https://www.thenation.com/article/why-are-the-media-taking-the-cias-hacking-claims-at-face-value/
Meanwhile, much of the media has ignored the rather salient fact that the FBI is by no means in agreement with the anonymous and secret CIA assessment that Russia interfered with the election in order to help elect Donald Trump.
Nor, for that matter, is the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI), which has declined to endorse the CIA report. This is perhaps less surprising than it first might seem, considering that as recently as November 17 ODNI Director James Clapper testified before the House Intelligence Committee and acknowledged that “as far as the WikiLeaks connection, the evidence there is not as strong and we don’t have good insight into the sequencing of the releases or when the data may have been provided.”
Indeed, evidence of a connection between the Russian government and the hackers that are believed to have stolen the DNC/John Podesta e-mails remains illusory. Cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr has observed that “there is ZERO technical evidence to connect those Russian-speaking hackers to the GRU, FSB, SVR, or any other Russian government department.” The very real possibility that non-state actors carried out the hack of the DNC has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream narrative of “Russian interference.”
And so, while the Russian government certainly could have been behind the DNC/Podesta e-mail hack, the possibility that it originated elsewhere should not be so easily dismissed. After all, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly denied that Russia was the source of the DNC/Podesta emails, while a former British ambassador who is close to Assange has said the source of the e-mails is “an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack.”
But that hasn’t prevented the media from treating the anonymous, unverified claims of both The Washington Post and The New York Times, both based on a CIA “secret assessment,” as gospel.
MEDIA RUSHES TO DEFEND THE CIA
Last weekend, the influential Sunday morning talk shows took Trump to task for his dismissal of the CIA’s “secret assessment.” An incredulous George Stephanopoulos asked incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: “How is a President Trump going to work with intelligence agencies if he doesn’t trust their work?”
“I want to know,” Stephanopoulos demanded, “why President-elect Trump doesn’t believe the conclusions of 17 intelligence agencies.”
On Face the Nation, Time magazine’s Michael Duffy said the CIA’s finding was “deeply disturbing” because “it means that Russia attacked the United States.” Duffy also expressed “shock” that Trump has “drawn a fairly dark cloud over his relationship with the intelligence community on whom he will rely and need as president.”
And over at NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd warned viewers that the issue of Russian interference “is not about the results of the election, it’s about a hostile foreign government trying to influence our election.” Todd thought it “remarkable” that Donald Trump decided “to side with a foreign government over our own chief intelligence agency.”
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“Donald Trump,” he concluded, has “declared war on the intelligence community.”
The respected liberal columnist E.J. Dionne also sprung to the defense of the CIA’s honor in his column for The Washington Post on Monday. “When The Post revealed the CIA’s conclusions about Russia,” Dionne opined, “Trump’s response was to insult the CIA.” Still more alarming to Dionne, is that Trump would have the audacity to “happily trash our own CIA.”
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, December 13, liberal stalwart Keith Olbermann went much further. In a commentary for GQ he warned that “the nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread. And the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum who are beholden to scum, Russian scum.” He then tweeted his considered belief that “If @realDonaldTrump will ignore CIA to listen instead to Russians, it’s treason.”
The working assumption here seems to be that the job of the president (and apparently of media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post) is to stand, salute, and never question Langley.
IN LANGLEY WE TRUST?
The high-profile anchors and analysts on CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC who have cited the work of The Washington Post and The New York Times seem to have come down with a bad case of historical amnesia.
The CIA, in their telling, is a bulwark of American democracy, not a largely unaccountable, out-of-control behemoth that has often sought to subvert press freedom at home and undermine democratic norms abroad.
The columnists, anchors, and commentators who rushed to condemn Trump for not showing due deference to the CIA seem to be unaware that, throughout its history, the agency has been the target of far more astute and credible critics than the president-elect.
