SSCI Chair Warner & Vice-Chair Rubio Give Their Perspectives on Classified Document Issues and Control Operations

Sundance reporting at Conservative Treehouse 

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI, is the epicenter of the larger intelligence apparatus that controls government.  It was/is the SSCI who helped to create the weaponized system we call the Fourth Branch of Government.  The SSCI is the institutional origin where the outcomes of the FISA courts, domestic surveillance, and downstream consequences of the Patriot Act are supported and facilitated.

Because of their unique role in creating our national security state, where U.S. citizens are regarded as the potential threat to the interests of that state, the SSCI is a unique stakeholder in retaining the corrupt systems of domestic surveillance power.  No institution within the elected legislative branch of government has done more to destroy the freedom and constitutional protections within the U.S. than the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The intelligence community interacts with the SSCI with that benefactor/beneficiary alignment in mind.  This is why the SSCI claims such bipartisanship, and why the corporate media herald the SSCI as an important functional tool. Without the assistance of the SSCI, the U.S. domestic surveillance state could not exist.  When the IC feels threatened, they run to the SSCI for protection.

The chair (Warner) and vice-chair (Rubio) of the committee are also members of the Gang of Eight, intelligence oversight group.  It is laughable to see Senator Mark Warner decry the possibility of national security leaks and compromises within the classified document issue.  Warner himself was the most consequential leaker during the Trump-Russia investigation (Wolfe leak of FISA application), and the SSCI facilitated everything that happened in the Mueller investigation.  [WATCH, Transcript Below]

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Let’s start on the news of the moment. I know the two of you were briefed by the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. Do you have any timeline in terms of when you will get visibility into the documents of classified material that both President Biden and President Trump had in their residences?

SEN. MARK WARNER: Margaret, unfortunately, no. And this committee has had a long bipartisan history of doing its job. And our job here is intelligence oversight. The Justice Department has had the Trump documents about six months, the Biden documents about three months, our job is not to figure out if somebody mishandled those, our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise.

And while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand. And every member of the committee who spoke yesterday and I wanted the director to hear this, regardless of party said, we are united in we have to find a way to do our job. That means we need these documents, we need that assessment.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the intelligence community would say their hands are tied, because this is an ongoing active Justice Department investigation. So what would meet the level of- of addressing your concerns without compromising that?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Well, I don’t know how congressional oversight on the documents, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation. These are probably materials we already have access to. We just don’t know which ones they are. And it’s not about being nosy.

You know, here’s the bottom line: if in fact, those documents were very sensitive, materials were sensitive, and they pose a counterintelligence or national security threat to the United States, then the intelligence agencies are tasked with the job of coming up with ways to mitigate that. How can we judge whether their mitigation standards are appropriate, if we don’t have material to compare it against, and we can’t even make an assessment on whether they’ve properly risk assessed it?

So we’re not interested in the timeline, the tick-tock, the who got what, who did that? Those are criminal justice matters, to the extent that that’s what it is. That’s not what we’re interested in. We deserve and have a right and a duty to review what the materials were so we can have a better understanding of not just, you know, what the agency is doing about it, but whether it’s sufficient.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Does the director even know what the materials were?

SEN. WARNER: Well, we got a bit of vagueness on that because again, I believe you want to make sure the intelligence professionals and not political appointees were making some of that, that makes sense to me. But I would even think that if the- President Trump and President Biden would probably want to have this known if they say there’s no there there. Well, you know, there may still be violations on handling.

But we got to tell the American people and our colleagues, because we’re the only ones who have access to this information, that there’s not been an intelligence compromise. And again, this notion that when there was a special prosecutor appointed, they’re not exactly the same circumstances. But remember, this committee spent years doing the investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 election, and there was a special prosecutor and Bob Mueller’s investigation going on simultaneously.

SEN. RUBIO: Let me tell you how absurd this is, there isn’t a day that goes by that there isn’t some media report about what was found where, what some sort of characterization of the material in the press. I just saw one this morning again. So somehow, the only people who are not allowed to know what was in there are congressional oversight committees.

But apparently, the media leaks out of the DOJ are unimpeded in terms of characterizing the nature of some of the materials that were found, plus whatever the individuals involved are telling the media. So it’s an untenable situation that I think has to be resolved.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But, you know, there’s an argument that there’s a diminishing value to intelligence over time, some of it’s time sensitive. The idea that some of these documents go all the way back to when President Biden was a senator, does that suggest that there’s something more than a problem in the executive branch?

SEN. WARNER: Agreed. That’s why the notion of ‘We’re not going to give the Oversight Committee the ability to do its job until the special prosecutor somehow says it’s OK,’ doesn’t- doesn’t hold water. That’s not going to stand with all the members of Congress–

MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you want to see these 300 documents from Trump?

SEN. WARNER: I think we need to see- chances are, we have a right as not only members of the Intelligence Committee, but as part of the leadership to read virtually every classified document. We’re part of the so-called Gang of Eight. We may have seen these documents, we just need to know, are these the ones that were potentially mishandled, and that mishandling is not our responsibility, our responsibility is to make sure the intelligence and the security of the United States have been compromised. And you’re absolutely right that some of these may have been years old.

So this idea that we’re not going to get that access just, again, we all agreed, and I think the director heard lot- loud and clear from all of us. It’s just not tenable. And it begs the bigger question and again, which Marco and I have agreed to jointly work on, that we got- we got a problem in terms of both classification levels, how senior elected officials, when they leave government how they handle documents. We’ve had too many examples of this. And again, I think we’ve got the bipartisan bona fides, to say, let’s put them in place on a going forward basis, a better process.

SEN. RUBIO: And let me just add on the age of the documents, it’s true, the information in and of itself may be dated and irrelevant at this point. But the- but having access to that information reveals how you gathered, whether it was a human source or–

SEN. WARNER: Sources and methods.

SEN. RUBIO: And so the- the- even though the information itself might no longer be very relevant, it does reveal how we collect information and thereby cost us those accesses and potentially cost someone you know, again, we don’t know what’s in the material, potentially put someone in harm’s way.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you- you threatened to withhold some funding to some of the agencies yesterday.

SEN. RUBIO: Well, what I said is that, you know, I’m not in the threat business right now. But we certainly are- there are things we need to do as a committee every year to authorize the moving around of funds. I think the Director of National Intelligence and other heads of intelligence agencies are aware of that.

You know, at some point, I’d prefer for them just to call us this morning or tomorrow or whenever and say, ‘Look, this is the arrangement that we think we can reach so that the overseers can get access to this.’ I’d prefer not to go down that road. But it’s one of the pieces of leverage we have as Congress. I’m not, we’re not going to sit here and just issue press releases all day.

SEN. WARNER: And one of the things that I wanted Director Haines to hear and I think she was in a bit of an untenable position yesterday, she had been willing to brief earlier before the special prosecutor. I wanted her to hear that this was not just Senator Rubio and I, this was all of the members of the committee, on both ends of the political spectrum, saying, we’ve got a job to do, we’re going to do it, we’re going to figure out- we’re not in the threat business. But we’re going to figure out a way to make sure that we get that access so that we can not only tell the American people, but we’ve got another 85 U.S. senators who are not on the Intelligence Committee, who look to us to get those assurances.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How much are your hands tied, though, in terms of this part of government and classified- classification really being over in the executive to a large extent? Like, what is it that you as lawmakers can do? Is it new regulation when it comes to transitions–

SEN. WARNER: The Director of National Intelligence is the individual that’s the chief officer for intelligence classification. I think, and there’s been a number of other members of the Senate, both parties have been working for years, on the notion that we over classify the number of things that we read in a SCIF that somehow then appear in the newspaper begs the question, it’s kind of been an issue that’s been bubbling for a long time–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Over classification.

SEN. WARNER: –I think this, I think this series of events, pushes it to the forefront. And again, we have the power to write legislation, which then executive agencies have to follow–

MARGARET BRENNAN: In terms of record keeping.

SEN. WARNER: In terms of record keeping. In terms, literally, at least guidance on classification issues. I mean, there has been, and again, this Director of National Intelligence, I’m going to give her credit, she has been at least acknowledging and long before this issue came up, said we need to work on this issue of declassification, over classification. Every director says it, and then it kind of gets pushed- pushed back, I think. One good thing that may come out of this is that we’re going to find a way to resolve this issue on a going forward basis.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So it sounds like we found one area of bipartisan agreement already here that there needs to be some kind of legislation around classified materials–

(CROSSTALK)

SEN. WARNER: I actually think you’re gonna find a lot- on our committee –

SEN. RUBIO: On our committee–

SEN. WARNER: –you’re gonna find an awful lot more than one.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Where does this rank in terms of priority? Dealing with the classified crisis?

SEN. WARNER: Well the immediacy of it right now, and the notion and again, I would- I don’t know what President Trump and President Biden are thinking about this. But I would think they would like some recognition that these documents, hopefully and as Marco said, are not disclosing sources and methods, are not so current that there may be a- a violation of American national security. We just don’t know.

So I think we need to get this resolved sooner than later. In terms of the specific case, the Trump and Biden documents, we’ve not really focused as much on the Pence documents. But who knows what additional shoes may fall.

SEN. RUBIO: Yeah, and I don’t want to speak for Mark. Obviously, the immediacy of this moment is big. But I think we- the- on the broader set of issues, we still have this reauthorization of [Section] 702, an important authority for our government.

And then more broadly, I just think the world looks so different than it did when I started out in this committee. When I first got to the Senate, the principal focus of foreign policy and national security issues were counterterrorism. And those are still very important, but we’re now in a world increasingly revolves around great power competition: China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and then some of the threats posed by Iran, North Korea and other rogue states.

So whether our intelligence agencies have adjusted quickly enough to that new reality, and- and the- and the- obligations that poses I think, is from a big picture perspective, in my mind, one of the things we really have to spend time on.

SEN. WARNER: And the thing that I think we’re getting- our committee has got some- some record on. I mean, I personally believe the competition, technology competition, in particular, with China is the issue of our time. And remember, it was this committee that first spotted, pointed out, the problems with the Chinese telecommunications provider, Huawei, as a national security threat.

And we built, frankly, even under President Trump, an approach to say we need to make sure that we get it out of our networks, and then convince our allies to do that. It was our committee, again, who first pointed out the challenges that, in the semiconductor industry, which we had dominated in this country–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Computer chips–

SEN. WARNER: In the- computer chips- in the 80s, and 90s, that we were falling behind, literally to the point that no cutting edge semiconductor chip was even being made in America. And we built them, the legislation around the so-called CHIPS bill.

I think there are other technology domains: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced energy, synthetic biology, where we need to do the similar kind of bipartisan deep dives, to say, how do we make sure America and our friends stay competitive with a China that is extraordinarily aggressive in these fields and making the kind of investments, frankly, that we used to make post-Sputnik?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, and I want to ask you about that, because President Biden is reportedly close to issuing an executive order when it comes to restrictions on U.S. investments in- in China. But there’s concern about risking further escalation. What’s your view on how far that action should go? And where do you all pick up in terms of lawmakers?

SEN. RUBIO: Well, I think there’s two things. The first is the Chinese have found a way to use capitalism against us. As- as- and what I mean by that is the ability to attract investment into entities that are deeply linked to the state. That military commercial fusion that exists in China is a concept that we don’t have in this country. We have contractors that do defense work, but there is no distinction in China between advancements in technology, biomedicine, whatever it might be, and the interest of the state.

And then the second is obviously the access to our capital markets. And the third is the risk posed, we don’t up to this point, have not had levels of transparency in terms of auditing and the like, on these investments of- the- into these companies. What- when you invest in these companies in U.S. exchanges, you don’t have nearly as much information about the- the bookkeeping of those companies as you would an American company or European company, because they’ve refused to comply with those restrictions.

So there’s systemic risk to our investments, and then there’s also the geopolitical reality that American capital flows are helping to fund activities that are ultimately designed to undermine our national security. So it’s a 21st century challenge that we really have to put our arms around.

SEN. WARNER: And again, this is something- I think and I fall under this category, beginning of the 20th century, I was a big believer that the more you bring China into the world order, the more things will all be copacetic. We were just wrong on that.

The Communist Party, under President Xi’s leadership, and my beef is, to be clear, with the Communist Party, it’s not with the Chinese people or the Chinese diaspora wherever it is in the world, but they basically changed the rules of the road. They made clear in Chinese law that every company in China’s ultimate responsibility is to the Communist Party, not to their customers, not to their shareholders. We’ve seen at- at the level of 500 billion dollars a year of intellectual property theft. We have actually in a bipartisan way- over the- didn’t get a lot of attention- over the last seven years, have been out and we’ve done 20 classified briefings for industry sector, after industry sector, about these risks. Frankly, pre-COVID, we kind of got nods, but you know, some pushback because a lot of companies are making–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because companies just wanted access to the market regardless of the risk–

SEN. WARNER: Were making a lot of- were making a lot of money off Chinese tech companies.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Exactly. Exactly.

SEN. WARNER: Now, post-COVID, I think there is an awakening that this is a real challenge and I think the good news is that not only is there awakening, you know, in America, but a lot of our allies around the world are seeing this threat as well. So I think, you know, we need to build this kind of international coalition, because the technology- who wins these technology domains, I think will win the race in the 21st century.

SEN. RUBIO: I- I think those–

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you want restrictions on biotech, battery technology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence?

SEN. WARNER: I want to have an approach that says we need to look at foreign technology investments, foreign technology development, regardless of the country, if it poses a national security threat, and have some place that can evaluate this. We kind of do this ad hoc at this point. You know, we- we- years back, there was a Russian software company, Kaspersky. Again, Marco was one of the first ones who said, ‘My gosh, we got to get this off the GSA acquisition list.’ We worked together on Huawei, I’m sure we’re going to talk about TikTok. We need a frame to systemically look at this. And frankly, if it goes just beyond the so-called CFIUS legislation about inbound or outbound investment.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s a committee that looks at national security risks.

SEN. RUBIO: But understanding that for- you know, 20 years ago, everybody thought capitalism was going to change China. And we woke up to realization that capitalism didn’t change China, China changed capitalism. And they’ve used it to their advantage and to our disadvantage. And not simply from an old Soviet perspective to take us on from a geopolitical or military perspective, they’ve done so from a technological and industrial perspective. And so you have seen the largest theft and transfer of intellectual property in the history of humanity occur over the last 15 years, some of it funded by American taxpayers. That has to stop. It’s undermining our national security, and giving them an unfair advantage and these gains that they’re making.

SEN. WARNER: And let me just echo- you know- I’m old enough to remember- you know, the challenges with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was an ideological threat, and a military threat. It really was never a first class, economic threat. China, we have ideological differences. They have a growing military, but domain after domain, they are a- right with us in certain areas, even ahead of us, in this kind of technology, on much. And I agree with Marco again, the ability to kind of manipulate our system, the kind of combination of command and control with certain tenets of capitalism. They have an authoritarian capitalism that for awhile worked pretty well. I don’t think it works as well as our long-term system. But we have to inform all of our industry and frankly, all our allies about this challenge.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They have the biggest hacking ability program than any other nation. Intelligence community says they’re the world leader in surveillance, in censorship. How restricted should their ability to access this market be?

SEN. RUBIO: Let me put it to you this way, I think it is nearly impossible for any Chinese company to comply with both Chinese law and our expectations in this country. Chinese law is very clear. If you’re a Chinese company, and we ask you for your data, we ask you for your information, we ask you for what you have, or we ask you to do something, you either do it, or you won’t be around. (continue reading)