‘I need you to say you agree’ 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a whistleblower’s account Wednesday detailing the pressure an Obama-era intelligence official applied on a subordinate to get them to sign off on an assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. 

“I was pressured to alter my views,” the senior intelligence analyst-turned-whistleblower claimed in documents Gabbard used as evidence in her bombshell report earlier this month, detailing the “treasonous conspiracy” Obama officials engaged in “to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory.”

The analyst – who worked on a 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which determined “foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” – recalled that “my concurrence was sought to enable [redacted] to sway the views of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)” — so that DIA would sign off on a revised ICA.  

The new, 2017 ICA relied on the discredited Steele dossier and claimed the Kremlin orchestrated hackings of Democratic National Committee emails and intervened in the presidential contest in favor of Trump.

“There is reporting you are not allowed to see, if you saw it, you would agree,” the analyst recalled a supervisor telling them in early January 2017, when they asked to review the new reporting in the alternative assessment.  

“Isn’t it possible Putin has something on Trump, to blackmail and coerce him?” the supervisor continued. ”You need to TRUST ME on this.”

When the whistleblower refused to sign off on the new assessment, the “visibly frustrated” supervisor stated: “I need you to say you agree with these judgements, so that DIA will go along with them!” 

“I remember this conversation very clearly,” the whistleblower wrote in the account, “as it was a difficult situation and I listened, and chose my responses, with care.” 

“I was aware that I was defying the [National Intelligence Office’s] direction to me (to misrepresent my views to DIA) based on a conscious decision to adhere to [Intelligence Community] standards, tradecraft, and ethics.”  

The DIA did not end up joining the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency (NSA) on the 2017 ICA. 

The documents also show the whistleblower made repeated attempts to report concerns about the information used in the 2017 ICA to multiple government officials, including the inspector general for the intelligence community, former Special Counsel John Durham, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.),  to no avail. 

“The Whistleblower put their own well-being on the line to defend our democratic republic and ensure the American people learned the truth about how President Obama directed the creation of Intelligence Community Assessment that knowingly promoted falsehoods claiming Russia helped President Trump get elected in 2016,” Gabbard said in a statement. 

“In doing so, the Obama Administration sought to delegitimize the 2016 election and President Trump’s presidency, subverting the will of the American people and enacting essentially a years-long coup against President Trump and the American people,” she added. “Thanks to this individual and other courageous whistleblowers, the American people are finally learning the truth about the dangerous consequences of weaponized intelligence.”

“Truth and accountability will help in ensuring this doesn’t happen again.”