Posted originally on CTH on April 6, 2026 | Sundance
Two weeks ago, after a lengthy back-and-forth process between the HPSCI and DNI offices, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) reported they released the transcript of former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). No further information has surfaced following that announcement.
“The transcripts will be posted on the Committee website once they undergo the standard classification review with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” (source)
It has been two-weeks. The transcript is not public. In my estimation, this transcript could potentially be exceptionally revealing. The background ‘delay’ is likely due to the significant revelations within it. Also, this is a rather extensive stakeholder equity.
The declassification process involves having every equity stakeholder named in the deposition ¹agree to allowing the information, their information, to be released.
Ex. if Atkinson discussed the Senate Intel Committee, they (Cotton/Warner) would need to allow and/or demand redaction. If the CIA was discussed, again another stakeholder who needs to review and approve. If HPSCI, same/same. If any of the internal agencies were discussed by Atkinson, National Security Council (NSC, White House, Rubio), National Intelligence Council (NIC, in CIA at the time), the same process has to flow through each agency. Also, this testimony is in 2019, making it possible contact with FBI or DOJ-NSD coconspirators (Mueller Inc.) may have taken place; the same would apply.
Each stakeholder gets to review the transcript content that applies to their mention and determine if they ¹approve the declassification process.
This is how the silo defense mechanisms work. You can see how convoluted these systems have become.
According to the originating HPSCI public release, remember, they are the originating stakeholder of the classified information; well, the transcript is then returned to the House Intelligence Committee for publication.
[¹If they don’t agree, a battle begins. Remember the battle over the Nunes memo?]
What would all these equity stakeholders be hoping to conceal? That’s where things get interesting.
CONTEXT: In December of 2016, President Obama turned to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan with a request to change the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) and blame the Russians for election interference in the prior presidential election. Brennan gave the task of assembling the fraudulent intel to a CIA analyst named Julia Gurganus.
Subsequently, inside the CIA the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Directorate of Analysis began working on a pretext that would create the impression for the misleading Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) as demanded by Obama, Clapper and Brennan; ultimately it was constructed by Julia Gurganus.
Inside the National Intelligence Council, one of the key figures who helped create the ICA fabrication was a CIA analyst named Eric Ciaramella.
You might remember the name Eric Ciaramella from the 2019 impeachment effort against President Trump. However, in 2016 Eric Ciaramella was a CIA deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the CIA’s National Intelligence Council at the time the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment was created.
♦ The key point to remember here is that Eric Ciaramella was one of the fabricators of the fraudulent ICA; constructed late December 2016 and presented in January 2017 as part of the foundation for the Trump-Russia narrative.
Earlier in 2025, DNI Tulsi Gabbard began to drill down onto the issue of the fraudulent ICA and how it was constructed. Current CIA analysts within the former National Intelligence Council (NIC) and CIA Directorate of Analysis began to notice Tulsi was going to declassify background documents, including the two-year House Intelligence Committee report revealing the fraud. Tulsi Gabbard became a target.
Julia Gurganus was an active government employee at the time Tulsi Gabbard began making inquiries. The CIA (NIC) changed the status of Julia Gurganus in June 2025 to that of a “covert” operative, in an effort to protect Gurganus.
The CIA changed the status of Julia Gurganus in June 2025, reclassifying her as ‘covert’, specifically because of the ODNI’s intent to reveal the fraud within the 2016 Russia election investigation. This, the CIA thought, would forcibly stop DNI Gabbard from exposing Ms. Gurganus and taking action. The 2025 CIA effort did not work.
In late July of this 2025, DNI Gabbard released the CIA intelligence information that was used in constructing the fraudulent ICA. On July 23rd, Tulsi Gabbard held a press conference alongside Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and outlined the issues.
In August 2025, DNI Gabbard then declassified and released the CIA work product, and then later removed Julia Gurganus security clearance.
The CIA embeds at the NIC and directorate of analysis were furious, and subsequently leaked a false story to the Wall Street Journal saying DNI Gabbard had compromised a covert CIA operative working in government – a familiar ploy that had worked for them in the past. However, this time it did not work, because her work history clearly showed Julia Gurganus was a known CIA employee.
♦ Key point: Julia Gurganus and Eric Ciaramella both worked on behalf of CIA Director John Brennan to fabricate the fraudulent ICA in 2016. Gurganus was still a CIA employee in August of 2025.
Back to Ciaramella…
In 2019 National Security Council (NSC) member Alexander Vindman also responsible for Ukraine, Russia Eurasia affairs, told CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella a fictional narrative about President Trump pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to provide dirt on Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 election.
Eric Ciaramella then became an “anonymous whistleblower” within the CIA to reveal the story and set up the predicate for the first Trump impeachment effort in late 2019. You might remember the name, because during the impeachment effort anyone who mentioned Eric Ciaramella on social media had their information deleted, and they were blocked from their accounts.
Facebook, Google, META, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter all deleted any mention of Eric Ciaramella as the anonymous whistleblower, and banned any account that posted the name. However, something else was always sketchy about this.
As the story was told, Ciaramella blew the whistle to Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson. It was further said that Atkinson “changed the CIA whistleblower rules” to permit an “anonymous” allegation; thereby protecting Eric Ciaramella.
Knowing, in hindsight, that CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella was one of the main people who constructed the 2016 fraudulent ICA, suddenly the motive to make him “anonymous” a few years later in 2019 for another stop-Trump effort makes sense.
Until today, the commonly accepted narrative was that ICIG Atkinson changed the CIA rules arbitrarily. This is the main narrative as pushed by the media, allowed to permeate by the larger Intelligence Community, and supported by the willful blindness of a complicit Congress.
It never made sense how an IC Inspector General, especially one that involves review of CIA employees/operations, could make such a substantive change in rules for an agency that is opaque by design. There is just no way any IG can make that kind of decision about the CIA without the Director, the Deputy Director and CIA General Counsel being involved.
Either someone in DNI or CIA leadership had to sign off on allowing ICIG Atkinson to change the rules and permit a complaint by Eric Ciaramella being turned into an “anonymous complaint”, or some mechanism was triggered that permitted the ICIG to operate using a legislative oversight method.
♦ Now, things are going to start getting a little dark here, because the implications are serious, and the aspect of ICIG Atkinson’s testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) being sealed is a little more than alarming when you consider what they were trying to do – impeach a sitting USA President on a fabricated issue.
Some context is needed.
Inspectors General do not operate in a vacuum. They are authorized to conduct investigative oversight, as an outcome of permissions from the cabinet agency heads themselves. The ICIG office, formerly headed by Michael Atkinson, falls under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.
As the Inspector General of the Dept of Justice does not operate without the expressed permission of the U.S. Attorney General, so too is it required for the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to have permission to operate in CIA functions with the expressed permission of the CIA Director.
To give you an example: You might remember when President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder created the Dept of Justice National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), they did not permit the DOJ Inspector General to have any oversight or review.
The 2009-2017 public reasoning was “national security interests,” as the DOJ-NSD was in charge of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISC) operations as well as Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) reviews and investigations. The factual, evidence-based reason was the DOJ-NSD running political surveillance operations using FISA and FARA as weaponized targeting mechanisms to keep track of their political opposition, ie Lawfare. [But that’s another story]
In fact, in 2015 the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the DOJ, Michael Horowitz, requested oversight and it was Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates who responded with a lengthy 58-page legal explanation saying, essentially, ‘nope – not allowed.’ (PDF HERE) All of the DOJ is subject to oversight, except the NSD.
You see, the Department of Justice’s own Inspector General (Michael Horowitz who opened a January 2017 investigation into the 2016 politicization of the FBI and DOJ) was not allowed to investigate anything that happened within the NSD agency of the Department of Justice. See the ‘useful arrangement‘? Yeah, Funny that.
It was not until 2018, when the OIG was tasked by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump to look into the fraudulent FISA application used against Carter Page, when the OIG was finally given authority to review activity within the Dept of Justice National Security Division.
♦ The two key points here are: #1) ICIG Michael Atkinson does not make unilateral decisions to change the internal rules within the CIA, without the expressed permission of the CIA Director, CIA Deputy Director and CIA General Counsel. #2) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) would also know of the changed rules and arrangement therein.
At the time of the impeachment allegation and investigation by the House (Aug to Dec 18, 2019), the CIA Director was Gina Haspel (May 21, 2018, to January 20, 2021). The CIA Deputy Director was Vaughn Bishop, and the CIA General Counsel was Courtney Simmons Elwood. In addition, the Acting DNI was Joseph Maguire.
We can reasonably be certain that CIA General Counsel Courtney Elwood and Acting DNI Joseph Maguire did not sign-off on changing the CIA rules permitting an anonymous whistleblower, because published media reports at the time outline both offices as NOT supporting the effort of ICIG Atkinson.
In fact, as the story is told (and investigatively affirmed) CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella was frustrated because he talked to CIA General Counsel Elwood about the leak from Alexander Vindman, and Elwood did not respond to his claims.
Instead, of following chain-of-command, CIA Analyst Ciaramella went to the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, and relayed the story as told to him by Vindman. The 2019 conversation between Ciaramella, the CIA analyst who previously fabricated the fraudulent Russia ICA in 2017, and Adam Schiff who fraudulently pushed the Trump-Russia narrative in 2017, took place prior to the CIA whistleblower complaint being filed.
Now we get to the crux of the story.
♦ On October 4, 2019, ICIG Michael Atkinson gave closed-door testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) as part of their impeachment investigation. One of the key questions to Atkinson surrounded the authority of his office changing the CIA whistleblower rules that permitted Eric Ciaramella to remain anonymous.
That Atkinson testimony was then “classified” and sealed under the auspices of “national security” by HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff, the same guy who Ciaramella talked to before filing the complaint.
If congress, or more importantly the American public, had known CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella was both the key author of the fraudulent 2016 ICA and the later 2019 CIA complaint, it’s doubtful any impeachment effort would have moved forward.
From within the CIA, Eric Ciaramella was the impeachment narrative creator and the Russian interference narrative creator. In short, a political fabricator of intelligence within the CIA.
Again, ICIG Atkinson could not change the ‘whistleblower’ regulations on his own. Someone had to sign-off on that, giving him the authority. Additionally, Atkinson a former legal counsel to the Deputy Asst Attorney General within the DOJ-NSD, is not going to go out on such a limb without a cya to protect himself.
The only person likely to give that authority within the structures and confines that operate inside our government was then CIA Director, Gina Haspel. The Deputy CIA Director is not going to make that kind of a decision, especially given the circumstances, and the CIA General Counsel was not touching it.
That outline of events means the 2016/2017 CIA ‘stop-Trump’ operation under CIA Director John Brennan, was effectively continued by CIA Director Gina Haspel in 2019/2020.
[SIDENOTE: Now, does the 2020 CIA operation known as the “51 Intelligence Experts’ who denied the Hunter Biden laptop story take on context? Now does the recent reaction, the angry outburst by former CIA Director John Brennan about the ICA construct take on some context?]
This is where doors slam and DC officials run out of the room.
This is where ‘pretending not to know‘ takes on another meaning entirely.
♦ IMPLICATIONS: CIA Director Gina Haspel had no way to know if the 2019 impeachment of President Trump was going to be successful. Just as the ICIG needed a CYA to protect himself, so too would Director Haspel want a legal defense mechanism in case the entire fiasco blew up. Enter the only oversight agency that can provide Haspel cover, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Underneath all of these machinations, there’s no other way for Director Haspel to protect herself other than to use the primary mechanism within the functions of IC oversight, inform the SSCI chair and vice-chair of her changed rule guidance to ICIG Atkinson.
That Occam’s Razor scenario puts SSCI chairman ¹Richard Burr and SSCI vice-chair Mark Warner in the silo-system loop. If things blew up, Haspel could always defend herself by pointing to her informing the mechanism for CIA oversight, the SSCI.
• DNI Dan Coats resigned from office when the Trump impeachment effort was announced, August 2019.
• Acting DNI Joseph Maguire was appointed by President Trump to replace Dan Coats.
• Following the impeachment trial, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate on February 5th, 2020.
• On Feb 20, 2020, President Trump replaced acting DNI Joseph Maguire with acting DNI Ric Grenell.
• On February 28, 2020, President Trump nominated John Ratcliffe to be DNI.
• Ratcliffe was confirmed May 26, 2020, and took office.
Before the impeachment effort began, Congressman John Ratcliffe was President Trump’s first choice to replace outgoing DNI Dan Coats in 2019. However, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said they would not confirm John Ratcliffe. President Trump was forced to appoint “acting DNIs.”
Somehow, within an unexplained reversal, after the impeachment effort ended, the SSCI had a change of position and agreed to confirm John Ratcliffe.
As the fully confirmed DNI, in 2020 John Ratcliffe would have full control of the ICIG, including an understanding of what took place within the CIA that led to the change in protocol creating the “anonymous whistleblower” complaint: the impeachment origination.
As Chair of the SSCI in 2019, it is highly likely that CIA Director Gina Haspel informed Richard Burr of the change in protocol creating the “anonymous whistleblower” complaint: the impeachment origination. ¹Richard Burr was replaced by Marco Rubio in May 2020.
John Ratcliffe is now CIA Director. Marco Rubio is now National Security Advisor.
Adam Schiff was not stupid.
He knew what he was doing and how to use the separation of powers for his purposes. He also knew that each stakeholder could be counted on to keep secrets.
The executive branch would not easily be able to reach into the legislative branch and extract information.
That’s why then HPSCI Chairman, Impeachment Chairman and now Senator Adam Schiff buried the Atkinson transcript in the vault of the House Intelligence Committee.
The process.
♦ First, you need a republican President in the White House √. Second, you need an aligned Intelligence Community DNI √, and third you need a Republican controlled HPSCI √:
[¹] • To extract the transcript the Executive would first need to understand its value. • Then the Executive would need to know where it was. • Then the Executive would need a qualified stakeholder, with appropriate clearances, to request to review the transcript in the HPSCI secure compartmented intelligence facility (scif). • If the HPSCI approved, the Executive would be given an appointment date to read it (no notes, no copying, just reading). • Then, after reading, the Executive stakeholder would then need to request the HPSCI Chair and Ranking Member for a classified copy. • The Chair and Ranking Member would need to agree to the value of the sunlight on the Legislative Branch controlled information. • To get a copy the entire House Intelligence Committee would need to vote on the release to the Executive. • The vote would need to be scheduled on the committee calendar. • A HPSCI vote would then take place:
[SOURCE]
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a business meeting to consider multiple Committee actions. During the business meeting, the Committee voted in favor of releasing two transcripts from 2019 hearings with the former Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson. The hearings were held to examine Atkinson’s role in an alleged whistleblower complaint, which ultimately led to Democrats’ first impeachment efforts against President Trump in December 2019. One transcript would be released to the ODNI for classification review, and then subsequently released to the public by the Committee with the second unclassified transcript.
“The great deal of widespread speculation about the Atkinson classified hearing transcript is indicative of the American people’s complete and warranted mistrust of the Intelligence Community,” said Chairman Crawford. “In far too many instances, the IC hides behind the veil of overclassification. Sometimes sunlight is the best disinfectant. As part of the Committee’s continued effort to balance the transparency the American people deserve and the need to protect sensitive national security information, we hope that the release of these transcripts allows the American people to make their own determinations. As Chairman, I remain committed to ensuring this Committee, where possible, is transparent as the IC works to rebuild trust with the American people.”
The transcripts will be posted on the Committee website once they undergo the standard classification review with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (source)
The HPSCI has given the transcript to Tulsi Gabbard, but I guarantee you the public release is against the interests of the entire intelligence apparatus.
Folks, this is a fight… and it’s ugly because the stakes are big.
If it sounds like hitting an anvil with a pickaxe, that’s because fighting the IC is like hitting an anvil with a pickaxe.
The truth has no agenda.
We have one ally.
I’m doing all I can…
Centinel2012 