CNN’s Ex-CIA Spook: Back-Channeling Should Be a Crime

A retired CIA agent said Tuesday that it should be illegal for American citizens to take steps to avoid surveillance by U.S. intelligence services.

Steve Hall, who served as the CIA’s chief of Russian operations, said on “Anderson Cooper 360°” that reports that White House adviser Jared Kushner sought a back channel with Russian officials during the transition was wrong, if not an actual crime.

“I mean, that’s ridiculous to say that you’re going to go to the Russian government so that you can keep a secret from your own society, from your own government, from the press. That’s ludicrous.”

“I’m not sure because I’m not a lawyer whether that’s against the law, but it ought to be,” Hall said. “I mean, that’s ridiculous to say that you’re going to go to the Russian government so that you can keep a secret from your own society, from your own government, from the press. That’s ludicrous.”

The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, interjected: “And there’s a word for it — collusion.”

Nonsense, said Joseph diGenova, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan. He told LifeZette that even if the allegations about Kushner’s request, which the White House has denied, were true, it would be fully legal.

“The guy making this comment doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” diGenova said. “He sounds like a very uninformed former spook who’s looking for face time to boost his private security business.”

[lz_jwplayer video=Ij529kt9]

It is not clear why Kushner asked for the secret line of communication — or even if he did, since it is based on reports quoting anonymous sources talking about intercepts of Russian-to-Russian conversations that may be part of a disinformation campaign. But assuming it is accurate, it shouldn’t be hard to come up with a plausible theory as to why Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, might want to talk with Russian officials without going through official channels.

Russia was a sensitive subject coming after an election that foreign agents tried to throw to Trump, according to U.S. intelligence officials. And, perhaps, Kushner might have wanted to avoid the prying eyes of U.S. intelligence services during the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.

As Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis pointed out to Cooper, concern that intelligence officials would leak details of such meetings and the names of participants — itself, a crime, under laws designed to protection Americans’ privacy — was not so outlandish.

“American intelligence services have leaked a lot of stuff,” he said during the CNN telecast.

There is nothing novel or nefarious about using back channels to talk to foreign governments. The Obama administration used the technique — and with Russia, no less. A 2014 column in Bloomberg News reported that the administration had been “working behind the scenes for months to forge a new working relationship with Russia, despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in repairing relations with Washington or halting his aggression in neighboring Ukraine.”

[lz_related_box id=”803284″]

Bloomberg columnist Josh Rogin wrote that Obama decided to embark on an effort to improve relations despite a number of sore spots.

“I don’t think that anybody at this point is under the impression that a wholesale reset of our relationship is possible at this time, but we might as well test out what they are actually willing to do,” a senior administration told Rogin. “Our theory of this all along has been, let’s see what’s there. Regardless of the likelihood of success.”

Obama also reportedly used a back channel before he even won election in 2008 to open negotiations with Iran, dispatching former Senate staffer William Miller to Tehran.