Contractors With CIA Signed Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, House GOP Report Discloses

 Some of the intelligence veterans who signed the infamous letter used to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story weeks before the 2020 presidential election were on the CIA‘s payroll at the time, according to a new report from Republican-led House committees.

Congressional investigators found that two of the 51 signatories — former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley — were actively working for the CIA as contractors when the statement was published.

The Weaponization of the Federal Government panel said the “revelation raises concerns that these officials may have abused their positions to expedite the statement’s approval and may have been earning taxpayer dollars while they did it.”

Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was in the midst of running against then-President Donald Trump when the New York Post began reporting on details of the younger Biden’s shady business dealings and personal life contained in the copy of a hard drive.

The letter suggested the timing of the laptop story’s emergence had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” POLITICO, which obtained the letter, published a headline in 2020 saying the intel veterans were claiming the laptop story was “Russian disinfo.”

Many of the contents of the laptop and hard drive have been analyzed and shown to be authentic over the past few years, but during a debate in the final stretch of the 2020 election cycle, Joe Biden was able to cite the letter to cast doubt on the Post’s reporting.

A new report from the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, along with the Weaponization panel, said emails showed that at least some of the letter’s signatories were on “active contract” with the CIA during its drafting, review, and publication. A CIA employee’s internal email in response to the letter said, “This frustrates me. I don’t think it is helpful to the Agency in the long run.” Another said, “I also love that at least a few of the random signatories belong to individuals currently working.”

The report said the investigating committees requested the identities of all the CIA contractors on the letter, but the agency has not “declassified the complete list of individuals … due to purported operational security” beyond disclosing Morell and Buckley.

A chart shows that three—including ex-CIA Director John Brennan, former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos, and former National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen—were not contracted with the CIA on October 19, the date of the letter.

Congressional Republicans previously revealed that Morell said “yes”when asked if a call around mid-October 2020 from Antony Blinken, an adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign who now serves as secretary of state, triggered a series of events that led to the letter.

Blinken denied soliciting the letter, but emails show Morell asked fellow intelligence veterans to add their names to it with a stated purpose of giving Biden’s campaign a debate “talking point.” Another top Biden campaign official later thanked him.

The new report noted Morell acknowledged it is “inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process,” though Hatch Act political restrictions do not apply to them in the same way they do to CIA employees.

“Such an overtly political action would be illegal under the Hatch Act for a permanent CIA employee. Congress ought to consider whether to extend this important prohibition to CIA contractors as well,” the report from the GOP-led House panels added.

Also mentioned in the report is how the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) received a draft of the letter because former senior intelligence officials had signed it, and a top officer said he informed the top brass that it would be published soon.

 

While the report asserts senior CIA leadership had an opportunity at that time to “slow down the CIA’s process for reviewing publication submissions” and “ensure that such an extraordinary statement was properly vetted,” the agency defended its work.

A process in which CIA officers are required to “sign a secrecy agreement that includes a lifelong obligation to submit any and all intelligence-related materials” to the PCRB before they are published was followed, a CIA spokeswoman told the New York Post.

Confirmation by the PCRB that “information is unclassified is never an endorsement of the reviewed content or its veracity,” the CIA spokeswoman added. “These former officers were not speaking for CIA.”

A prior staff memo from the House GOP inquiry from last year revealedthat retired CIA analyst David Cariens said an active CIA employee involved in reviewing his memoir “asked” if he would sign the letter, which he agreed to do after learning its contents.