Wow! Was John Brennan’s Overlooked “Intelligence Bombshell” The Steele Dossier?

How Could He Not Know the Dossier Was a Hillary Dirty Trick

In June 2017, well on their way to a Pulitzer for national reporting, the stenographers at the Washington Post published a lengthy, breathless article about an extraordinary message delivered to the White House in early August 2016.

According to the Post, CIA Director John Brennan had sent an “intelligence bombshell” directly to President Barack Obama, an “eyes only” report. So sensitive was the report that Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) and insisted it “be returned immediately after it was read.”

The report was allegedly “drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government.” It detailed not only Vladi­mir Putin’s “direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race,” but also “Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.”

Although I could find no recent discussion of this “bombshell,” either in the information released by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard or in the solid independent reporting on Russiagate, I found a highly useful May 2019 article on the subject by National Review’s Andy McCarthy.

Wrote McCarthy, “Brennan’s ‘intelligence bombshell’ was drawn from high-level Russian-government sourcing positioned to know that Putin himself was complicit in the cyber campaign. And wouldn’t you know it: Steele claimed his dossier was drawn from high-level Russian government sourcing positioned to know that Putin himself was complicit in the cyber campaign.”

In convincing detail. McCarthy made the case that the “intelligence bombshell” in question was, in fact, the Steele dossier. In an argument that has been borne out by recent whistleblower revelations, McCarthy also asserted that it was Brennan who insisted the Steele dossier be included in the annex of the now notorious Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of January 6, 2017.

Titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” the ICA concluded that Putin “ordered” an influence campaign, the goal of which was “to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” a conclusion Brennan allegedly reached in early August 2016.

Writing in May 2019, McCarthy did not have access to the documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee declassified by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe in September 2020. They read in part, “According to his handwritten notes,” Brennan “briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”

Thanks to Gabbard’s release of the Durham annex, we now know that the foreign policy advisor Brennan referenced was veteran globalist Julianne Smith. On July 25, 2016, George Soros’s guy in the Clinton campaign, Leonard Benardo, wrote in an email, “Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire." Curiously, Smith’s Wikipedia page makes no mention of her work for Hillary.

On July 27, Benardo wrote in a follow-up email, “HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russia hampering U.S. elections. This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level." Four days later, July 31, the FBI poured oil on the fire, opening its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

Brennan briefed Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, the FBI’s James Comey, DNI james Clapper, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch about Hillary’s scheme on July 28, 2016. According to the Washington Post, within a week or so of that meeting Brennan sent his intelligence bombshell to Obama. That bombshell presented as fact what a week earlier Brennan presented as a plot by the Clinton campaign to tie Trump to Putin.

In June 2017, when the Post ran the “bombshell” article, the media were still trying to prop up the Steele dossier. Incredibly, America’s crack journalists had not yet discovered that the Clinton campaign had commissioned the Steele dossier. They were suckers for Brennan’s disinformation. Having sent Obama an “eyes only” message that was quickly retrieved, Brennan knew there would be no paper trail, not that the Post would ask to see one.

“The story coming from the Brennan camp is that he had some other ‘bombshell intelligence’ sourced to the Kremlin, wrote McCarthy presciently in May 2019. “That seems unlikely: The record shows that he was promoting the Steele dossier.”

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