The letter that just won’t go away

Former intelligence officers who signed the 2020 missive stand by it, but some fear retribution today.

(Sasha Ingber)

The other day, I was interviewing a former intelligence officer who completely shot down my questions about President-elect Donald Trump and his relationship with the intelligence community. I have known this person for years and the behavior puzzled me. Then I found out that the source feared potential arrest.

As Trump prepares to return to the White House on Jan. 20, a flashpoint comes down to a letter penned four years ago. It was published in Oct. 2020, weeks before the election, and 51 former intelligence officers signed their names at the bottom. 

The New York Post had just reported on Hunter Biden’s emails, obtained and copied from a laptop that had been brought into a computer repair shop and was said to be Hunter’s. Social media companies swiftly blocked links to the article out of concern that it was yet another influence operation from Moscow, akin to its antics before the 2016 election.

The letter stated, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case. If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.” 

U.S. authorities later confirmed the laptop really did belong to Hunter Biden. And to Trump, the letter was an egregious form of meddling, a betrayal purportedly blessed by the CIA. And it is something that he has not forgotten. This week, in nominating former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA, Trump wrote, “When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden's laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People…” 

Were other former intelligence officers, who have risked their lives in innumerable operations to contain America’s foes overseas, fearful of the incoming president’s potential retribution and therefore choosing to self-censor? One signatory told me he hopes the Trump administration, if it takes any action at all, just pulls their security clearances — instead of calling the 51 people in for depositions and compelling them to hire lawyers. He believed that Trump’s rhetoric “is about keeping us quiet.” 

I asked him if he regretted signing the letter. “I still stand behind it,” he told me. “We acknowledge that the emails and laptop may be real. The issue was their placement in the news just prior to the election.” And he alluded to a tactic whereby Russia’s hack and leak operations also give cover to them injecting false information among the real stuff: “No one has proven that the copy of a copy that the New York Post article was based on was an exact copy and hadn’t been compromised.”

Another former intelligence officer involved with the letter said they have been mischaracterized and turned into a meme. “The core issue of freedom of speech has been completely missed in this whole thing,” he said. 

The CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board clearly states, “A secrecy agreement does not oblige officers and contractors to absolute silence.” The board is tasked solely with determining whether material submitted by current and former officers contains classified information — and that is how it examined the letter before it reached the American public. The goal is to prevent disclosures about U.S. operations, weapons systems, vulnerabilities, and other topics from getting out and damaging national security.

The ‘spies who lie’ allegation is completely wrong, the former officer told me. Because they did not actually lie in the letter, and they were all formers (though some were on contract). “To take that on as a crusade of retribution against folks is nothing short of absurd and un-American,” he said. 

Was he concerned about retaliation? “Concerned about a government that has no rules and will do whatever it can to persecute perceived enemies within? Yeah, sure,” he said. “I won’t leave the country or anything, that’s all bullshit. But just seeing with [Trump’s] appointments, inmates have taken over the asylum.” 

We have seen Trump let go of some direct attacks: Sen. Marco Rubio called him a con-artist and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency” in 2016. Trump nominated him for Secretary of State this week. He chose JD Vance as his Vice President even after Vance texted a friend in 2016, “Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect… I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

So what is it about the 2020 letter that continues to vex the President-elect? Does he still resent all things Russia, years after some journalists and Democrats conflated his victory with Russian interference in the 2016 election? Does he think this was “domestic disinformation” that influenced the 2020 election, whose results he then denied? Or is it that these 51 former officers simply have refused to back down?

Right now, foreign intelligence services across the globe are analyzing every detail about Trump, including his predilections and triggers. They’re taking notes on how he behaves as a justification for how they treat their own people and as a vector to work with — or undermine — the United States.

In a House of Representatives report, Trump’s Republican backers saw the letter as an overtly political operation from the start. Their investigation contended that former intelligence officials “coordinated with the Biden campaign.” Then-campaign official and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken had called one of the authors, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell. That conversation incited the letter. Some of the signatories, such as former CIA Inspector General David Buckley, had active contracts with the CIA, leading to accusations that they were engaging in political work and that the agency was involved. (The CIA also told the House’s investigators that Morell was on contract, then later said they misread contract documentation — prompting more skepticism among critics.)

As the signatories wait and see what happens, I went to another former CIA officer who understands Moscow. “No one should regret doing the right thing just bc the consequences are hard,” she texted. The context was that Russian intelligence was pushing the “Biden corruption” story — and the laptop, authentic or not, was a plot tool. “I didn’t sign [the letter],” she told me. “I wish I had.”