA sources and the National Security Agency’s methods of gathering information. For example, a memo he released on Tuesday could give Russian intelligence important clues about how the CIA collected information in 2016, according to two people familiar with the intelligence agency.

Presidents and their senior officials rely on intelligence agencies to make decisions about sending troops into battle, dismantling terrorist attacks, and other national security issues. It is supposed to be factual, and intelligence officials believe that politics is less reliable when it influences their judgments.

Several former senior intelligence officials accused Mr Ratcliffe of advancing Mr Trump’s personal agenda while politicizing the traditionally apolitical intelligence community.

“He’s doing exactly what the government asked him to do as DNI,” said Joseph Maguire, who was dismissed by Mr. Trump in February as acting director of national intelligence.

The publication of raw information also harms the Republicans’ case and suggests bias, said Dan Hoffman, former CIA officer and commentator for Fox News. The material released by Mr Ratcliffe last week was more of a “single thread” of an intelligence report than a full, verified analysis, he said.

“The most professional analysis is based on all source information,” said Hoffman. “The DNI should know that publishing rough reports out of context runs the risk of giving ammunition to those who claim they are politicizing their office.”

Trump administration officials said the clearances were intended to demonstrate the Obama administration’s partiality as officials began investigating Mr Trump and his campaign. They have accused former senior intelligence officials like former CIA director John O. Brennan of confirmatory bias, reading the worst of the information gathered, and tossing aside evidence that complicated their view.

Mr. Trump and his allies also believe that the material exhibits a double standard of scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s relations with Russia than the material and intelligence that concerned the Clinton campaign.

However, the evidence has made it clear how Russia carried out extensive election sabotage operations that backed Mr Trump and that its advisors welcomed the efforts, Mr Polymeropoulos said. “It’s so obvious what happened,” he said.

Although the CIA and the National Security Agency have already objected to Mr Ratcliffe’s releases and would almost certainly try to block further releases, Mr Trump has also given Attorney General William P. Barr the authority to keep the secret services secrets as part of the release to outclass Investigation of the Ministry of Justice on the origin of the Russia investigation.

Some past and current officials expressed concern that Republicans might attempt to undermine key CIA sources, citing the recent release of information intended to discredit an FBI informant who was central to the creation of a dossier played about Trump’s relations with Russia. Among the secrets that some former officials believe could be released includes a critical CIA informant who supported the conclusion that Putin was in favor of Trump’s election.

If he did release this information, Mr Ratcliffe could attempt to highlight counter-espionage concerns regarding the informant who was relocated to the United States after agency officials became concerned about his safety. When his name became public last year, the CIA had to move him a second time.

Maggie Haberman reported from New York and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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