https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/us/politics/trump-barr-declassify-intelligence.html
https://archive.fo/jbJmB


WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A. It effectively strips the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden.
Mr. Trump said on Friday that he wanted Mr. Barr to “get to the bottom” of what the intelligence agencies knew about the investigation into his campaign. He promised, “We’re exposing everything.”
The president raised questions about C.I.A. involvement in the origins of the Russia investigation, and other officials said Mr. Barr wanted to learn more about sources in Russia, including a key informant who helped the C.I.A. conclude that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the intrusion on the 2016 election. Mr. Trump also invoked two close allies, Australia and Britain, telling reporters he wanted the attorney general to examine their roles in sharing intelligence about Russia’s interference.
The declassification order served as Mr. Trump’s counterpunch to the special counsel’s investigation. Since the release of the Mueller report, the president has been trying to focus attention on his accusations that the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies spied on his campaign. The new order, former officials said, could be intended to give more ammunition to that effort.
The intelligence agencies signaled on Friday that they would not easily give up their secrets. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, pledged to cooperate with the review but also warned that the secrets of the intelligence community, or I.C., must be protected.
“I am confident that the attorney general will work with the I.C. in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” Mr. Coats said in a statement.
Though the ultimate power to declassify documents rests with the president, Mr. Trump’s delegation of that power to Mr. Barr effectively stripped Mr. Coats and the C.I.A. of control of their secrets. The move could endanger the agencies’ ability to keep the identities of their sources secret, former intelligence officials said.
Mr. Coats and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, will fight hard to ensure that their most valuable secrets — the identities of sources — are protected, former officials have said. Ms. Haspel has been described as a fierce political infighter, but she has also been careful to cultivate a strong working relationship with Mr. Barr, former officials said.
Traditionally, the C.I.A. has been effective at intramural governmental fights, in large measure because its power comes from its information and its closely guarded secrets. By taking that power from the intelligence agencies, Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr may have weakened the C.I.A.
The intelligence agencies already have a degree of unease over the Justice Department’s ability to keep the identity of sources secret. The name of the F.B.I. informant involved in the initial investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia was inadvertently made public.
“If you compromise agents, lives can be lost. That is why this is so sensitive,” Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. “It is important to be exceedingly careful in this area. That is my only concern, and I hope Mr. Barr realizes that.”
Mr. Barr asked Mr. Trump for the declassification authority, a Justice Department official said on Thursday. He has not detailed the information he is seeking, but some officials have said he is interested in how the C.I.A. concluded Mr. Putin ordered the interference campaign in 2016.
The most prominent of the C.I.A.’s sources of intelligence on Russia’s election interference was a person close to Mr. Putin who provided information about his involvement, former officials have said. The source turned over evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that President Barack Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign, the officials said.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated, according to the officials. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
But Mr. Trump’s promise to declassify a broad swath of documents suggests that Mr. Barr’s mandate is more extensive than investigating any single source. Mr. Trump’s comments mentioning Britain and Australia appeared to be a reference to the F.B.I.’s investigation of George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide.
An Australian diplomat told the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016 that Mr. Papadopoulos had said that Russia had made an offer to help the Trump campaign by releasing stolen Democratic emails. The F.B.I. enlisted an informant, Stefan Halper, to talk with Mr. Papadopoulos, an investigative technique that prompted Mr. Trump to accuse the bureau of spying on his campaign.
Mr. Barr has picked up on the term “spying,” invoking it multiple times in recent weeks to describe steps the F.B.I. took to investigate the Trump campaign but stopping short of alleging that the bureau acted improperly.
It would have been improper for the intelligence agencies to sit on the information from Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. King said.
“If someone came and told that to the C.I.A. or F.B.I. and they didn’t open a counterintelligence investigation, they would be guilty of malpractice,” he said. “If they had ignored that, it would have been unacceptable law enforcement, especially when we are dealing with an adversary trying to undermine our country.”
He also said the Intelligence Committee looked at both the F.B.I.’s and the C.I.A.’s role in the origins of the Russia inquiry. He said the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency played roles in the inquiry, but said that was proper.
Some revelations about intelligence operations around the 2016 campaign have angered officials in Britain, Australia and other closely allied countries, according to former officials. Exposing further information about British or Australian cooperation in the investigation could deepen tensions with two of America’s closest intelligence partners.
“It is yet another step that will raise questions among our allies and partners about whether to share sensitive intelligence with us,” said Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the C.I.A. and host of the “Intelligence Matters” podcast.
Mr. Morell said Mr. Coats, not the attorney general, was in the best position to determine what information would be damaging if declassified.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify the 2003 invasion.
But Mr. Trump’s order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.
Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,” at various points accusing Mr. Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory.
He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election. But the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and the publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to lift Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems.
Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would closely monitor Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said.