A senior US intelligence official said that the White House ordered him to stop reporting on Russian election interference, and highlight Chinese and Iranian meddling instead, according to a whistle-blower complaint revealed on Wednesday.
Offering explosive evidence to support Democratic allegations that US President Donald Trump has manipulated intelligence to support his re-election bid, US Department of Homeland Security analyst Brian Murphy said that he was told by Acting US Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf that assessments on the Russian threat made Trump “look bad.”
Wolf told him that the order to stifle his analysis “specifically originated from White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien,” a top Trump aide, Murphy said in the complaint.
Photo: AFP
Murphy, a senior official in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the department, said that he refused to censor his reporting on Russian interference and the domestic white supremacist threat, “as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger.”
In retaliation, he said that he was demoted last month.
The complaint, released by the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, came after months of reports that the White House was downplaying the Russian election threat, despite what US intelligence chiefs have said was massive interference in the 2016 campaign.
In a widely criticized official statement on election interference on Aug. 7, the US Directorate of National Intelligence focused on what it said was active interference by China and Iran, with China opposed to Trump.
Russia is also interfering against former US vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, and an anti-Russia “establishment,” it said, avoiding suggestions that, as in 2016, Moscow favors Trump.
The department rejected the allegations of intelligence manipulation and retaliation against Murphy.
“We flatly deny that there is any truth to the merits of Mr Murphy’s claim,” department spokesman Alexei Woltornist said.
The White House has denied manipulating intelligence to support Trump’s policies and re-election, but also repeatedly condemns what it labels an alleged anti-Trump “deep state” in the intelligence community.
Murphy’s complaint said that, between 2018 and this year, he witnessed “a repeated pattern of abuse of authority, attempted censorship of intelligence analysis and improper administration of an intelligence program related to Russian efforts to influence and undermine United States interests.”
In a July 8 meeting, Murphy said that Wolf told him his report on election interference had to be held back “because it ‘made the president look bad.’”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that Murphy’s complaint “outlines grave and disturbing allegations” of manipulation and censorship of intelligence “in order to benefit President Trump politically.”
“This puts our nation and its security at grave risk,” he said.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
TENSIONS: The march went ahead without clashes, but arrests were still possible as police investigate suspects behind Nazi salutes, racist slurs and homophobic insults Thousands of people on Saturday marched in southeastern France under heavy security in tribute to a far-right activist whose killing, blamed on the hard left, has put the country on edge. The crowd — many wearing black and some covering their lower faces with masks — marched through the city of Lyon carrying flowers and placards bearing pictures of Quentin Deranque and the words: “justice for Quentin” and “the extreme left kills.” The 23-year-old died from head injuries following clashes between radical left and far-right supporters on the sidelines of a demonstration against a politician from the left-wing France Unbowed
RSS