Senators Try to Force Trump Admin to Declare WikiLeaks a 'Hostile' Spy Service
It’s one of a number of ways the Senate intelligence committee is trying to box the White House in on Russia.
SPENCER ACKERMAN
08.22.17 5:03 PM ET
If the Senate intelligence committee gets its way, America’s spy agencies will have to release a flood of information about Russian threats to the U.S.—the kind of threats that Donald Trump may not want made public.
The committee also wants Congress to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization – which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence – to new levels of surveillance.
On Friday, the committee quietly published its annual intelligence authorization, a bill that blesses the next year’s worth of intelligence operations. The bill passed the committee late last month on a 14-1 vote, with Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon as the lone dissenter, owing to what he calls the “legal, constitutional and policy implications” that the WikiLeaks provision may entail.
Among the bill’s major provisions are requirements for the intelligence community to release major public reports into Russian threats to U.S. elections, Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Moscow’s influence operations, Russian money laundering in the U.S., and more. In short, the Senate committee intends to do a lot more about Russia than investigate its involvement in the 2016 presidential race – namely, box the Trump administration into a more assertive response to Russian aggression.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/senators-try-to-force-trump-admin-to-declare-wikileaks-a-hostile-spy-service