Spygate: Obama Admin Cut Situation Room’s Video Feed During Meetings on Russia Investigation

Comments made by Attorney General William Barr about extraordinary arrangements regarding the original handling of the Russia investigation may take on more significance in light of a previous report showing a high and unusual degree of compartmentalization in the Obama-era intelligence community’s initial intel set up of the Russia probe.

In an interview with Fox News that aired Friday, Barr commented that the intelligence community’s early handling of the Russia investigation may raise questions. He noted it was first handled at a “very senior level” and then by a “small group.”

Barr stated:

The thing that’s interesting about this is that this was handled at a very senior level of these departments. It wasn’t handled in the ordinary way that investigations or counterintelligence activities are conducted. It was sort of an ad hoc, small group — and most of these people are no longer with the FBI or the CIA or the other agencies involved. I think there’s a misconception out there that we know a lot about what happened. The fact of the matter is, Bob Mueller did not look at the government’s activities.

Deep inside a 7,700-plus word Washington Post article published June 23, 2017, the newspaper detailed the highly compartmentalized nature of the original Russia interference investigation and the manner in which other U.S. intelligence agencies were deliberately kept in the dark.

According to the newspaper, in the summer of 2016, CIA Director John Brennan convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.”

The Post described the unit as so secretive it functioned as a “sealed compartment” hidden even from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; a unit whose workers were all made to sign additional non-disclosure forms.

The unit reported to top officials, the newspaper documented:

They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.

The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, The Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved: Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey. Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings, The Post stated.

The newspaper continued :



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