Recent congressional testimony suggests that the infamous 2020 letter alleging the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot was both solicited and approved by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is set to release a report on Wednesday, revealing that several former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA’s role in disseminating the letter. Eventually, over 50 former senior U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter.
The report says, “One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (‘PCRB’) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it. The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date.”
The responsibility of the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) is to examine statements, letters, and books authored by former intelligence personnel, with the objective of identifying any classified information that may require removal or redaction before publication.
According to an email dated March 5, 2023, sent to congressional investigators, Cariens reported that a CIA official responsible for vetting and sanctioning his forthcoming memoir informed him about the Hunter Biden laptop letter and even invited him to endorse it.
Cariens said in the email, “When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter. The person asked me if I would be willing to sign.”
In the email, Cariens disclosed that the CIA official read out certain portions of the letter to persuade him to endorse it. However, he admitted that he could not recall the name of the said CIA official who urged him to sign the Hunter Biden laptop letter. Cariens’ spouse, Janice, who had retired from the CIA back in 1995, was also among the signatories of the letter.
At 6:34 a.m. on October 19, 2020, the Hunter Biden laptop letter was initially submitted to the PCRB by Mike Morell, a former CIA acting director, and Joe Biden campaign supporter. The CIA review board confirmed receipt of the letter at 7:11 a.m. on the same day.
BREAKING 🚨 The CIA conspired with former acting director Mike Morell and the Biden campaign to produce a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation — and solicited signatures from at least one former intelligence official, a staff…
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 9, 2023
Subsequently, Kristen Wood, a former CIA official, forwarded the letter to a distribution list of ex-intelligence officials at 10:27 a.m., requesting their signatures. Morell and Marc Polymeropoulos, who had retired from the CIA in 2019, had drafted the letter. Later, Cariens responded to Wood’s email and consented to sign the letter.
During Morell’s testimony before Congress, he admitted to drafting and circulating the letter to furnish Joe Biden with a talking point to employ during the 2020 presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump.
Morell and Polymeropoulos testified that the involvement of a current CIA official in promoting and soliciting participation in the letter they authored would be grossly inappropriate.
