UNCLASSIFIED January 11, 2020 The Honorable Michael K. Atkinson Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Washington, D.C. 20511 Dear Inspector General Atkinson: House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Ranking Member Jim Jordan, and I sent you a letter on September 30, 2019, requesting documents, communications, and written responses to numerous questions related to the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community’s (ICIG) handling of the August 12, 2019 whistleblower complaint. 1 Specifically, our letter stated: “The ICIG should view this letter as a preservation order for all documents and communications from your office related to the matters discussed herein.” To date, your office has provided incomplete or unsatisfactory responses to many of our questions, and completely failed to respond to others. Your refusal to fully and candidly comply with our information request is troubling. If your answers are indeed accurate, it should pose no problem to provide the supporting documents that you are inexplicably withholding. Similarly, citing mistakes or deficiencies by your office, such as your explanation as to why the revised urgent disclosure submission form was backdated, is insufficient without the inclusion of the documents we’ve requested reflecting the form’s revision and approval process. Therefore, I request that you provide a consolidated response to the following questions that you’ve failed to answer, and submit the previously requested documents and communications as delineated below. • Who revised the ICWSP Form 401? a. Who reviewed and/or approved each of the revisions to the May 24, 2018 version of the form? 1 Letter from Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, and Jim Jordan to Michael K. Atkinson, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (Sept. 30, 2019). UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED b. Provide each revised version of the ICWSP form starting from May 24, 2018 to present, including all versions that show Tracked Changes and the identity of personnel who made each change. • When was the ICWSP Form 401 removed from any other internal or external resources provided to Intelligence Community employees? • Was the Intelligence Community workforce informed of this revision? If so, please provide the date, time, and substance of this notification. • Were the congressional intelligence committees notified of this revision? If so, please provide the date, time, and substance of this notification. • Who requested discussions about making this revision? • When did discussions about the revision begin and conclude? • Who was involved in discussions about the revision? • Who was involved in drafting the revised form, and who was consulted in the approval process? • Did you approve this revision? If so, please provide the date of your approval. • Understanding that a complaint of urgent concern may be made to your office by various means, e.g., hotline, e-mail, hard copy mail, has it been your office’s practice to follow-up with a whistleblower and request that the whistleblower complete an ICWSP Form 401 or similar form? a. If not, or if a whistleblower declines to complete the form, has it been your office’s practice to complete the form based on the information provided to you by the whistleblower? b. If so, is this done for record keeping purposes or some other purpose? • Did your office complete any version(s) of this form on behalf of the whistleblower in this case? a. If so, which version(s) and on what date(s)? b. Please provide the completed form(s). • Provide all internal ICIG written policy guidance to ICIG personnel concerning the criteria for making a credibility determination in the case of an alleged “urgent concern” complaint, 2 UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED whether that guidance is in a formal memorandum or less formal form such as emails, since January 1, 2019 to the present. • During your tenure as ICIG, how many other disclosures to the ICIG were solely based on second-hand knowledge, and when were those disclosures received? a. Were any of those disclosures deemed credible by your office? Additionally, please provide answers to these follow-up questions: • As part of the rationale for revising the ICWSP 401 form, your office’s September 30, 2019 press release cited “recent press inquiries regarding the instant whistleblower’s complaint.” a. In your response letter to this committee, why did you fail to mention these press inquiries as a reason for revising the form? b. Describe the nature of these inquiries, when your office received them, and why you responded by revising the ICWSP 401 form. • Your response letter to this committee stated that the Center for Protected Disclosures had been reviewing whistleblower urgent-concern submission forms since March 2019. Please explain why, if the guidance language on the ICWSP 401 form wrongly excluded the submission of second-hand information, the Center’s review failed to discover and correct this significant mistake until a half-year later, after the submission of the whistleblower complaint in this case. • In your response letter to this committee, you stated that the revised ICWSP form was published on September 25, 2019, but was backdated to August by mistake because the revised form had been “preliminarily approved” in August. If the revision had been preliminarily approved in August, please explain why it took somewhere between 3 and 7 weeks for your office to post the revised form, and explain exactly how long was the lag between granting preliminary approval for the revised form and posting it. Furthermore, please produce all records, including email exchanges and other communications, related to the drafting of the response to the letter from Leader McCarthy, Ranking Member Jordan, and me dated September 30, 2019. In addition, your office informed the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on October 30, 2019, of a conversation that occurred with the whistleblower on October 8, 2019.2 The information provided by the whistleblower to your office appears to conflict with public statements made by Chairman Schiff’s spokesperson regarding the whistleblower’s 2 Letter from Michael K. Atkinson, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, to Adam Schiff, Chairman, and Devin Nunes, Ranking Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Oct. 30, 2019). 3 UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED previous interactions with Chairman Schiff and/or his staff. According to The New York Times, Chairman Schiff “learned about the outlines of a CIA officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistleblower complaint, according to a spokesman.”3 Please provide any documents or communications your office has had regarding this matter, along with written answers to the following questions related to this apparent discrepancy: • When did your office become aware that Chairman Schiff and/or his staff had learned about the “outlines” of the whistleblower’s complaint prior to August 12, 2019? • Did your office ask the whistleblower about why their statements seemingly contradict Chairman Schiff’s spokesperson? If not, why? • Has your office amended its determination of the whistleblower’s credibility based upon learning about multiple instances of the whistleblower providing your office with incorrect or incomplete information? If not, why? Please provide the information requested above no later than January 17, 2020. If you have any questions, please contact Republican staff for the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at (202) 225-4121. Julian E. Barnes et al., Schiff Got Early Account of Accusations as Whistleblower’s Concerns Grew, NEW YORK TIMES (Oct. 2, 2019). 3 4 UNCLASSIFIED