The intelligence community briefed the president-elect on this oppo research, which is reportedly tied to the Kremlin". That's a fact and to me it's a news story I don't think there's anything wrong with reporting that.
On January 16, 2014, the State Department's Afghanistan and Pakistan office, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community briefed Congress and nearly a dozen congressional committees about a video on Bergdahl produced by the Taliban that the government received.
"I would say this: Regardless of the outcome of the election, the American people have the right to know what a foreign power did to disrupt our election," she said after the intelligence community briefed House and Senate leaders on its findings. .
Clearly, however, by the fact that the most senior members of the intelligence community briefed the President-elect about its contents, the substance of the dossier was not being dismissed out of hand.
Mr. Kellems said Mr. Cheney's public statements had "reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community, as briefed to him by the Central Intelligence Agency".
From what has been made public, we know that the F.B.I., under the Obama administration, used its powers under the Patriot Act to seek these records; that judges with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved these searches; and that members of Congress with oversight powers over the intelligence community were briefed about the searches.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.
Obama explained that he instead allowed law enforcement and the intelligence community to investigate, brief Congress, and eventually inform the public.
It also risked deepening the division between the Obama administration and the intelligence community, which have been briefing against one another throughout the week.
The exchange on Thursday night drew laughs from the audience at the Baltimore Council on Foreign Relations, but did not seem to impress the former ambassador, who replied: "We generally don't do that in democratic societies". It also risked deepening the division between the Obama administration and the intelligence community, which have been briefing against one another throughout the week.
"The leadership of the intelligence community and those they brief have a very clear understanding of the threat and understand it to be a question of a global movement rather than a single organization," a C.I.A. spokesman said.
