On Saturday, NY Congressman Hakeem Jeffries gave the Democratic response to President Trump's weekly address. While doing so he rolled out and repeated a tired old trope from the Hillary Campaign. "Seventeen (17) Independent agencies determined that the Russians hacked the DNC Email Server," which led directly to the myth the "Russia Hacked the election.
Frankly, I've had it with the multiple lies that are rolled up in that statement. There are not 17 Independent Intelligence Agencies, there were not 17 Intelligence agencies working on the question and there was not a real consensus of that many agencies.
So how did we get the constantly repeated line the '17 Independent blah blah blah...?'
The facts:
There are seventeen member of the US Intelligence Community (IC) led by (#1) The Office of The Director of National Intelligence, which coordinates the often overlapping and occasionally conflicting work of the entire community, without command, oversight, or budget authority over anyone but their own staff. They do however chair the meetings that lead to to findings and "consensuses"
The other sixteen naturally include the most well known of the them the CIA (#2) which almost certainly had a hand in collecting and analyzing the raw intel that produced the "finding." Also the National Security Agency (NSA) (#3) which is the largest, and sometimes the best funded, of US Intelligence Agencies. The NSA as the agency responsible for Cyber intelligence abroad would have led the effort to collect evidence of foreign hacking, been involved in the analysis and co-developed the tools used in cyber operations. Also surely involved was the FBI (#4) which is in the lead for investigations involving attacks that rise to the level of national security threats and has the lead competency for domestic intelligence and counter-espionage efforts.
What about the other 13 members of the intelligence community? Not all of whom are independent agencies (more about that in a minute).
Well for starters five of them are the intelligence branches of the five armed services(#s 5-9) , Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Coast Guard. With the exception of the Coast Guard, these agencies focus on three major (and overlapping) concerns: Threats to their parent services, the capabilities of their competitors and peers, and tactical, operational and strategic intelligence affecting ongoing military operations. The Coast Guard's Intelligence Service focus on Intelligence Threats to the Service and on Ports and Waterways threats to homeland security. While all of these services undoubtedly retain some cyber collection and analysis capabilities, it's unlikely that those experts were ever involved with the effort to determine who hacked John Podesta's email.
Similar arguments apply to the other Department of Defense Intelligence Community members, the National Reconnaissance Office (#10), which mainly designs, builds, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the United States government, and provides satellite intelligence, particularly signals intelligence and imagery intelligence, to several other government agencies, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (#11), which interprets and maps satellite imagery.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)(#12), handles national-level, long term and strategic intelligence for the military and department of defense, as such it sometimes overlaps with other agencies but is unlikely to have provided much to the discussion of DNC hacking.
Also in the IC, are specialized contributors, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Office of National Security Intelligence (DEA)(#13), which focuses on the drug trade and associated terror networks, The Dept. of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (#14), focusing on Energy Issues and collection threats to US Nuclear programs. Treasury Dept's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (#15), is concerned with the economies of foreign states and the financing of terror networks.
Finally there are two more generalists at the table. The State Dept's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (#16) exists mainly to provide accurate and up to date intelligence from all sources to the Secretary of State and to US Diplomats. The Dept of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (#17) coordinates and analyzes intelligence for all the component agencies of DHS. Both of these have some capabilities to look at intelligence information and provide analysis, of the two it is highly unlikely the State Dept. would be involved in more than a summary read of the data, while DHS was consulted. DHS is along with the FBI the primary guardian of US Security at home. They issued the joint statement with the FBI, finding that the Russians indeed hacked into DNC servers, back in April.
As to the Independence of these Community Members? I'm not sure what the Hillarys and Hakeems of the world mean by that phrase. I've made the argument, I think, that this was not a case of seventeen agencies working independently to investigate this and all reaching the same conclusion. I think it's also clear that this was not several agencies developing raw intelligence, sharing it out to seventeen and all of them independently reaching the same conclusions.
Of the seventeen members of the IC, fully eight are part of the DOD, two part of DOJ, two DHS, only two, the CIA and the DNI answer directly to the President and are considered "Independent Agencies" ie. not part of a Cabinet Agency. So I'm not sure what "independence" reflects in the claims of Democrats, except an attempt to confuse and mislead the public.
Only three IC members are likely have really been major players in the effort to determine who hacked the DNC server, through collection AND analysis, the NSA, the CIA and the FBI. These three "agencies" would have coordinated their findings with and through the office of the DNI. The DNI could surely have shared those findings with representatives of the other constituent members of the IC and asked for rebuttals, objections, or evidence against the findings. Then, unless the Dept of Energy or Marines Corps Intelligence had some weirdly relevant intelligence on the matter, they would have concurred as a matter of course.
At the end of the day somewhere between four and five constituent members of the US Intelligence Community made this call. Two (#4 & #17) signed a joint report And ONE (#1), in the lead, with a Director who answered directly to the President Obama determined "Consenus!" Not seventeen!!
