Russian election meddling

Feds won't release redacted intelligence report on Russian election meddling

By JOSH GERSTEIN

The Trump administration is refusing to release a redacted version of a key report President Barack Obama received in January on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, court filings show.

Then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made public an unclassified version of that report, but the Electronic Privacy Information Center brought a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding a copy of the classified report given to Obama at the same time. EPIC said the unclassified version omitted "critical technical evidence" that could help the public assess U.S. intelligence agencies' claims that Russia did make efforts to affect the outcome of the 2016 race.

However, a top official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a court declaration filed Monday that releasing the original report with classified information blacked out would be a field day for foreign intelligence operatives, including the very Russians the report accuses of undertaking the interference.

"Release of a redacted report would be of particular assistance to Russian intelligence, which, armed with both the declassified report and a redacted copy of the classified report, would be able to discern the volume of intelligence the U.S. currently possesses with respect to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election," Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration Edward Gistaro wrote.

"This would reveal the maturity of the U.S. intelligence efforts and expose information about the [intelligence community's] capabilities (including sources and methods) that could reasonably be expected to cause serious or exceptionally grave danger to U.S. national security."

The intelligence official argued that a redacted version of the original report would allow a trained eye to assess "comparative weight" of human intelligence and signals intelligence reporting included in the compendium. Release of some of the information the privacy-focused organization wants made public "could prove fatal to U.S. human intelligence sources," Gistaro warned.

Gistaro also appears to argue that even if officials blacked out the whole report, highly classified information would be at risk.

"I agree with the [National Intelligence Council] that a heavily or even fully redacted version of the classified report can not be publicly released without jeopardizing national security information properly classified as SECRET or TOP SECRET," he wrote.

EPIC sought the information in January, just days after officials released the public version of the report. The group filed suit in federal court in Washington in February after failing to get any records from ODNI.

“The ODNI should release the complete report to EPIC so that the public and the Congress can understand the full extent of the Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election," EPIC's Marc Rotenberg told POLITICO Tuesday. "It is already clear that government secrecy is frustrating meaningful oversight. The FBI, for example, will not even identify the states that were targeted by Russia.”

The case is assigned to Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Rotenberg said his group is pursuing two other related FOIA suits: one seeking records abou the FBI's response to the alleged Russian meddling and another seeking Trump's tax records from the IRS.