After President Trump’s speech last week accusing Red China of election interference, the White House released many interesting documents. The press refused to credit these, just as the intelligence agencies had suppressed information earlier.
The mechanism at work here is to give every possible benefit of the doubt to the perpetrator. For instance, when Trump refers to Beijing’s “acquisition of 200 million voter files,” the rationale many offer is that this does not mean that they were used to perpetrate fraud. Ditto for Red China’s forgery of U.S. drivers’ licenses.
DECLASS_REDACTED
In a CIA product called the World Intelligence Review dated July 1, 2020, we see an article headlined “China: Cyber Activities Probably Prelude to Election Espionage.” This is exemplary of a CIA narrative that any or all of communist election-related activity is “probably to gather intelligence that could enable future [espionage] operations,” not election interference. (CIA Wire Memo Summer 2020 DECLASS_REDACTED.pdf)
Different emails in this cache spell out the positions of different agencies. In a 2020 chain that seeks intelligence community (IC) consensus on communist Chinese interference, we find this from the State Department:
“China’s influence efforts to shift public opinion on particular policy issues are not the same as election Interference, nor are they intended to influence the election. We object to language that blurs the line between these two activities and implies interference is happening, without stating it directly.” The author continues, “In this case, we actually do possess positive evidence about China’s intent—and it suggests China probably is not interfering in the election.” State’s firm position is that “positive evidence”—suggests—probably.
Counterexamples “should not be used to justify a conclusion that it could be happening but we just don’t see it.” Actually, that would be called “worst case analysis” and is basic to any security project. (EMAIL_RE Please coord by COB 9.1 – 4 Country election security graphic 03SEP2020_DECLASS_REDACTED.pdf)
In another 2020 thread, the Director, Election Threat Analysis, National Intelligence Council/DNI Election Threat Executive is struggling to find common ground with the rest of the intelligence community in a joint paper on communist election interference. An NSA author from the East Asia Counterintelligence Division writes, “Just for your awareness, as that last COl [community of interest] meeting was going on, everyone around the table at NSA had thoughts similar to what I shared at the meeting. I think many were reticent to express them to the group because FBI and CIA seemed so adamant about their stances. I’m happy to see that we can have the alternative viewpoint. : ).”
Before and after election
The Director, Election Threat Analysis replies, “It sounded to me like your take on this is at least somewhat similar to ours. I felt like jumping in to agree with you, but I’ve burned enough political capital arguing with CIA and FBI about this that I thought it might be more productive for me to sit the discussion out. The positions are not really that far apart, so I’m not sure why so many in the community want to close down the possibility that China might have done or be doing something.” (EMAIL_RE for IC coord by Oct 7 2020 7OCT2020 DECLASS REDACTED.pdf)
The National Intelligence Officer—Cyber, ODNI/National lntelligence Council noted a change in consensus by December 21, 2021. The election had passed by this time and a report had been issued.
“[R]ead through this report. It cites some of the same intel and logic used in 2020 to say that these same units were NOT engaged in election influence but were instead only issue-focused to now argue that China IS influencing the [redacted] election. They literally cite as support for their argument some of the same reporting used in the mainline assessment in our minority report.”
“For example, they cite [redacted] activity as being ‘Chinese military’ even though in 2020 the IC said we didn’t know who it was. This report describes the same unit that [redacted] and I said were influencing the US 2020 election and now characterizes it as an election-influence unit and attributes it to the Chinese Government. That’s a weird coincidence, and one we should highlight for oversight.”
By the way, this email was declassified by President Trump himself. (EMAIL_Everyone’s favorite topic 23DEC2021 – DECLAS_REDACTED)
Worst case
Another of the items personally declassified by the president is a National Intelligence Council report from August 2020. The NIC is subordinate to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The NIC report states: “We assess Beijing probably calculates that a concerted effort to [redacted] influence the Presidential election would [redacted] backfiring and offer uncertain benefit.” On the other hand, “If Beijing were to assess that the increasingly downward trajectory in US-China relations threatened China’s rise and could not be dealt with using existing tools, it might attempt to more directly thwart the President’s reelection.” (NICA Foreign Threats to 2020 US Election_19AUG2020 DECLASS_REDACTED.pdf)
“We assess Beijing probably calculates” is a horrible way to do intelligence analysis. So is “it might attempt to more directly thwart.”
Always prepare for the worst case. They’ve grabbed voting records. They’re printing drivers’ licenses. They have military units attempting to affect the election.
The worst case is here. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
Also see:
The White House: Election Integrity
This page includes a video of President Trump’s July 16, 2026 address on election integrity and two links to zipped files. One zipped batch is entitled “Vulnerabilities in Election Voting and Ballot-Counting Systems,” the other “China’s Acquisition and Exploitation of Voter Data.” Clicking on either of these links automatically downloads the zipped batch of documents.
The Epoch Times: “Newly Declassified Docs Describe China’s Election Influence Efforts, Concern That US Intel Downplayed Connections”
