Tanzina Vega: Welcome back to The Takeaway, I'm Tanzania Vega. On Friday, Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, informed Congress that his office would no longer provide in-person briefings about election security. The announcement came despite bipartisan concerns that the 2020 election remains vulnerable to foreign interference, including from Russia.

John Ratcliffe: I'm going to continue to keep the promises that I made. I'm going to continue to follow the law. I'm going to continue to keep Congress informed, but we've had a pandemic of information being leaked out of the intelligence community and I'm going to take the measures to make sure that that stops.

Tanzina: That was Ratcliffe speaking on Fox News this weekend about his controversial decision. Joining me now is Natasha Bertrand, National Security Correspondent for Politico. Welcome to the show, Natasha.

Natasha Bertrand: Thanks for having me.

Tanzina: Also with us is Ryan Goodman, the editor-in-chief of Just Security and former special counsel to the Department of Defense. Ryan, always good to have you on.

Ryan Goodman: Great to be with you.

Tanzina: Natasha, you and your colleagues at Politico reported the details of Friday's announcement early. What was the reaction to this news and what's it been like on Capital Hill?

Natasha: It's been pretty split along partisan lines. The acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio issued a statement supporting Ratcliffe's decision and saying that it was because of leaks coming out of Congress that the Intel Community had essentially been forced to make this decision. The vice-chairman of that committee, the Democratic Senator, Mark Warner, released his own statement saying that it was outrageous and that it was pretty unprecedented for the office of the Director of National Intelligence to say that it was no longer going to provide in-person briefings to the intelligence committees, which are their direct oversight bodies. It's been divided sharply, but the consensus among intelligence community experts and people in the national security community at large is that leaks happen and that it's always been their responsibility to brief their oversight committees on these issues, especially with a with an election about 66 days away.

Tanzina: What's really driving this change.

Natasha: It's a good question because leaks can't be the only explanation because there were leaks early on in the summer, but they continue to schedule in-person briefings with our members of Congress, even after those leaks had occurred. There were also reports that there were confrontations between members of the intelligence community and democratic members of Congress who wanted them to be more forthcoming in their assessment of Russia's interference in the election this time around and Russia's motives. I think that the confrontations that were occurring between Bill Evanina in the US and who's responsible for leading these briefings and members of Congress who on the one hand, we're trying to push him to reveal more about Russia and on the Republican side, we're trying to get him to speak more about the threats posed by China. I really prompted the Intel community to step back and say, look we don't want these kinds of conversations leaking out. It makes us look bad. That's part of the reason.

Tanzina: Ryan, the Intelligence Authorization Act requires briefings to Congress on matters of national security. Is this move even legal?

Ryan: My view of it would be that it's a minimum of violation of the spirit of the law. Then I could see different minds disagreeing as to whether or not it's as straight-up violation of law. The law says that Congress must be kept "fully and currently informed" by the intelligence community. This is the reason that speaker Pelosi and Adam Schiff in their statement said that Ratcliffe's action of cutting off all in-person briefings was "An advocation of the lawful responsibility to keep Congress currently informed." They're invoking the law. I also did read the statement by Senator Rubio to be referring to the law as well in that regard, because he, in his statement, definitely supports Ratcliffe. That's the crux of the question, can Congress really be informed in a timely manner if they can't get a face-to-face interactions where they can ask questions in real-time about issues for clarification purposes or otherwise, and all they can rely on is the administration saying, we'll get back to you in writing

Tanzina: Ryan, the distinction here is that they will provide briefings, but those briefings will only be in writing. What is the importance, Ryan, of in-person briefings?

Ryan: I think that the importance of in-person briefings is really highly valuable, in that, it can get at the truth, in a way, just like in law, and in trials, cross-examination is the most effective way of getting at the truth. That doesn't even have to be a hostile witness, it could even just be somebody where you're trying to get at points of clarification. That's just one part of the exercise. I think of it as, imagine if the president gets his and the president of the future, his or her presidential daily briefing, which is in writing, and then has questions, they come in with the written product, but then the intelligence community is ready to answer any questions that the President might have. If the intelligence community said to the President, "I'm sorry, we're going to put that in writing and we'll get back to you in writing." Nobody would call that a full and informed briefing and the President would be irate like, "How can I operate if you're not going to answer my questions of clarification that I need to know now?" Part of it is, just imagine the product that's being written inside of the intelligence community, if they know that they'll never have to face that scrutiny. If they know that they'll never have to answer questions by members of Congress going back and forth, in real-time so that if they don't answer it right, or they try to wiggle around it, the member of Congress will follow up. Then they know that they can just submit the written product and never have to face that oversight. I think it changes the nature of the written product. There's even sociology of organizational theory that talks about if an individual or organizations within an administration know that they're going to be scrutinized at the back end, their product is different. When you lack that level of oversight, I think that the information that is getting to Congress is going to look very different. The last, of course, is that it's a bureaucracy. If they're going to put things in writing, it's going to slow matters down. I think that's why some Members of Congress have invoked this idea of why it needs to be in real-time, in-person exchanges that they also have relied upon, across multiple administrations to get at this information.

Tanzina: Natasha, we've covered the Senate Intelligence committee's recent report, bipartisan report, I should say on Russian interference into the election. Can you remind us of some of the top-line concerns about election security, particularly when it comes to foreign interference? It's not just Russia, correct? There are concerns here about other players like China or Iran.

Natasha: Yes, absolutely. To be clear with you, when you speak to members of the intelligence community and national security community, they do say that they believe that China poses the greatest long term threat to not just election security in the United States, but the national security more broadly of the United States. They compare China to climate change and Russia to a hurricane. Russia being the more acute threat, especially when it comes to election secure, and China being the broader long term threat. With regard to Russia, the concerns still stem largely from counterintelligence threats. The ability of the Russians to infiltrate and CO-OPT people who might not be witting or unwitting in terms of promoting their propaganda or disinformation or trying to sow chaos and interfere in the election in that sense. Disinformation and influence campaigns are still a very large concern. Another big one, obviously, is tampering with election infrastructure. The intelligence community has said that they have not seen nearly the level of activity this time around that they did in 2016, but they're also the first to admit that they could be missing something that the reduced level of activity that they see maybe being replaced by something else that they're not seeing. There is a lot that still unknown and there have been members of the intel community who four years ago suspected that Russia was actually pulling its punches and was holding on to certain material that it could then use later to undermine either the Democratic or the Republican candidates in order to just sow chaos. This time around, what they're seeing is that the Russians are trying to help Trump again win reelection and that is something that because of these in-person briefings that the Members of Congress were getting up until recently, they were able to force out of [unintelligible 00:09:31] , the top counter Intel official by pushing and pushing and pushing and saying, "Okay, what is your real assessment here of Russia's motives?" He finally acknowledged that Russia is trying to undermine Biden and boost the President's candidacy. One of the biggest concerns remains about these foreign actors that are working at the behest of Russia to push this information into the mainstream, and that, of course, is being aided by certain Members of Congress who are laundering this information through their committees through certain investigations of the Bidens.

Tanzina: Ryan, just finally, are states prepared for any type of election interference right now? In addition to the challenges that we faced in 2016, we are now dealing with a coronavirus pandemic, with the issues of mail-in ballots but actual voting technology that was an issue before this election. Are states prepared with their own security infrastructures from what you can tell?

Ryan: It's difficult to know. They're definitely more aware of these kinds of threats than ever before especially because of what we've learned from the 2016 election and thanks in significant part to bipartisan work on the Senate Intelligence Committee that has highlighted these kinds of concerns. What has been lacking is a centralized focus and a priority by the Federal Government coming out of the Whitehouse which has not given this kind of attention to the states that they have asked for in terms of information that they can have. I think that the problem here is leaving it up to states more to themselves is not the right path that anybody would want to approach this to have it be the most effective way forward. That's been a complaint over the last three years because they've been trying to prepare for this since the lessons that have been learned from 2016.

Tanzina: Well, this is something we're obviously going to be keeping a close eye on. Natasha Bertrand is a National Security Correspondent for Politico and Ryan Goodman is the editor-in-chief of Just Security. Thanks to you both.

Ryan: Thank you.

Natasha: Thank you.

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