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.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
RSS