theintercept | CIA Director Mike
Pompeo met late last month with a former U.S. intelligence official who
has become an advocate for a disputed theory that the theft of the
Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential
campaign was an inside job, rather than a hack by Russian intelligence.
Pompeo met on October 24 with William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower who co-authored an analysis
published by a group of former intelligence officials that challenges
the U.S. intelligence community’s official assessment that Russian
intelligence was behind last year’s theft of data from DNC computers.
Binney and the other former officials argue that the DNC data was
“leaked,” not hacked, “by a person with physical access” to the DNC’s
computer system.
In an interview with The Intercept, Binney said Pompeo told him that
President Donald Trump had urged the CIA director to meet with Binney to
discuss his assessment that the DNC data theft was an inside job.
During their hour-long meeting at CIA headquarters, Pompeo said Trump
told him that if Pompeo “want[ed] to know the facts, he should talk to
me,” Binney said.
A senior intelligence source confirmed that Pompeo met with Binney to
discuss his analysis, and that the CIA director held the meeting at
Trump’s urging. The Intercept’s account of the meeting is based on
interviews with Binney, the senior intelligence source, a colleague who
accompanied Binney to CIA headquarters, and others who Binney told about
the meeting. A CIA spokesperson declined to comment. “As a general
matter, we do not comment on the Director’s schedule,” said Dean Boyd,
director of the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs.
Binney said that Pompeo asked whether he would be willing to meet
with NSA and FBI officials to further discuss his analysis of the DNC
data theft. Binney agreed and said Pompeo said he would contact him when
he had arranged the meetings.
It is highly unorthodox for the CIA director to reach out to someone
like Binney, a 74-year-old ex-government employee who rose to prominence
as an NSA whistleblower wrongfully persecuted by the government, for
help with fact-finding related to the theft of the DNC emails. It is
particularly stunning that Pompeo would meet with Binney at Trump’s
apparent urging, in what could be seen as an effort to discredit the
U.S. intelligence community’s own assessment that an alleged Russian
hack of the DNC servers was part of an effort to help Trump win the
presidency.
