NEW: the Senate Intelligence Committee has released the 4th volume in its Russia investigation. This one is an examination of the Jan. 2017 intelligence community assessment that determined that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume4.pdf

This volume is heavily redacted to protect sources and methods, the committee says.

The next and final volume will be on the counterintelligence (the collusion question).

Committee Chairman @SenatorBurr: "The ICA reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning, and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred.

“The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions."

. @MarkWarner:

"The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump.  Our review of the highly classified ICA and underlying intelligence found that this and other conclusions were well-supported."

Key findings, per the committee.

Interesting note on the Steele dossier as well:

Reminder: In 2018, the committee released a summary of this report confirming that they had endorsed the findings of the ICA -- contradicting Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/senate-intel-contradicts-house-republicans-on-russia

“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledges the impressive accomplishment in drafting and coordinating of the [ICA]"

“The Committee found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments. However, a summary of this material was included in Annex A as a compromise to FBI's insistence..."

"The Committee found the ICA would benefit from a more comprehensive presentation of how Russian propaganda-as generated by Russia's multiple state-owned platforms-was used to complement the full Russian influence campaign."

Hmm: Committee says it reviewed "source documents and related materials,” then later says that "In the case of FBI documentation for [redacted], FBI did not provide the correct underlying report until January 29, 2018.”

Folks, they were not lying about the redactions being heavy.

Origins of the ICA:

"FBI assigned two counterintelligence analysts to the ICA team,” per interviews with Bill Priestap, then assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and the section chief of the counterintelligence analysis section.

[will return to this, also working on a coronavirus story at the moment]

https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1252626637063106565

“One guy speaks for NSA.”

Why the Steele dossier was included in the annex of the “most classified version of the ICA.”

Reminder: “The Committee found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments."

In a closed hearing, Burr asked former FBI director Comey if he "insisted that the dossier be part of the ICA in any way, shape, or form."

Comey: “I insisted that we bring it to the party, and I was agnostic as to whether it was footnoted in the document itself"

Then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers’ “initial reaction” upon learning of the Steele info was that it should be in the appendix.

"Every witness interviewed by the Committee stated that he or she saw no attempts or pressure to politicize the findings."

"The President's original tasking included a request for recommendations […] All witnesses interviewed by the Committee stated the position that the IC does not make policy recommendations."

“The participants in the process even debated whether to name the two leading candidates."

The question of whether there was coordination between the Russian government didn’t come up at the time.

"As noted elsewhere, neither the Fusion Cell members nor the !CA authors were read into the FBI's investigation."

"the Committee found the ICA's treatment of the historical context of Russian interference in U.S. domestic politics limited."

A "body of reporting...showed that Moscow sought to denigrate then-candidate Clinton.”

“[T]he ICA presents information…to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for
candidate Trump."

"While the ICA cites examples of Russian media in 2016, its analysis of RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik is dated, and the ICA does not provide an updated assessment of this Russian capability in 2016, which the Committee found to be a shortcoming in the ICA"

FBI intelligence reports were cited 51 times in the ICA.

On the topic of "Russian Cyber Intrusions Into State Electoral
Infrastructure,” the committee found that one FBI report was missing.

The committee says "the ICA's treatment of the historical context of Russian interference in U.S. domestic politics is limited, and the over-redacted FBI references in the ICA source book make the assessments in this section difficult to substantiate."

More on that:

"Annex A includes qualifiers for the Steele material, but does not mention the private clients who paid for Steele's work. The Committee found no evidence that analysts working on the ICA were aware of the political provenance of the Steele material."

“[T]he presentation of the multifaceted aspects of the Russian interference campaign […] as part of the propaganda element of the influence campaign-would have been much stronger with an updated OSE annex."

“[T]he Committee believes that the ICA and its supporting sources do not provide a satisfactory representation of Russian interference in the two
previous presidential elections, as requested in the original POTUS tasking."

The committee says it asked that "CIA’s Center for the Study of
Intelligence (CSI) search CIA's holdings for analytic products on Russian active measures.” Next lines are redacted but it seems the CIA had these products and didn’t include them in the ICA.

"The Committee's access to FBI intelligence reports characterized as [redacted] as well as LHMs, was also beyond the norm of regular Committee oversight.”

Some background on how the committee reviewed the ICA: "The Committee conducted twenty-five interviews and hearings with over forty intelligence officers from the across the IC involved in the ICA process, including the directors
of ODNI, CIA, NSA, and FBI."

Last thing: @RonWyden provided additional views.

"The findings are not a ‘hoax.' They are not in doubt because, as Donald Trump stated, Vladimir Putin 'very strongly' denies them."

Wyden: "[T]he Committee conducted an extensive examination of the intelligence demonstrating Russia's intrusions into DNC networks. That review, which confirmed the ICA's findings, is fundamentally incompatible with Trump's conspiracy theories about Ukrainian involvement"

fin