Susan Miller, a former CIA officer who led a team conducting an intelligence assessment in 2017 on Russian interference in the 2016 election, is accusing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the White House of "lying" with accusations that former President Barack Obama and his team tried to sabotage incoming President Donald Trump.
"The director of national intelligence and the White House are lying, again," Miller, who led the team producing a report about the Russians' actions, told NBC News, the network reported Saturday. "We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected."
However, she said that there was no sign of a "two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time."
Miller's comments come after Gabbard said Wednesday that the intelligence assessment conducted in 2017 had been based on information that the Obama administration had "manufactured" information to stage a "treasonous conspiracy" to undermine Trump.
She cited a report from 2020 from Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which she declassified this week, that said there was not enough evidence to conclude Russia was trying to help Trump defeat Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.
Miller told NBC News that it "is clear that Trump and his followers have a script they want to follow, despite the facts."
She added that she and her team briefed Trump and others about the assessment in 2017, and she acknowledged at that time that "we could not say if this attempt by the Russians actually worked unless someone polled every single Trump voter to see if this disinformation was what led them to vote for Trump."
Miller said the team and the then-CIA director said in their report that "Trump was our president" and that he thanked them for the briefing.
"That part was left out by Gabbard," Miller told NBC News.
Miller added that before the 2016 election, intelligence reports indicated Russia was using disinformation to influence the election.
After the election, Miller said, then-CIA Director John Brennan asked her to form a task force to examine Russia and the election.
At the time, Miller, who served nine tours abroad during her 39 years in the agency, headed CIA counterintelligence.
She told NBC News that the members of the team had a range of skills and included analysts and officers who worked in counterintelligence.
But the team found that the polarized political climate meant they faced pressure from people from inside the CIA and outside.
"There were people that hated Trump that wanted us to find that Trump was complicit, and there were those that loved Trump. They wanted us to find nothing," Miller said.
"And we ignored all of it. We just kept ourselves neutral. We just decided to let the data speak for itself. ... We had very, very good data coming in."
Gabbard's office, though, insisted that Miller "is wrong."
"The American people can read for themselves hundreds of reasons why she is wrong in the declassified HPSCI report," Olivia Coleman, spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said about the 2020 Republican House intelligence report.
Democrats on the panel rejected the report, but a bipartisan Senate report that year endorsed the intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia had spread disinformation and leaked emails stolen from the Democratic Party to undermine Clinton.
Current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, endorsed the panel's conclusions.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, meanwhile, said that Gabbard declassified the documents "to show the world that the Obama administration was indeed behind the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Those who participated in criminal activity will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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