Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the U.S. intelligence community has “not made any judgment” on the reliability of recent salacious documents concerning President-elect Donald Trump.
Clapper expressed his “profound dismay” at the release of the documents by BuzzFeed News, which set off a firestorm concerning potentially compromising information Russian intelligence services have on Trump. CNN reported Tuesday evening that the documents, commissioned by anti-Trump operatives and compiled by a former British intelligence officer, were included in briefing documents to Trump and President Barack Obama.
Clapper repeatedly emphasized that the document was provided to Trump and Obama “to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”
He continued, “The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable,” using an acronym for the intelligence community.
The extraordinary statement injects increasing confusion as to the veracity of CNN’s claims that some of the claims within the salacious documents were verified by U.S. intelligence operatives. Other major news organizations claim to have independently verified CNN’s claim, while NBC News says the document was not briefed to Trump.
The New York Times conceded in its Wednesday night story on the matter, “parts of the story remain out of reach — most critically the basic question of how much, if anything, in the dossier is true.”
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