New CIA Review of the Agency's 2016 Activities

Sloppy tradecraft, rushed conclusions, fabricated 'consensus', analytical rigor subordinated to the Russia-collusion hoax

A new review submitted June 26, 2025 to CIA Director John Ratcliffe documents what insiders already knew and others suspected about the conduct of the spy agencies during the transition from the Obama Administration to the first Trump Administration in December 2016. Having failed to defeat Trump in the presidential election, Obama and the spy agencies set out to destroy his presidency by branding him an agent of Russia. This effort succeeded in distracting attention from the actual profitable involvement of leading U.S. politicians with China, Ukraine, Iran, Kazakhstan, and other countries not dedicated to America’s best interests.

Former CIA Director John Brennan together with Obama, FBI Director Comey, and others, orchestrated an elaborate — yes, conspiracy — to persuade a gullible public that President-Elect Trump was an agent of Russia. Armed with a phony ‘dossier’ cobbled-together from the alcoholic ravings of a third-hand source, Brennan forced through a ‘consensus’ of intelligence agencies based on a single day’s consultation in late December 2016. The Washington Post and the New York Times dutifully trumpeted this ‘consensus’, even before the report was released, that President Putin ‘aspired’ to elect Trump. The new review discloses that Russia-specialists in the CIA objected to this conclusion, calling it ‘weakly supported’. Analysts at other intelligence agencies felt ‘jammed’ by the rushed schedule, observing there was no operational basis for such urgency. At least one of them resigned rather than take part in such fatally flawed ‘tradecraft’, the spys’ term for analytical rigor or evidence-based research. Among the specific defects noted in the current review are ‘a higher confidence level than was justified; insufficient exploration of alternative scenarios; lack of transparency on source uncertainty; uneven argumentation; and the inclusion of unsubstantiated Steele Dossier material’. As late as December 29, 2016, the Agency’s own Russia specialists wrote that the Steele dossier on which the CIA report was based 'did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards'. The following day, they advised Brennan to remove the statement that Putin ‘aspires’ (during the election campaign) to elect Trump. Not only was it unsubstantiated, they also feared it would subject the CIA to political repercussions. The New York Times exceeded the standards even of disgraced FBI Deputy Peter Strzok, who described their story of intercepted Russian communications as of ‘no substance’.

We insert later revelations like this new CIA review into the Timeline when the events referred to actually occurred. This fills out our understanding of the full extent of the deception practiced by top officials like Brennan and Comey in forcing through preordained conclusions designed to damage President-Elect Trump even before his term of office began. The Timeline thus reinforces the truth, partially suspected at the time but not yet generally acknowledged, by superimposing on the past what becomes generally known years later. The objections of Russia specialists and other analysts to the CIA’s deeply flawed analysis in December 2016 were suppressed at the time, compomising the Agency’s ‘tradecraft’, its very integrity. If anyone in the CIA or any of the 16 other (as counted then) intelligence agencies expressed dismay at the impact of these false accusations on U.S.-Russia relations, that has yet to be revealed. If word of such objections emerges, we will place it in the Timeline whenever it occurred.