As we reported yesterday, President Donald Trump is receiving flack from hysterical liberals for reportedly advising CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with former senior NSA official Bill Binney, whom the media has labeled a conspiracy theorist for his belief that Russia wasn’t responsible for hacking the DNC - or at least, if it was, it was the work of a deep-cover agent - because the files, according to Binney, were manually loaded onto a thumb drive, meaning the theft was likely the work of a disgruntled insider.
Binney discussed the meeting during an appearance on NBC, where he confirmed that Trump was probably made aware of his theory by watching one of his appearances on Fox News.
"He's trying to find some factual evidence," said Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the National Security Agency.
Binney, a widely respected NSA whistleblower, left the agency in 2000 and has made claims that the NSA is capturing and storing nearly every US communication.
Binney told NBC News that Pompeo informed him that the CIA director took the meeting at the urging of the president.
Mike Pompeo
In a statement, a CIA spokeswoman did not dispute that, but declined to comment.
“The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment," on Russian election interference, spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said.
She added, “The director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor."
The intelligence community released a multilateral report in January 2017 concluding that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 election, which was won by Trump in a historic upset. One of the tactics, the intelligence community alleged, was the hack of the DNC, which was a massive public relations embarrassment for Clinton and eventually led to the resignation of former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the intelligence community and claimed its conclusion is unfounded. And Pompeo, a former Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate who gives Trump his intelligence briefing nearly every day, is suspected of kowtowing to Trump in his tepid approach to the issue.
Last month, the CIA had to correct Pompeo's erroneous statement that the intelligence assessment found that the Russian interference campaign did not alter the outcome of the election. No such conclusion was made.
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NBC pointed out that it is extremely unusual for a CIA director to meet with someone like Binney, who for years has accused US intelligence agencies of subverting the constitution and violating the civil rights of Americans. However, Binney - while a controversial figure in the US - has been praised abroad as a whistle blower and truth teller.
However, the meeting to discuss the narrative that directly contravenes the findings of the US intelligence community was so productive that Pompeo is already arranging further meetings between NSA and FBI officials and Binney to discuss his analysis. Binney said two unnamed CIA analysts accompanied Pompeo during the meeting at CIA headquarters.
Binney reportedly also raised the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich as a suspicious, given its proximity to the release of the hacked documents. There has been speculation that Rich was the one who leaked the emails.
Binney said he did not discuss with Pompeo his longstanding allegations that U.S. intelligence agencies have been acting illegally. Binney said he voted for Trump, because he considered Democrat Hillary Clinton "a war monger.