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The Director of National Intelligence appointed a CIA agent. Veteran amid delays in Congress to approve cash for a new supervisor of threats to U. S. foreign policy. USA

By Julian E. Barnes

WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Avril D. Haines has appointed a new r to oversee threats to the election, playing a critical role in the country’s efforts to counter foreign election interference, she said Friday.

The new r, Jeffrey Wichman, who worked at the CIA for more than 3 decades, will take over as head of election threats in the position of director of national intelligence next week, said Nicole de Haay, spokeswoman for the director of national intelligence. intelligence.

Individual intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency and U. S. Cyber Command. U. S. officials have already begun intensifying monitoring of electoral threats ahead of this year’s midterm elections. But without a new executive on election threats, some on Capitol Hill feared progress would stall, coordination had waned. , and the analytical differences had not been resolved.

Wichman’s appointment came after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was forced to delay plans to create a foreign malicious center of influence that would oversee foreign efforts to influence the election and U. S. policy in general. The creation of this center slowed down due to disagreements on Capitol Hill. Hill on the scale of the effort and its funding.

Mr. Wichman is most recently director of research at the CIA’s Counterintelligence Mission Center and in the past served as a senior cyber analyst in the agency’s Digital Innovation Directorate. a leadership position at CIA. school that trains analysts.

Once Congress approves the investment for the broader means of malicious influence, the election threats led by Mr. Wichman will be incorporated into the new group.

“While we are competing with Congress to secure investments for the center, the intelligence network continues to aim to combat malicious foreign influence,” de Haay said.

The main objective of the new executive is to create a common vision of what constitutes a malicious electoral influence. In 2020, Republicans and Democrats lamented that intelligence agencies used other criteria to judge the efforts of Russia and China. Some analysts were reluctant to classify China trying to assert its prospects as influence operations and warned that intelligence agencies needed a non-unusual standard.

Warnings this week in Britain and Canada about Chinese efforts to influence lawmakers in those countries have made doubts about malicious influence and electoral threats more acute.

Government intelligence analysts are still assessing the evolution of foreign threats ahead of this year’s midterm elections. But a senior intelligence official said the corporations were conducting campaigns for foreign countries, efforts “that come with manipulating data and laundering outdated narratives. “

Expanding those efforts, the senior official said, threatens to make the public more vulnerable to manipulation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the operations of intelligence agencies, many of whose paintings are classified.

Prior to the announcement of Wichman’s appointment, some former intelligence officials and Capitol Hill advisers had raised questions about whether Biden’s administration had done enough to assemble an election defense team.

Shelby Pierson was named Election Threat Executive in 2019 after presenting security concerns surrounding the 2018 midterm elections. But because of President Donald J. Trump’s sensibilities in discussions about Russian interference in the election, the task became temporarily daunting.

Ms. Pierson led a February 2020 briefing to Congress that, as should be reported, Russia’s crusade for electoral influence continued. But Trump’s anger over the briefing eventually led to the firing of acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire. The Trump Subsequently, management prevented Ms. Pierson from reporting to Congress.

Ms. Pierson remained from the beginning of Biden’s tenure until the end of her mission. In September, he assumed a leadership position at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

Intelligence officials said that even in the absence of Pierson, whose departure was previously reported by The Associated Press, the coordination agencies’ tasks and reporting to Congress had continued.

But some congressional aides said leaving the task empty for four months was a missed opportunity to temporarily repair the damage done to the office at the end of the Trump administration, when Pierson refrained from reporting to Congress.

Other former intelligence officials said the leadership vacuum disrupted much of the coordination operation. Without an election risk officer, data sharing between various intelligence agencies has proved difficult.

Part of the explanation for why the post wasn’t filled without delay is that intelligence officials intended to expand the executive’s election threat team to a broader medium of malicious foreign influence. Halfway through, Congress hasn’t funded it yet.

The malicious center of influence originally led through Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, who is now chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. The center, Reed said this week, would handle either foreign efforts to influence elections and “counter the full diversity of those threats, which continue to evolve. “

It would be about a number of countries seeking to influence the United States, not just China and Russia.

As intelligence agencies try to fight malicious influence campaigns, Reed said there wasn’t enough coordination between departments. Since the midterm election technique and other countries seek to use data warfare to undermine infrastructure, the economy, and the military, it is imperative. you have to make the medium work, he said.

Last year, Haines, the director of national intelligence, proposed reassigning positions to create a small center that could accommodate up to 15 other people without adding new jobs, congressional aides said.

But Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have raised questions about whether a new effort can be legally funded through such a maneuver, according to congressional aides. And the House Appropriations Committee asked Ms. Haines a series of questions.

“The initial. la DNI application lacked main points about the center’s operations, duration and scope, and had questions that I didn’t answer,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Min. House assignments. .

For now, with the federal government operating under an interim termination bill, the new center cannot be created and it’s unclear whether Congress will approve long-term completion spending before the end of the fiscal year in September. McCollum said he included investment for the outlet in this year’s defense completion bill, but without a deal between the House and Senate, the bill remains stalled.

“It is transparent that disinformation and incorrect information pose a serious risk to national security,” he said, “and I will continue to work with D. N. I. to finance appropriate solutions. “

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