CIA report - Russia intervened in the 2016 election

[Flagg]

Simon, as someone who is genuinely on the fence and willing to believe what the evidence shows, there just isn't enough (yet or at all) for me to buy into this despite believing the Russians would totally do this. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But it's not all that far fetched since the US has been fucking with smaller nations' elections for decades.

[K. A. Pital]

Do you think that I personally would approve if evidence came to light of the US interfering in a Russian election?

No, I don't think you'd approve. But would you accept the evidence and not dismiss it as Russian propaganda? Would you actually even know about the fact of US interference in the affairs of many third-rate countries, if the media would totally obscure the thing and never report on it much? This is what I meant.

US interference in the affairs of others would be condemned to news oblivion. It is the interference of others in US affairs which will be given prime-time and heavily discussed in the media.

[mr friendly guy]

@Simon Jester

1. So we agree that they need to provide evidence before we start believing them. Well the default state is to disbelief is it not?
2. How is what you said about Iraq not confirmation bias? By the CIA going along with cherry picked data? Isn't that what people with confirmation bias do? Pick the data that supports their conclusion and ignoring what doesn't?

[Tsyroc]

Yeah, why didn't they hammer Trump about his tax evasion, case after case concerning sexual assault? Frankly Clinton is a 2 bit pickpocket and Trump is a serial killer if you want to use metaphors.

I think they are both terrible but I agree with you. The press should have been nailing them both and early on.

[Tsyroc]

Arguing that the press "should have" revealed the truth about Clinton is a moot point unless you're also arguing that the press "should have" revealed (that is to say, emphasized) a wide variety of truths about Trump. Such as the extremely long list of sexual harassment complaints, the history of tax evasion, the fraudulent 'Trump University.' The fact that these things weren't making the news regularly throughout the month of October indicates that the media wasn't doing a very good job of exposing the vices of either side.

I'll be honest with you, assuming the CIA actually has the evidence to back up its claims, I'd be more comfortable with someone like the Speaker of the House being chosen (even though I think Paul Ryan would be an absolutely terrible president). Mike Pence would be a sane-ish compromise choice, except that he stood to personally benefit from the Russian hacking just like Trump, and it's hard to rule out him being complicit.

The press should have been all over both of them years ago. It's amazing that both of them aren't in jail let alone being allowed to hold and/or run for major public office.


I think I agree with you about the CIA having real evidence as long as they can also prove that someone in Trump's camp knew beforehand and let it happen. Otherwise I can't see how we can hold him accountable for benefitting from something that he had no part in. It's sketchy, and maybe a far better person than Trump would offer to resign over the questionable way he got elected.

I don't know whether Ryan or Pence would be better. I don't like what Pence did as governor of Indiana so I guess I'd go with Ryan. At least he might be a bit more circumspect about what he would do based on the roundabout and f'd up way he got to be president.

[The Romulan Republic]

If the Electoral College were to reject Trump, the only other contender who would have any real democratic mandate would be Hillary Clinton, since she won the popular vote. And I can't see anyone else being more likely to get it.

If Trump were impeached, the Presidency would pass to Pence. If he too were impeached, it would pass to Paul Ryan. That's the chain of succession for the Presidency established in the Constitution.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with the Russian hacking conspiracy theory is it fails Occam's Razor. The fact is both John Podesta and the DNC were hacked with a simple phishing scam, and then the info ended up at Wikileaks which chose to leak it at a time of their choosing...

The only Russian connection is that the shortened URLs were created by an account that is linked to a domain used by Russian hackers. It's the same as saying I'm an American business because I used Godaddy as the domain service to setup my web based retail site.

To summarize. The Russian hacking theory that's being peddled by the US claims the following:
1) Russian hackers, specifically those with the GRU and other Russian agencies hacked the DNC, Podesta, and everyone else
2) These hacks were personally authorized by Putin
3) Putin, Trump, Russian intelligence, Wikileaks, and other outlets all co-ordinated with each other to hack & leak the info at the best possible time to ensure Trump's victory

The much simpler alternate theory says the following:
1) Some hacker(s) using a Russian DNS phished the DNC and Podesta
2) The info from the hack was dumped to a file and given to Wikileaks (we have a person who claims to be the courier)
3) Wikileaks then released the info at a time of their choosing

What basis do you have for assuming that this is the same Russian hacking the CIA is talking about?

If this is the ONLY instance of Russian hacking that occurred during the campaign, then you would have a pretty damn good point here: a Russian domain being used for one specific hacking attempt is not proof of a systematic campaign on the Russians' part. It's not even very convincing proof of the Russians' involvement.

But the Russians are also being accused of being involved in the campaign in other, different ways. The obvious concern is not "did this specific thing happen at the behest of the Russian government." It's "gee, there sure are a suspicious number of different instances of Russians hacking things and faking news stories and so on, consistently in a way that benefited Trump."

One guy doing something via a Russian domain is not proof of Putin trying to influence the election. Twenty separate Russian guys, all doing something, all of whom act to benefit the same side of the election... that is much more suggestive.
__________________________________

Simon, as someone who is genuinely on the fence and willing to believe what the evidence shows, there just isn't enough (yet or at all) for me to buy into this despite believing the Russians would totally do this. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But it's not all that far fetched since the US has been fucking with smaller nations' elections for decades.

I'm not saying the evidence as yet presented justifies believing the claim. What I'm saying is that the combination of evidence and circumstances justifies taking the claim seriously, and not treating it arrogantly, dismissively, or as if it were some kind of pitiful joke.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

If you tell me that Donald Trump is a meat puppet controlled by an alien from the planet Xffto that masquerades as his toupee, I'm not going to buy it. The claim is a priori not believable. I reserve the right to give you a belly-laugh instead of a fair hearing, because seriously that's ridiculous. That is not a thing that could have happened, and no sane, serious person would present it as such. It's a crackpot idea.

But if you tell me Donald Trump received assistance in the election from Russian hackers... I'm not going to immediately believe you. But I will take you seriously, refrain from mocking your opinions as "dumb," and quit trying to think of excuses to ignore the evidence or arguments you present to support your case. I don't promise to believe you, but I'll listen.

Because while the latter idea may be right or wrong... it's not crackpot. It is within the realm of things that can plausibly happen. It may be false, but is not ridiculous, to think that Putin would want to stop Clinton from winning the election, that Putin likes Trump and thinks Trump will abstain from interfering with Putin's activities, that Trump called in a favor with Putin, or some combination of the above.

Am I saying, definitively, "I think this is a thing that happened?" No. But I don't feel confident enough in saying it is NOT true to treat the idea with mockery or disdain.

@Simon Jester

1. So we agree that they need to provide evidence before we start believing them. Well the default state is to disbelief is it not?

There is disbelief and then there is derision.

If you tell me that Hillary Clinton covered up some shady campaign donations, I may not believe you, but I will not mock or ignore you. I'll listen to what you say, respond to your arguments as though they were serious. It is plausible that you actually have evidence that is worth paying attention to.

If you tell me that Hillary Clinton is secretly a serial killer, I will not take you seriously. There is no realistic plausibility that you have real evidence, and any evidence you think you have would presumably be false (either fabricated or misinterpreted). You would have to meet a major burden of proof just to get me to even pay attention to you.

If I go around showing derision towards every opinion I disagree with, even the plausible ones, I will find myself hanging onto a lot of false beliefs. Because by scoffing and mocking when people try to show me evidence that I've made a mistake, I bias myself against paying attention to their evidence.

Thus, there need to be two separate thresholds of evidence: a high one for 'I believe you,' and a lower one for 'I'm not going to laugh at you.'

My argument here is that while the "Russians hacked the election" claim does not yet merit belief, it at least deserves to be treated without derision. It is plausible, though very possibly not true.

2. How is what you said about Iraq not confirmation bias? By the CIA going along with cherry picked data? Isn't that what people with confirmation bias do? Pick the data that supports their conclusion and ignoring what doesn't?

Because the confirmation bias in question didn't belong to the CIA, it belonged to the president. The fix was already in, the president essentially ordered the CIA (and the Secretary of State, and so on) to behave as if they believed the cherrypicked evidence the president wanted to believe. ANd they went along with it.

Thus, the runup to the Iraq War wasn't just about the CIA getting confirmation bias and believing a falsehood. It was about a systematic, deliberate lie on the part of the administration, with the CIA being complicit in the lie.

Unless you think that Obama himself fabricated this claim as a lie, it should not be dismissed as "like the Iraqi WMD."

Now, it IS still possible that the CIA made a mistake accidentally. And that this time, unlike with Iraq, the problem actually is the CIA getting confirmation bias. However, we cannot say one way or the other whether that is true without more time and an opportunity to examine their evidence. In the meantime, we don't have to believe them, but we should at least not treat this like "lol just another Russian boogeyman."

Not when there is considerable independent evidence of an exceptional level of Russian interaction with the election process (mostly by 'hacking the voters,' but that is still Russian interaction). Indeed, at this point it is almost certainly true that "Russians" interfered in the election. The only question is whether they were private citizens acting on their own, or whether the Russian government told them to do this.

The former case is annoying but does less to invalidate the election results. The latter case is deeply, deeply troubling if you're an American who doesn't want a government puppeted by Russia.

If the Electoral College were to reject Trump, the only other contender who would have any real democratic mandate would be Hillary Clinton, since she won the popular vote. And I can't see anyone else being more likely to get it.

If Trump were impeached, the Presidency would pass to Pence. If he too were impeached, it would pass to Paul Ryan. That's the chain of succession for the Presidency established in the Constitution.

I can imagine the Electoral College feeling bound to honor the result of the election (namely, 'pick a Republican') even if they don't support Trump personally. That goes double if the Electoral College members are chosen from the affected parties- I honestly do not remember if that's the case, if a state sends Republicans if the vote goes Republican and Democrats if they go Democrat.

The big problem there would be that the obvious 'next choice,' Mike Pence, is also a direct beneficiary of the alleged Russian hacking, even if it is somewhat more plausible that he wasn't involved in it. Which leads to Ryan.

Or, yes, they COULD flip to Clinton.

I really, REALLY don't want Ryan to be president, I'd much rather have Clinton. I think I'd even rather have Pence, who I can imagine not being totally disconnected and insane about how the consequences of his decisions affect the average American.

But that's a personal opinion, not a procedural one about how the nation is supposed to respond to foreign governments influencing our elections.

I'm not going to complain if the Electoral College picks Ryan.

[mr friendly guy]

If you tell me that Hillary Clinton covered up some shady campaign donations, I may not believe you, but I will not mock or ignore you. I'll listen to what you say, respond to your arguments as though they were serious. It is plausible that you actually have evidence that is worth paying attention to.

If you tell me that Hillary Clinton is secretly a serial killer, I will not take you seriously. There is no realistic plausibility that you have real evidence, and any evidence you think you have would presumably be false (either fabricated or misinterpreted). You would have to meet a major burden of proof just to get me to even pay attention to you.

If I go around showing derision towards every opinion I disagree with, even the plausible ones, I will find myself hanging onto a lot of false beliefs. Because by scoffing and mocking when people try to show me evidence that I've made a mistake, I bias myself against paying attention to their evidence.

Thus, there need to be two separate thresholds of evidence: a high one for 'I believe you,' and a lower one for 'I'm not going to laugh at you.'

My argument here is that while the "Russians hacked the election" claim does not yet merit belief, it at least deserves to be treated without derision. It is plausible, though very possibly not true.

The problem with this is twofold.
1. When you won't release evidence and boils down to "trust us,", that deserves mockery in this case. Now if you say something minor like this company provides good service, trust me, I might overlook it because its a minor thing and no mockery would ensue. That's however not because of how you present evidence, but that the topic is not important enough for me to care. However accusing another country, yet alone one which is a nuclear power of interfering in the elections of another country, I am just not going to overlook it. Especially when you have an obvious motive to do so. Not saying I am dismissing Democrat claims because of a motive, but combined with lack of evidence being presented makes it look more damning.

2. When some of the sources claim include an internet group called "prop or not," whose members are not only unnamed, but they resort to Elmer Fudd language mocking Putinists and provides no evidence. No, I am not kidding. They use Elmer Fudd as in the looney tunes character type language. This utterly deserves mockery. Before you ask, it was reported in WaPo.

Because the confirmation bias in question didn't belong to the CIA, it belonged to the president. The fix was already in, the president essentially ordered the CIA (and the Secretary of State, and so on) to behave as if they believed the cherrypicked evidence the president wanted to believe. ANd they went along with it.

Thus, the runup to the Iraq War wasn't just about the CIA getting confirmation bias and believing a falsehood. It was about a systematic, deliberate lie on the part of the administration, with the CIA being complicit in the lie.

Unless you think that Obama himself fabricated this claim as a lie, it should not be dismissed as "like the Iraqi WMD."

Now, it IS still possible that the CIA made a mistake accidentally. And that this time, unlike with Iraq, the problem actually is the CIA getting confirmation bias. However, we cannot say one way or the other whether that is true without more time and an opportunity to examine their evidence. In the meantime, we don't have to believe them, but we should at least not treat this like "lol just another Russian boogeyman."

Not when there is considerable independent evidence of an exceptional level of Russian interaction with the election process (mostly by 'hacking the voters,' but that is still Russian interaction). Indeed, at this point it is almost certainly true that "Russians" interfered in the election. The only question is whether they were private citizens acting on their own, or whether the Russian government told them to do this.

The former case is annoying but does less to invalidate the election results. The latter case is deeply, deeply troubling if you're an American who doesn't want a government puppeted by Russia.

The problem I see with how you phrase this argument is, you're all but reversing the burden of proof. Its boils down to the CIA rarely makes mistakes, and if its report wrong its because the administration told it to. Therefore prove the administration interfered in their investigation, or else you are not allowed to bring up examples of CIA wrong analysis.

[Flagg]

Simon, I agree that there is enough of a rotten smell of death on the beach to believe there may be dead fish or a whale washed up on shore and we need to investigate. If it's just some dead fish, then we have to accept it, dig a hole and bury them. But if it turns out to be a humpback whale, then we may have a much bigger problem that will be a mess and very hard to deal with but at the end of the day; We have to find out what the problem is so we know it's scale and exactly how to deal with it.

[Flagg]

Mr Friendly guy, the evidence for the Bush Administration manipulating the CIA, among other intelligent agencies, is cartoonishly obvious, and that's why using the Iraq debacle as "The CIA got it wrong" is laden with problems. It doesn't mean the CIA doesn't lie for any number of reasons, it just means that using the Iraq example is flawed.

[aerius]

If this is the ONLY instance of Russian hacking that occurred during the campaign, then you would have a pretty damn good point here: a Russian domain being used for one specific hacking attempt is not proof of a systematic campaign on the Russians' part. It's not even very convincing proof of the Russians' involvement.

But the Russians are also being accused of being involved in the campaign in other, different ways. The obvious concern is not "did this specific thing happen at the behest of the Russian government." It's "gee, there sure are a suspicious number of different instances of Russians hacking things and faking news stories and so on, consistently in a way that benefited Trump."

One guy doing something via a Russian domain is not proof of Putin trying to influence the election. Twenty separate Russian guys, all doing something, all of whom act to benefit the same side of the election... that is much more suggestive.

Problem: where's the evidence that there was an organized group of Russian hackers, and assuming the evidence exists, how do you link them to Russian intelligence, Putin, and Trump?

One of the issues is that Russia is a hotbed for hacking groups for whatever reason, India gets call centres, Russia gets hackers, it's just one of those things. It's entirely plausible that one of those hacking groups has a hate on for Hillary & America and decided to hack the shit out of the DNC, or maybe a group got hired out by another foreign power, say, Iran or Syria to hack some shit and fuck with the election. Assuming of course that evidence of the data theft exists and can be traced to somewhere in Russia. Or maybe the Russian connection is real and the hackers were contracted by the GRU.

The problem is that even if you can trace the data flow to Russia, you still can't prove dick unless you find an email from Putin or it traces to the basement of GRU HQ. That is, assuming the evidence exists.

Or we go with the alternate theory. It's a proven fact that there were multiple successful phishing attacks on the DNC and John Podesta, all the stolen data could've been taken from those attacks. It literally takes one person or just a small group to pull it off and send the data to Wikileaks and whoever else they want to get it leaked out at right time. The media is fucking stupid and can't fact check for shit, you can just drop the lure and reel them right in. A good computers guy and a good PR dude, 2 guys could pull off the whole thing easy.

[Flagg]

If this is the ONLY instance of Russian hacking that occurred during the campaign, then you would have a pretty damn good point here: a Russian domain being used for one specific hacking attempt is not proof of a systematic campaign on the Russians' part. It's not even very convincing proof of the Russians' involvement.

But the Russians are also being accused of being involved in the campaign in other, different ways. The obvious concern is not "did this specific thing happen at the behest of the Russian government." It's "gee, there sure are a suspicious number of different instances of Russians hacking things and faking news stories and so on, consistently in a way that benefited Trump."

One guy doing something via a Russian domain is not proof of Putin trying to influence the election. Twenty separate Russian guys, all doing something, all of whom act to benefit the same side of the election... that is much more suggestive.

Problem: where's the evidence that there was an organized group of Russian hackers, and assuming the evidence exists, how do you link them to Russian intelligence, Putin, and Trump?

One of the issues is that Russia is a hotbed for hacking groups for whatever reason, India gets call centres, Russia gets hackers, it's just one of those things. It's entirely plausible that one of those hacking groups has a hate on for Hillary & America and decided to hack the shit out of the DNC, or maybe a group got hired out by another foreign power, say, Iran or Syria to hack some shit and fuck with the election. Assuming of course that evidence of the data theft exists and can be traced to somewhere in Russia. Or maybe the Russian connection is real and the hackers were contracted by the GRU.

The problem is that even if you can trace the data flow to Russia, you still can't prove dick unless you find an email from Putin or it traces to the basement of GRU HQ. That is, assuming the evidence exists.

Or we go with the alternate theory. It's a proven fact that there were multiple successful phishing attacks on the DNC and John Podesta, all the stolen data could've been taken from those attacks. It literally takes one person or just a small group to pull it off and send the data to Wikileaks and whoever else they want to get it leaked out at right time. The media is fucking stupid and can't fact check for shit, you can just drop the lure and reel them right in. A good computers guy and a good PR dude, 2 guys could pull off the whole thing easy.

Yeah, and it doesn't help that many, many Americans, including some in the media, see Trump being inaugurated as staring into the abyss, so anything that may be used to delegitimize the son of a goatfucking grope-monkey with the hopes of derailing things (which is wishful thinking, unfortunately) is grabbed onto and pushed as fact.

[Q99]

Mr Friendly guy, the evidence for the Bush Administration manipulating the CIA, among other intelligent agencies, is cartoonishly obvious, and that's why using the Iraq debacle as "The CIA got it wrong" is laden with problems. It doesn't mean the CIA doesn't lie for any number of reasons, it just means that using the Iraq example is flawed.

Short of it, the CIA didn't say 'they have WMDs.' They said, "Here's our report," without definitive conclusion and the Bush administration says, "Ah ha, WMDs!"


Plus, here we have the FBI and other intelligence agencies cross-checking and agreeing.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with this is twofold.

1. When you won't release evidence and boils down to "trust us,", that deserves mockery in this case. Now if you say something minor like this company provides good service, trust me, I might overlook it because its a minor thing and no mockery would ensue. That's however not because of how you present evidence, but that the topic is not important enough for me to care. However accusing another country, yet alone one which is a nuclear power of interfering in the elections of another country, I am just not going to overlook it. Especially when you have an obvious motive to do so. Not saying I am dismissing Democrat claims because of a motive, but combined with lack of evidence being presented makes it look more damning.

Do you really expect the CIA to have disclosed all the evidence they gathered through entirely unknown methods (possibly including agents it would be very difficult to replace if 'burned') in a matter of no more than a week or two?

I get that this is desirable, but it's also unrealistic.

Because I am aware that this is unrealistic, I am deferring judgment, positive OR negative judgment, of the CIA's claims until a later time. To say "the CIA must be lying to Congress, or they'd already have publicly disclosed everything" is to be very, very out of touch with reality.

2. When some of the sources claim include an internet group called "prop or not," whose members are not only unnamed, but they resort to Elmer Fudd language mocking Putinists and provides no evidence. No, I am not kidding. They use Elmer Fudd as in the looney tunes character type language. This utterly deserves mockery. Before you ask, it was reported in WaPo.

I'm not going to argue that, because I haven't done an exhaustive dissection of the entire set of claims, citations, and lists.

I would caution you against looking for the stupidest ones you can find in order to engage in idiot-baiting ("The list A through Z contains member M, who is a moron, and is therefore unworthy of consideration") Idiot-baiting is a very tempting hobby that, again, often leads us to falsely dismiss true claims. Because it's very easy to decide something must be wrong due to the stupidity of one of the many people who said it.

The problem I see with how you phrase this argument is, you're all but reversing the burden of proof. Its boils down to the CIA rarely makes mistakes, and if its report wrong its because the administration told it to. Therefore prove the administration interfered in their investigation, or else you are not allowed to bring up examples of CIA wrong analysis.

No, you're forgetting my earlier posts and arguments.

There are four possibilities:
1) The CIA is making this up, and was told to make it up, OR
2) The CIA is making this up, and made it up themselves, OR
3) The CIA isn't making this up, but has started believing bad evidence that anyone with sense would dismiss, OR
4) The CIA isn't making this up, and the evidence is at least good enough that a rational person who had access to it could very plausibly be convinced

(2) and (3) are largely ruled out by the fact that the CIA has convinced not only themselves, but President Obama and other intelligence officials (apparently including the FBI and DNI) that they're correct.

Either they're deliberately lying as part of a larger systematic lie, OR their evidence is good enough that it convinced a bunch of people outside their immediate 'tent.'

Now, this 'good enough to convince others' evidence may not be good enough to convince ME. I won't know until I've seen it, and anyone who is anything but a total political illiterate will know it's going to be a while before I see that evidence.

But I'm prepared to reserve judgment entirely, rather than pre-emptively assuming the evidence must NOT be good enough.

Problem: where's the evidence that there was an organized group of Russian hackers, and assuming the evidence exists, how do you link them to Russian intelligence, Putin, and Trump?

I don't know. But hell, maybe the guys who've spent the last seventy years trying to gain the ability to read the Kremlin's mail do know? It would hardly be the first time that the secretive parts of the US government learned something before the general public became aware of it.

I'm not going to assume that the CIA is right- but I'm not going to pretend there's no reason to seriously consider that they might be right.

One of the issues is that Russia is a hotbed for hacking groups for whatever reason, India gets call centres, Russia gets hackers, it's just one of those things. It's entirely plausible that one of those hacking groups has a hate on for Hillary & America and decided to hack the shit out of the DNC, or maybe a group got hired out by another foreign power, say, Iran or Syria to hack some shit and fuck with the election. Assuming of course that evidence of the data theft exists and can be traced to somewhere in Russia. Or maybe the Russian connection is real and the hackers were contracted by the GRU.

The problem is that even if you can trace the data flow to Russia, you still can't prove dick unless you find an email from Putin or it traces to the basement of GRU HQ. That is, assuming the evidence exists.

It's plausible. But again, the CIA (and Obama himself) seem to think they have reason to blame the Russian government. Maybe they're wrong, but it is absolutely certain they have access to more raw information than I do about what the Russian government does in its spare time. Perhaps this extra information has only led to them making wrong, stupid conclusions... but that doesn't strike me as a very safe bet to make right now.

Or we go with the alternate theory. It's a proven fact that there were multiple successful phishing attacks on the DNC and John Podesta, all the stolen data could've been taken from those attacks. It literally takes one person or just a small group to pull it off and send the data to Wikileaks and whoever else they want to get it leaked out at right time. The media is fucking stupid and can't fact check for shit, you can just drop the lure and reel them right in. A good computers guy and a good PR dude, 2 guys could pull off the whole thing easy.

Yes, but it would surprise me if Obama (and the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence and so on) didn't know that, and were so easily fooled into thinking they had evidence of Russian government involvement, if the only REAL evidence they had was purely circumstantial.

I can imagine this being the case- but it would be about as much of a surprise to me, as learning the Russian government had tried to manipulate the election in the first place.

So I'm not going to argue for the truth of the accusations against the Russian government. I have no reason to assume the accusations are true. At the same time, I have no reason to assume they are false, and am simply arguing for treating them with a degree of neutrality, courtesy, and open-mindedness.

[Flagg]

Mr Friendly guy, the evidence for the Bush Administration manipulating the CIA, among other intelligent agencies, is cartoonishly obvious, and that's why using the Iraq debacle as "The CIA got it wrong" is laden with problems. It doesn't mean the CIA doesn't lie for any number of reasons, it just means that using the Iraq example is flawed.

Short of it, the CIA didn't say 'they have WMDs.' They said, "Here's our report," without definitive conclusion and the Bush administration says, "Ah ha, WMDs!"


Plus, here we have the FBI and other intelligence agencies cross-checking and agreeing.

Yeah, but like I said, it was a concerted effort of those outside or on the margins of those agencies that essentially gave the Administration what it asked for.

[Kingmaker]

If the Electoral College were to reject Trump, the only other contender who would have any real democratic mandate would be Hillary Clinton, since she won the popular vote. And I can't see anyone else being more likely to get it.

The the EC rejects Trump, it is exceedingly unlikely they will pick Clinton instead. More likely they will cast a bunch of spoiler votes for other Republicans (e.g. Kasich or Ryan or even Mittens) and throw it into the House. At which point, things become a mess. Trump probably still wins, Hillary definitely doesn't. And we probably have a constitutional crisis because a decisive electoral revolt is unprecedented and raises all sorts of messy questions.

[mr friendly guy]

Do you really expect the CIA to have disclosed all the evidence they gathered through entirely unknown methods (possibly including agents it would be very difficult to replace if 'burned') in a matter of no more than a week or two?

I get that this is desirable, but it's also unrealistic.

I expect them to avoid making such claims about who did what until they are confident enough to release the evidence. Simply saying we are looking into it is good enough for me. Especially when the accused is not some unknown nobody.

I'm not going to argue that, because I haven't done an exhaustive dissection of the entire set of claims, citations, and lists.

I would caution you against looking for the stupidest ones you can find in order to engage in idiot-baiting ("The list A through Z contains member M, who is a moron, and is therefore unworthy of consideration") Idiot-baiting is a very tempting hobby that, again, often leads us to falsely dismiss true claims. Because it's very easy to decide something must be wrong due to the stupidity of one of the many people who said it.

You're correct in that a claim isn't rendered invalid because an idiot also supports it. However the fact that some mainstream media outlets are willing to use that source suggests a few things to me
1. Idiocy

2. They have already decided what the answer is, and gathering evidence is just a formality. Like how a Fundie already knows "God did it," and so now gets as many "experts," no matter how stupid their statements are. When you do that, it makes me suspect WaPo like Nancy Pelosi already have decided Russia did it irregardless of evidence (only Pelosi was stupid enough to say it on camera). When you have such confirmation bias I am already very suspicious.

No, you're forgetting my earlier posts and arguments.

There are four possibilities:
1) The CIA is making this up, and was told to make it up, OR
2) The CIA is making this up, and made it up themselves, OR
3) The CIA isn't making this up, but has started believing bad evidence that anyone with sense would dismiss, OR
4) The CIA isn't making this up, and the evidence is at least good enough that a rational person who had access to it could very plausibly be convinced

(2) and (3) are largely ruled out by the fact that the CIA has convinced not only themselves, but President Obama and other intelligence officials (apparently including the FBI and DNI) that they're correct.

Either they're deliberately lying as part of a larger systematic lie, OR their evidence is good enough that it convinced a bunch of people outside their immediate 'tent.'

Now, this 'good enough to convince others' evidence may not be good enough to convince ME. I won't know until I've seen it, and anyone who is anything but a total political illiterate will know it's going to be a while before I see that evidence.

But I'm prepared to reserve judgment entirely, rather than pre-emptively assuming the evidence must NOT be good enough.

Its not that I am sure Russia did not do it, but given the intelligence agencies track record and the lack of evidence, I am going to disbelief as a default. Also given that WaPo uses such laughable sources as "Prop or not," it damn deserves mockery even if the CIA turns out to be 100% true.

But I will spell it out in another way why I think you argument sounds funny. Your argument boils down to a combination of reversing the burden of proof and a fallacy of suppress premise. For example if I could list 100 CIA fuck ups, and you agree with these mistakes but identify broadly 5 reasons (a to e) why they made a mistake each time, you would ask me to show THIS TIME which of those reasons are at play here. If I cannot therefore I should not be able to doubt the CIA this time even though they have not provided evidence yet and despite a lot of examples of mistakes. That is reversing the burden of proof and the fact no proof is forthcoming, is just explained away as going to take time. Its also a fallacy of suppress premise, with the unspoken premise that the CIA rarely makes mistakes except in certain circumstances. Therefore no matter how many mistakes they make, we can't be cautious given those mistakes unless we show those same circumstances at work here, which is very difficult when they haven't even release the evidence for analysis.

[Simon_Jester]

Do you really expect the CIA to have disclosed all the evidence they gathered through entirely unknown methods (possibly including agents it would be very difficult to replace if 'burned') in a matter of no more than a week or two?

I get that this is desirable, but it's also unrealistic.

I expect them to avoid making such claims about who did what until they are confident enough to release the evidence. Simply saying we are looking into it is good enough for me. Especially when the accused is not some unknown nobody.

The big problem with expecting the Central Intelligence Agency to start doing this is that they're not a newspaper.

They routinely deal with information that comes from sources which are either temporarily or near-permanently a secret. If we got some important information on this from, say, Vladimir Putin's barber, or a bug planted with great difficulty somewhere in GRU headquarters, or a senior Russian official we're successfully blackmailing, or the like... They may never be inclined to tell anyone who isn't already cleared for top secret information.

Now, I'm not going to say that is a good or a bad reaction on the CIA's part. For the purposes of the argument I'm making it doesn't matter.

What matters is that this is a reality. This is how intelligence agencies operate. They routinely draw conclusions based on classified intelligence, which they might share with top decision-makers but almost certainly won't share with the general public. Even if they do share it, they would have to be directly ordered to do so, by someone with the authority to override the classification on the source material, AND who is willing to take the risk of an important information source getting blown.

Expecting this to change in a week or two is massively unrealistic. There will be a delay in finding out why the CIA thinks what they think. The best we can hope for in the short term is that the political figures they're briefing might (MIGHT) be convinced to spill the beans themselves, and that is far from certain.

And that's true regardless of whether the evidence in question is a bunch of circumstantial crap, or three solid hours of videotapes of Vladimir Putin cackling, rubbing his hands, and verbally reviewing his plans to get Trump elected.

You're correct in that a claim isn't rendered invalid because an idiot also supports it. However the fact that some mainstream media outlets are willing to use that source suggests a few things to me
1. Idiocy

2. They have already decided what the answer is, and gathering evidence is just a formality. Like how a Fundie already knows "God did it," and so now gets as many "experts," no matter how stupid their statements are. When you do that, it makes me suspect WaPo like Nancy Pelosi already have decided Russia did it irregardless of evidence (only Pelosi was stupid enough to say it on camera). When you have such confirmation bias I am already very suspicious.

It seems like you're conflating the Washington Post's position on the issue, and the CIA's position on the issue. The Washington Post's bias has nothing to do with whether or not the CIA is biased enough to accept stupid nonsense as fact.

No, you're forgetting my earlier posts and arguments.

There are four possibilities:
1) The CIA is making this up, and was told to make it up, OR
2) The CIA is making this up, and made it up themselves, OR
3) The CIA isn't making this up, but has started believing bad evidence that anyone with sense would dismiss, OR
4) The CIA isn't making this up, and the evidence is at least good enough that a rational person who had access to it could very plausibly be convinced

(2) and (3) are largely ruled out by the fact that the CIA has convinced not only themselves, but President Obama and other intelligence officials (apparently including the FBI and DNI) that they're correct.

Either they're deliberately lying as part of a larger systematic lie, OR their evidence is good enough that it convinced a bunch of people outside their immediate 'tent.'

Now, this 'good enough to convince others' evidence may not be good enough to convince ME. I won't know until I've seen it, and anyone who is anything but a total political illiterate will know it's going to be a while before I see that evidence.

But I'm prepared to reserve judgment entirely, rather than pre-emptively assuming the evidence must NOT be good enough.

Its not that I am sure Russia did not do it, but given the intelligence agencies track record and the lack of evidence, I am going to disbelief as a default.

Disbelief is fine, as long as you don't paint yourself into a position where you're categorically rejecting all evidence regardless of its origin, due to the well having been poisoned by early mockery and derision of the 'silly idea.'

Also given that WaPo uses such laughable sources as "Prop or not," it damn deserves mockery even if the CIA turns out to be 100% true.

Okay, but then you should clearly state whether you're mocking the Washington Post or the CIA (and by extension the entire Obama administration, which appears to be falling into line behind the CIA's accusations).

But I will spell it out in another way why I think you argument sounds funny. Your argument boils down to a combination of reversing the burden of proof and a fallacy of suppress premise. For example if I could list 100 CIA fuck ups, and you agree with these mistakes but identify broadly 5 reasons (a to e) why they made a mistake each time, you would ask me to show THIS TIME which of those reasons are at play here. If I cannot therefore I should not be able to doubt the CIA this time even though they have not provided evidence yet and despite a lot of examples of mistakes. That is reversing the burden of proof and the fact no proof is forthcoming, is just explained away as going to take time.

The only area where I am reversing the burden of proof is on the sneering comparisons to the Iraqi WMD. In that specific case I am arguing that the burden of proof should be reversed for a specific reason. Because an analogy to the Iraqi WMD is an analogy to a situation where the CIA did not make an honest mistake, and where it did not independently reach a wrong conclusion. It was more or less ordered to reach a wrong conclusion, because that conclusion was desired by a higher authority.

If we want to compare this situation to the Iraqi WMD situation, that is tantamount to accusing Obama of making this all up himself. Which is itself a serious accusation, and one that carries its own burden of proof.

If you are simply saying "well, the CIA could be wrong about this," then there is no reverse burden of proof. But then the argument below comes into play.

Its also a fallacy of suppress premise, with the unspoken premise that the CIA rarely makes mistakes except in certain circumstances. Therefore no matter how many mistakes they make, we can't be cautious given those mistakes unless we show those same circumstances at work here, which is very difficult when they haven't even release the evidence for analysis.

That's not my argument either.

My argument isn't that the CIA doesn't make mistakes. If you've been reading my posts you should know this by now.

My argument is that the CIA's reports have already convinced independent individuals who are not themselves part of the CIA. People who do have the security clearance to ask for (and obtain) access to the CIA's evidence and sources, as we do not.

It is STILL possible that the CIA has made a mistake. But the CIA's ability to convince the president, and so forth, limits how dumb or obvious the mistake can be.

Which in turn raises the percent chance of this NOT being a mistake.

Look, this is basic Bayesian logic, as applied to politics. A group being delusional is relatively probable. The same group's delusion being convincing enough to fool other parties, who stand to lose reputation and waste energy if they get fooled, is LESS probable. Correspondingly, the probability of the group being correct goes up.

PLEASE tell me you know the difference between "the probability of the CIA being right about this has increased" and "the CIA is right about this." I would very much like to believe you can understand that well enough for it to be worth talking to you about this.

[Raj Ahten]

Strangely enough a book review from the New York Times may shed some light to shed on this issue. Basically a retired employee who interviewed Sadaam says the Agency is full of careerists who are only out to please whomever is in power. Furthermore most Analysis is shallow crap on whatever the issue of the day is with little to no long term analysis going on. While this could be to ramblings of a disgruntled employee, other insider reports have been saying for awhile that the CIA has turned into a drone strike program first and its analytical and long term threat planning duties have atrophied. The multiple agency consensus on hiking still adds credibility, but without better released intel trusting the CIA remains a questionable concept.

Of course, none of this changes the massive conflicts of interests that Trump has with Russia and other nations which is what truly compromises him as president along with his arrogance that he will know best and will likely increase any instincts among his cabal and intel agencies to cherrypick.

Link

Review: ‘Debriefing the President’ Tears Into the C.I.A.

Books of The Times

By JAMES RISEN DEC. 18, 2016
Continue reading the main story
Share This Page

Share
Tweet
Pin
Email
More
Save

Photo
Credit Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Most C.I.A. memoirs are terrible — defensive, jingoistic and worst of all, tedious. Others are doomed by the C.I.A.’s heavy-handed and mandatory censorship.

There are exceptions, and that list includes the refreshingly candid “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein” by John Nixon.

Mr. Nixon, the first C.I.A. officer to interrogate Hussein after his capture in December 2003, reveals gobsmacking facts about that deposed Iraqi leader that raise new questions about why the United States bothered to invade Iraq to oust him from power. These details will likely appall Americans who have watched their nation’s blood and treasure wasted in Iraq ever since.

More broadly, Mr. Nixon offers a stinging indictment of the C.I.A. and what he sees as the agency’s dysfunctional process for providing intelligence to the president and other policy makers. The agency, he writes, is so eager to please the president — any president — that it will almost always give him the answers he wants to hear.
Continue reading the main story

Mr. Nixon’s book comes at an extraordinary moment, when President-elect Donald J. Trump is already at war with the C.I.A. He has attacked the C.I.A.’s assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help his candidacy, and he has cited the agency’s failures on prewar intelligence on Iraq as an example of how the C.I.A. is often wrong.

“Debriefing the President” will add fuel to the fire of the Trump-led criticism. It will also send a chilling warning to anyone counting on the C.I.A. to stand up to Mr. Trump once he is in office.

Mr. Nixon had been preparing for his interrogation of Hussein for years before he ever met him. Mr. Nixon, 55, did graduate work at New York University and Georgetown University, where he wrote about Hussein in his master’s thesis. He joined the C.I.A. in 1998, and was immediately assigned to be a “leadership analyst” on Iraq, which meant that his job was the full-time study of Hussein.
Photo
John Nixon Credit Ralph Alswang

Mr. Nixon was an analyst in Iraq when the United States military captured Hussein, and he was asked to identify him so the Americans could be certain they had the right man. Mr. Nixon confirmed Hussein’s identity by checking for a tribal tattoo on the back of his right hand and a scar from a 1959 bullet wound.

Once he began debriefing Hussein, though, Mr. Nixon realized that much of what he thought he knew about him was wrong.

His most astonishing discovery was that by the time of the United States-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Hussein had turned over the day-to-day running of the Iraqi government to his aides and was spending most of his time writing a novel. Hussein described himself to Mr. Nixon as both president of Iraq and a writer, and complained to Mr. Nixon that the United States military had taken away his writing materials, preventing him from finishing his book. Hussein was certainly a brutal dictator, but the man described by Mr. Nixon was not on a mission to blow up the world, as George W. Bush’s administration had claimed to justify the invasion.

“Was Saddam worth removing from power?” Mr. Nixon asks. “I can speak only for myself when I say that the answer must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government.” Strikingly, Mr. Nixon says that the C.I.A. had some evidence that this was the case before the invasion, but that “it was never relayed to policy makers and emerged only after the war.” By 2003, Mr. Nixon writes, Hussein’s disengagement meant that he “appeared to be as clueless about what was happening inside Iraq as his British and American enemies were.”

With Hussein increasingly detached, Mr. Nixon says that by 2003 Iraqi foreign policy decision-making had fallen to his lieutenants, led by the “unimaginative and combative” Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, who “repeatedly missed opportunities to break Iraq’s international isolation.”

Regarding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, the justification for the 2003 invasion, Hussein admits to Mr. Nixon that it was a mistake for him not to make clear before the war that he had long since gotten rid of them. “Saddam turned philosophical when asked how America got it so wrong about weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Nixon writes. He quotes him as saying that “the spirit of listening and understanding was not there … I don’t exclude myself from this blame.”

Hussein never understood the United States, and Mr. Nixon describes him as repeatedly mystified by American intentions in the Middle East. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Hussein fatally misread how America would react. He thought the attacks would bring the United States and Iraq closer together to jointly combat Islamic extremists.

“In Saddam’s mind, the two countries were natural allies in the fight against extremism,” Mr. Nixon writes, “and, as he said many times during his interrogation, he couldn’t understand why the United States did not see eye to eye with him.”
Photo
Saddam Hussein in 1980. Credit Associated Press

The findings from Mr. Nixon’s interrogations of Hussein that cast doubt on the Bush administration’s original justifications for the war, Mr. Nixon says, were ignored by senior officials at the C.I.A. and the White House. “The policy makers at the White House and the leadership on the seventh floor at the C.I.A. didn’t want to hear that many of the reasons for going after Saddam were based on false premises,” he writes.

Mr. Nixon’s most scathing criticism is reserved for the C.I.A, which he describes as a haven for yes-men excessively eager to please the White House. When he joined the C.I.A., Mr. Nixon says, he was told that analysts should “dare to be wrong” — in other words, be willing to take chances when the evidence called for counterintuitive reasoning. But he says experience taught him that the C.I.A. didn’t really reward out-of-the-box thinking. “As I found out in the Clinton, Bush and Obama years, the agency’s real operating principle was ‘dare to be right.’”

Mr. Nixon, who left the C.I.A. in 2011 when, he says, the work no longer excited him, depicts a sclerotic agency not much different from the Agriculture Department or any other large bureaucracy, complaining that the agency “was governed by lines of authority that were often clogged by people who got ahead by playing it safe and who regarded fresh thinking as a danger to their careers.” Since he had to submit the book to the C.I.A.’s censors, he doesn’t identify the stultifying bureaucrats and timeservers, although he does reserve special wrath for one boss he names only as “Phil,” who, he says, “as a schmoozer, had few equals.”

Mr. Nixon thoughtfully argues that the C.I.A.’s overeagerness to please the White House has led to a serious degradation in the quality of its intelligence. Virtually the entire analytical arm of the C.I.A. is focused on quickly pumping out short memos on the issues of the day that are immediately read at the White House. But the agency has largely abandoned its tradition of freeing up analysts to engage in deeper, long-term research. As a result, Mr. Nixon writes, few analysts at the agency now know very much about anything. “Expertise is not valued, indeed not trusted.”

The C.I.A.’s brief memos have become like “crack cocaine for consumers of classified information,” Mr. Nixon says. It’s as if the C.I.A.’s analytical branch has been transformed from a college faculty into a cable news network.

The trend toward quick-hitting but shallow intelligence reports — which other former C.I.A. analysts have also criticized in recent years, particularly since 9/11 — makes the agency much more susceptible to manipulation and politicization, and to repeating the kinds of mistakes it made when it inaccurately concluded that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

When it came to Iraq, Mr. Nixon writes, the “agency slavishly sought to do the president’s bidding — as it usually does — in an effort to get a seat near the center of power and justify its budget. That was the institutional imperative.”

Mr. Trump may soon test whether the C.I.A. has learned any lessons.

[mr friendly guy]

Do you really expect the CIA to have disclosed all the evidence they gathered through entirely unknown methods (possibly including agents it would be very difficult to replace if 'burned') in a matter of no more than a week or two?

It depends on what you expect them to do. If its just to convince Obama and the establishment Putin did it, then whether you release or not release the evidence to the public makes no difference. If its to convince world opinion, then damn they better release the evidence. Its quite clear though, that the establishment, whether you say Obama and the White house with or without the CIA clearly do want to convince the public and world opinion that Putin did it.

It seems like you're conflating the Washington Post's position on the issue, and the CIA's position on the issue. The Washington Post's bias has nothing to do with whether or not the CIA is biased enough to accept stupid nonsense as fact.

Just to be clear
I am mocking WaPo for its stupid use of Prop or not as a a resource. I am criticising the CIA for expecting to convince the general public without any evidence being released. If the CIA doesn't care about releasing it to the public (only releasing it to Obama) then I will move the mockery to Obama expecting us to accept the claim without evidence.

Disbelief is fine, as long as you don't paint yourself into a position where you're categorically rejecting all evidence regardless of its origin, due to the well having been poisoned by early mockery and derision of the 'silly idea.'

For me to do that the CIA would first have to provide evidence for me to categorically reject. All I am rejecting is believing it purely on the grounds the CIA think so.

Okay, but then you should clearly state whether you're mocking the Washington Post or the CIA (and by extension the entire Obama administration, which appears to be falling into line behind the CIA's accusations).

See above. My critiques of them are based on different examples of stupidity.

The only area where I am reversing the burden of proof is on the sneering comparisons to the Iraqi WMD. In that specific case I am arguing that the burden of proof should be reversed for a specific reason. Because an analogy to the Iraqi WMD is an analogy to a situation where the CIA did not make an honest mistake, and where it did not independently reach a wrong conclusion. It was more or less ordered to reach a wrong conclusion, because that conclusion was desired by a higher authority.

If we want to compare this situation to the Iraqi WMD situation, that is tantamount to accusing Obama of making this all up himself. Which is itself a serious accusation, and one that carries its own burden of proof.

If you are simply saying "well, the CIA could be wrong about this," then there is no reverse burden of proof. But then the argument below comes into play.

I disagree on a philosophical level. The point of the Iraq example is to point out the CIA made mistakes (even if their own report is correct, their ignoring their own report to go along with the Bush administration is a mistake). The reason why its important to establish they make mistakes, is because we are asked to believe purely because the CIA says so. Whether they made a mistake from incompetence or bribery or pressure is pretty irrelevant to my point.

However if WMDs don't float your boat, I will point out the 638 failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro as CIA fuck ups. Point is, we shouldn't believe just because they say so. If Obama expects us to just swallow it hook,line and sinker, then he is either an idiot, or he thinks most of America are idiots (and he could be correct for all I know).

That's not my argument either.

My argument isn't that the CIA doesn't make mistakes. If you've been reading my posts you should know this by now.

I am not saying you consciously use a fallacy of suppress premise. I am saying it flows from your argument whether you realise it or not.

My argument is that the CIA's reports have already convinced independent individuals who are not themselves part of the CIA. People who do have the security clearance to ask for (and obtain) access to the CIA's evidence and sources, as we do not.

It is STILL possible that the CIA has made a mistake. But the CIA's ability to convince the president, and so forth, limits how dumb or obvious the mistake can be.

Which in turn raises the percent chance of this NOT being a mistake.

Convincing someone who isn't a part of the CIA is itself not that impressive from the independence point of view. Convincing someone who is on the other side like the Trump team might be more convincing, or Republicans who support Trump. Or a geopolitical rival of the US. Convincing Obama who belongs to a party where it has members outright blaming Russia for their loss and one member saying "I know" Russia did it, does not really make it that much more convincing. Its like Michael Behe convincing other Christians who aren't Creationists of Intelligent Design.

Look, this is basic Bayesian logic, as applied to politics. A group being delusional is relatively probable. The same group's delusion being convincing enough to fool other parties, who stand to lose reputation and waste energy if they get fooled, is LESS probable. Correspondingly, the probability of the group being correct goes up.

PLEASE tell me you know the difference between "the probability of the CIA being right about this has increased" and "the CIA is right about this." I would very much like to believe you can understand that well enough for it to be worth talking to you about this.

Then the probability goes down again when you realise some of these people already have a hard on of hate for Russia.

[Simon_Jester]

Do you really expect the CIA to have disclosed all the evidence they gathered through entirely unknown methods (possibly including agents it would be very difficult to replace if 'burned') in a matter of no more than a week or two?

It depends on what you expect them to do. If its just to convince Obama and the establishment Putin did it, then whether you release or not release the evidence to the public makes no difference. If its to convince world opinion, then damn they better release the evidence. Its quite clear though, that the establishment, whether you say Obama and the White house with or without the CIA clearly do want to convince the public and world opinion that Putin did it.

That's a valid point. However, the CIA is not an independent decision-making group. They are supposed to follow the president's orders (unless those orders are illegal). The CIA independently releasing classified evidence to the public is not something they would normally be doing, unless they are told to.

The disinclination to share this evidence may very well have nothing to do with the strength of the evidence. It may have everything to do with the American security-intelligence complex's culture of secrecy, and President Obama's habit of resorting to half measures.

Just to be clear
I am mocking WaPo for its stupid use of Prop or not as a a resource. I am criticising the CIA for expecting to convince the general public without any evidence being released. If the CIA doesn't care about releasing it to the public (only releasing it to Obama) then I will move the mockery to Obama expecting us to accept the claim without evidence.

The CIA lacks the authority to release the evidence to the public, if the evidence in question is classified. Any CIA official who released the evidence would be pulling a Snowden. You can criticize them for not being inclined to do that... but you shouldn't be surprised, and you can't take the fact that they don't do that as proof that their evidence must be weak.

Personally, I do not know if the CIA's evidence is strong or weak. I have no idea. I consider the allegations plausible but unproven. They cause me a lot of worry and concern, but there is little I can do about it.

I disagree on a philosophical level. The point of the Iraq example is to point out the CIA made mistakes (even if their own report is correct, their ignoring their own report to go along with the Bush administration is a mistake).

Thing is, following orders to do something morally wrong is different from making a mistake out of stupidity or incompetence. They are not the same category of thing.

There is no real debate here over whether the CIA is fallible or not. Obviously they are.

The point is that either:

1)The CIA is lying, in which case:
1a) they convinced others who are not themselves CIA.

OR

2) The CIA made a mistake...
2a) A mistake plausible enough to fool just about every senior official in the executive branch.

OR

3) The CIA is telling the truth.

The parts (1a) and (2a) significantly lower the probability of (1) and (2) respectively, which is all that makes (3) even worth considering.

If the CIA did not have the backing of the White House here, I would just assume they had made a mistake or that the director of the CIA decided to blow up his career making up a lie in hopes of discrediting Trump.

Since they do, either there's a lie and it's coming from Obama (unlikely), the CIA's mistake is subtle enough that it fooled many people both inside and outside the CIA (possible), or the CIA actually does have fairly good evidence.

I suppose you could argue that a CIA mistake would easily fool Obama and other senior executive branch members. But I'd appreciate evidence that they specifically are predisposed to believe falsehoods about Russian activities. Arguing that Nancy Pelosi or the Washington Post believe falsehoods about Russian activity is not the same thing.

The reason why its important to establish they make mistakes, is because we are asked to believe purely because the CIA says so. Whether they made a mistake from incompetence or bribery or pressure is pretty irrelevant to my point.

However if WMDs don't float your boat, I will point out the 638 failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro as CIA fuck ups. Point is, we shouldn't believe just because they say so. If Obama expects us to just swallow it hook,line and sinker, then he is either an idiot, or he thinks most of America are idiots (and he could be correct for all I know).

Honestly, I'm leaning towards a mix of the two underlined explanations.

Alternatively, he is trying to release this information to the decision-makers who are cleared to see it, and regards releasing it to the general public as some kind of last resort. Which would be typical of the chronically half-assed compromise measures Obama has made throughout his presidency. If he were prone to boldness, he would be a very different man and the last eight years would have gone rather differently.

Thing is, it is delusional to expect the CIA to release the information on their own. Or to expect Obama, given who and what he is, to release it immediately. This is why I'm trying to use inferential logic to work out the probability of "this is a lie," "this is a mistake," and "this is true."

Do you or do you not understand what I'm trying to argue here?

This is Bayesian logic, not Boolean. I'm not assigning a truth value of 'false' or 'true' to "The Russians hacked the election." I'm assigning probabilities, in the full awareness that I could be wrong either way... because there is simply no plausible or practical way for me to be sure one way or the other.

Convincing someone who isn't a part of the CIA is itself not that impressive from the independence point of view. Convincing someone who is on the other side like the Trump team might be more convincing, or Republicans who support Trump. Or a geopolitical rival of the US. Convincing Obama who belongs to a party where it has members outright blaming Russia for their loss and one member saying "I know" Russia did it, does not really make it that much more convincing. Its like Michael Behe convincing other Christians who aren't Creationists of Intelligent Design.

Then we frankly need to wait and take some time, because the odds are good that it will take time for the CIA to convince anyone, even if their evidence is excellent.

Furthermore, there is the alarming possibility that people who support Trump will simply ignore the evidence, no matter how good it is, because they want Trump to be president. You can't just assume that sufficiently good evidence would convince them. Especially not given that there has been plenty of evidence for Trump having bad moral character and being suspected of criminal or at least shady dealings for years, and this didn't deter those people from supporting him in the first place.

The best candidates to be convinced would be neutrals who do not have a strong interest in either believing or ignoring the evidence. Who would you consider neutral in a debate like this?

[mr friendly guy]

1. I will then switch mockery to Obama for not releasing said information rather than the CIA for being constrained from releasing the information even if they wanted to.
2. Who would I consider neutral in this debate?
Switzerland. To a lesser extent Sweden and Finland. You know, the original third world countries (the initial definition of third world, not the current one where we associate with poor countries).

Although as I stated, if a rival would be convinced, it would carry more weight. Doesn't mean the evidence is iron clad, but we are both speculating about how reliable evidence is based on a really poor and indirect way, ie seeing who it convinces.

[Simon_Jester]

Are there any figures within American politics you would view as having an opinion worth counting?

Because, for all the reasons I just discussed, any classified information the US has on how it spied on the Russians is almost certainly NOT going to get disclosed to a foreign power.

Also, go ahead and mock Obama; the culture of secrecy and opposition to whistleblowers has been a chronic problem for his administration, which is ironic given his original campaign promises.

[mr friendly guy]

Glen Greenwald. Even though I hate some of his views and his feud with Sam Harris. Oh wait, he is not a politician. Ok, I am drawing a blank at the moment.

[Simon_Jester]

Er, to clarify, I mean anyone who has a security clearance.