The 51 Intel Know-Nothings

 As Joe Biden headed into his Thursday night brawl with Donald Trump, he was missing a key ally from his 2020 debates. He doesn’t have the backing of an intelligence community that Democrats once promised would kneecap Mr. Trump “six ways from Sunday.”

We learned more this week about those 51 former intelligence officials who in 2020 pulled their own version of the 2016 Hillary Clinton-James Comey Russia-collusion hoax. In October 2020 the 51 released a public statement declaring that emails “purportedly” belonging to Hunter Biden’s laptop exhibited “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Joe Biden used this to deflect a debate question about the laptop as “a bunch of garbage”; social-media companies used it to justify censoring the New York Post’s laptop stories; and American voters were kept in the dark about the Biden family business in the runup to November’s razor-thin election result.

House investigators revealed last year the partisan truth: It was the Biden campaign that ginned up the letter. Campaign adviser Antony Blinken (now secretary of state) called former Obama Deputy Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Morell three days after the Post published the Hunter emails (and just before the second Trump-Biden debate), a chat investigators wrote “led to the issuance of the public statement.” Mr. Morell testified the goal was, among other things, to “help Vice President Biden” “win the election.”

But the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees this week released a second report that exposes the lengths to which this cabal went to craft their own disinformation campaign. Recall the slippery cleverness of the original statement. The signers went out of their way to include their prior official titles and experience—to boost the legitimacy of their declaration—alongside analysis suggesting special abilities that enabled them to credibly brand the emails Russian “disinformation.” Yet they included a careful caveat: They explained they didn’t have any direct “evidence” of Russian involvement—i.e., no access to classified information.

It turns out this know-nothingness was deliberate—making the letter even more scandalous. The new House report says that at least two signatories were CIA contractors at the time of the statement, while others retained access to classified material. All it would have taken was one call or briefing to ascertain that the laptop wasn’t part of a Russian campaign. The federal government certainly knew it. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had been in possession of the Hunter laptop since 2019, while Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, on the same day as the statement, said that the laptop was “not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”

Instead, these “professionals” with access to the truth purposely kept themselves in the dark—so as to retain their ability to engage in wild (and false) speculation in aid of a political campaign. In an interview with House investigators, former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—whose name appeared at the top of the statement—was asked why he didn’t first request a briefing on such a specific topic, given that he “had the clearance.” Mr. Clapper said he “didn’t think it was appropriate” because “I didn’t want to be tainted by . . . access to classified information.” Asked how the truth would possibly count as “tainted,” he dug himself a bigger hole: “Bad choice of words. . . . I wanted only to go on what I had seen publicly.” He didn’t want any truth to get in the way of the story.

Mr. Morell similarly told House investigators that he hadn’t engaged in any conversations with the FBI, received a classified briefing, or availed himself of any investigative material, prior to organizing a bombshell claim that a foreign government was interfering in a U.S. election. The House reports that Mr. Morell was an active CIA contractor at the time of the statement. (In an email to the Post on Tuesday, Mr. Morell denied it.) Never forget: Those at the top of the intel game are there because they know the art of cons, double-cons, and plausible deniability.

The House report divulges other disturbing info, including that the CIA’s internal review board (which scours proposed publications for classified information) may have rushed its process at the request of the vaunted 51. Also, that while the highest echelons of the CIA were alerted to the statement prior to publication, nobody took any action to set the signers straight. Then there are the ethical problems of CIA contractors brazenly engaging in partisan politics and elections.

This year’s Biden campaign hasn’t (yet) been dumb enough to try to sell the voting public on another Russia-election plot. But it’s a long way to November, and this week’s report serves as a sharp reminder of the outsize and repugnant political roles the FBI and intelligence community played in the past two presidential elections. With a track record like this, voters should treat any wild claim with the distrust it deserves—and remember just which political party has proven itself more adept at spewing disinformation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-51-intel-know-nothings-report-hunter-laptop-69a903e1