The man who oversaw President Joe Biden’s daily intelligence briefing previously defended the CIA’s false allegations about his torture program to a powerful Senate committee, according to his former chief investigator and three others with direct knowledge of the events.
In 2013, during a dramatic standoff between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA, Morgan Muir, then a senior CIA analyst, played a key role that has never been reported before. After the Senate committee found that “improved interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists were not effective, he led a series of tense meetings in which the CIA attacked these findings.
While the 6,700-page committee’s politically explosive report on the matter was based on the CIA documents themselves, Daniel Jones, the lead author, said Muir continued to defend the value of the torture program, citing information that the CIA would later admit publicly inaccurate.
After questions from BuzzFeed News, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Muir should no longer inform Biden personally.
Jones told BuzzFeed News that he believes Muir’s statements to the committee should immediately disqualify him from his new role because he cannot be trusted to “convey accurate information”.
“I wouldn’t trust him,” said Jones. Given Muir’s previous statements, he said: “there is no more place for you in senior positions”.
Muir did not answer questions from BuzzFeed News. CIA spokesman Timothy Barrett called Jones’ characterizations “unfounded” and Muir “an exemplary career intelligence officer whose strength of character is unquestionable.”
But former Democratic Senator Mark Udall, who was a particularly outspoken member of the Intelligence Committee, expressed caution. “President Biden has assembled a strong national security team, but he must have serious concerns about entrusting his Presidential Daily Briefing to anyone who may have helped to cover up this dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Udall said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.
In addition, he said: “I can attest that it is essential that intelligence agencies provide the president and other leaders with unbiased, factual and honest information. As we now know, the CIA and its leadership have deceived the public, senators and Senate officials for years about the systematic and brutal torture of CIA detainees. “
As first reported in the New York Times, Muir was initially asked to meet with Biden for the President’s Daily Brief, a highly confidential summary of national security threats around the world.
After BuzzFeed News contacted ODNI for comment, spokeswoman Amanda Schoch said on Wednesday that Muir’s responsibilities would not include being in the Oval Office “daily, informing the president”.
On Friday, she appeared to dismiss presidential instructions entirely. “He is not the briefest of the president as the term is generally understood, and there are no plans for him to stay in the oval,” said Schoch.
His new role is to be responsible for integrating the mission, which means that he will be responsible for coordinating the collection and analysis of intelligence across multiple agencies. This includes overseeing the content of the President’s Daily Summary, which she said will likely be delivered by “a series of expert summaries”. She gave no explanation for the change.
In response to questions about Muir’s role in defending the torture program, she said: “Morgan Muir is a widely respected intelligence officer who has demonstrated the highest standards of integrity and professionalism throughout his career.”
The White House declined to comment.
The 2013 meetings with the Senate Intelligence Committee took place in a highly charged political climate, after the committee concluded – although it has not yet published – its report and the CIA offered its formal response. Muir, who had previously provided President George W. Bush with the Daily Brief, was chosen to lead the CIA delegation in a series of discussions with committee members and officials.
All-day meetings, which continued over months, took place inside a secure facility at the Hart Senate Office Building, where confidential information is discussed. Jones and another source said the meetings were recorded and the tapes are in the committee’s safe.
The perspectives on both sides were so far apart that it sometimes seemed impossible to reconcile even the basic facts. “We would say: ‘Here is a piece of paper. It’s red. We can all see that it’s red, ‘”said Jones. “And they said, ‘No, it’s blue.’ “
Three well-informed sources on the interactions corroborate Jones’ account. Jones, who now heads a private research and investigation firm, said Muir defended the CIA’s response to the torture report – even after being shown copies of the agency’s own records contradicting his claims.
“He continued to double with the false claims,” said Jones.
For example, the CIA claimed the success of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, which the agency said it gave information about another terrorist after being drowned. President Bush would also cite this case by revealing the existence of the CIA’s interrogation program in 2006. But by the time Mohammed was drowned, the CIA had already obtained the information through another operation, without using torture.
When the Senate torture report and the CIA response were released, the CIA also quietly posted three pages of corrections in its response, including the fact that Bush received inaccurate information about Mohammed. It would be a year before the Senate Intelligence Committee and the public knew about the corrections.
Eventually, the meetings – dramatized in the film The report, on Jones’ investigation of the CIA’s torture program and the years-long effort to release a public version of the report – has completely failed. In March 2014, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the committee, accused the CIA of spying on its committee, intimidating its employees and trying to block the disclosure of the torture report.
Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Intelligence Committee at the time and now, did not directly answer questions about Muir. But in a statement to BuzzFeed News, he said, “The American people deserve transparency about the origins of high-level intelligence officers who, in addition to directly informing the president, work for the public.”