JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
As the intelligence community continues to assess the impacts of military strikes launched against Iran's nuclear facilities, the CIA is holding up a mirror to its past. They're looking back at a report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and questioning how it was put together. NPR's Jenna McLaughlin explains.
JENNA MCLAUGHLIN, BYLINE: In May, President Donald Trump's CIA director, John Ratcliffe, tasked senior CIA analysts with going back in time. He wanted them to review how a team of intelligence community experts concluded that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential race, seeking to damage Hillary Clinton and bolster Donald Trump.
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JOHN BRENNAN: It should be clear to everyone that Russia brazenly interfered in our 2016 presidential election process and that they undertook these activities despite our strong protests and explicit warning that they not do so.
MCLAUGHLIN: That was then-CIA Director John Brennan testifying on Capitol Hill in 2017. The whole scandal that unfurled - since dubbed Russiagate - infuriated Trump. For years, he's called it a hoax. Intelligence officials involved have consistently defended their conclusions and their trade craft. Congress, government officials and the media have gone over every detail multiple times over. But now, as a part of a new lessons-learned review, CIA analysts are pointing to what they described as a few deviations from normal procedure behind the 2017 assessment.
Those include the close involvement in the assessment by senior intelligence officials, including Brennan, the compressed timeline before publication, the smaller circle of experts who were informed about the key intelligence and the decision to include the since widely questioned Steele dossier, an opposition research paper compiled by a former British intelligence officer. They said those factors could have distracted from the strength of the report's conclusions. Dan Hoffman, a former CIA operations officer and Russia expert, said the review made some valid points, though he told NPR that analysts often work under fast deadlines. He questioned the value of rehashing the 2017 review, especially when so much else is going on in the world.
DAN HOFFMAN: I don't know why they did this. Who made this decision to go back over something 9 years old?
MCLAUGHLIN: Ultimately, the authors of the review said the 2017-era conclusions were defensible, but they recommended that intelligence analysts going forward follow strict procedure to ensure future assessments are seen as credible and objective, particularly when the subject matter is controversial or politically charged. Ratcliffe didn't explain the timing of the review, but in a post on social media platform X, he went beyond its conclusions, alleging that former senior intelligence officials had manipulated intelligence and silenced dissent in an effort to, quote, "get Trump."
Time will tell how those lessons learned will be incorporated into the CIA's ongoing work. That includes assessing the impacts of the recent U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Trump has already touted the campaign as a major success, and Ratcliffe published a statement concluding the targets were severely damaged just days after the missiles were launched. If new evidence comes to light, Hoffman, the former CIA officer, wonders whether those assessments will be questioned.
HOFFMAN: Are they OK if they submit a report that says that we don't know where the 900 pounds of enriched uranium is?
MCLAUGHLIN: If the nuclear materials remain somewhere in Iran, that would contradict the White House claim that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. Jenna McLaughlin, NPR News.
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