Senate Intelligence Committee Reports Volumes III and IV: US Government and Intelligence Community

 So, on to Senate Intelligence Committee Russia Report Volume III and Volume IV.

Volume III

Volume III recounts the U.S. government's real time response to Russian election interference and finds it inadequate. At 53 pages, it is the shortest volume. The report found that Obama Administration hampered in its response by a highly politicized environment, concern that warnings would undermine public confidence in election results, fear that Russia might be able to manipulate vote totals, incomplete information, and limited time, and that these prevented an effective response.  The Administration was navigating uncharted waters.  Nothing of this kind had ever happened before.  And one party, after all, stood to benefit from the Russian intervention and therefore had a strong incentive to disbelieve in it and reject effective response.

Most Administration officials said they learned of the Russian hack of the DNC when they read about it in the Washington Post. (p. 5).  The intelligence community appears to have been aware of at least some sort of hack, but it is not clear whether they understood who was making the attempt (pp. 5-8).  

As soon as the hack became publicly known, the GRU (Russian military intelligence, Fancy Bear) created a front identified as "Guccifer 2.0" to claim credit as an individual. Cyber security experts almost immediately saw through Guccifer 2.0.  Guccifer immediately published some of the hacked documents and claimed to have sent others to Wikileaks for publication (p. 9).  Nonetheless, the intelligence community (IC) and policy makers generally saw the hack as intelligence gathering, rather than election interference -- undesirable, of course, but still within normal behavior. The general public became aware that something more was happening on July 22, 2016, when Wikileaks started releasing hacked information right ahead of the Democratic Convention.

But that alone did not truly alarm the Obama Administration and convince them that the hack was a serious threat.  Volume III, pp. 11-13 states that another piece of intelligence convinced the Obama Administration that there was a serious threat. The intelligence was so alarming that the Administration leapt into action within an hour or two. The intelligence was so sensitive that initially only nine executive officials other than the President and National Security Advisor were briefed.  At first, only top ranking intelligence officials were included and ever the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were excluded, although they were later let in (p. 14).  The House and Senate Intelligence Committees were not informed, but the Gang of Eight* were individually briefed throughout August and into early September.

The intelligence tip was also so sensitive that report blacks it out, so we do not know what it was.  But we can make a good guess.  In early August, 2016, Obama received an extremely classified report from the CIA that a confidential source in the Kremlin had reported that the hack and leak operation was ordered by Putin personally with the goal of electing Trump.  Compare the linked story with the report (pages 11-16), the overlap in dates and personnel, and see if Volume III could be referring to anything else.**

Volume III then goes over the perceived constraints (set forth above).  Very much contributing was Donald Trump's insistence in 2016, as in 2020, that the election was "rigged" and that if he lost it would be proof of fraud. Public claims by the Intelligence Community that Russia was in the tank for Trump would only strengthen the impression of a "deep state" plot.  Official also feared that if they exposed Russia's actions, the Russians might retaliate by hacking into state databases and either disrupting the election or altering votes.  The Administration therefore limited itself to admonishing the Russians and offering anti-hacking assistance to state election officials without explaining what the offer was about.  The Russians were unmoved, while state officials generally saw the offer and unwanted federal "interference."  Republican members of the Gang of Eight (including Senator Richard Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair portrayed above) were deeply distrustful. Only after the election did the Intelligence Community officially attribute the hacks and leaks to the Russian government and begin expelling Russian diplomats. 

Volume III concludes with additional opinions from the Republican members (pp. 47-49) rather hypocritically berating the Obama Administration for its weak-kneed response, and from Democrat Ron Wyden saying that the full Intelligence Committees should have been notified as to what was happening.

Volume IV

Volume IV takes up about where Volume III leaves off.  It is a review of an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) completed after the election on December 30, 2016.  The overall report is favorable. It finds the ICA reviewed numerous sources, followed accepted analytic tradecraft, was free of political interference, and was well supported in its conclusions. The ICA had no policy recommendations, but this is standard practice in the intelligence community.  There was some criticism of open source analysis and historical analysis as weak, and some criticisms of the FBI, but overall Volume IV appears to endorse the ICA in its methodology and conclusions.

It is not possible for the general public to say much more about Volume IV, because, although at 158 pages Volume IV is the second longest report, the vast majority of it is blacked out.  Volume IV (p. 11) give the date that CIA Director John Brennan learned about Operation Crossfire Hurricane (the FBI investigation of the Trump Campaign), but the date is blacked out.  Volume IV also described in excruciating and unredacted detail (pp. 38-46) the feud between the FBI and CIA as to whether to include the Steele Dossier.  The FBI wanted to include the Steele Dossier as part of the report, while the CIA considered the  dossier worthless and contrary to their own human intelligence. The FBI did not want to be accused of hiding anything and finally compromised by including the Steele material in a two-page annex.  The NSA (National Security Agency, signals intelligence) played no part in the dispute. Probably somewhat significant -- Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper said that he first learned of the Steele Dossier on December 15 (p. 42).

Going over the report section by section, Volume IV generally endorses its conclusions except to say that its analysis of historical context was weak and the FBI failed to provide some sort of important material (blacked out). Almost not other details are shown.  

It is hard to tell, but Intelligence Community may not have been aware of the Troll Farm's activities at the time the report was written.  Reviewing the section saying the Russian attack was multifaceted, there were five sections, cyber espionage against political organizations, public disclosures, cyber intrusions on state election systems, propaganda, and another section that is blacked out entirely.  The report goes over these one by one, but does not have a section on the last, completely covered, category.

Finally, there is an opinion section by Senator Wyden that does some justified crowing that these reports clearly show that Russian interference was not a hoax.  What a shame that we, the public, are not allowed to see the proof!  Wyden also calls for paper ballots as backup to safeguard against election hacking, which has mostly been done.

Next up:  Volume V, the biggie.  That one will undoubtedly take multiple posts.

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*Both party leaders in each house and the chair and ranking minority member of both intelligence committees.

**The WaPo story, it should be noted, had been published over two years before the report.  It is my understanding that the secret spy has been successfully exfiltrated and was later identified. Another possibility were reports by friendly foreign intelligence services of a suspicious volume of contacts between Trump associates and Russian figures, which appear to have come in about the same time.