Last week, DNI Tulsi Gabbard appeared at the White House press briefing to summarize the import of some newly released documents about Russiagate:
"There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false," Gabbard said. "They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn't."...
"All come back to and confirm the same report: There was a gross politicization and manipulation of intelligence by the Obama administration intended to delegitimize President Trump even before he was inaugurated, ultimately usurping the will of the American people," Gabbard said...
"We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI, to investigate the criminal implications of this for the evidence," Gabbard said. "Correct. The evidence that we have found, and that we have released, directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact."
Those claims were met with a lot of pushback in the media and at the center of many of those stories was former CIA agent Susan Miller. Here's how CNN introduced her in a story titled "Retired CIA official rebuts Gabbard’s claims about US intelligence on Russian election interference."
Retired CIA official Susan Miller, an author of the agency’s 2017 intelligence report on Russian election meddling, is vowing to fight any potential criminal charges brought by the Trump administration.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has accused the Obama administration of manufacturing the intelligence report, which assessed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump, and said she made criminal referrals to the Justice Department...
Pushing back against Gabbard’s accusations, Miller said that no one – including then-President Barack Obama or then-CIA Director John Brennan – had told her team what conclusion to reach in their report. “Absolutely not,” she said. She added that she and her team would have quit if they had faced such pressure.
Miller said the intelligence that helped them reach their conclusion “was extremely sound and it was verified.” Miller also said her team briefed Trump at the time.
If you read this when it appeared last Saturday, you probably assumed Miller was an author of the ICA (intelligence community assessment) drafted by the CIA. After all, that is the ICA that Gabbard was talking about last week. And CNN's intro says Miller was "an author of the agency's 2017 intelligence report" and then explains that Gabbard "accused the Obama administration of manufacturing the intelligence report."
NBC gave her the same treatment in its version of this story attacking DNI Gabbard.
The former senior CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election says Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the White House are “lying” when they claim that it was an attempt to sabotage President Donald Trump.
Susan Miller, a retired CIA officer who helped lead the team that produced the report about Russia’s actions during the 2016 campaign, told NBC News it was based on credible information that showed Moscow sought to help Trump win the election, but that there was no sign of a conspiracy between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
There are more examples but you get the gist. Gabbard said the ICA was manufactured and Miller contradicts her saying, essentially, Hey, I wrote that report and it was accurate.
Sounds pretty definitive. Except that's not what happened. Matt Taibbi points out today that Miller did not write the ICA in question.
“Not an author. Not involved,” says a senior intelligence official.
“There’s a chance she’s on some emails or something like that,” adds another person familiar with the investigation. “But she’s not the author of the ICA… she wasn’t leading this effort. So it’s just totally bizarre that she claims the opposite.”
Taibbi pressed Miller for clarification and didn't hear back, but another reporter at the Blaze was working on the same story and did get a response:
...a source familiar with the assessment told Blaze News that "Susan Miller was not an author of the 2017 ICA."
The suggestion by this reputable source serves to justify Taibbi's skepticism.
When pressed for comment, Miller told Blaze News, "My team and I at CIA wrote a CIA analysis about Russian influence on the election."
"This was a CIA report, briefed to Trump by our then-director, and by me to the Senate and congressional intelligence committees. The DNI used that report as the basis for the ICA," continued Miller. "I indeed did not write the ICA, but the ODNI used my report as the basis for theirs."
So contrary to what CNN and NBC were reporting, Susan Miller did not write and was not an author of the ICA Tulsi Gabbard was criticizing. Instead she wrote some other report which she claims was the basis of the ICA. It's odd that she never explained that to CNN, NBC or any of the other reporters who repeated referred to her as an author of the report.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a pair of document releases, first showing that Barack Obama in an abrupt shift personally ordered the new Assessment on December 9th, 2016, and secondly showing the key evidence for the “aspired” and “clear preference” claims were based on discarded, unverified, and fraudulent evidence.
After each of these events, Miller appeared to issue strident objections, saying Gabbard and the White House are “lying,” saying Trump is “acting like” a Russian asset, even doubling and tripling down on the Steele Dossier. Particularly lately, she’s seemingly been everywhere, headling a new NBC story, sitting at the center of a new Guardian feature, talking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” name-checked in a debate between Kristen Welker and Senator Lindsay Graham, sandwiched between Jeff Stein and old friend Michael Isikoff on multiple episodes of the SpyTalk podcast, saying Donald Trump is “acting like” a Russian asset in a Times UK radio segment, even speaking in a British Channel 4 documentary whose makers claim it’s “her first television interview addressing these events.”
The crucial first detail about these appearances is that Miller is introduced in virtually every one as a “principal author,” “author,” or team leader of the ICA...
On Meet The Press Kristen Welker described Miller as “a former senior CIA officer who helped to oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian interference”; another NBC story quoted her as saying she “she put together a team” that wrote the report; over and over, media characterizations put her at the center of the controversial report.
The best case here is that none of them knew there were two separate reports and just confused readers because they were confused themselves by what Miller was telling them. If so, a correction is in order. The other possibility is that these outlets all understood Miller was talking about a different report that was not the one Gabbard was talking about and decided to just conflate the two because it helped amplify the denials Miller was making.
Bottom line, there's a different between author of the ICA and not author of the ICA which someone decided to just skip over.
Editor's Note: The Trump administration is exposing the Russian Collusion Hoax.
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