The Daily - How the Whistle-Blower Complaint Almost Didn’t Happen

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

It took just days for a whistle-blower complaint to prompt an impeachment inquiry of President Trump. But it took weeks for the concerns detailed in the complaint to come to light — and they nearly never did. Guest: Julian E. Barnes, who covers national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: The Trump administration’s handling of the accusations is certain to be scrutinized by lawmakers.President Trump was repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory was “completely debunked.”

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Today, it took just days for the whistleblower's complaint to trigger an impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Julian Barnes on the weeks that led up to that complaint and how it almost didn't happen. It's Monday, September 30th. Julian, tell me about what you've been reporting. Up until now, the focus has been on the whistleblower complaint and how it was handled. The explosive reports of a whistleblower complaint and how it was handled. The explosive reports of a whistleblower complaint against President Trump

is raising more questions than answers. How it was handled by the inspector general. Yeah, so when you get into this, what does it mean that they have blown through the legal deadlines? Does that in itself mean that the intel agencies here are in violation of the law? And what happens next? How it was handled by the director of national intelligence. Did he handle it accurately when it wasn't released for so many weeks?

And how, you know, the Department of Justice reacted to that. Paula, the Department of Justice declined to look into the allegations in the whistleblower's complaint. Does Bill Barr's behavior on this raise any red flags for you? But what I was interested in is what happened before the complaint was filed. What happened between July 25th, when President Trump has the call with the Ukrainian president, and August 12th, when the whistleblower complaint was filed. It could have been a really simple story. A conscientious worker finds out

about wrongdoing, mulls what to do, learns that the whistleblower system exists, and decides to submit a complaint. But that's not what happened. We found out about a very different story. we found out about a very different story. And what was that story? Immediately after the July 25th call, there's concern in the White House. Officials who have heard it are worried about what they have heard. This is not right. This appears to be a potential abuse of power.

And we learned that a CIA officer who used to work in the White House had learned about something amiss in that July 25th call. At least a couple people talked to the CIA officer, tell him about this call. And there's enough of a level of concern here that the CIA officer decides he needs to do something about it. And what he decides to do is to take the information to the CIA's top lawyer. But to do that, he doesn't want to go directly. He wants to stay anonymous.

So he uses a colleague to bring the information to the lawyer's office. And do we know, Julian, why the CIA officer would do it this way, kind of indirectly, through a colleague versus getting this complaint up to the top of the CIA himself? We don't know exactly, but we have some evidence, and so we can make an educated guess here. It looks like because the CIA officer worked in the White House, his identity could be quickly discovered. We know that anonymity was very important to him, and if the White House knew that a CIA officer who had worked there

was making the accusations, it would be very easy to identify him. And what is the information that the CIA officer has his colleague communicate to the top lawyers at the CIA? It's very vague. The initial information that the colleague brings to the CIA's top lawyer is that something has gone wrong. There's been some impropriety in a call between Mr. Trump and a foreign leader. There's no date. There's no name of the foreign leader. There's no country. So what do the top lawyers at the CIA do with this kind of vague information?

The top lawyer at the CIA, she needs to figure out if this information is credible. But that information lies in the White House. So to learn more, she picks up the phone and she calls her counterpart at the White House. And is that standard practice? It is. It is the standard practice. That's what the guidelines tell you to do. Okay. So what happens after she alerts the White House that there's a complaint within the CIA involving the president? So it turns out that the lawyers in the White House have apparently also heard rumblings about the July 25th call. They don't know how serious it is,

but there are a series of calls on the week of August 5th between the CIA's lawyers and the White House lawyers, and they're trying to figure out what's going on. And very quickly, they learned that a number of people within the White House have concerns about this July 25th call. So folks are taking this pretty seriously. I recognize that it's complicated because the CIA has just gone to the White House, but investigators are investigating. Yes, that's absolutely right. From the CIA perspective, the folks at the White House are taking it seriously. They're doing their

due diligence. They're learning concerning information. So meanwhile, how much of this do we think filters back to the CIA officer who starts all this by asking his colleague to go to the top lawyers inside the agency. How aware is he of the kind of follow-up that's going on? We don't know exactly. Remember, the CIA's top lawyer doesn't know who he is. So the CIA officer who has concerns is in the dark. But remember, he has sources at the White House.

Right, where he used to work. Right, where he used to work. And now, the people who told him about the original allegations, they start to talk to him again, and they tell him they're being questioned, questioned by lawyers, but not from the CIA, from the White House.

And that's not what he wanted. Right. In his mind, the fox and the people around the fox are suddenly investigating who broke into the hen house. Exactly. The fox is in charge of counting the hens, and that's not going to have a good result. And what does he make of that? It spooks him.

This is not what he was looking for. What we think is in the back of his head is that the White House is doing this investigation, and that means the White House could crush it, could brush it under the rug. So what does this suddenly spooked CIA officer do next? He decides to dramatically escalate the situation. Previously, he had the other officer bring the complaint to the CIA lawyer. He now takes matters into his own hands. You know, it's been about a week since his original complaint to the CIA lawyer,

the one delivered anonymously through a colleague. And he has gathered more information from White House colleagues. He's learned more about the call. He's learned more about how the White House lawyers handled the notes of that call, putting it into the White House's most classified system. One meant for holding information about covert action, not banter between foreign leaders. And so he decides to take an important step, one that will change the direction of this. He's going to file a whistleblower complaint, and he's going to file it with the inspector general for the intelligence community.

So this is the now famous whistleblower complaint we all know. Correct. And what's different about this whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community's inspector general from this internal CIA complaint. I wonder if the process itself is any different between these two complaints. It's a very different process. The whistleblower process is designed to protect

the person making the complaint, to protect their identity, to protect them from reprisals. But it also allows for an independent investigation. Instead of the CIA lawyer working with White House lawyers, the inspector general is going directly to the witnesses. This time, it won't be the White House lawyers asking questions. This time, it will be the inspector general asking questions. And crucially, in this process,

if a complaint is deemed credible, it goes to Congress. So this is like a turbocharged complaint process compared with the first one. A hundred percent. It's a very different process. This is what he wanted to see in the first place, we think, a neutral arbiter, an outside person looking at this. An outside person can look at it without a conflict of interest and presumably will not try to brush it aside or ignore it. So this would ensure that what he was most worried about, that the White House would be conducting this investigation and possibly quashing it, but that can't happen. That's right.

So at this point, correct me if I'm wrong, there are basically two processes happening at the same time. The original report within the CIA is working its way through the system. working its way through the system. And now this more formal complaint filed by the CIA officer himself to the inspector general of the intelligence community, it's starting to unfold. So what happens with that first complaint within the CIA? The CIA doesn't know there's a whistleblower complaint,

not yet. And so the CIA's top lawyer continues her work and she finds there's a reasonable basis for this complaint. And under government policy, under the rules, she has to alert the Department of Justice. And she does. She does it on August 14th, two days after the whistleblower complaint is filed. the whistleblower complaint is filed. So a lawyer from the Department of Justice goes to the White House and reads the original transcript, the transcript of the July 25th call between President Trump and President

Zelensky. The one that has been placed in that special computer system kind of hidden away from wider circulation that might embarrass the president. Exactly. And the lawyer says, wow, this is serious. And so what does he do? He tells his bosses. And who's the biggest boss?

Attorney General William Barr. So the attorney general is alerted to the situation by the original CIA complaint. Right. The CIA investigation, that original complaint, is at the Department of Justice where it enters a kind of legal purgatory. And ultimately, nothing happens. Huh. Okay, so they basically quash it. What happens to the other complaint, the whistleblower complaint?

quash it. What happens to the other complaint, the whistleblower complaint? So the whistleblower complaint goes from the inspector general to the director of national intelligence. Now, ordinarily, the intelligence chief would just send it on to Congress, but this involves the president. So the director of national intelligence decides he needs to consult with the Department of Justice. Hmm. And so the whistleblower complaint goes to the Department of Justice. But they already know all about this because they got the CIA complaint days before. And so they're ready.

So they do their review and they say, it's not a criminal matter. There's nothing to see here, folks. Nothing needs to happen and it doesn't need to go to Congress. So because the Department of Justice has gotten a heads up about this through the CIA complaint, when this official, more formal, supposedly independent whistleblower complaint arrives, the people inside the Department of Justice, they know what they're going to do. And what they're going to do is basically say, there's nothing to see here. This ends here. That's right. They're ready and they make a critical decision that it doesn't need to go to Congress.

But of course, we all know it does get to Congress eventually. So how does that happen? That happens because the inspector general has notified the House Intelligence Committee that there is a complaint. And the House Intelligence Committee knows that it's highly unusual to be notified of a complaint and then not to get it.

And so they start making us think. that it's highly unusual to be notified of a complaint and then not to get it. And so they start making us think. So it's possible that if the whistleblower had just left it at the first internal CIA complaint, we might not have known any of this because it appears that the Department of Justice, which of course works for the president, would have more or less kept it under wraps. That's right. Only because of the whistleblower process. Only because the inspector general

gave a hint to Congress that there was something to see. That's the only reason this went forward. Right. What's so interesting about this, and I don't think I understood it before, is that a lot of this is unfolding inside the executive branch. The CIA answers to the director of national intelligence, who answers to the president. All of these entities work for the president of the United States. The only thing that's different about the whistleblower process is that it triggers communication to the legislative branch. That's right. The oversight process of the United States government is meant for mid-level officials.

It's meant for high-level officials. It's not meant for the president of the United States. What we've learned through all of this is that if the allegation of wrongdoing is against the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, the systems break down. It can be blocked by a politicized Department of Justice. It can be brushed aside by political appointees in the White House. That's what makes that whistleblower

system where there is a reporting line to an independent branch of government so important. We'll be right back. So in the end, it feels like this is, above all, kind of the story of a very determined and persistent whistleblower. Absolutely. We learned a lot about the CIA officer who made this complaint. He was very determined. He was nervous that his complaint wasn't going to spark the right kind of investigation. And because he was nervous, he kept pressing and he got the right kind of investigation going.

Right. And Julian, at a certain point, you and our colleagues in the Washington Bureau decided to publish details about the whistleblower's background, not his name, but the fact that he worked for the CIA and had spent time at the White House. Why did you feel that that was important to telling the story that you just laid out? I really believe that you can't understand how the whistleblowing process worked and almost didn't work in this case unless you understand the role of the CIA in the initial investigation, the role of the CIA in telling the White House that someone from their organization had concerns. Look, this was not a decision we took lightly. You know, the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean McKay, weighed in on this.

But he mentioned how much the president of the United States had put the credibility of the whistleblower into question. And the president had called the whistleblower's account a political hack job. We felt it was important to tell people about the credibility of the whistleblower. And part of that is telling people how he learned the information and what he did with it. And you can only understand that when you know that he came from the CIA. when you know that he came from the CIA. But my sense from what you've just told us is that the whistleblower took steps to conceal his identity from the very beginning by asking a colleague to file this complaint. So how does that factor into your decision?

That's true. But remember, there's a lot of information in that complaint once Congress makes it public. We know he worked at the White House. We know he had expertise in European affairs. And what's really crucial to understand is that we didn't tell the White House anything they didn't know just days after the July 25th call. As soon as the top lawyer at the CIA picked up the phone and called the White House, they knew the complaints were coming from the CIA. So I really believe it's important to understand where the system worked and where it didn't work. Because it almost didn't work here.

And we now know why it almost didn't work. We know better why it didn't work. And if we're going to improve the systems so that you can make a complaint, even about the President of the United States, and it's taken seriously, we need to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the system. And this reporting really shows how it almost didn't work. that the whistleblower was at the CIA is because it's important to understand this key

sequence of events, which reveals just how vulnerable this whole system is when the alleged political wrongdoing is done by the president himself. That's right. The system is fragile. It almost didn't work.

And if we're going to improve it, we need to understand those weaknesses. Julian, thank you very much. Thank you. On Sunday, the White House intensified its attack on the whistleblower. During an interview on Fox News, Stephen Miller, a senior advisor to the president, claimed without evidence that the whistleblower was a partisan intent on hurting the president. I know what the deep state looks like. I know the difference between a whistleblower and a deep state operative. This is a deep state operative, pure and simple. is a deep state operative, pure and simple. After days of negotiations, the whistleblower has reached an agreement to testify behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee.

Have you reached an agreement yet with the whistleblower and his or her attorneys about coming before the committee and providing the information firsthand? Yes, we have. That whistleblower will be allowed to come in and come in without a minder from the Justice Department or from the White House to tell the whistleblower what they can and cannot say. We'll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower. Democrats continued to move swiftly to advance their impeachment inquiry, starting with a subpoena to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The subpoena demands that Pompeo provide documents relating to President Trump's call with Ukraine's president, including a full transcript of the conversation. And it warns that a failure to comply, quote,

shall constitute obstruction of the House's impeachment inquiry. In a letter attached to the subpoena, the Democrats demand that five State Department officials linked to the Ukraine episode sit for depositions beginning this week. The number of House members who now support an impeachment inquiry has reached 224.

Over the weekend, the first House Republican, Representative Mark Amadei of Nevada, indicated support for the inquiry. The complaint's been filed. It should be processed by all the committees that have a dog in that fight for oversight. I'm a big fan of oversight, so let's let the committees get to work and see where it goes.

But soon after, Amadei's staff quickly walked that back, saying he supported oversight, but not a formal impeachment inquiry. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The number of people with lung illnesses linked to vaping has risen to 805 and is responsible for 12 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said that the illnesses are widespread, with cases reported from 46 states and concentrated among young people. Two-thirds were 18 to 34 years old, and 16% were younger than 18. So far,

no specific ingredients or devices have been identified as the cause of the illnesses, leading many health experts to say that for now, people should simply stop vaping. People should simply stop vaping. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Babarro. See you tomorrow.