A12 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020
YWASHINGTON — During his confir-
mation hearing in May to oversee the na-
tion’s spy agencies, John Ratcliffe, then a
lawmaker from Texas, promised sena-
tors skeptical of his vocal support for
President Trump that he would be “en-
tirely apolitical as the director of national
intelligence.”
A few months into his tenure, Mr. Rat-
cliffe has emerged as anything but. He
has approved selective declassifications
of intelligence that aim to score political
points, left Democratic lawmakers out of
briefings, accused congressional oppo-
nents of leaks, offered Republican opera-
tives top spots in his headquarters and
made public assertions that contradicted
professional intelligence assessments.
None of the moves have dismayed his
critics, or intelligence officials inside the
C.I.A. and the National Security Agency,
as much as Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to re-
lease unverified intelligence last week
that mentioned Hillary Clinton. Intelli-
gence professionals said the material
could be Russian disinformation, but
even if its substance — that Russian in-
telligence had information that Mrs.
Clinton’s 2016 campaign planned to tie
Mr. Trump to the Kremlin’s election
hacks — were true, it hardly demonstrat-
ed anything nefarious about her.
No matter. Republicans claimed it
showed Mrs. Clinton was part of a “deep
state” plot to undermine the president by
investigating his campaign’s ties to Rus-
sia, and Mr. Trump made a glancing ref-
erence to the unverified intelligence in
the first presidential debate.
Gina Haspel, the director of the C.I.A.,
opposed the declassifications, saying
that the release of the unverified raw ma-
terial could jeopardize spies’ ability to
gather intelligence and endanger their
sources, according to two people familiar
with the matter. But Mr. Ratcliffe, who
has the authority to release intelligence,
and Mark Meadows, the White House
chief of staff, favored the move, the peo-
ple said.
Mr. Ratcliffe’s tenure is the latest ex-
ample of how the Trump presidency has
thrust the intelligence community into a
charged political role, much of it stem-
ming from Mr. Trump’s enmity toward
intelligence and law enforcement scru-
tiny of his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.
“We have never seen a senior intelli-
gence official so politicized as Ratcliffe,”
said Marc Polymeropoulos, the former
head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine opera-
tions in Europe and Russia. “When the
head of the C.I.A. pleads to not disclose
information, it is extraordinary that he
wanted to push forward.”
Amid the renewed push for more dis-
closures, Mr. Ratcliffe is preparing to re-
lease more material, according to three
current and former American officials.
The releases so far have been aimed at
discrediting the Obama administration
and trying to undercut the intelligence
community assessment that showed
Russia favored Mr. Trump and worked to
help him get elected in 2016.
The president has long taken issue
with that finding, released by the intelli-
gence agencies in the final days of the
Obama administration. His allies, led by
Representative Devin Nunes of Califor-
nia, the top Republican on the House In-
telligence Committee, have long sought
to declassify intelligence that they be-
lieve undercuts the finding.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Ratcliffe de-
clined to comment. The C.I.A. declined to
comment.
Mr. Trump has made the disclosures a
priority as the election nears. He claimed
on Thursday that last year he had declas-
sified “everything” related to the Russia
investigation, then railed against un-
named officials impeding the release of
the information. “There’s not a docu-
ment they can’t have, but it’s still not that
easy,” Mr. Trump told Fox Business Net-
work. “You have a ‘deep state’; you have
a group of people that don’t want to have
documents shown.”
Some Republicans blamed Ms.
Haspel. Senators Ron Johnson of Wis-
consin and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa
wrote to her in a letter released on
Wednesday that they were “increasingly
disappointed” that she had failed to pro-
vide them with documents they wanted
about the F.B.I.’s 2016 investigation into
Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign.
Mr. Ratcliffe, with little warning to the
C.I.A., released more material this week,
prompting a torrent of complaints from
Mr. Trump on Twitter about the Russia
investigation and calls for even more re-
leases.
Some of the additional intelligence Mr.
Trump, Mr. Nunes and Mr. Ratcliffe want
to disclose is contained in secret docu-
ments based on the House Republicans’
2018 report on Russia’s election interfer-
ence campaign, according to current and
former officials.
The report, dismissed by Democrats
as distorted, criticized the tradecraft of
the intelligence community and said
Russia’s goals in 2016 were simply to“sow chaos and discord,” not to favor Mr.
Trump. It also raised questions about
that intelligence conclusion.
The secret documents contain Repub-
lican allegations of wrongdoing by senior
officials in the Obama administration, ac-
cording to a person familiar with the doc-
uments. They also have sensitive ma-
terial about intelligence sources that the
C.I.A. relied on to investigate Russia’s in-
terference campaign, as well as material
from the F.B.I. and the National Security
Agency, according to two other people fa-
miliar with the outlines of the docu-
ments. Republicans believe the informa-
tion backs their criticism of the handling
of the Russia investigation by the C.I.A.
and the F.B.I.
The information is so sensitive that
Republicans on the House Intelligence
Committee keep the documents in a lock-
box in a vault in C.I.A. headquarters in
Langley, Va. — prompting some intelli-
gence officials to call the lockbox a tur-
ducken. Others likened it to a bank safe
deposit box.
Mr. Ratcliffe visited Langley at least
once, in August, to open the lockbox and
read the Republican documents, accord-
ing to three people familiar with his visit.
He most likely already had a road map
to its contents. A number of Republican
veterans of the Intelligence Committee
staff now work in senior jobs in his office
and on the National Security Councilstaff. Some would have been certain to
know at least the broad outlines of the
documents.
And Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in June to the
committee to announce that he was do-
ing a declassification review and seeking
an unredacted copy of the 2018 report. In
a letter 10 days later acquiescing to the
request, Representative Adam B. Schiff,
Democrat of California and the panel’s
chairman, cautioned that the Republican
report “sought to whitewash” Russia’s
election interference and warned Mr.
Ratcliffe against resuscitating “this mis-
leading attack.”
Weeks later, in early August, Mr. Rat-
cliffe’s office sought, and received, per-
mission from the committee to read the
secret documents and annexes related to
the report and stored at the C.I.A., said a
person briefed on the request. Demo-
crats have still not seen the documents
themselves: Republicans are blocking
Democrats on the panel from seeing
them.
The Democrats on the House commit-
tee would most likely object to the re-
lease of all or part of the documents, leav-
ing Mr. Ratcliffe the option instead of de-
classifying the underlying intelligence.
Mr. Ratcliffe, current and former intel-
ligence officials said, endangers the
agencies’ intelligence collection network
with his aggressive declassifications by
risking the exposure of C.I.A. sourcesand National Security Agency methods
of intelligence gathering. A memo he de-
classified on Tuesday, for example, could
give Russian intelligence important
clues about how the C.I.A. gathered in-
formation in 2016, according to two peo-
ple familiar with the intelligence.
Presidents and their senior officials
rely on intelligence to make decisions
about sending troops into battle, disman-
tling terrorist plots and other national se-
curity issues. It is supposed to be based
on facts, and intelligence professionals
believe that if politics color their assess-
ments, they are less reliable.
Some former senior intelligence offi-
cials accused Mr. Ratcliffe of advancing
Mr. Trump’s personal agenda and, in the
process, politicizing the traditionally
apolitical intelligence community.
“He is doing exactly what the adminis-
tration brought him in to do as D.N.I.,”
said Joseph Maguire, whom Mr. Trump
dismissed as acting director of national
intelligence in February.
Releasing raw intelligence also hurts
Republicans’ case and gives the appear-
ance of partisanship, said Dan Hoffman,
a former C.I.A. officer and Fox News
commentator. The material declassified
by Mr. Ratcliffe last week was a “single
thread” of an intelligence report, rather
than a complete, verified analysis, he
said.
“The most professional analysis is
based on all source intelligence,” Mr.
Hoffman said. “The D.N.I. should know
the release of raw reporting without con-
text runs the risk of giving ammunition
to those who argue he is politicizing his
office.”
Trump administration officials said
the declassifications were meant to dem-
onstrate the partisanship of the Obama
administration as officials began investi-
gating Mr. Trump and his campaign.
They have accused former senior intelli-
gence officials, like the former C.I.A. di-
rector John O. Brennan, of confirmation
bias, reading the worst into the informa-
tion they gathered and casting aside evi-
dence that complicated their view.
Mr. Trump and his allies also believe
the material shows a double standard of
more scrutiny applied to the Trump cam-
paign’s ties to Russia than to material
and intelligence that involved the Clin-
ton campaign.
But the evidence has made plain how
Russia conducted extensive election
sabotage operations that supported Mr.
Trump and that his advisers welcomed
the effort, Mr. Polymeropoulos said. “It is
so blatantly obvious what occurred,” he
said.
Though the C.I.A. and the National Se-
curity Agency have already objected to
Mr. Ratcliffe’s declassifications and
would almost certainly try to block fur-
ther releases, Mr. Trump has also given
Attorney General William P. Barr the au-
thority to declassify intelligence agen-
cies’ secrets as part of the Justice De-
partment investigation into the origin of
the Russia inquiry.
Some former and current officials ex-
pressed concern that Republicans might
try to undermine the C.I.A.’s key sources,
pointing to the recent release of informa-
tion meant to discredit an F.B.I. inform-
ant who played a central role in compil-
ing a dossier on Mr. Trump’s ties to Rus-
sia. Among the secrets that some former
officials believe could be declassified in-
volve a critical C.I.A. informant who
helped shore up the conclusion that Mr.
Putin favored Mr. Trump’s election.
If he were to declassify that informa-
tion, Mr. Ratcliffe could be seeking to
highlight counterintelligence concerns
about the informant, who was resettled
to the United States after agency officials
became concerned about his safety.
When his name was revealed publicly
last year, the C.I.A. had to move him a
second time.Trump’s Spy Chief Pledged to Stay Out of Politics. He Hasn’t.
Approving Releases of Intelligence to Score Partisan Points
By JULIAN E. BARNES
and ADAM GOLDMANJohn Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, dismayed critics by disclosing unverified material last week.GABRIELLA DEMCZUK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMaggie Haberman contributed reporting
from New York, and Eric Schmitt from
Washington.
Protecting intact peatlands and re-
storing degraded ones are crucial steps if
the world is to counter climate change,
European researchers said Friday.
In a study, they said peat bogs, wet-
lands that contain large amounts of car-
bon in the form of decaying vegetation
that has built up over centuries, could
help the world achieve climate goals like
the limit of 2 degrees Celsius of postin-
dustrial warming that is part of the 2015
Paris agreement.
But without protection and restoration
efforts, some targets for greenhouse gas
emissions “would be very difficult or
nearly impossible to achieve,” said Alex-
ander Popp, an author of the study, which
was published in Environmental Re-
search Letters. Dr. Popp is a senior scien-
tist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research in Germany, where he
leads a group studying land-use issues.
Peatlands exist around the world, in
tropical as well as colder regions. They
make up only about 3 percent of global
land area, but their deep layers of peat
are practically treasure chests of carbon,
overall containing roughly twice as
much as the world’s forests.
In pristine bogs, that carbon remains
soggy and intact. But when a bog is dried
out, for agriculture or other reasons, the
carbon starts to oxidize and is released to
the atmosphere as planet-warming car-
bon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
That process potentially can continue
for centuries. Current estimates are that
drained peatlands worldwide emit as
much carbon dioxide annually as global
air travel.
But dry peat is also a fire risk, and peat
fires have the potential to release a lot of
carbon very quickly. In September and
October 2015, peat fires in Indonesia,
where bogs have long been drained for
palm oil plantations and other purposes,
released more carbon dioxide per day
than all the fossil fuels burned in the Eu-
ropean Union.
Dried peatlands could be restored by
allowing them to become wet again,
which would saturate the decaying vege-
tation and prevent further release of car-
bon dioxide, and also eliminate the fire
hazard.
“Rewetting them is really the core for
reaching mitigation targets,” Dr. Popp
said.
Most pathways for countering climate
change predict that by the end of this
century, land use, which includes forestsand agriculture, would be a net carbon
sink, meaning it would store more car-
bon than the amount being released to
the atmosphere. That would slow the
process of global warming.
But most of those pathways do not
take emissions from degraded peatland
into account, the researchers said. When
they plugged peatland data into their
own land-use model, they found that land
use would be a net carbon source, releas-
ing more carbon dioxide than was stored.
The researchers then calculated that
protecting pristine wetlands and rewet-
ting about 60 percent of the degradedones would reverse that, making land
use a net sink again.
Mike Waddington, a peat researcher
at McMaster University in Hamilton, On-
tario, who was not involved in the work,
said the study “makes a very compelling
case” in favor of restoring peatlands.
“Despite covering a small area, they
really pack a carbon punch when it
comes to carbon storage in ecosystems,”
Dr. Waddington said. “They are really
important in global climate regulation.”
He said the study made an important
point: In current pathways for changing
land use to aid the climate, throughplanting more trees or other measures,
peatlands are often considered expend-
able.
“When we think about storing carbon
in ecosystems, it’s almost always about
planting trees,” Dr. Waddington said.
There’s often tremendous pressure to
plant trees in drained peatlands, he said,
but that’s the wrong choice given the car-
bon-storing ability of an intact bog.
Peat bogs are usually dried by digging
ditches through them, which allows the
water to drain away. In addition to con-
version to croplands, tree plantations or
forests, some peatlands are drained so
the peat can be extracted for use in horti-
culture or even, in some parts of the
world, for fuel.
“You only have to drain 10 to 15 percent
of a peatland and start extracting peat to
turn that entire system into a source,” Dr.
Waddington said.
Restoring them could be accom-
plished by blocking the ditches or build-
ing berms to keep the peat saturated, he
said.
In the study, the researchers found
that there was considerable uncertainty
in estimates of the costs of protecting
and restoring peatlands. But even if the
costs were at the high end, the basic find-
ing of the research was unchanged, they
said.
“In a way it’s the low-hanging fruit,”
Dr. Waddington said.They’re Squishy and Pungent
And an Essential Ingredient
Of Fighting Climate Change
By HENRY FOUNTAINPeat bogs contain about
twice as much carbon as
the world’s forestlands.
Peatlands scorched by an April wildfire in the Netherlands. Blazes in dry peat
bogs can release a great deal of carbon into the atmosphere very quickly.SEM VAN DER WAL/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK