In March 2020, NSA Deputy Director George Barnes blocked the release of a finished intelligence report on foreign targeting of U.S. elections, including 2016 activity, because he feared it would brand the agency as part of the “deep state.”
A newly declassified memo from one of the analysts records the meeting. Barnes said releasing it in the current political climate, with an acting ODNI tasked to “clean house” and an administration suspicious of the intel community, would damage NSA’s credibility. He noted that ODNI, CIA, and parts of the FBI had already been tarred as the deep state, while NSA had so far escaped that label and remained trusted. Publishing the report, he warned, would destroy that trust, hurt overall NSA credibility, and create workforce morale problems. He wanted to protect the agency’s image as “nonpartisan, objective, speaking truth to power.”
The report had been ready since December 2018. Analysts finished their work on time, but higher levels sat on it for 16 months. It covered foreign targeting beginning in 2014 and included 2016 election activity. Some details were judged “sensational,” and the material would unavoidably identify members of Congress even with names removed.
By February 2020, the distribution list had finally been approved. The report was pushed for release pending approval by NSA Director General Paul Nakasone, but Barnes objected to releasing it “as-is at this time.” He proposed several alternatives, including a watered-down summary instead of the full assessment. The analyst pushed back, noting that amalgamating the material would still contextually identify members of Congress (especially regarding the 2016 Democratic field of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) and would look even more selective, and therefore more political, if only Republican-field analysis were retained. The analyst also argued there was lasting foreign-intelligence value in the original analytic language and in the policy preferences expressed by the foreign actors that remained relevant beyond 2016.
The same meeting also addressed a then-draft report on the Russian Internet Research Agency’s preferences and strategy for the 2020 Democratic primary, another product that faced identical Gates Procedures problems of unavoidably identifying members of Congress. Barnes floated the idea of folding some 2016 material into the new 2020 product or even exploring a non-serialized sharing process so that only selected analysts could see the information without a formal, broadly distributed report.
These 2020-era IC fights over election interference reporting and subsequent fears of politicization are not isolated. The memo was later reviewed by IC Ombudsman Barry Zulauf for his 2021 report on politicization of election interference intelligence, fitting a broader pattern that included analysts withholding Chinese 2020 meddling evidence from Trump because they opposed his China policies.
NSA leadership chose political self-protection over timely delivery of completed election-threat intelligence.
