CIA review confirms Putin interference in 2016 elections, notes process was flawed

A newly released CIA review has found procedural flaws in the way US intelligence agencies assessed Russia’s alleged efforts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election — but it did not overturn the core conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a campaign to sway the vote.

The internal review, ordered by former CIA Director John Ratcliffe and released Wednesday, critiques the confidence level assigned to the conclusion and reveals “procedural anomalies” in how the assessment was prepared under intense time pressure.

While reaffirming the credibility of the intelligence, the report said, “The review does not dispute the quality and credibility of the CIA report that underpinned the 2016 assessment.”

However, it added, “These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment’s most contentious judgment.”

One of the key takeaways was that the CIA and FBI’s “high confidence” rating for the judgment — that Putin preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton — should have matched the “moderate confidence” of the NSA, which monitored communications.

The review criticised what it called the “excessive involvement of agency heads” and a “highly compressed timeline”, which it said led to departures from standard analytical processes.

Trump has consistently rejected the conclusion that Russia interfered to help him. After a 2017 meeting with Putin, Trump controversially said he believed the Russian leader’s denials, despite the consensus from the US intelligence community and a 2018 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report backing the same conclusions.

The new review does not challenge the substance of that conclusion but urges better analytic objectivity and tradecraft for future assessments.

A CIA spokesperson said the “lessons learned” were released to improve transparency and prevent such issues in future intelligence products.

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With inputs from Reuters