“That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.”
It’s hard to believe that the Russiagate plotters are so stupid, but the declassified documents tumbling out of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s files show that, while they had a lot of power and managed to hide their nefarious activities for almost a decade, President Barack Obama’s henchmenwere none too bright.
The latest tranche of declassified emails has Obama’s DNI, James Clapper, telling then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers essentially to shut up and put his name to the intelligence community assessment (ICA) that Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan were cooking up, at Obama’s direction, to concoct a narrative that Russia had tilted the 2016 election to help Trump win.
“Understand your concern,” Clapper wrote to Rogers on Dec. 22, 2016, in the waning days of the Obama administration.
“It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking to it.’ ”
Compromised
Rogers had kicked off the conversation by laying out his concerns that normal tradecraft was being compromised and that his team had not had “sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence.”
“I’m concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments,” Rogers wrote.
“I know that you agree that this is something we need to be 100% comfortable with before we present it to the President — we have one chance to get this right, and it is critical that we do so.
“In addition, if NSA is intended to be a co-author of this product, I personally expect to see even the most sensitive evidence related to the conclusion.”
But Clapper was unyielding.
“More time is not negotiable,” he replied, copying Brennan and then-FBI Director James Comey on the email.
“We may have to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule.”
“This is one project that has to be a team sport.”
Team sport.
What an unprofessional, idiotic thing to say, let alone write down for posterity.
As Gabbard said when she released the emails Wednesday: “Clapper’s own words confirm that complying with the order to manufacture intelligence was a ‘team sport.’ ”
There was no reason for the ICA to be completed under such a compressed schedule — less than a month from the Oval Office meeting on Dec. 9, 2016, when Obama ordered Clapper, Brennan, Comey and others to prepare a new intelligence assessment to replace all the inconvenient others before the election that had found that Russia wanted to sow discord but was not partial to one candidate over the other.
In fact, previous declassified material released by Gabbard shows that Russian spies possessed damaging material on Hillary Clinton’s “psycho-emotional” and physical ailments that they were withholding until after the election because they were so certain she would win.
But Obama wanted the cooked ICA to be released before Trump’s transition on Jan. 20, 2017.
He wanted to do maximum damage to Trump, whose election was a repudiation of Obama’s presidency, and of course to cover up Clinton’s scandals — including her BleachBitted private server, missing emails and alleged pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation.
Full Op-ed Continues Over at The New York Post:
Miranda Devine: Bumbling Obama aides actually admit Russiagate was a smear campaign against Trump https://t.co/d32u47WZuV pic.twitter.com/AJTwQXbpve
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) August 14, 2025
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