CIA review finds flaws but does not dispute finding Putin sought to sway 2016 vote to Trump

In this June 28, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

WASHINGTON — A CIA review released on Wednesday found flaws in the production of a U.S. intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential vote to Donald Trump, but it did not contest that conclusion.

The review “does not dispute the quality and credibility” of a highly classified CIA report that the assessment’s authors relied on to reach that conclusion, it said.

But the review questioned the “high confidence” level that the CIA and FBI assigned the conclusion. It should have instead been given the “moderate confidence” rating reached by the communications-monitoring U.S. National Security Agency, the review said.

Trump, who has a history of quarreling with U.S. intelligence analyzes, has previously rejected that intelligence assessment, which was made public in an unclassified version in January 2017. After a November 2017 meeting with Putin, he said that he believed the Russian leader’s election meddling denials.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a former congressman who served as director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, ordered the review and its “lessons learned” section “to promote analytic objectivity and transparency,” said a CIA statement.

The CIA’s Directorate of Analysis, which conducted the review, “identified multiple procedural anomalies” in how the December 2016 classified assessment of Russian election interference was prepared.

They included “a highly compressed timeline ... and excessive involvement of agency heads” and “led to departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing” of the report, it said.

“These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment’s most contentious judgment,” it continued.

The review, however, did not overturn the judgment that Putin employed a disinformation and cyber campaign to sway the 2016 vote to Trump over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton.

A 2018 bipartisan U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report reached the same conclusion.

Jonathan Landay, Reuters