National Threat Assessment

Ken AshfordCybersecurity, Foreign Affairs, Russia, Trump & Administration, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

It may not be in the news much today, but there is an important open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where the directors of the all the intelligence agencies testify:

Director Daniel R. Coats – Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
Director Michael Pompeo – Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Director Admiral Michael Rogers – Director of the National Security Agency (NSA)
Director Lieutenant General Robert Ashley – Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
Director Chris Wray – Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director Robert Cardillo – Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)

I imagine the closed hearing that follows will be even more important.

Already there is news. Coats calls cyber threats “one of my greatest concerns and top priorities.” “Frankly,” he adds, “the United States is under attack” in cyberspace. In fact, every single intelligence agency head has said that there is no change in Russia’s interference in American politics. They are just as active now as they were over the last year.

This is DNi Coats’s “opening statement”:

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This is troubling…

This is very interesting…

The Rob Porter issue continues to plague the White House — he did not have security clearance (because of the ex-wife abuse), yet he was handling documents to and from the President.  There are many questions to be raised about this. The White House’s position on the Porter background check was that it was an on-going process, so in key ways out of their hands. FBI Director Christopher Wray just confirmed that that is not true – that the check was mainly completed last year and that the file was officially closed in January, before any of the scandal broke. Here’s Dana Bash explaining.

Senator Angus King lashes out —

Speaking of things spy-like, three Russian intelligence chiefs came to US a couple of weeks ago.  This was mentioned in the American press, like the New York Times….

The two Russian officials who came to Washington were Alexander V. Bortnikov, who runs the Federal Security Bureau, the domestic intelligence service that is the successor to the K.G.B., and Sergey Naryshkin, the chief of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, who was placed under sanctions by the American government under President Barack Obama.

…but in the RUSSIAN press, we learned that the head of the Russian GRU agency — they are the ones who hacked into the DNC data and stole data that had a massive affect on our election — also came.  He apparently wasn’t at the meeting with CIA Chief Pompeo. Why he was here and where he went is also a mystery.

Some think that the meeting was about terrorism which affects both countries.  Others think that the reason of terrorism was a pretext, and the Naryshkin delegation was likely sent to give info to help coordinate efforts to discredit Mueller’s Russia investigation.

No questions were asked about this by the Senate Intelligence Committee today in open session.  I HOPE it will be raised in closed session.