Buried lead: “CIA Says” in place of “National Intelligence Council says” is for a reason: The other agencies wouldn’t sign on. But that’s just evil KGB plausible deniability and those other spy agencies are falling for it! assures the Post.
“The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.
“For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.”
Seems like if the Russians wanted to influence the election secretly they could. Seems like if they were this ham-handed about it maybe it was because they were pushing for the opposite reaction, a rally to Hillary, who is a much more predictable, if on the face of it more hawkish, person and candidate.
And then check this out, from elsewhere in the Post, Greg Sargent on the real motives behind these newly declared investigations:
“James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan international security think tank, suggests that a finding of Russian interference of some kind might “hem in the next administration,” i.e., the Trump administration. That’s because any evidence that Russia tried to swing the election in some form or other — if such evidence is found — might shine a harsher light on Trump’s foreign policy choices.”
Hint for the new guys: “Hem Trump in” in this context means “prevent Trump from making peace” with Russia.
On the other hand, If Putin Did Rig the U.S. Election, Good.
Update: Marcy Wheeler ain’t buying it. Check out her Twitter feed here. Says she’s going to write up a blog about it soon.
Update II: Greenwald takes these idiots to the woodshed here.
