Pfeiffer’s Baseless Deflections in Favor of Bidens

Among the endorsers of the groundless October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter, purposefully designed to provide Joe Biden a ‘defense point’ in his presidential debate against Donald Trump, was Larry Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer, the previous Chief of Staff to erstwhile CIA director Michael Hayden, made an outlandish assertion, insinuating without any plausible evidence that ‘Russians had some involvement’ in the condemning laptop. This ludicrous claim surfaced during an episode of the SpyTalk podcast in August, amidst an expansive discourse where the former intelligence official also attempted to trivialize the findings from recent declassifications endorsed by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The New York Post reports painted a distressing image of the illicit commercial ventures involving Joe Biden’s son in Ukraine and China, all of which were subsequently suppressed on social media. Predominantly, legacy media undertook a self-censorship regime, reluctantly conceding to the laptop’s genuineness only after Biden had clinched the election. Whistle-blowers from the IRS disclosed that the FBI had, in fact, corroborated the laptop’s authenticity as far back as November 2019, a staggering year before its existence was publicly acknowledged.

During the early-August podcast, Pfeiffer acknowledged, ‘I signed the letter at the time’ and emphasized ‘there were others’ who inked this document anonymously. The dominating quartet involved in the discussions locals during the signing of the letter were Morell, Marc Polymeropoulos, Kristin Wood, and Nick Shapiro, as per his claims. Kristin Wood had previously held the post of a CIA officer, and Nick Shapiro was a long-serving aide to former CIA director John Brennan.

Interestingly, Pfeiffer maintained, ‘public records reveal that in those emails, it stated, by the way, we reckon, this action would offer Biden an edge, supplying him a talking point for the imminent debate.’ However, he contended that the letter, although designed to aid Biden, did not explicitly endorse a candidate or prompt supporters to vote for him. Thus the attempt to mask the thinly veiled favoritism towards Biden becomes clear.

Biden’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report, released in March 2021, postulates that ‘Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, possibly directed by Russian intelligence’ promoted the unfavorable content about Joe and Hunter Biden. However, the report puzzlingly sidestepped any mention of the Hunter Biden laptop saga, arriving at no public conclusions concerning this case.

Multiple media personalities, including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and NPR, jumped the gun in early 2021. They prematurely asserted that the ODNI report had dismissed the allegations revolving around the Biden laptop. The hastily drawn conclusions were later recanted as they eventually recognized their erroneous declarations.

It’s rather telling when we look back at the January 2017 assessment from the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. The agencies arrived at ‘conclusive confidence’ that Putin ‘had initiated an influence campaign in 2016.’ The sole aim of Russia was declared to ‘undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, tarnish former Secretary of State Clinton, and jeopardize her eligibility and potential presidency,’ all the while nurturing ‘a distinct preference for president-elect Trump.’

Interestingly, the CIA’s recent examination unequivocally concluded that the judgment that Putin ‘desired’ to ensure Trump’s victory ‘did not qualify for the ‘high confidence’ status that CIA and FBI assigned to it.’ The overt flip-flop in judgment mirrors the inherent instability in their analysis.

The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), however, made it patently obvious that the distinction was crucial. The amendment of conclusions and gradation of their confidence indicate the volatile nature of their standpoint. The basis of their confidence levels seemed more like a predictive game, less a well-reasoned, scientific judgment.

Additionally, the ODNI’s ‘Intelligence Community Directive 203’ underscores the significance of confidence levels. The directive states, ‘Analytic products should stipulate and clarify the basis for the uncertainties linked to major analytic judgments, specifically the possibility of the occurrence of an event or development, and the analyst’s confidence in the fundamental rationale for this judgment.’

The directive, while reading like a guideline for trustworthy intelligence analysis, seems to have been treated as optional in the case of the Biden laptop incident. The fracturing of confidence in their analysis concerning the matter raises questions on the validity and integrity of the intelligence community’s overall work.

The inconsistent application of such directives combined with the hasty assumptions, later recanted, by media personalities speak volumes about the preparedness and transparency of the intelligence apparatus. All of this circus over a laptop incident and the whirlwind reporting caused more confusion than clarity.

The shadowy way the intelligence apparatus has handled the Hunter Biden laptop incident, with layers of insinuation, false confidence, and abrupt recantations, leaves a lingering bitter taste. It points towards a broken system in desperate need of robust, transparent, and accountable mechanisms to handle such critical scenarios.