Declassification of Unverified Information becomes Election Talking Point

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — Last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe promised, or maybe threatened, “Additional declassification and public disclosure of related intelligence remains under consideration.”

That sentence was part of the same September 29, letter that he sent to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that contained declassified, unverified, information about Russian allegations concerning the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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