Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell recounts the differing confidence levels intelligence analysts provided to President Barack Obama prior to authorizing the 2011 Abbottabad raid.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morell: Intelligence Case for Iraq WMDs Was Stronger Than Bin Laden Case
“And the punchline, right, the punchline was, Mr. President the case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was stronger than the case that Bin Laden is. You could hear a pin drop in the Situation Room, and it was true, right?”
Disclosure
Morell: Backed Apple over FBI in encryption debate to avoid vulnerabilities
“On the encryption debate, I was actually not where you would expect me to be. I was not on the side of the FBI. I was on Apple's side, because by forcing Apple to create a key for its keyless encryption, you were creating another huge security vulnerability.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morell: Snowden leaks damaged US tech companies' business overseas
“Edward Snowden Did serious damage to that relationship because the perceptions of the private sector covertly helping the government, whether those were true or not, but the perception that was created, right, of that significantly damaged some American compan…”
Assertion Contradicted
Morell: Russian networks posted en masse minutes after Clinton's 2016 collapse
“So within five minutes of Secretary Clinton falling in New York City on September 11th during the campaign, there were hundreds of thousands of social media postings coming out of Eastern Europe and Russia questioning whether she was healthy enough to be presi…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morell: US banks have far superior cybersecurity compared to government
“Cybersecurity in large U.S. Financial institutions is light years ahead of cybersecurity in the United States government.”
Insight
Presidents routinely ask the CIA to solve intractable problems, says Michael Morell
“There is this tendency that In every administration that I've seen, and I saw six of them, three Republican, three Democrat, for when the problem gets really hard to turn to CIA and say, fix this. Using covert action, fix this. And a lot of the times, CIA can'…”