FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ODNI News Release No. 22-25
August 13, 2025
DNI Clapper to NSA Director Rogers:
“That’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it”
Stunning admission that manufacturing intelligence is a “team sport”
requiring “compromise on our ‘normal modalities’”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified a Top Secret email from then-DNI James Clapper exposing his efforts to suppress concerns raised by then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers regarding the politicized January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that President Obama ordered.
On December 22, 2016, Rogers wrote an email to Clapper, then-FBI Director James Comey, and then CIA Director John Brennan expressing serious concerns over the NSA’s lack of “sufficient access,” warning that NSA personnel “aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments.” Clapper responded, “We may have to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities” and “more time is not negotiable.”
“The leading figures in the Russia Hoax have spent years deceiving the American public by presenting their manufactured and politicized assessments as credible intelligence. The email released today reinforces what we already exposed: the decision to compromise standards and violate protocols in the creation of the 2017 manufactured intelligence assessment was deliberate and came from the very top,” said DNI Gabbard. “Clapper’s own words confirm that complying with the order to manufacture intelligence was a ‘team sport.’”
Clapper’s response to Rogers came just hours before the authors of the ICA were set to deliver the initial draft of the politicized ICA to Intelligence Community leaders.
You can view the declassified emails here.
Read more about the Russia Hoax in ODNI’s previous releases on July 18, July 23, and July 30.
###