Free Republic

The former head of US intelligence blasted one of the officials who signed the letter casting doubt on Hunter Biden’s laptop - calling him a lying “phony” and igniting a Twitter war over the weekend. The spat erupted Saturday when Richard Grenell, the former Trump-appointed acting director of national intelligence, reacted to a post from John Sipher, who retired from the CIA in 2014, about ethical behavior among public servants. “Didn’t @john_sipher sign a letter 3 weeks before the 2020 elections saying don’t look at Hunter Biden’s laptop because it’s Russian disinformation?” Grenell tweeted Saturday. “Now he’s lecturing people about...

51 is an interesting number, isn’t it? It’s one shy of a deck of cards. It’s the mysterious “Area” where a top-secret U.S. military installation associated with UFOs is located. It’s exactly three times the number of intelligence agencies who confirmed Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. It’s a large number — an impressive one, even. And when 51 current and former intelligence officials sign and publicize a letter, it’s designed to get your attention and, undoubtedly, persuade you of the import of what is being said. And so it did — for many Americans, the characterization of...

Aformer acting CIA director has admitted to Congress that he organized the letter that falsely portrayed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation in an effort to influence the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden and that he did so at the direction of current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a letter released Thursday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. The extraordinary admission by career intelligence officer Michael J. Morell provides stunning evidence that the now-infamous letter from 51 security officials in October 2021 was not an organic intelligence community initiative but rather a political dirty trick...

A former CIA officer recently took to Twitter to gleefully boast about how he took a “special pride” in his efforts to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story as being part and parcel of Russian disinformation aided in “swinging” the 2020 election “away from Trump.” The comments coming from this ex-CIA officer, John Sipher, stem from a back-and-forth between him and former Trump White House official Richard Grenell over the Hunter laptop discrediting efforts. Sipher was one of many so-called intelligence experts who slapped their name and reputation on alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York...

WASHINGTON – A former top intelligence official who signed on to a letter attacking The Post’s bombshell 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation has now admitted he knew a “significant portion” of the recovered files “had to be real” – but doesn’t regret dismissing the exposé. ... The Oct. 19 letter — whose signatories included former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former Director of National intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA Director John Brennan — went out of its way to cast doubt on the legitimacy of The Post’s scoop, devoting five paragraphs to explaining “factors that make...

A CIA officer has confessed that the ‘Deep State’ rigged the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor, and has boldly admitted that the agency would do it again. Former CIA officer John Sipher claimed in a stunning Twitter thread that he took “particular joy” in discrediting the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” narrative and enthusiastically admitted to “shifting” the election away from Trump. Sipher was among the many “intelligence experts” who falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post back in October of 2020 was part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.” Redvoicemedia.com reports: A March 18th...

[Editor’s Note: In this special Just Security article, highly respected former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, John Sipher examines the Steele dossier using methods that an intelligence officer would to try to validate such information. Sipher concludes that the dossier’s information on campaign collusion is generally credible when measured against standard Russian intelligence practices, events subsequent to Steele’s reporting, and information that has become available in the nine months since Steele’s final report. The dossier, in Sipher’s view, is not without fault, including factual inaccuracies. Those errors, however, do not detract from an overarching framework that has proven...