Clash over secrets is looming between Justice, CIA
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the CIA, effectively stripping the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden.
On Friday, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said the agencies under his purview would give the Justice Department “all of the appropriate information” for its review. But Coats, a seasoned politician, also included a not-so-subtle warning that his agency’s secrets must be protected.
“I am confident that the attorney general will work with the IC in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” Coats said, referring to the intelligence community.
Trump granted Barr’s request for sweeping new authorities to conduct his review of how the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The president ordered the CIA and the other intelligence agencies to cooperate, granting Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents and thus significant leverage over the intelligence community.
Trump defended his decision earlier Friday, telling reporters as he left for a trip to Japan that the declassification would be sweeping. “What are we doing, we are exposing everything,” he said. “We are being transparent.” He expressed no qualms about national security implications.
As Coats’ comments suggested, intelligence officials believe the danger of the move by Trump was that it could endanger the agency’s ability to keep the identities of its sources secret.
The most prominent source among them may well be a person close to President Vladimir Putin of Russia who provided information to the CIA about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference.
The concern about the source, who is believed to still be alive, is one of several issues raised by Trump’s decision to use the intelligence to pursue his political enemies. It has also prompted fears from former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers that other sources or methods of intelligence gathering — among the government’s most closely held secrets — could be made public, not because of leaks to the news media that the administration denounces, but because the president has determined it suits his political purposes.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably in the run-up to the Iraq War. Trump’s order also raises the specter that officials ranging from the FBI to the CIA to the National Security Agency, which was monitoring Russian officials, will be questioned about their sources and their intent.
The order could be tremendously damaging to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Rep. Adam Schiff, DCalif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Schiff said in an interview.