Russia didn’t fear Hillary Clinton. “It was a relationship they were comfortable with,” some CIA analysts believed, but intelligence was suppressed. On the fall of the last great Russiagate myth
It was all a lie.
The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal launch on January 6th, 2017, when the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper published what’s called an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or “ICA,” as it’s universally known in Washington.
Release of the ICA dominated headlines, fixed Donald Trump in the minds of millions of Americans as a Manchurian candidate controlled by Vladamir Putin, and upended his in-coming administration.
The report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton and “harm her electability,” thanks to their “clear preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump.”
It was powerful stuff. And it was dead wrong.
By Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag
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