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EXECUTIVE SESS]ON
PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW

OF:

SUSAN RICE

Wednesday, September 8, 2017
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, the Capitol,
commencing at 9:51 a.m.

Present

Representatives Conaway, King, Rooney, Stewart, Gowdy,

Stefanik, Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro, and

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Heck.

Aopearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

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For SUSAN RICE:

KATHRYN RUEMMLER, ESQ
NICK MCQUAID, ESQ.

LATHAM & WATKINS
555 11th Street, NW
Suite 1000
Washington, D.C.zOO04

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Good morning

This is a transcribed interview of Ambassador Rice.
Thank you for speaking to us today.

Forthe record,

l.rI,Ilforthe

staff of the majority

side of the House Permanent Select Committee on lntelligence. There's a
number of other individuals in the room, who will identify themselves as the
interview proceeds.
Before we begin, I wanted to state a few things for the record.

The questioning will be conducted by members and

staff.

During the

course of this interview, members and staff may ask guestions during their allotted
time period. Some questions may seem basic, but that is because we need to
clearly establish facts and understand the situation. Please do not assume we
know any facts you have previously dlsclosed as part of any other investigation or
review.
During the course of this interview, we'll take any breaks that you desire.

We ask that you give complete and fulsome replies to questions based on your
best recollections.
Right now, we are cleared for the Top SecreUSCl level, but please let us

know if your answers require you to speak to information classified at a different
level, and we'll make the necessary arrangements beyond that, if necessary.
lf a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your response, please let us

know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot remember,
simply say so.
You are entitled to have counsel present for this interview, and I see that

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you have brought

so.

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lf counsel could please identify themselves for the record.

MS. RUEMMLER:

Sure. Kathryn Ruemmler from Latham & Watkins,

on

behatf of Ambassador Rice.
MR. MCQUAID: And Nick McQuaid from Latham & Watkins.

Thank you
This interview will be transcribed. As you can see, there is a reporter
making a record of these proceedings so we can easily consult the written

compilation of your answers. Because the reporter cannot record gestures, we
ask that you answer verbally. lf you forget to do this, you might be reminded to

do

so. You may also be asked to spell certain terms or unusual

phrases.

Consistent with the committee's rules of procedure, you and your counsel, if
you wish, will have a reasonable opportunity to inspect the transcript of this

interview in order to determine whether your answers were conectly transcribed.
The transcript will remain in the committee's custody. The committee also
reserves the right to request your return for additional questions should the need
arise.

The process for the interview is as follows. The maiority will be given
60 minutes to ask questions, and the minority will be given 60 minutes to ask

questions. lmmediately thereafter, we will take a S-minute break if you so desire,
after which the majority will be given 15 minutes to ask questions and the minority

will be given 15 minutes to ask questions until we reach the hard stop.
These time limits will be strictly adhered to by allsides, with no extensions
being granted. Time will be kept for each portion of the interview, with warnings

given at the 5- and 1-minute marks respectively.
To ensure confidentiality, we ask that you do not discuss the interview with

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anyone other than your attorneys here today.
Our record today will also reflect that you have not been compelled to

appear. You are reminded that it is unlawfulto deliberately provide false
information to Members of Congress or staff.
And, lastly, the record will reflect that you're voluntarily participating in this
interview under oath. And, Madam Ambassador, if you would raise your right
hand now to be sworn.
Madam Ambassador, do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about

to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
MS.

RICE: ldo.
Thank you, ma'am.

At this time, l'llturn it over.
Mr. Chairman?

MR. ROONEY: My name is Tom Rooney. I'm from Florida. I'm here with
Chairman Mike Conaway and Trey Gowdy from South Carolina on behalf of the

majority. Mr. Schiff

is the ranking member on the minority, as you know.

I'll be asking the first set of questions, but I also was asked to go over the

parameters of what this whole investigation is about.
Chairman Nunes and Ranking Member Schiff have approved the scope of
investigation for the inquiry by this committee into the Russian active measures
campaign targeting the 2016 U.S. election.
While the detailed, six-page scoping document remains classified, the
investigation will seek to answer the following questions: What Russia cyber
activity and other active measures were directed against the United States and its

allies?

Did the Russian active measures include links between Russia and

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individuals assoclated with political campaigns or other U.S. persons? What was

the U.S. Government's response to the Russian active measures? And what do
we need to do to protect ourselves and our allies in the future? And what
possible leaks of classified information took place related to the lntelligence
Community assessment of these matters?
So, basically, as you can imagine, our responsibility here is to try to make

the lntelligence Community do a better job when it comes to protecting ourselves.
And so hopefully you wil! be able to share your insight and your expertise in these
matters and be able to allow us to write a report that hopefully is unified and that
we can share with the lntelligence Community moving forward.
My questions are pretty straightforward, and then l'll turn it over to
Mr. Gowdy. I'd like to ask you some questions specifically with regard to
unmasking.

MS. RICE: Excuse me, do I need to turn on the microphone?
Yes, Madam Ambassador, please, if you could push the
button.

MR. ROONEY: There you go.
I know that you're familiar with the process requesting U.S. persons to be

unmasked. ! know you are familiar with that process. So I wanted to ask you,
when you wanted to make an unmasking request, what was your process for when
you were the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. when you went about making that

request? What was your process in unmasking?
MS. RUEMMLER: lf I could just ask a point of clarification before
Ambassador Rice answers the question. ls it the committee's position that that
question is within the scope of these four questions that you previously read for

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the record?
MR. ROONEY: I think that, with regard to the possible leaks of classified
information that took place with regard to the lntelligence Community assessment,
I think that that's what we're trying to get at.

MS. RUEMMLER: Yes, okay, but the lntelligence Community assessment
related to Russian interference with the 2016 election, correct?
MR. ROONEY: Correct.
MS. RUEMMLER: So, at that time, Ambassador Rice was the National
Security Advisor. She was not, you know, the U.S. Ambassador to the United

Nations. So I'm not sure I understand how that question is within the scope.
MR. ROONEY: One of the things that

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and l'll let others chime in here

too, but one of the things that I'd personally be interested in is, when you're
making an unmasking request, we've seen from some of the other witnesses that
we've talked to and in full committee that with regard to certain agencies and
certain people their request was more specific and others was more broad. And
we're trying to get an irlea of whether or not the ones that are too broad need to be
more specific, not with regard to what was right or wrong. Because, clearly, there
was no guidance as to whether or nol, you know, one way was better than the

other.

So when we're writing our report to try to improve the lntelligence

Communit/s ability to do these things, should it be more specific.
And so, when I ask this first question of the Ambassador, of what was her
practice at the U.N. and then maybe as compared to as National Security Advisor,
it was, is there a difference.

And that's the line of questioning that I'm about to get

into. And I

understand what you're saying, but, I mean, it's more of, you know, sort of a

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technique thing. And so

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MS. RUEMMLER: Okay.
MR. SCHIFF: Would the gentleman yield for a moment?

MR. ROONEY: Yeah.
MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Conaway and I have discussed how to divide the Russia
investigation from the unmasking inquiry that the chairman is doing on his own

initiative. And we discussed that in connection with Ambassador Rice's
testimony. And I think our discussion was that she was going to be asked
questions about the Russia investigation, and thats why she was being brought in
under the auspices of the Russia investigation; that if Mr. Nunes wanted to ask

questions about the unmasking, that would be done as part of the unmasking
inquiry.

So I would think that, unless this deals with the Russia investigation, kind of
generic unmasking questions ought be saved for what Chairman Nunes is doing.
At least that was my understanding of what we had discussed.
Mr. Conaway, that's not your understanding?
MR. CONAWAY: Lefs go off the record.

[Discussion off the record.]
MR. CONAWAY: Back on the record.
lf the witness chooses to answer, the witness chooses to answer. lf she
doesn't want to answer, she doesn't want to answer. We get 15 minutes to ask

questions; you get 15 minutes to ask questions. And we'lljust go at it like that.
MR. SCHIFF: Okay.
MR. ROONEY: Just to be clear, there is a little bit of overlap with what I'm
trying to lay some groundwork here for and some of the questions that I have with

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regard to Russia and unmasking. So if you don't want to answer the broader
foundation questions, thats fine, but the questions that I had do specifically deal

with Russia and unmasking,
So I don't know what your side agreement was with

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that you think that it

was with Mr. Conaway, but I think that it's within the scope of what the four bullets
here are that you had with Chairman Nunes. So, again, I mean, you can

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MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Rooney, you're operating in good faith, and I completely
appreciate

that.

because that was

And hopefully these questions will be mostly about Russia,

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MR. ROONEY: I willtry to separate them out as best I can.
And, counsel, if you're uncomfortable with me, with any of the foundation
questions, then, you know

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MS. RUEMMLER: Well, just let me be

clear. I asked a clarifying question

about the scope of this proceeding today. I didn't raise an objection. I didn't
instruct the witness, you know, not to answer the question.
What I do want to make clear is, she is prepared to answer these questions,
whether they're, you know, table setting, do not directly relate to Russia.
However, she's going to answer them one

time. She's not going to come back up

here for a separate unmasking inquiry. So I iust want to make that record very
clear.

MR. ROONEY: Okay. Okay.
Ambassador, I'm trying to sift through some of these questions. So I'm just
going to ask them again. I mean, if you object, then you object, but I would like to

continue. And a lot of these are "yes" or "no" answers.
Do you know roughly how often you would make requests for U.S. person

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information? And, specifically, do you recall making more requests when you
were the Ambassador of the U.N. versus the NSC?

MS. RICE: I think itd be helpfulfor me to try to begin by explaining the
process and what I experienced as National Security Advisor.
MR. ROONEY: Please do.
MS. RICE: And then l'm happy, for context, to try to make comparisons to
when lwas U.N. Ambassador.
As National Security Advisor, I received a daily intelligence briefing 6 days a
week, Monday through Saturday. I had an lntelligence Community briefer
assigned to me for a period of a year, roughly, and that person every morning

would bring me my briefing materials.
On an average day, I received somewhere between 20 and 30 pieces of

intelligence. That would include the elements of the PDB, that would include
SIGINT, that would include HUMINT, that would include GEOINT, and it would
include finished products from the lC on various topics.
Over the course of a month, I received a relatively small number of reports

that contained minimized U.S. person identilies. And when and if I thought it was
necessary for me to understand completely and thoroughly the import of a

particular report to request the identity of a U.S. person, I would do

so.

I can't

give you precise numbers of how frequently that was, either when I was National
Security Advisor or when I was U.N. Ambassador, now going back almost 9 years
to the beginning of that time.
But what I can say is, as National Security Advisor, I took very seriously my
role as a consumer of intelligence, as a principal adviser to the President, as the

person responsible for convening the principals committee meetings on every

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national security topic of significance, and I read my daily briefings thoroughly and
scrupulously.
And I felt it was important, if the lC had deemed a report significant enough
to provide to me in the flrst place

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and they're selecting, by definition, a narrow

subset of the universe of what they could provide me -- as something that they
thought I needed to see, then I thought it was important for me to thoroughly
understand it.
And there were occasions when I received reports on a wide range of
subjects that, in order to understand it more precisely and thoroughly, I thought it
was necessary to ask for that identity. That would be a request that I would make
directly to my briefer. The briefer would take my request back to the agency that
originated the report. That agency would decide whether or not they would
provide that identity. !t would come back to me, orally only, through my briefer,
24, 48 hours, sometimes 72 hours later.
So that was the process that I experienced as National Security

Advisor. lt

was roughly the same as U.N. Ambassador. Obviously, I would have received a
somewhat different setection of intelligence materials as U.N. Ambassadoi,
although atways the PDB and the things that carne up in the principals committee
meetings because I was a member of the principals committee meetings as
U.N. Ambassador. But I had a broader set of responsibilities as National Security

Advisor.
MR. ROONEY: lf you could give us, like, a generic example of what would
sort of pique your interest as to why you would have to know the identity. Not
specifically, just generically. Like, what would you see that would make you say

that I need to know who that person is?

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MS.

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RICE: I could give you various types of examples.

MR. ROONEY: Yes.
MS.

RICE: But, for example, if there was a report that suggested that a

U.S. person was engaged in transferring technology that was either in violation of
import and export control responsibilities or laws or could have been used in a way
that might damage U.S. persons or U.S. interests, it would be important to know,
for example, is this somebody significant with the capacity and the means to

transfer that materialto a hostile govemment, or was this somebody, you know,
playing around on the lntemet who really didn't know or have such material.
Another example might be f, you know, I saw information that suggests that

a U.S. person was puporting to convey or undermine information regarding U.S.
policy

- undermine U.S. policy by conveying information,

or was conducting some

kind of independent policy role, that would concern rne, because we have one
govemment at a

time. We

have to be very careful about how we communicate

with foreign partners, whether friendly or adversarial. And so that might be an
example of when such information were of interest.
I could go on, but those are two generic examples.

MR. ROONEY:

Yeah.

I have a couple others that

I'lltalk to you about.

But was there, like, a discernible difference between when you were U.N.

Ambassador and with the NSC that you would notice sort of, like, trends and
differences of when you would ask for unmasking? Or was it sort of the same
ground rules that you would have with regard to

- were there any differences at

the U.N. versus the NSC?
MS. RICE: Well, I think the same principles apply. One respects the
irnportance of preserving confidentiality of U.S. persons. One asks those

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identities only when necessary to understand the import of a report. That, at
least, was my approach.

But I wouldn't hesitate if I thought it was necessary for me to understand

what I was receiving and to do my job as National Security Advisor effectively.
Obviously, I sought to do my job as U.N. Ambassador as effectively as possible.
I did, as I said earlier, receive a different -- somewhat different, not entirely

different, but somewhat different, universe of materials than my daily intelligence
take as U.N. Ambassador. I received a broader selection as National Security
Advisor.
MR. ROONEY: Did you have a designated staffer who would process that

request? And if you did, would their rationale for requesting unmasking be any
different than yours?
MS. RICE: No, I had no staffers involved in this process. I spoke, as

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said, directly to my briefer, both as National Security Advisor and as U.N.

Ambassador. And I was usually with my briefer in a one-on-one context.
MR. ROONEY: What would you say as far as what sharing information of
unmasked persons with, say, the media or leaking classified materialwould mean
for our ability to gather intelligence and for national security purposes? Would
you say that that would be harmfu!?
MS. RICE: Not only would it be harmful, it's illegal. lt's not something
ever

did.

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And I think, to the extent that classified material, whether unmasked

identities or other forms of classified material, are provided to the media, it's
extremely damaging.
MR. ROONEY: Do you ever recall being denied a request, in either of your
two roles, for a person to be unmasked?

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MS. RICE: I do. I can't recall exactly the specifics, but, yes, in the course
of my 8 years of service in the Obama administration and indeed during my
service in the Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of State For African
Affairs, as Senior Director For African Affairs, I do recall having been denied.
MR. ROONEY: Do you recallever requesting somebody to be unmasked
on behalf of somebody else?
MS. RICE: No, I never recallsuch a thing.
MR. ROONEY: And then, finally, on these foundation questions, have you
ever personally or through an intermediary shared classified information with
individuals who are not authorized to view such information?

MS. RICE: lhave no recoltection of ever sharing classified information
with the media.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
Specifically with regard to an article, which I think that you were provided

with, it was a New York Times article that

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basically,
Do

you know this article?
MS. RICE: What do you mean lwas provided with it, sir?
MR. ROONEY: They weren't?
MS. RICE: ! haven't received -MR. ROONEY: Are you familiar with this article?
MS. RICE: lwould need a little more specifics, if you don't mind
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
Moving on to

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Do you recallthis?
MS. RUEMMLER: We were provlded the opportunity to review this

particular intelligence report this morning. That was after the representations had
been made to us by staff that Ambassador Rice would not be shown any

documents. Nevertheless, she's prepared to answer questions about it this
moming.
MR. ROONEY: Okay. This is just general with regard to this U.S. person

t-MS. RUEMMLER:

Yeah. I would also note it's far afield from anything

having to do with the Russian interference in the 2016 election. But she's
prepared to answer the question.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
MS. RICE: Sir, if I might just ask, we had the opportunity to see these
documents very briefly before coming

you have them thatyou can share?

in. I do not have them in front of me.

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MR. ROONEY: Yeah, I'llgive you this one here.
MS. RICE: You all remain in possession of them. Thank you.
MR. ROONEY: This is, again, just to sort of try to get to a specific example
sort of give us an idea of, like,

where you
why this

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MS. RICE: Well, let me begin by saying that, prior to the provision of this
document, ldidn't recallthis particular report. lt does ring a vague bell, having
reviewed it just recently.
I can share with you the context and what

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MR. ROONEY: Okay

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MS. RICE:

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Here, my question or concem, il I did ask

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and I will defer to your information on that, because I don't have a

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specific recollection, but I might well have,

We have one government at a

time.

I took very seriously our

responsibility, up until noon on January 20th, to do our best to advance U,S
interests and protect our security. And when

-

And this was something that, frankly, worried me and, I think, other
administration officials in this window

MR. ROONEY: But to your recollection with regard to this or any of these
other examples that, you know, somebody may bring up, these unmaskings were
not used in any way for political purposes, like, to share with a political
opponent -- I'm just asking. I mean -MS. RICE: Absolutely not.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
MS. RICE: Any unmaskings that   -- l'm

you'llforgive

me.

sorry, I don't like that term, if

Any requests for the identities of U.S. persons that I made as

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National Security Advisor or U.N. Ambassador I did to understand the information
was being provided to execute effectively my responsibilities as the National
Security Advisor or U.N. Ambassador.
I never shared that information with other people, to my

recollection.

l

certainly never shared classified information. And I had no and would not have
any political motive. I don't even understand, to be honest, how you could
construe a political intent from something like

this.

I don't know -- how does that

work?

MR. ROONEY: Well, let me ask you a few more questions. This is with
regard to trying to tie that with Russia and what hopefully our investigation leads
us to.
MS.

RICE: I hope we willget to Russia, by the way, because --

MR. ROONEY: YCAh.
MS. RICE:

- that's the important

issue here.

MR. ROONEY: And, I mean, you know, just because l'm asking these
questions is not any kind of a leading inference that there was, you know,
one -- but, obviously, you know, just being in involved in politics, that allegations
are made about a whole bunch of things.
So with regard to

-

MS. RUEMMLER: Just for clarity of the record, given this is transcribed,
may I suggest that we mark this particular intelligence report as an exhibit?

MR. ROONEY: Yeah. Sure.
MS. RUEMMLER: Exhibit 1 I guess we can call it.
[Rice Exhibit No.

1

was marked for identification.l

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MR. ROONEY: Ambassador, in this New York Times article that's entitled
"The Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve lntelligence of Russian Election
Hacking," this report states that in the waning days of the Obama administration
some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts

to undermine the Presidential election and about possible contacts between
associates of President-elect Donald Trump and the Russians across the
government.
Do you know if the Obama administration sought to broadly disseminate

this information across the government? Are you aware of that?
MS. RICE: I am not aware of
contents of
and

false.

that.

I recall the report, as you read the

it. I remember, when I saw that report, thinking it was very far afield
lf there were any efforts by the White House to instruct the lntelligence

Community or other agencies to preserve and disseminate such material, I didn't
know about it, and lwould have thought I would

have. So I considered that report

at the time and still consider it to be inaccurate.
What ! do know, however, is that when the President in December
requested that the lntelligence Community produce the lCA, as it came to be, the
purpose of which was to compile and preserve for Congress, for the next
administration, and for the public what we knew at the end of the administration
about Russian interference in the election,

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It was not a directive, as the report in The New York

Times suggested, to my knowledge, from the White House to anybody to preserve
and disseminate documents.

MR. ROONEY: Mr. Gowdy
MR. GOWDY: Good morning, Ambassador.
I

want to try to thread the needle between your counsel's jurisdictional

concerns, which I think are legitimate. We want to stay within the confines of
what we've been scoped to

do.

And we're going to get to Russia, I promise you,

shortly.
But I'm not interested, from a factualstandpoint, in -- forgive me for using
the term "unmasking." We use it allthe

time. You prefer another phrase.

MS. RICE: Deminimization or a request an kientity.
MR. GOWDY: l'm probably not going to remember that phrase

-

MS. RICE: That's okay.
MR. GOWDY:

-

so forgive me if I don't say it correctly.

But l'm not interested, from a factual standpoint, for the identity of a U.S.
person that you requested when you were the U.N. Ambassador. But you are
one of the very few people on the face of the Earth who's ever been the
U.N. Ambassador, so l'm very interested in how you viewed your role to the extent
that you have successors and will continue to have successors. You have one
right now, used to be the Govemor of my home

State. So I am interested in how

you viewed your role and generally how you viewed requests for U.S. person
information when you had that title.

So I'm not going to ask you about anything specific. l'm not interested in
anything specific. But I am interested in whether or not you viewed your role as

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changing when you went to become the National Security Advisor, whether you
would have made similar requests, different requests as you transitioned from one
role to another.
So, with that background, how did you view requests for U.S. person
information when you were the Ambassador to the U.N.?
MS. RICE: Well, I tried to answer that, but let me try again.

MR. GOWDY: Allright.
MS. RICE: First of all, as U.N. Ambassador in the Obama administration
and in previous Democratic administrations and now similarly in the Trump
administration with Ambassador Haley, the U.N. Ambassador has been
designated a member of the Nationalsecuri$ Council Principals Committee.
So, as U.N. Ambassador, I had two distinct, broad responsibilities: one,
obviously, first and foremost, representing the United States to the United Nations,
to the world, representing our poticy, negotiating in the Security Council and the
General Assembly, speaking publicly on behalf of the United States.
ln addition, I sat as a full member of the principals committee with my own
voice and

vote.

committee as

I had a representative who spoke for me in the deputies

well. And so I participated in virtually every significant

policy

decision taken by the Obarna administration in the national security realm over the
course of

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years, including my 4-112 years as U.N. Ambassador.

I atso had responsibility for running a mission of U.S. personnel

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So ! had, as U.N. Ambassador, a
broader range of responsibilities than I think perhaps the average person
understands.

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So lwould read, as I said, in the context of the intelligence briefing that
received, reports that were provided to rne
me in both roles

- obviously,

I

everything is selected for

- that was relevant to my work as the U.S. Ambassador

negotiating with the other members of the Security Council or the General

Assembly on a day-to-day basis.

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I would also receive a selection of reports that related to the broader

national security agenda

-

issues that might arise in the principals committee,

issues that were on the U.N. agenda, issues of broad interest and that other
principals were receiving.
So that would be the contents of my

take. And if, in reading my take as

U.N. Ambassador, whether it was a report that was more relevant to my

negotiations at the U.N. or my responsibilities at the principals'table, I felt it was
necessary to request the identity of a U.S. person in order to understand the
import of a report, lwould do so.

As National Security Advisor, obviously, I had a different set of

responsibilities. I was the Presidents principaladviser. lwas the chairperson of
the principals committee. I was the person responsible for integrating and
coordinating and brokering U.S. national security policy decisions. So my
responsibilities included defense, they included intel, they included diplomacy,
they included budget, I mean, you name it, everything that you could broadty
construe as relevant to national security.

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So my take was different. I had very few of the kinds of reports that

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would have seen relevant to negotiations in the Security Council, though some, on
occasion, on hot-button issues, and more on the broader swath of national securi$
information.

And, again, I applied the same criteria, but my responsibilities were

different. I was responsible directly to the President. I was responsible to the
principals. I coordinated the agencies. And I was particularly sensitive to any
information that implicated a potential threat to the United States, to our personnel,
to our interests.
And, to that extent, my responsibilities and the pressures on me were
different as National Securi$ Advisor than they might have been as U.N.
Ambassador.
Does that help you to understand the difference?
MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am.
Do you believe you would have made more requests for U.S. persons'

information as the U.N. Ambassador or as the National Security Advisor?
MS. RICE: I can't be precise in making that iudgment. I don't recall the

numbers. But I would suspect that I would have had more reports that came to
me with minimized information as National Security Advisor, and I may have had

more reason as National Security Advisor to request the identities of U.S. persons.
Bul without, you know, being able to go back and refresh my memory as to,
you know, the universe of material that I saw -- again, 20 to 30 reports a day over

- over 8 years, I can't give you precision on that.
MR. GOWDY: Before we go to Russia - I promise I'm two questions

6 days a week

away -- for those of us who have never served in the roles that you have served

I

 I

24

and are new to HPSCI,'it might strike some as curious why an Ambassador to the
United Nations would have more requests to identifo U.S. persons than the head
of the ClA, the

NSA. I guess

l'm trying to understand why the U.N. Ambassador

would have a unique need for information that other agency heads would not have
made.

MS. RICE: Well, sir, you're -MR. GOWDY: And lget the U.N. -MS. RICE:

-

implying a bunch of assumptions that l'm not privy

to. So

I

don't know the numbers of requests that I made. I don't know the numbers of
requests that any other member of the principals committee

want to speak with certain$ on that

made. So I don't

topic. I don't know the number I made as

U.N. Ambassador relative to the number I made as National Security

Advisor.

I

don't have access to that information.
What I can say is that, as U.N. Ambassador, I had responsibilities that
spanned participating in the principals committee meetings and representing the
United States to the world, and I took those responsibilities seriously. I hope and
assume that my successors took them seriously.

And if, in the course of doing that job, I felt it was ne@ssary to ask for the
identity of a U.S. person, I would do

Thdt information would come only to

so. Obviously, I would do so judiciously.
me.

lt wouldn't be more broadly

disseminated. lt certainly wouldn't be leaked.
But I don't, on the face, find it striking that, if, in fact, as you suggest is the
case, the U,N. Ambassador made more requests than other members, that that's

necessarily unusual.
MR. GOWDY: All right. When I use the words "collude, conspire,

I

 I

25

coordinate," do those three words have different meanings to you, or are they all
essentially interchangeable? Because l'm going to try to use them alltogether,
but I want to make sure that you understand them in the context in which I use
them.
MS. RICE: Collude, conspire

-

MR. GOWDY: Collude, conspire, coordinate.
MS.

RICE: I think they're different.

MR. GOWDY: Tell me how.
MS. RICE: Well, I think "conspire" implies a conspiracy, which, as

I

understand it, is a violation of law.
MR. GOWDY: Depends on what you're conspiring to do.
MS. RICE: Well, help me out here, lawyers.
MR. GOWDY: lt's an agreement between two or more persons. You

could conspire to go to lunch, or you could conspire to commit a crime, but it's an
agreement -MS. RICE: You might coordinate to go to

lunch. t don't know why you'd

call it conspiring.
MR. GOWDY: And that's exactly why I ask. I want to know whether or
not you view those words separately, because I don't want to use them all the

same if you don't

-

MS. RICE: I do view them separately, and l'm happy to get into my best
attempt at a semantic dissection of

each. But I think "coordinate," to me, does not

imply anything necessarily nefarious. "Collude" begins to or may -- in fact,

definitely does, and "conspire" certainly does.
Now, thats just how I hear the words and understand

I

them.

I'm not

 I
purporting to give you dictionary definitions

26

here,

But they do strike me as

different.
I don't know if any of my counsel would want to say something differently.

MR. GOWDY: Well, this is the way l'm going to do it

then. I'm going to

ask the questions, and I'm going to insert each one of those words separately as

opposed to together. And if you get tired of me doing that, if l'm asking too many
questions, you can just say, all right, I get where you're going, and for these
purposes t'llview them all the same.
MS.

RICE: Okay.

MR. GOWDY: And l'm going to ask you about Donald Trump. I'm going
to ask you about Donald Trump's officialcampaign, those that were paid or
officially hired. And then I'm going to ask you about what I kind of consider to be
hangers-on or people who represent that they may have a relationship even

though they may not.
Before you separated from service in -- did you leave in January 2017?

MS. RICE: 20th.
MR. GOWDY:

Okay. Before you separated from service, did you have

any evidence or had you come across any evidence, or intelligence, for those who

don't like the word "evidence," that Donald Trump conspired with the Russian
Government to interfere with or influence the 2016 election?
MS.

RICE: Donald Trump himself?

MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am.

MS. RICE: Sorry, what was the verb you used?
MR. GOWDY: I think I said "conspire," but I better write them down.

MS. RUEMMLER: And I think you should limit your answers to

 I

27

intelligence, because that's what you would have been privy to.
MR. GOWDY: Well, but your lawyer raises a really good point. When

I

use the word "evidence," how does that differ from the word "intelligence," in your

mind?
MS. RICE: lntelligence would be material provided by the lntelligence
Community, in most instances classified, but something that lwould receive as
part of my intelligence take, as opposed to something I'd read in the newspaper or
as opposed to something that I might hear on the street.
MR. GOWDY: Well, your lawyer raises a good point, but it's going to

require me to ask you about

both.

Because if I don't ask you aboul the other,

then some of my friends on the other side may accuse me of not asking all the
right questions.
So we'll use the word "conspire." And right now we're just talking about
Donald

Trump. And we'll start with intelligence, and then we'llmove to evidence.
MS. RICE: So, to repeat the question, do I recalt seeing any intelligence

prior to my separation from government that indicated or suggested that Donald
Trump per se conspired with Russia?
MR. GOWDY: To interfere with or influence the 2016 election.

MS. RICE: I don't recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that
effect that I saw prior

-

of conspiracy prior to my departure.

MR. GOWDY: Now, it could just be the way I'm hearing it and not the way

that you're saying it, but you emphasized one of the words in that sentence. You
emphasized the word "intelligence."
MS.

RICE: lsn't that what you asked?

MR. GOWDY: lt is.

I

 I
MS. RICE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: But it's going to lead me to ask, was there something that

you don't consider intelligence, other forms of evidence? And I realize people
don't like the word "evidence." I just don't know what other word to use.
MS. RICE: Not that I specifically recall.
MR. GOWDY: Allright.

lnsert the word "coordinate." Evidence that Donald Trump himsetf
coordinated with the Russian Government. lntelligence first, and then evidence
second.
MS.

RICE: As opposed to people close to him?

MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am
MS. RICE: I don't recall intelligence or evidence to that effect.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. Well, l'llskip the next question then.

We've done "conspire." We've done "coordinate." How about we do
"colluden?

MS. RICE: Same thing.
MR. GOWDY: Same answer?

MS. RICE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY:

Okay. All right. So that's Mr. Trump himself.

We'llgo with the, for want of a better phrase, official campaign. I don't
even know who was offtcialand not official, but people that he either hired or
specifically asked to join his campaign,

MS. RICE: Potentially.

I

28

 I
MR. GOWDY: What do you mean by "potentially"?

MS. RlCE:

MR. GOWDY

MS. RICE: That's why we have a transcript. Don't ask me to repeat it
twice.
MR. GOWDY: And don't ask me to remember something I heard

30 seconds ago.
MS. RICE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY

MS. RICE: Are we talking about -- well, I recall concerns conveyed and

I

I

29

 I

30

So that would be an example of a variety of points of concern that came to

my attention related to General Flynn. I don't believe he was the only

one.

I

recall hearing concerns expressed about Carter Page and potentially others.
MR. GOWDY: You say

MS. RICE

I think

its been stated in the press that

-

and, in fact, acknowledged that

was among those

l, just for comparison, served on President Obama's transition

team.

I also

was an outside, informal, but close adviser during the campaign of 2008. And

I

don't recall I or others that were inside the campaign having contacts with the
Russians.
MR. GOWDY: Al!

right. Your answer introduced another word that also

starts with C, "contact." I assume you would agree contact can
either

-

sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's not benign, sometimes it's witting,

and sometimes it's unwitting.

I

 I

31

When you saw the frequency of contact, do you recallwhat anyone in our
law enforcement or intelligence communities did to determine whether it was
simply contact or whether it was beginning to veer over into the other
three -- collude, conspire, coordinate?
MS. RICE: I think that's, frankly, a question better directed to law
enforcement or the lC.
You know, if we get into the chronology of the Russia story, we can go into

this in more depth, but our principal interest and concern, as we first leamed of
what Russia might be doing, was to understand and get a comprehensive
lntelligence Community high-confidence assessment as to what was going on vttith
what purpose and objective. And that was what we sought from the lC.
What they did in order to acquire that assessment I can't state with
certainty, so I would suggest they'd be better positioned to answer that.
MR. GOWDY: Well, let's go ahead and go with the chronology. when did

you first learn of Russia's efforts to interfere with or influence the 2016 election
cycle?
MS. RICE: My recollection is that my first indication of that was through
press reporting in June of 2016 when the first reports came out of the DNC hacks.
MR. GOWDY: Having never served at the levels you've served in

government, is it unusual that you would tearn it from press reporting as opposed
to colleagues within the administration, or is that not unusual?
MS. RICE: lt's not

ideal.

MR. GOWDY: All

right. And once you learned via press reporting, what

I can't say it's entirely unusual.

was your response?
MS. RICE: I was deeply concerned, as were my colleagues in the

I

 I

32

administration. And we asked the lntelligence Community to provide us their best
understanding of what this was about. Were these, for example, something sui
generis, or were they the kind of thing we had seen in the past that was also
concerning

I

I
I
MR. GOWDY: You testified that was in the summer of --

MS. RICE: Mid-June-ish of 2016.
MR. GOWDY: Do you recall if that was before or after the hack of the
DNC's server?

MS. RICE: lt was

after.

I mean, what I'm recalling, if I wasn't precise, was

press reporting on the DNC hack.
MR. GOWDY: Okay.

MS.RICE:

I

MR. GOWDY:

I

Given that, do you recallany precautions

being taken leading up to the 2016 election cycle?

I

 I

33

MS. RICE

But to answer your broader question, yes, for several years in the run-up to

2016, as we'd seen evidence of Russian and Chinese hacking into various types
of systems, we took a variety of steps that I think you're familiar with both to warn

governmentaland nongovernmentalentities, to give them the tools through DHS
and FBI to pursue these types of intrusions and their perpelrators. And we gave
the executive branch, through an executive order, the ability to punish cyber
intruders through the cyber EO.
So we took a variety of steps, going back several years, as we saw more

and more of this kind of effort,

MR. GOWDY: All right.

Because you referenced the transition,

that you served on President Obama's transition team.

MS. RICE: Well, if I drew a line, I wasn't trying to, so just to be clear

I

 34

MR. GOWDY: I drew the line, the election -- pre-election, post-election
MS. RICE:

MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am.

MS. RICE:

I
MR. GOWDY: Both
MS. RICE: Okay.

 I

35

[10:50 a.m.]
MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am. Would you have been one of the advisers

that President Obama consulted with on how to respond to Russia's active
measures, whether or not to say something before the election or wait until after
the election?
MS. RICE: There was much more to it than

that.

But yes, I was involved

in the policy decision process on how to respond to the Russian intrusions.
MR. GOWDY: I do not doubt that there is much more to it than what l've

said, and you are welcome to -- I'm sure that it was a long analysis. So, to the
extent you can shed light on that, because one of the three things we do have to
look at is U.S. response, if there is anything you would Iike to say or you think we
would benefit from under that, we'd love to hear it.
MS. RICE: Okay. So if you'll allow me to elaborate in some detail.

I

mentioned that my first indication, as I recall, of information suggesting unusual
Russian activity was around mid-June in the context of press reporting. To my
knowledge, none of my other senior colleagues at the White House had had any
prior indication before the press reporting either. And when we received it,
obviously, the President was concerned, I was concerned, my senior cotleagues
on the National Security Council staff were concerned.

Lisa Monaco (ph), who was the President's

- was assistant to the President

but a Deputy National Security Advisor and the senior person in the White House

responsible for cybersecurity issues as well as Homeland Security and
counterterrorism, was asked by me and the President to work with the lntelligence
Community, to task them and to support them in their efforts to investigate what
was being suggested in the press reports, to shed any and all light as quickly as

I

 I

36

they could on what we understood this Russian intrusion to be about and, in fact,
to confirm that it was a Russian intrusion.
And so, over the course of some weeks in the summer, we were awaiting
with urgency whatever the lntelligence Community could provide us that would
illuminate our understanding of that.

The next day, as I recall, the President convened a smallgroup of his
senior national security officials, the intelligence leaders, the FBl, the AG, me, the
chief of staff of the White House, my two principal deputies, Lisa Monaco (ph) and
Avril Haines (ph), to discuss what we knew and to hear from the various
components of the lC and the law enforcement community what they knew, so
bringing this all together. And I think we had another meeting within the next day
or two, and all of this being in roughly the first week of August, where Secretary

Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, was also involved.

I

 I

37

And over the course of the subsequent days and weeks, we were focused
on several things, if I might describe them to

you.

First and very importantly, we

were still seeking a high-confidence, comprehensive lntelligence Community
assessment as to what this was all about.

I
And we were stillvery, very concerned to receive a

thorough and comprehensive lntelligence Community assessment of what this

was.

That is point one.
Secondly, we were very concerned that the States, the 50 States that were

responsible for protecting and preserving the integrity of our voting systems were
made aware of this information and were urged in the strongest terms to take
every possible effort that they could, with the support of the Department of
Homeland Security, to shore up the security of our electoral systems because
Secretary Johnson had shared that there had, even at that stage, been

- I think

he used the colloquial term "knocking" on the infrastructure of a handful of States
at that point.
Thirdly, we were interested in being in a position as quickly as we had this
lC assessment to be able to make the public aware of what we were becoming
aware of.

I

 I

38

We were also, frankly, quite concerned that they could take
release additional

-

- they could

steal additional information and release it or, even more

worrying, steal information, manipulate it, falsify it, and release

it. So we

envisioned a variety of ways that the Russians could be doing more and do worse
than what we believed they had already done. We wanted to deter the Russians
from attempting to do more.
And in that vein, as I think you may know by now, Director Brennan in that
very first week, in a previously scheduled phone callwith his Russian counterpart,

made it clear that we knew what was going on and that we were deeply

concerned. And President Obama confronted President Putin in China on the
margins of the G-20 at the end of a bilateral that they had one-on-one, to make
very plain we knew and that they better stop or that the consequences for Russia
would be quite severe. So we were trying, as I said, to deter further Russian
actions.

And then we also very much wanted to brief and enlist the support of the
bipartisan leadership of Congress, the Gang of Eight in the first instance, and
ultimately subsequently the Big Four, to hear -- to know what we

knew. And that's

why Director Brennan made aggressive efforts over the course of August and
early September to brief each of the members of the Gang of Eight

I

and to enlist the leadership of Congress

to help in conveying the message to the States, who were skeptical, some of
them, and the public that we had a problem and that itwas a problem on a

nationalbasis, on a bipartisan basis.

I

 I

39

We were very concerned, frankly, that, given the atmosphere, given that
Candidate Trump was claiming our elections were going to be rigged, given all this
swirl, that what we might say or do could be misconstrued as being a political
effort or political statement rather than a statement of fact in national security,
And we tried very hard to guard against that.
We wanted the leadership of Congress, therefore, as the President asked
them in early September, to join in issuing a strong statement of warning and

concern. So that was another line of effort that didn't bear fruit as quickly as -

or,

in fact, ultimately as we had hoped.
Finally, during the course of this period, we were also involved in crafting a

robust package of potential punishments that we might employ if the Russians
were not deterred and took further actions in advance of the election beyond what
we thought they had already done or, if we didn't see evidence of that, to use as
necessary after the election. So we were working on various forms of pressure,
sanctions, punishments at the same time as we were doing all of these things.
Now, if you want to fast-forward to late September

That was something
that we deemed a very important predicate to a public statement.

We had also sought, as I said, the bipartisan statement from the Big Four,
which took a very long time, we had thought at times might not materialize. And
when it did materialize, it was quite thin gruel, in my judgment. And meanwhile,
we were trying to persuade the States that they had a problem and that they
needed to seek support.

 I

40

This culminated on October 7th in the issuance of the public statement by
Director Clapper and Secretary Johnson about the Russian interference. And in

the period between October 7th and the election itself, we were watching very
carefully for any indications the Russians had done more and crossed further the
line that had been drawn.
I should say also that, on October 7th, when we issued that public

statement, I again

-

not

again. I called in Ambassador Kislyak to my office and,

at the President's request, conveyed to him to be

-

asked him to convey to

Moscow another direct message from President Obama to President Putin

reiterating and amplifying the warning that he had issued in China.
MR. GOWDY: Thank you.
I think we're out of

time.

So, Mr. Schiff.

MR. SCHIFF: Thank you.

Welcome, Ambassador, and ! appreciate your willingness to respond to all
of our questions today. And, also, I appreciate my colleague's

- I think you've

stayed wellwithin the spirit of what Mr. Conaway and I had discussed. I was

concerned at the outset that this may be solely focused on unmasking, which
would have been at odds with our understanding.
I want to ask you questions before I turn it over to some of my colleagues,

but just to follow up on some of the questions that have already been asked, you

were asked a number of questions about whether you saw evidence or intelligence
regarding the President's involvement in a conspiracy or collusion or coordination

with the Russians. ljust want to set the context with you, if I could.
Director Comey testified that, in July of last year, he began a

counterintelligence investigation into people associated with the Trump campaign

I

 I

4L

and what context they may have had with Russia. That investigative

responsibility wasn't part of your portfolio, I take it.
MS. RICE: No, not at all.
MR. SCHIFF: And would Director Comey brief you on the progress of his

investigation?
MS. RICE:

No.

So just

- I think it's important for everybody to

understand: We were not informed by Director Comey or the Attorney General
that there was an active investigation of anybody in the Trump

orbit.

We would

not have asked that question because, in the Obama White House, we maintained
scrupulously the firewall between people in the While House and contacts with
Justice about potentialor actual criminal matters. The only communication that
was sanctioned in that vein was between the White House Counsel and the
Justice Department or the FBl.
So we would not have asked that question. To my knowledge, we didn't
ask the question. And Director Comey did not volunteer to us, not only then but

through the duration of the administration, that there was an active investigation of
anybody in the Trump
concerned about

it.

orbit. I knew he was looking at this issue, that he was

But he never specifically shared with me or others, to my

knowtedge, that such an investigation was ongoing. And I learned about it

formally in the public domain after I left office.
MR. SCHIFF: ln terms of any information or evidence or intelligence that

you might have come across implicating in any way either the President or
anybody affiliated with his campaign, that would not have been a part of any
formal role in the investigation but, rather, something that came across your desk
by virtue of your other responsibilities?

r

 I

42

MS. RICE: My responsibilities for nationalsecurity, as National Security
Advisor, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: ln terms of a specific question about the President, were

you aware at the time of the meeting that has since become public between Don
Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and several Russians that have various
degrees of afflliation with the Russian Government?
MS.

RICE: lwas not.

MR. SCHIFF: During that emailexchange, information was offered to the

Trump campaign that was derogatory to Secretary Clinton. They were asked if
they would be open to receiving that information, and the response was that they

would love to get that information.
lf the Presidents.open call, which occurred around the same time, for the

Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, that they'd be richly rewarded, was
made with the knowledge of that approach by the Russians, could that be

evidence of the President's own involvement in some effort to coordinate or seek
Russian support?

MS. RICE: ln my opinion, yes, it could.
MR. SCHIFF: So whether or not things we have seen the President do
publicly were part of any coordinated effort depends on what other information or

evidence may be unearthed in our investigation or Mr. Muelle/s?
MS.

RICE: Absolutely. I want to be very clear that I was responding to

the question as posed, which was within the confines of my tenure as a sitting U.S

official. That's all I could testify to with any certainty.
MR. SCHIFF: You mentioned that at one point the leader of the Trump

transition team expressed concerns.

I

 I
MS.

RICE: The NSC transition,

43

Yes.

MR. SCHIFF: Oh, l'm sorry, the NSC transition.
MS.

RICE: The Trump NSC transition.

MR. SCHIFF: The Trump NSC transition team expressed concerns

regarding Ambassador Kislyak, contacts between General Flynn and Ambassador

Kislyak. Who were you referring to as the head of the NSC transition for the
Trump team?
MS. RICE: Mr. Marshall Billingsly
MR. SCHIFF: And when did this conversation take place?

MS. RICE: I don't recall precisely, but sometime early in the process of the

transition. So late November-early Decemberish.
MR. SCHIFF: And do you remember where the conversation took place?

MS. RICE: lt would have been at the NSC in some place, whether the
situation room or other classified facility where our teams were meeting.
MR. SCHIFF: And who else was present during the conversation?

MS. RICE: I'm not certain who allwas present because I wasn't there, but
I can tell you that I learned of this information through my colleagues, including my

chief of staff, who was the direct liaison with Mr. Billingsly.
MR. SCHIFF: And who was your chief of staff at the time?
MS.

RICE: Susie George (ph).

MR. SCHIFF: And what was conveyed to you about the concerns

expressed by Mr. Billingsly?
MS. RICE: As I said, the concern was -- let me put it this

way: What was

relayed to me -- let me back up.
Understand we're in the early days of a new transition. We are all meeting

 I
each other for the first

first

time.

44

time. We are all having communication and contact for the

Over the course of the entire transition, I had four separate meetings

myself with General Flynn where we exchanged information and I briefed him for

over about 12 hours.
At the same time, there were extensive contacts at the staff

level. I think

the NSC was one of the few parts of the bureaucracy that actually executed a real
transition in 2016. And we had Trump-led landing teams, and I say plural
because they changed in composition over

time. And, indeed, Mr. Billingsly

began as the leader of the NSC transition team from the Trump

conclude in that

side.

role. And they not only met with my chief of staff

He didn't

and my senior

team that I had designated to be on point for transition, but eventually they met

with other members of the NSC staff, office by office, to hear from the various
regional and functional offices at the NSC what was in their portfolios and et cetera
so they could make personneland policy preparations.

So it was in the context of one of the relatively early meetings between my
chief of staff and the head of the Trump NSC landing team that my chief of staff
conveyed to me, in the context of other things that had happened in these

conversations, that Mr. Billingsly expressed concern to them about the frequency
of General Flynn's contacts with Ambassador Kislyak and potentially the

substance of the contacts and, as I said, asked for background on Ambassador
Kislyak that he seemed to want to use to persuade Genera! Flynn that perhaps he
should scale back the contacts.

That's the best of my recollection of that. And it came, frankly, in the
context of other data points that caused me to be somewhat concerned about
General Flynn's potential contacts with Russia.

 I

45

MR. SCHIFF: Do you have any more detail you can offer, in terms of did

Mr. Billingsly describe how frequent the contacts were between General Flynn and
Ambassador Kislyak? And you mentioned also the content of the contacts. ls
there anything more you can tell us about the content that concerned
Mr. Billingsly?
MS. RICE: I can't speak with any precise recollection on

that.

The

contacts in terms of frequency were not once; they were repeated, And I think
Mr. Billingsly found that strange. My recollection, although I'm not certain about
this, was that he was concerned both about phone and potential contacts in

person. And I think perhaps -- ! don't know

-

that Mr. Billingsly was worried about

what he didn't know in terms of what was being said between

them. But I don't

recall, I don't remember hearing, you know, specific substance of the conversation.
MR. SCHIFF: You mentioned that you also had several conversations with

General Flynn. Did any of those conversations involve Russia or the Russian
Ambassador or U.S.-Russia policy?
MS.

RICE: Yes.

So, just to lay the context for you, we had spent a great

deal of time and effort over the course of the whole year of 2016 preparing for the

transition. My team produced over 100 briefing papers for the incoming
administration. I personally read and reviewed every one of them. And they
covered the waterfront of key issues that any incoming team would want to know
about, from budget of the NSC to personnel to structure to every policy issue of

significance. We also prepared memos that

-

on contingencies, things that we

envisioned could happen in the realworld that would be difficult, tough issues that
could come at the administration in their early months and ways of working
through those issues. We worked very hard and I'm quite proud of the amount of

I

 I

46

time and effort that my team put into trying to execute a responsible transition at
the direction of President Obama.
And so, when General Flynn was named to his role, we were actually in the
midst of the President's last foreign trip to Greece, Germany, and

Peru. As soon

as we returned from that trip, I reached out to try to introduce myself to General

Flynn and to congratulate him and to offer any and all support that we could

provide. I offered to make myself available for as many hours between that point
and January 20th as he found helpful or necessary. And l, frankly, found myself

chasing him to try to find time that worked on both of our schedules to provide that
handoff.
ln the course of the four meetings that I described, we touched on all the
major
one of

- major - policy issues that you might imagine. Obviously, Russia was
them. We touched, however, more superficially on Russia than might have

otherwise been the case. This was my judgment. We

-

he had all the briefing

materials provided to him on Russia, and those remain unchanged. We didn't talk
about Ambassador Kislyak, to answer specifically your question, but we did talk

about Russia as an adversary, as a threat to NATO. We talked about Ukraine.
We talked about Syria. We talked about lran and Russia in al! of those contexts.
But, frankty, we spent a lot more time talking about China in part because

General Flynn's focus was on China as our principal overarching adversary. He
had many questions and concems about

China. And when I elicited - sought to

elicit his perspective on Russia, he was quite

- I started to say dismissive, but that

may be an overstatement. He downplayed his assessment of Russia as a threat

to the United States. He called it overblown. He said they're a declining power,
they're demographically challenged, they're not really much of a threat, and then

I

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47

reemphasized the importance of China.
I had seen enough at that point and heard enough to be a little bit sensitive

to the question of the nature of General Flynn's engagements with the Russians.
And so, while I certainly gave him what he

- what I thought any incoming National

Security Advisor would need, in terms of broad strokes of Russia policy, Ukraine,

Syria, all of those things, I didn't go into depth on particularly
in the sort of

hard national security realrn. lfigured that he could become briefed on that when
he took office.
MR. SCHIFF: And during those discussions, did he ever bring up his

meetings with or conversations with Ambassador Kislyak?
MS. RICE: He did not.
MR, SCHIFF: And you didn't raise the subject with him, in light of what

Mr. Billingsly had told you?
MS. RICE: No, I don't recallthat I did.
MR. SCHIFF: There have been public reports about Mr. Kushner also

meeting with Ambassador Kislyak and General Flynn and having discussions of
setting up a secret back channel at a Russian diplomatic facility. ls that
something you were aware of at the time?
MS.

RICE: lt was not something I was aware of at the time.

MR. SCHIFF: Some have attempted to defend that as being a normal,
usual, or laudable practice to establish that kind of channel. What is your take on

the idea of setting up a secret channel through a Russian diplomatic facility?
MS. RICE: Quite frankly, when I read that report and to the extent that
thought it might be true, lwas honified. lt's inconceivable to me that someone

I

I

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48

associated with an incoming administration would seek to have a private channel
with an adversarial government designed to be hidden from the govemment that
he or she was going to represent in a few weeks' time.

And the fact that one would consider, if this is, in fact, the case
no independent knowledge of this

-

and I have

- using Russian communications to speak to

Moscow is hair-raising.
MR. SCHIFF: And what about the Russian communications makes you
say that?

MS. RICE: That approach, if it's true, would suggest to me that one places
more confidence in our principal adversary's interests and communications than

they do in our

own. And

it is deeply troubling to me that anybody responsible in

any way, shape, or form for U.S. policy would privilege the Russians over the

United States Government.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me ask you about some of the chronology that you went
over with Mr. Gowdy. When you initially learned about the hacking, did this

appear like another intelligencegathering operation that is no different than other
instances in the past of a foreign govemment wanting to know information about a
potential candidate, someone who might become the President of the United
States?
MS.

RICE: Obviously, we didn't know. We were concerned to find out, as

best we could, but we'd had sufficient predicates and precedents of that sort of

intelligencegathering for informationgathering espionage purposes that we might
have at first blush had a hypothesis that that's what this was.

MR. SCHIFF: Was it only in August that you learned that more than a
foreign intelligenceaathering operation, this was going to be an effort to use that

I

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49

data, to effectively weaponize it, to influence the outcome?
MS. RICE: I can't be precise in saying that

-

thats when I recall it most

clearly; let me put it that way

I
I can't say that we hadn't

-

as I said,

MR. SCHIFF: One of the questions that we've been trying to answer

- l'd

be interested in your perspective on it - is whether the Russian intention from the
beginning was to engage in an effort to influence the outcome or whether this
began as one thing, as a foreign intelligence-gathering operation, and later there
was some decision point made to utilize the data they had stolen. ln other words,
was it the Russian intention all along to gather the information for the purpose of
using it, or was there something that triggered a Russian decision to affirmatively
try to affect the outcome?

MS. RICE: I don't have the ability, based on what I saw while I was in
government alone to make that judgment with confidence. I can tell you what

I

now believe as a private citizen, aggregating what I knew while 1 was in
government with what I have leamed subsequently from public reporting, which
acknowledge may not be entirely accurate.
But my impression, looking at the full span of this, is that the Russians

were -- have been for years gathering information for information purposes from
U.S. entities of various sorts, governmentaland nongovernmental; that at some

I

I

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50

stage, presumably in the spring of 2016 or early summer, they took a decision to
become more actively involved in our election process, through hacking, leaking,
and potentially

-

although I don't know that we ever saw information suggesting

that they actually did this

- falsifying information or manipulating

our voting

system.
But, you know, somewhere along the line, I believe they took a decision to

do something more than simply gather information for intelligence purposes but to
involve themselves in our election affirmatively

MR. SCHIFF: lt was clear, I guess, in August that the Russian goalwas
going to be more extensive and involved than just gathering intelligence.
MS.

I

RICE:

lt was becoming clear.

and lthink we had

-

we did not have a comprehensive assessment to that

effect. And there were, frankly, some agencies that were less invested in that
reporting than others.

MR. SCHIFF: At what point were you confident of the Russian attribution?
When would you peg that, in terms of the calendar? When did you feel that you
had enough confidence about the attribution to discuss it publicly?
MS. RICE:

MR. SCHIFF: And was there a discussion going on within the NSC about
public attribution, when it should be made, who it should be made by, and whether
there ought to be an effort made to impose sanctions at the time of attribution?
MS. RICE: So let me take those in parts because they're not all one and

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51

the same. As I mentioned in response to Mr. Gowdy's question, we were very
eager and eagerly awaiting a

assessment. We thought it was very important because we had different pieces
of the

lC.

We had obviously DNl, ClA, NSA, FBI and others that had pieces of

this puzzle. We wanted those pieces put together, aggregated, and distilled

!

That was a very important predicate for

making a public statement.
And why did we place such high stock in that

assessment? Because that was the analytically sound approach, but also
because, as I said, we were Very, very concerned that we handle this issue in a
manner that was not only actually but perceived to be nonpartisan.
We did not want to play into any campaign's line that the elections were

rigged. We did not want to seem to favor one candidate over another, in
particular Secretary Clinton over Mr. Trump, and we didn't want to feed and play
into the Russian effort to undermine public confidence in our election process.
assessment we viewed

And so the

as an important predicate that would enable any statement of public attribution to
be more likely to be consumed on its merits as a national security matter than as a
political matter.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, when you say the

there

were different levels of confidence ultimately in the judgment about the Russian
motivations and how much was about taking down Secretary Clinton, how much
was helping Donald Trump, how much was sowing discord. But in tenns of the
fundamental issue of who was responsible for the hacking and the dumping of
documents, that was clear fairly early, was it not?

I

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52

MS. RICE: I think we felt very strongly that, to the extent that it was clear,
it was clear when the lntelligence Community agreed and had

that

it was clear

I
We were not trying to get into
telling the lC what they should say or when they should say it, except that we

wanted them to do it as quickly as possible and -- but do it as quickly as possible
with integrity and quality.
And, you know, much as we felt, as I know you did, a sense of urgency
about making this public, we really felt very strongly that we needed ideally two
things to proceed to public attribution: As I said, the

I

assessment; and, secondly, as you know, we wanted very much to

have this bipartisan Big Four statement released to underscore that this was a
national security concern, not a partisan concern.

MR. SCHIFF: The need to deter the Russians from doing more before the
election and the concem about the potential Russian escalation, how did that
factor into the decision about when attribution was made and when there would be
an effort to pursue sanctions?

And let me ask in this respect as

well:

The dumping of the documents

continued on an almost daily basis. What conclusion did you reach about
whether the warnings that you conveyed, that the President conveyed, were
having an effect or not having an effect because the dumping of documents was
continuing?

 I

MS.

53

RICE: So, let me take them in reverse order, and if I forget a piece,

remind me, please,

\Mth respect to the continued document dumping, our assessment,

I
\Mth respect to how deterrence and attribution

-

MR. SCHIFF: I'llask you, Ambassador, on that last point, though, for

cutouts like Guccifer2, which were considered to be arms of the GRU, how could
you conclude that any continuing release by the GRU was not directed, at least in
terms of its timing, by the Kremlin?
MS. RICE

I can't give you precision on Guccifer versus DCLeaks

versus

Wiki. Wiki, as I recall, was the principalvehicle in the September-October

timeframe, but I may be mistaken on that.

I

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54

To come back to your question about the interplay between deterrence and
attribution, we delivered the deterrence message as quickly as we thought we
could do so without compromising sources and methods. So we did it in the first
instance between Director Brennan and his counterpart on their secure phone call.
We did it again in early September, when the President face-to-face met with

Putin. And we thought that the President conveying a very pointed and forcefu!
message to Putin one-on-one was a criticalgating

opportunity, so we took

it.

step. And we had the

So there was not an interplay there.

Again, attribution was on a timeline that was affected really only by two
things, as I said: One, the

assessment,

which, frankly, took longer than we had hoped or anticipated; and, secondly, we
were hoping, although I think, if we had never gotten it, we would have moved on,
that the Gang of

-

that the Big Four would release a bipartisan statement and that

that statement would have been a bit more clear than it turned out to be.
With respect to punishment, as I said, beginning in August, we prepared a
very broad range of potential punishments in the economic realm, in the diplomatic
realm, in the cyber realm, and others. And we had a range of punishments. l've
used the analogy of we had it sort of heated to 300 in the oven, more cooked than
not, but not allthe way cooked. We had them ready, and we could have cooked

them to fully baked in short order at any point between September and the election
in November had the President taken a decision that our deterrence had failed and
it was time to punish.

We didn't want to punish preemptively for severa! reasons. One, we

thought, if we punished in the absence of evidence that they had done more than
they had already done before the warning, that we would have, in facl, precipitated

I

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55

worse behavior on their part than we, in fact, saw.

I

and we weren't trying to precipitate that.
Secondly, we really did not want to play into the hands of those who wanted

to undermine, in the public's mind, confidence in the election itself, the election

mechanisms. And we didn't want to do the Russians' dirty work for them by, you
know, frankly, freaking out the American public. Waming them, yes, but freaking
them out, we did not seek to do if it wasn't necessary.
And so we also knew that we had ample time to punish after the election if
punishment were the objective rather than deterrene,e. And as we issued the
successive warnings to the Russians, did not see evidence of escalation, a
decision was taken not to punish in advance of the election, knowing fullwellthat

we had the ability to do so after the election.
MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Himes.

MR. HIMES: Thank you, Ambassador.
MS.

RICE: Can I ask a -- excuse me, sir - a selfish question? How much

time do we have before we get a bio break?
MR. ROONEY: Whenever you want.
MS. RICE: ls this a good

time?

Do you

mind? Okay thank you.

IRecess.]

MR. HIMES: Thank you, Ambassador.
Jim Himes of Connecticut. I want to ask a couple of questions that will
paint a more detailed picture of the consideration of responses to the Russian
interference.

I

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56

Before I do that, let me go back and maybe "clean up" is the right word
something that caught my attention in an answer that you gave to Mr. Rooney's
question, a question by Mr. Rooney.
He asked you a question whether you had any recollection of sharing

classified information with persons not entitled to receive that information. Your
response was that you have no recollection of sharing classified information with

the media. The media is obviously a subset of those not entitled to receive, so

I

just -MS. RICE: Thank you.
MR. HIMES: ln orderto close a window for inference if it should be closed.
MS. RICE: I have no recollection of sharing classified information with
anybody not entitled to receive it, including the media but not limited to the media.
MR. HIMES: Great. Thank you.
MS. RICE: Thank you.
MR. HIMES: So, to the debate around the options for deterring or
punishing Russia, there was a Times report at the time that said that the Obama
administration

-

and l'm quoting here --

First, precisely who

was involved in the discussions of the options that were available?
MS. RICE: So let me take a minute or two to try to explain the process we
went through. First of all, in the period beginning in August, early August, through
the election, we held these deliberations in very tight circles, quite deliberately.

The circle expanded somewhat from early August over the course of the next 2

I

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57

months, but it was tightly held.
At the principals level

-

and thats the level at which I was responsible in

chairing the meetings -- we had in the first instance a subset of the relevant
Cabinet Secretaries and then ultimately the full circle of the relevant Cabinet
Secretaries, to include the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, U.N.
Ambassador, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, all the lntelligence leadership, and the
law -- AG and FBI and DHS.
But this was what we called principals-only discussions. So, prior to the

election, principals did not bring plus-ones to the meetings, which they might in
other circumstances have

- at least in some circumstances been allowed to do.

We had a very small subset of NSC staff involved in these discussions, three or
four or five at any one time.
At the same time, the deputies committee, chaired by Avril Haines (ph) and
some meetings also chaired by Lisa Monaco (ph) dealt with the pre-work that fed
into the principals process on vetting various punishment

options. Lisa's role was

primarily -- she sat in the larger princlpals and deputies meetings, but she oversaw
the work in the cybersphere in particular. Avril's (ph) deputies committee was

bringing together the economic pieces, the diplomatic, and the cyber, and also
potential covert action realm. And, again, very tight circles, not plus-ones.
There was some work done at the working level in the cybersphere to sort
of generate at a technical leve! these kinds of options. When I say "working
level," I mean Assistant Secretary level roughly, which is actually a little higher
than working level.
And in the economic sphere, we needed less input from the working level
because we'd, frankly, done a whole lot of homework on economic -- ways to

I

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58

punish Russia economically in the context of Ukraine. And so we had a whole lot
of options that had been generated for that purpose that could be utilized for this

purpose. And so we didn't need to do a whole lot of - we did some, but not a
whole lot of extra spadework.
And then, in the diplomatic realm -- and by which I mean, you know, their
facilities, their personnel, that sort of stuff

- we had also -

there had been some

work done over prior months because we had considered taking some steps
based on our frustration with the Russians about how they were treating our

personnel in Moscow. And I had had a separate discussion some months back
with Ambassador Kislyak warning him about the way they were treating our

personnel and saying that, you know, they should be prepared for reciprocity if
they continued. So we'd done some homework in that realm as

well. We

amplified it and built on it in the course of the process that I chaired.
So we had some meetings over the course of August and September on

this, maybe into October. And then, as we watched to see if the Russians
actually were not deterred from doing further, as I said, we were ready very quickly

to bring those various options to fruition; and in any event, after the election and as
we came back from the President's finalforeign trip and began the process of
transition, returned back to those options and refined them and ultimately made
decisions.

MR. HIMES: You've talked a little bit about the economic option. Two
other options, and I'll ask you in the end whether there were other options
considered

I

 I
MS. RICE: As I recall, they were discussed at my levelafter the election,
as we were refining the various tools we might employ.

MR. HIMES

MS. RICE:

II
I

I

59

 50

r
MR. HIMES: Which gets to my, I think, last question. ln late December,
there was what I would characterize as a modest package approved, the expulsion

of 35 diplomats, the closure of the Russian compounds.
Can you just spend a minute or two on why that was the particular option

settled upon? And part two of the question is, did you personally agree that that
was the right approach at the time?
MS. RICE: Well, the package, as I recall it, had multiple components to it.
One was, as you said, the expulsion of 35 diplomats, the closure of their two

facilities, one in the Eastem Shore, one in New

York. We

also did the public

attribution of the forensics of how they conducted the attack. There were
sanctions, including for the first time not just sanctions against individuals, but
sanctions against the Russian intelligence entities that we believed had conducted
the intrusions and attacks

So it was a package of things. We did consider more robust economic
measures, and I'd like to come back and elaborate on the considerations that went
into

those. But we, frankly, considered the package at the time, based on what

we knew and based on what we understood them to have done, to have been
rather significant. As I recall, it wasn't consumed at the time as modest, although,

with the benefit of hindsight and what we know as we've gathered further
information about what transpired, I understand why you may consider it that now.

The one area wherei we

-

let me share with you the considerations in both

I

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61

the economic and the diplomatic realm. ln the economic realm, as I suggested,
we had gathered a whole range of potentialsanctions that we could have
employed in the first instance in response to what happened in Crimea and

Ukraine. We imposed a fair number of significant sanctions as a result of their
actions on Ukraine. We did so in unison with and in coordination with our
European partners. And the aim was to find sanctions that we could

- that could

be minored on the European side, thus, to have greater impact on Russia. And
we were looking for sanctions that would hurt the Russians far more than they

might hurt the Europeans or ourselves.
And so we basically plucked all the low-hanging fruit in that universe, things
that would hurt the Russians disproportionately, not hurt the Europeans or

ourselves, that we could agree on with the Europeans, agree with the Europeans
on, and successively over months from 2O'14 had imposed those sanctions.
So we were left with a number of sanctions that, to use a term we

sometimes use in the White House, had hair on
low-hanging

fruit.

them. They were

not

They were problematic in one respect or another.

So there were

some that they didn't like.
There were economic options that were quite a bit more potent than
anything we had thus employed

- thus far employed.

We didn't choose to use

those, either for Ukraine, because we couldn't get the Europeans to go along, or
for the Russian hacking, because the Treasury Department assessed that their

I

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62

systemic impact on Europe and the United States would be very significant. So,
in other words, we plucked the low-hanging fruit of things that hurt them far more

than they hurt us or our allies. We were now into the realm of things that could
hurt us equally or even us more than the Russians. And Treasury's very strong
recommendation, again, as we went through this process in December, looking at
what more we could do in the economic sphere, was not at that stage to take
actions that they viewed as having very real systemic risk to the Europeans and to
us, as wellas detrimental impact on the Russians. So we

didn't. And I think, you

know, I have mixed feelings about that personally in retrospect, to be honest.
ln the diplomatic realm, we looked at expelling
wrong

-

- and I may get the numbers

but something like 10, 20, or 35 diplomats. Our Embassy in Moscow

and the State Department, even though they were the principal victims of all of the

Russian harassment that we had been experiencing over the prior months and
they had been advocating for this kind of stuff to respond, were very reticent to
PNG as many as we

did.

They were afraid that whatever we did, they would

reciprocate and then some. And we had less fat to cut on our side of the ledger
than we thought the Russians had on their side.

I supported the robust package, including the 35 diplornats, closing both the

facilities,

the economic sanctions. And I reluctantly agreed

with the Treasury Department assessment that we shouldn't at that stage go for

sanctions that had systemic risk, and as I said, l, with the benefit of hindsight, have

I

  

 

some misgivings about that particular part of my recommendation.

63

I

64

[11:58 a.m.]
MR. HIMES: Okay. Thank you.
I'm going to yield to the ranking member

now.

Thanks.

MR. SCHIFF: I just have one further question, and then I have a couple
colleagues who also have questions they wanted to ask.

MS, RICE

MR. SCHIFF: Thank you.
Mr. Carson.
MR. CARSON: Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
As Ambassador to the U.N., did you engage in many dealings with your

Russian counterpart?
MS. RICE: Daily.
MR. CARSON: Were there any specific challenges during those times?
MS.

RICE:

Daily.

I

 I
You know, I'm glad you raised

5s

this.

When you are the U.S. Ambassador to

the U.N., you are the senior American with the most frequent and intensive contact
with the Russians of anybody in our government, much more so than our
Ambassador to Moscow, who doesn't have access to people at the
decisionmaking level every day, much more so than the Secretary of State, who
may talk to his or her counterpart on the phone or meet them on the margins of

meetings. lt's daily. And its daily because we're working on issues of
significance in the Security Council, everything from, you know, Burundiand South
Sudan to Syria and North Korea.
I spent more hours with my Russian counterpart

when I was

U.N. Ambassador, by far, than with my husband. And I came to know -- I'm just

telling you the

truth.

I came to know him very

well.

Same with the Chinese,

exact same. And same with the British and the French. The P5
ambassadors

-

and we joked about this

-

might as well be married to each other,

given how much time they spend together.
And so I knew that everything I said to the Russian Ambassador, formal
and informal, might have been reported to Moscow. I knew to be very attuned to
what he said to

me.

Chinese. And so

I might want

to report it to Washington. Same with the

that was a very intensive, very consistent, very important

channel.
MR. CARSON: Madam Ambassador, as the facts bore out, President

Obama had, in fact, told President Putin to stop his meddling in our affairs,
correct?
MS. RICE: Yes,
MR. CARSON: Yes, ma'am.

I

 66

MS. RICE: Twice.
MR. CARSON: Hindsight being 2Ol2O, do you have any doubt that, had
the administration taken a public posture, you would be sitting here today?
MS. RICE: l'm sorry? I'm not -MR. CARSON: Hindsight being 2Ol2O, had the administration, the Obama
administration, taken action, a more aggressive action, do you think you would be
sitting here today, ma'am?
MS. RICE: Well, !'m not sure -- I can't answer whether l'd be sitting here
today, but would we be where we are today?
First of all, we did take action to publicly attribute this on October

7th.

lt

was a very unusual and blunt warning from the Director of National lntelligence
and the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Unfortunately, it was followed some brief hours later by the release of the

"Access Hollyrvood" tape and some further dumps by WikiLeaks, which may have
crowded the attention given to it in the media.
But we took very seriously our responsibility to inform the American public,
and we did so as soon as we thought we had the necessary inputs to do so,

assessment. So I think

principally the
we did that as best we reasonably could.

As to whether we should have -- and let me say also, I think we did as best

we reasonably could in terms of deterrence, in terms of delivering a forceful
message and watching to see very carefully whether it had been heeded. And
we, as I said, concluded that up until the election they did not do more than they
had or more than they could have particularly with respect to falsifying information,

manipulating the voter registration rolls or the vote tally, et cetera.

I

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67

So I'm not sure we could've done better on deterrence. That leaves
punishment and the question of whether punishing them prior to the election would
have been beneflcial. I can give you my own judgment on that, and I can try to
elaborate on why the judgments were made that were made.
I do not think, even in retrospect, lhat we should have punished them prior

to the election, for the reason that I explained in response to Mr. Schiff: that if our

goalwas to deter, first and foremost, further disruptive Russian conduct and we
thought we were having the deterrent effect that we desired and we'd then lobbed
a punishment at them, our expectation was that the Russians would have, in fact,

done exactly'what we were trying to prevent them from doing in retaliation. So
that didn't seem to be smart.
We also knew that, even if we saw no further evidence of Russian nefarious
actions before the election, it would be necessary to punish them afterwards. And
we were prepared to do so.
So I guess the short answer to your question, sir, is it's not obvious to me
what we could have done that would have prevented, beyond what we tried to do,
us being where we are today.

We can talk about whether the punishments after the election were
sufficient, and I think that's a live question for you all to consider as you weigh
what you can do from Congress or encourage the administration to
think

-

do.

But

I

and you all correct me if I'm wrong -- that, at the time when the

punishments were implemented, they were seen as relatively robust. And that's
how they were intended, with the caveat that I gave Mr. Himes in considering the

pros and cons of more in the economic sphere.
MR. CARSON: And, lastly, Madam Ambassador, prior to leaving your role

I

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68

with the administration, did you see any evidence that an entity other than the
Russian Government, directed actors, could have been responsible for the cyber
interference of 2012, in the election?
MS.

RICE:

No.

MR. CARSON: Okay.

MS. RICE: We only saw evidence of Russia.
MR. CARSON: Thank you, ma'am.

lyield back, Mr. Chairman.
MR. SCHIFF: Ms. Speier.
MS. SPEIER: Thank you, Ambassador, for your comments.
I'm going to ask this question because it's the elephant in the room,

oftentimes, from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but I would like to
have you on the record.
Did you ever request that a U.S. person's name be unmasked for politica!
reasons?
MS.

RICE: No, ldid not.

MS. SPEIER: Thank you.
President Trump, or, I should say, many in the administration, have

suggested that contacts with foreign dignitaries and foreign corporations in the
transition are customary. Was that your experience during the Obama transition?
MS. RICE: Foreign?
MS. SPEIER: Foreign leaders, fore(7n
MS.

-

RICE: Foreign governments.

MS. SPEIER: -- ambassadors.

MS. RICE: Foreign leaders, government. ln my experience, it was

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69

normal, customary to have contacts with the governments of friendly countries.
And, you know, we certainly did

- British, French, Germans, NATO allies, Asian

allies.
It was not normal, in my experience, to have contacts with adversarial

governments during a transition, apart from, you know, potentially receiving a
congratulatory phone call and, you know, indicating that, you know, the
President-elect, you know, looked forward to continued communication once he
was in office.
MR. ROONEY: Jackie, that's 60 minutes. We're going to go to our
15 minutes, and then you can go back to yours.
ls that correct?
Yes, sir

MR. ROONEY: So we're going to go to 15 minutes, 15 minutes now, and
we might have to break for votes in between. And then you have a 1 o'clock hard
stop.
Ms. Rice, ljust had a couple followup questions frorn allthe questions that

we've been asking here today. And I think that it's

-

and from other witnesses

that we've talked to before you from the previous administration.
I think that it's pretty evident, obviously, that we all agree that the Russian

involvement in our last election cycle is something that we need to focus on and
something that is obviously not going to

-

it's probably going to continue, with not

just the Russians but, as you said, maybe with other governments as well.
Have you talked to General McMaster about what you learned while you

were in his capaci$ as far as, like, trying to assist him in his job at all or
MS.

RICE: On any topic?

I

-

 70

MR. ROONEY: On any topic, yeah.
MS. RICE: Okay. So, as I mentioned, I spent

-

MR. ROONEY: I know you talked with General Flynn.
MS. RICE:

- 12 hours with General Flynn and shared with him 100
papers. I obviously didn't have the opportunity to do that before I left MR. ROONEY: Right.
MS.

RICE:

- govemment with General McMaster.

Soon after General McMaster assumed the role of National Security

Advisor, we did communicate. We had a relatively lengthy secure conversation
where we covered, obviously much more superficially than I could over 12 hours
without the benefit of classified information, a number of issues that I thought
would be of interest and relevance to him.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
MS. RICE: And, you know, they were very, you know, useful
conversations but far more superficial.
I also alerted him to the fact that he

-

and he wasn't aware

-

that we had

prepared allthese transition papers for General Flynn that he should take

advantage of, as well, because they were hardly out of date.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
And was that 6 minutes left to vote?
MR. CONAWAY: Let me go

check. We're just going to try to tag team -

MS. RICE: Gotcha.
MR. CONAWAY: -- vote and come back.
MS. RICE: Gotcha.
MR. ROONEY: With regard to some of the things that we've been talking

I

 7L

:
about here, the Russian -- Russia trying to influence our election, which I don't
think anybody in this room disputes, I think that what we're trying to get to the
bottom of

-

and without going into the things that you read or heard after you left

office, just in your official capacity while you were still part of the administration,
and the intelligence that you received, did you come across any intelligence or

evidence -- and ! know that Trey was getting to some of this -- in your official
capacity to show that not only was the Russian Government trying to influence our
election but they were aclually coordinating with the Trump campaign to assist
them in beating Secretary Clinton as part of the election process?
Whether it be coordinating dumping of emails or sharing intelligence that
they gathered with the Trump campaign to use against Hillary Clinton, did you see
anything of that nature in your official capacity in the prior administration?
MS. RICE: Well, I'lldo my best to answer that.
MR. ROONEY: Yeah.
MS. RICE: But let me just say that that question crossed my mind more
than once, and it was a question that I was wondering about, in part

-

and due to

a confluence of things:

So that was one set of data

points. We talked about what we learned from Mr. Billingsly.
But you asked for evidence as well as intelligence. And I was a sentient

consumer of the news, like you and others in the room, during this period. And,
you know, when odd statements emanated from some in the Trump universe, they
would catch my attention. You know, when it was suggested that there was about

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72

to be a dump by WikiLeaks of Podesta's emails, that was a strange statement.
When Candidate Trump called on Russia to produce the emails that had been
missing from Secretary Clinton and to, you know, hack her systems, that was a

very strange comment.
There were a number of such things

-

MR. ROONEY: Right, and I agree with you.
MS. RICE:

-

which were evidence.

MR. ROONEY: But I don't know who to believe in the news anymore. So
my question to you is, like, in your official capacity, with regard to what you had

been briefed by actually the lntelligence Community, was there anything that came
across your desk that was official documentation which showed

coordination

- you referred, I think, to -

I forget the guy's name --

But was there anything official that you

saw in your capacity in the prior administration that showed actual coordination
between the campaign? Not what we've been seeing in the news, not what we've

heard about at cocktail parties, but in your official capacity.
MS.

RICE: To the best of my recollection, there wasn't anything smoking,

but there were some things that gave me pause

MR. ROONEY: Right. And that's -MS. RICE

I

 I
MR. ROONEY: Did you see evidence of the

73

deal?

Like, when we hear

about -. go ahead.
MS.

RICE: I don't mean to --

MR. ROONEY: No, go ahead.
MS. RICE: Forgive me for interrupting.

MR. ROONEY: Right.
MS.

RICE: So that, I think, answers your specific question.

MR. ROONEY: Yes.
MS. RICE

And then you combine that with what was in the public domain, with

-

MR. ROONEY: Yeah.
MS.

RICE:

- you know, Candidate Trump talking about how much he

admires Putin and, you know -MR. ROONEY: Right.
MS.

RICE:

-

how great relations are going to

be.

These

-

MR. ROONEY: I get that.
MS. RICE: I know you get it, but ljust want you to understand from my
point of

view.

I answered your specific question --

MR. ROONEY: Right.
MS. RICE:

I

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74

MR. ROONEY: Right
MS. RICE:

MR. ROONEY: Right.
MS. RICE

MR. ROONEY: And I agree with

you.

l'm just

-

MS. RICE: I hear you.
MR. ROONEY:

-

trying to get to what the actual proof is

MS. RICE: I got you, and l'm just

-

-

MR. ROONEY

I
And just one other cleanup question that Adam asked you with regard to

the Don Jr. meeting. And this wasn't anything you said, but it was part of your

question. ljust want to make sure that I got this correct.
Mr. Schiff asked you, with regard to the meeting with the Russians and Don

Jr., he said that they had varying degrees of afflliation with the Russian

Government. Do we know or do we have evidence to show that the people that
met with Don Jr. and others at that hotelwere, in fact, affiliated with the Russian
Government?

MS. RICE: l'm not in a position to answer that question. I didn't know of
that rneeting when -MR. ROONEY: Okay.
MS. RICE: -- I was in office, and I don't know what is known about it in

I

 75

I
intelligence circles now.
MR. ROONEY: Okay.
MS. RICE: So ljust -- I can't help you on that.

MR. CONAWAY: Yeah, just realquick, Madam Ambassador' When you

were talking about

MS. RICE
MR. CONAWAY

MS. RICE: So let me try to be more precise. lf lwasn't, I apologize.
First of all, I'm only speaking about my official capacity.
MR. CONAWAY: Right.

MS. RICE:

So that's what I was receiving -MR. CONAWAY: Okay. And so, is it your best

I

-

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76

MS. RICE:
MR. CONAWAY: Yeah, yeah

MS. RICE: I can't answer

that.

I mean, give me one second

here. So I

was getting what I was getting in what was provided to me orally and in writing by

the lntelligence Community. And separate, as I discussed with Mr. Rooney, was
what was in the public domain that I

-

MR. CONAWAY: Right, right, right.
MS.

RICE:

-

also match with

that.

I'm leaving that aside.

MR. CONAWAY: Gotcha.
One other

thing. To the conversation we were talking about, Billington or

Billingsly, whatever the guy's name

-

MS. RICE: Billingsly.
MR. CONAWAY: Billingsly -- and the things that were going on, you

menlioned

I
And

-l

I

l-

 I
MR. CONAWAY:

77

Right. And then you focused in on December and

January. I was just wondering

-

MS. RICE: No, I was trying to answer that over the course of the year -MR. CONAWAY: Oh, okay.
MS.

RICE:

- and not just December or during the transition.
You asked

who, or somebody asked who -MR. CONAWAY: Right, right.
MS.

RICE:

- and I then tried to be precise to the extent that I could recall

MR. CONAWAY

MS.

RICE: No, no, no.

MR. CONAWAY:

- with the transition and all that.

MS. RICE: No.
MR. CONAWAY:

Okay. Thank you.

Minority, back to you.
MS. SPEIER: Thank you.

ls it alarming to you that the FBI knew that the hacking was going on by
Russia back in September

- let's just say for discussion purposes July to

September 2015, when they started alerting the DNC, but you were not informed
about it by anyone in the lC and, in fact, heard about it by news medias in June

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78

of 2016?
MS. RICE: Well, I wouldn't have necessarity expected to hear about it from

the

lC, We might have been told, had they chosen to tell us, by the Justice

Department on behalf of the FBI or by the FBI directly.

As I understand it -- I don't know this with perfect certainty -- this was
something that was occurring

-

the discussions with the DNC were occurring in

FBI channels. l'm not sure the extent to which they had briefed the rest of the

lntelligence Community on this or not.
Am I surprised or alarmed? You know, I never like to read anything in the
press before its briefed to me that has any national security significance. So I'm
never happy when that happens. lt unfortunately happened and continues to

happen more than, l'm sure, I liked or other policymakers would like.
I

wasn't particularly alarmed that the FBI hadn't shared that with us, and I'm

not especially alarmed in retrospect
have a jump on this -- that

-

-

although it would've been maybe nice to

because the FBI engages with actors outside of the

U.S. Government who have been hacked all the time, as does

DHS. And they

are, as I understand it - even though they're not necessarily involved in an
investigation, they are trying to advise these entities, whether they're private-sector

companies or think tanks or other forms of nongovernmental organizations, what
to do.
When there have been hacks of U.S. Govemment infrastructure,

I

absolutely would expect to be promptly and thoroughly informed, and if it were a
hack conducted by a foreign adversary, especially

so.

But I don't believe

-

 

believe there are many, many instances of foreign intrusions into nongovernmental

entities in the United States that I may not have been briefed on or my colleagues

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79

might not have been briefed on.
Now, you might say this was the DNC, you know, il was a political actor;

why didn't they tellthe White House of the same party? That may have been
precisely why they didn't tell us.
MS. SPEIER: So, along the same lines, when President Trump was

Candidate Trump, he constantly made statements about the election being rigged.
And, of course, that stopped after the election, but during the campaign he said it a
great deal.
Do you think that had a chilling effect on decisions the President made in

conjunction with his National Security Council as to the steps that he took?
MS.

RICE: I think, obviously, we were well aware that those statements

were being made. We were puzzled and dismayed by them. We saw no
evidence to back them

up. And we certainly did not want to act in a way that

played into the public's fears or to a campaign's line that the elections would
somehow be compromised.
But above and beyond that specific concem, we were very mindful of a

broader concern that the President was very focused on and we were all very
focused on, which was to try to maximize the potentialfor the public to consume
any actions that the administration took for purposes of national security and any
statements we made that we thought were necessitated by nationalsecurity
wanted to make sure they were not digested in a partisan

: we

way. We put very, very

high emphasis on not acting in a way that could be perceived as political or

favoring one candidate or the other.
And, you know, I can't overstate the extent to which that was an important

consideration. Do I consider that chilling? No, but it was important. lt would've

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80

been counterproductive for the administration or the President taking action that

was designed to protect the integrity of our national electoral process, which is
obviously a nationaltreasure and a bipartisan concern, and have that be
consumed and misconstrued and manipulated for partisan, political purposes.
We were aware of the potential for

that. That potential was arguably

heightened by some of the statements that had been made about the potentia! for
the elections to be rigged. And we were concerned about that.
MS. SPEIER: Any doubt in your mind that WkiLeaks is a cutout for
Russia?

MS. RICE: No doubt that it has been used by Russia as a cutout. I don't
know that that's its only purpose.
MS. SPEIER: Okay.

And this is my last question. ln hindsight, what should have been done
differently?
MS. RICE: By the administration? I tried to answer that, but let me recap.
And this is obviously just my opinion, and others may respectfully disagree.
I think that we handled the deterrent, the attribution, the public statements

as best we

could. I think that we worked up, as we should have, a full range of

punitive responses and had those ready to go at any point in this process if we
needed to utilize

them. I think it was correct not to punish before the election.

The one area where I have lingering questions in my own mind about
whether what we did was sufficient was, as I said, on the economic sanctions
piece of the punitive measures that we adopted in December. And I still don't
have a clear view in my mind as to whether we got that right or wrong, but

I

wonder, with the benefit of hindsight, whether we would have, in retrospect, been

I

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81

better served by taking some of the more robust economic sanctions options that
the Treasury Department was very hesitant to embark upon because of their likely
knock-on effects to affect our system, our financial system, and the European
financialsystem.
Because I do think that we have every reason to be concerned that the
Russians or other adversaries might attempt to do this again in the future. And

I

do think that we need to make clear, as a Nation, that the cost for doing so will be

significant. But we would've - at least if you believe the Treasury Department
analysis, and I did
as

-

would've done so at considerable risk and harm to ourselves

well. And I think that's true today,
So if you ask me what we need to do now, I think it's vitally important that

the work you're doing and the work that the Senate is doing and that Mr. Mueller is
doing reach a very definitive, high-confiden@, unified conclusion about what the
Russians did and make it public and dispel any ambiguity or downplaying of what

the Russians did and the potentialfuture threat.
I think the best inoculation we have against this in the future is for the public

to know what the Russians are up to and why and that we are witting of it and
prepared to guard against

it. And I'm very concerned that, if you all don't reach a

strong and unified conclusion, and the same in the Senate, that the public will be
lulled into misunderstanding the significance of this and the potentialfor it to
happen again, thus making ourselves more vulnerable.
I also think our best

-- !'m sorry to editorialize here, but since I may not have

another opportunity, I think our best defense against aggression and intrusion and
hostility by a foreign adversary is our domestic

unity. And if we can't agree on a

bipartisan basis about a foreign threat of this magnitude to our very democracy

I

 I
and our institutions

-

82

it could affect any party and anybody on the ballot from, you

know, the President down to local officials

-

then I think we're in deep trouble as a

Nation and as a world leader.
MS. SPEIER: Thank you.
I yield back.

MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Quigley?
MR. QUIGLEY: Sorry if we seem fixated on the part about sounding the

alann, Madam Ambassador, but you have to appreciate the fact that when
Secretary Johnson testified in open session he said that

- I believe the word he

used was the administration was "influenced" by the fact that Candidate Trump
had said the election was rigged, and they wanted to -- words to the effect that you

have used -- not be seen as attempting to influence the election.
ln your mind, though, looking back, was the decision to make the

announcement delayed in any timeframe at all because of those concerns, making
absolutely sure in your minds? And was the way that it was described
may be the wrong word, but

- I understand

-

"soften"

the good-heart intention of what the

administration was trying to do, but looking back after the fact, it had the effect of

minimizing it, to an extent, compared to what it could have been in letting people
know and having time to respond to it.

MS. RICE: Well, with alldue respect, I don't agree.
First of all, the announcement was very plain, it was stark, on October 7th,

and it should have been consumed as such by the American public and the media
and Congress, frankly.
We faced a remarkable degree of skepticism as we briefed some Members
of Congress and as we tried to brief the secretaries of the 50 States about the

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83

significance of this threat. Some were skeptical. Some called us political.
Some basically accused us of

lying. Others suggested that our motives

were

political. That is not only false and offensive, parenthetically, but, I think, inhibited
our response as a collective, as a Nation.
I wish that we had gotten a strong and early bipartisan statement by the big

four.

I think that would have very much helped the public digest this as a serious

and nonpartisan concern and insulated anybody against the concern that the
administration was playing politics.
I

wish that we had had a

assessment sooner than the end of September. Lord knows we pushed for one,
but we wanted it good and not just fast, and we were not in the business of telling

the lntelligence Community what they should say or even when they should say it.
Those were the things that were the gating steps that we were seeking prior
to a public attribution. Do I wish it could have happened a couple of, 3 weeks

earlier? Yes. But it wasn't because we were concerned about allegations of
rigging or anything like

that,

We didn't pull our punches in terms of how we made

the statement because of Candidate Trump's statements about the election's
potentially being rigged.
MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you.

Your understanding prior to June of '16 of the Russians' relationship with

Wikileaks or Guccifer, I mean, what did you know? Because I want to ask what
you knew after that, what you learned after

that.

But prior to June of last year,

what was your understanding of the Russian relationship with either Guccifer or
WikiLeaks?
MS.

RICE: I don't have

a precise recollection of, you know, what the

I

 I
nature of the Russian relationship with WikiLeaks

84

was. You know, WikiLeaks

was, by that time and long before that time, viewed by us as a hostile, adversarial
entity that was acting to undermine U.S. interests across many spheres and that of
other countries as well.
And, put simply, we knew that when it came to matters of stealing
intelligence and disseminating il that Russia was not our

friend. Witness

its

harboring of Snowden to this day.

So I don't remember specifically, you know, detailed information
underscoring that Russia and WkiLeaks were acting in

unison. But I do know

that, you know, Russia took full advantage of nefarious actors like Snowden, like
WikiLeaks to work against our interests and that of other countries.
You have about 30 seconds, sir.
MR. QUIGLEY: As quickly as you can, after June of 2016, what did you
understand their role to be?

MS. RICE: We've gotten far more granularity on WikiLeaks' relationship to
Russia and its negative

role. We viewed them as a principal but not the only

outlet for the hacked Russian materials.

And, you know, we saw in the public realm Trump associates touting

Wikileaks, in fact, the President, when he was a candidate himself, praising
WikiLeaks, when the rest oi us, everybody in this room, knew that WkiLeaks was
our adversary and was in the hands of our adversaries. So that was another
strange aspect of this, to say the least.
MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you.
MR. GOWDY: Ambassador Rice, I'm going to editorialize just for about
15 seconds, and this willbe attributed to me and not to you.

I

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85

But it seems like President Obama was confronted with a fact pattem where

he didn't want to overreact and create that dynamic with the public, and if he
underreacted or was perceived to have underreacted, then he'd be subject to
criticism after the election.
So I get the difficulty that he had in balancing how do I react without eliciting
from the Russians even more negative actions. I get

that.

So he made a

decision.
But somebody else during this same cycle made another decision, and that

would be the Director of the
it was July of 2016

FBl.

ln an unrelated case that, in the time

-   believe

- he cited a meeting between the then-Attorney General and a

spouse of one of the candidates as the reason for him appropriating a decision to

himself. He has since suggested that it was also material learned during the
course of the Russia investigation.
MS. RICE: That what

was?

I'm sorry.

MR. GOWDY: That his decision to appropriate the charging decision away

from the Department of Justice on to the FBI was at least in part based on what he
knew connected with the Russia investigation.
Do you have any idea what he was talking about?

MS. RICE: No, put simply. I don't know what the FBI

-

well, as I said,

I

was not aware formally that there was an FBI investigation at any point during my
time as National Security Advisor. I might have assumed or suspected, but
never knew for sure. Secondly, I didn't know
existed going back to June or

-

I

certainly didn't know that one

July. And so I don't know how those things might

have interplayed in the Director's mind.
MR. GOWDY: Well, ldon't either, despite having talked with him a couple

I

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86

of different times.
lnitially, we were led to believe that a chance meeting on the tarmac led him

to want to take the decision away from Attorney General Lynch and make the
decision himself in the press conference, which is pretty unusual for a law
enforcement agent to do.
Since then, he has said that there was information gathered during this

investigation into Russia's attempts to interfere with our election that was really the
basis of him appropriating that decision away from Loretta Lynch onto himself.
ln fact

-

because I made a note when you were testifying previously that

one of the things we were worried about is that Russia would take information,
falsify it, and then disseminate it, and the public would not know what was true,
what was not true, even though all of it was illgotten.

You don't recall any discussion at the administration level in June, July, or
August about Director Comey taking that decision away from the Department of
Justice for himself because of
MS.

-

RICE: Stop right there. I don't have any knowledge of anything

related to Director Comey's decision about how to approach the Clinton email

investigation. Nothing. Never crossed my desk. Never had a conversation.
Much less its relationship to the Russia stuff.
MR. GOWDY: Allright.

MS. RICE

MR. GOWDY: Allright.

I

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87

MS. RICE: That I remember. I don't want to suggest that was exhaustive
MR. GOWDY:

No. But are there any other names

I should add to that

list?
MS.

RICE: Not that I can pull off the top of my head without the benefit of

reviewing what I saw back then.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

So we're going to go with those three names.

And this will be the line of distinction in my

mind: pre-election,

MS. RICE:

MR. GOWDY: All right.

MS.

RICE: Yes. Only

MR. GOWDY:
MS.

RICE: That I saw?

MR. GOWDY: Yes, ma'am, or were briefed on.

MS. RICE:
MR. GOWDY:
MS. RICE: As I recall.
MR. GOWDY:
MS.

RICE:

I

Both.

MR. GOWDY:

J

MS. RICE: I'm not sure.

I

post-election.

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88

MR. GOWDY: Okay

MS. RICE:

MR. GOWDY:

MS.

RICE: Not that lcan recall. But, you know, I hate to be - l'm not

trying to be flip here, but there are a whole bunch of people that weren't part of the

officialtransition that were still playing in the Trump universe even during the
transition and beyond. I don't know, you know, what role Manafort or Stone or
any of these other people, Page or whoever, may have had on the margins that
nevertheless, you know, fed its way into the campaign or the transition. I just

don't know, But it was not, you know, as tight an operation aS you might normally
see
MR. GOWDY: I'm going to ask you a question about the unveiling of a

U.S. person's information with respect to masking, but it is with respect to Russia.
Did you make any request to identiff U.S. persons with your motive or the
impetus behind your request being the investigation into what Russia was doing or
had done?
MS.

RICE:

So, just to be clear, when you say "investigation," you mean

law enforcement investigation?

MR. GOWDY: I mean just better understanding.
MS. RICE: You mean the lntelligence Community -- trying to understand

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89

from the point of view ftom a policymaker orwith the lntelligence Community what
was going on?
MR. GOWDY: And I hate to say "either," but

- I know that you don't have

a law enforcement function. I'm not assigning that to you.
MS. RICE: lwasn't trying to impute one to myself.
MR. GOWDY: Well, I guess what l'm trying to ask, as politely as I can, is,

were any of your unmasking requests connected to Russia, and did any of your
unmasking requests lead to a better understanding of what Russia was doing or
had done?

MS. RICE: Well, with alldue respect, I don't have specific recallof my
unmasking requests. I'm sure that I probably asked for identities related to

Russia. And I did so primarily for two reasons.
One was to understand as best I could the universe of information that was

available to me, as the person responsible to the President for national security,
about what the Russians may have been up to with respect to interfering in our

election. That was obviously a very important and sensitive topic, and if ! saw
something that included a masked identity that I thought might shed light on that,
would want to know.
The other reason

: and this would have been relevant both during the

campaign and the transition

-

is I would be very concerned, whether it related to

Russia or some other topic, about non-sitting government offlcials purporting to
talk to foreign governments, particularty foreign adversaries, but not limited to
adversaries, about current or future U.S. policy in a way that might have
undermined or compromised the sitting administration's ability to conduct foreign
policy on behalf of the United States.

I

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90

As I said earlier, we have one government at a

time.

lt gets complicated

inherently during a transition. lt becomes even more complicated if members of
the transition or people associated with the transition are communicating with

foreigners about policy in a way that is clearly antithetical to the sitting
administration's policy. lt's even more concerning if they're doing so secretly.
And so we had, to be very honest, ample reason for concem about that.
MR. GOWDY: One of my colleagues made reference to the elephant in
the room, that all the Republicans were dying to ask you a question. I actually
wasn't dying to ask you the question. I wasn't going to ask you a question.

I

think Ms. Speier asked whether or not there were any unmaskings done for
political purposes. I wasn't going to ask that question.
But I will ask, as a followup to hers, how would you define a political
purpose?
MS. RICE: So that's a great question. That's my question. I've been
accused of all sorts of things in the public domain over the last many months,
including being a criminal, which I don't appreciate. And I have no idea what the

hella political unmasking

is.

I mean, what I did in the conduct of my job in order to ensure that I was

acting on the information I was provided and doing so responsibly was to be sure
understood what I was reading and, to the extent that I understood it, that I was

putting in process the actions that were necessary to protect our national interests
and our national security. That's the only reason, ever, that I asked for the

identity of the U.S. person.
I don't know how one would use that information for a political purpose.

We've asked ourselves that question many

times. lt doesn't make any sense to

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So if you all understand, just for my prurient interest since l've been a party

to some of these accusations, l'd love to know what that means.
MR. GOWDY: Well, I actually think in a roundabout way you've already

answered the question, that you answered it very early

on,

You said what a

negative impact leaks have on the security of our country, that you don't do it, that
you have never done it, so take you out of it.
MS.

RICE: I get why leaks are a problem.

MR. GOWDY: Pardon me?

MS. RICE: I get why leaks are a problem.
MR. GOWDY: Well, but if the unmasking is connected to the leak

-

MS. RICE: But I haven't seen any connection established there.
MR. GOWDY: Well, and that, you know, ostensibly is part of what the

committee is doing.
You were very forceful, because I wrote down your

answer: Never done it,

not appropriate, harmfulto the country. So I'm not askang about

you.

Are you

aware of anyone that has disseminated classified information to an unauthorized
consumer?
MS.

RICE: No. And if lwere, I probably would have reported

MR. CONAWAY: Just realquick

it.

-

MS. RICE: Certainly would have reported it.
MR. CONAWAY
one, would you have normally have said, who

was that citizen? Would you have asked for an unmasking of that citizen in that
circumstance?
MS.

RICE: lt depends on the substance of the conversation. lf it looked

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like it was a casual

-

MR. CONAWAY: lf he's calling for apizza,l got that.
MS.

RICE:

tf he was talking about U.S. nationalsecurity issues, I probably

would have.
MR. CONAWAY: OkaY.

MS. RICE: I think that, frankly, I would have been remiss not to.
MR. CONAWAY: lwould

agree. lwould agree.

MS. RICE:
MR. CONAWAY:

MS. RICE

MR. CONAWAY:

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MS. RICE:

MR. CONAWAY,

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MS. RICE:

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MR. CONAWAY: OkaY. Thank You
MS. RICE:

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MS. RUEMMLER: We saw them this moming.
MS. RICE: ln fact, we did
I'm happy to respond to it.

o
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MR. GOWDY:

MS. RICE: Well, I mean, you can ask me what you want to ask me about

it. I don't know why you would ask me about that.
MR. GOWDY: ! don't want to, but
MS.

RICE:

-

Okay.

MR. GOWDY:

- I wanted to give you the right, if you wanted to respond.

MS. RICE: Since you were kind enough to share it with me?

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That goes straight to one of my principal concerns as National Security
Advisor, about how we maintain the integrity of one government at a time and one
U.S. foreign policy at a time when there were there were all kinds of things
happening that were not in official channels.

no patience for

that.

I think that is un-American.

-- and you all will find other examples of

this.

lt was

a problem that we had to manage. lt was not something we appreciated. They

did not use the normalchannels that any administration would use to have their
phone calls transcribed, go through the State Department, have records.
Part of the reason why I had a hard time meeting with General Flynn during

the transition, I had to chase him, was because he was so busy meeting

foreigners. And I knew he was meeting foreigners because the foreigners were
then coming to meet me, as they normally would during the course of their foreign
visits.
So, you know, it was a big mash-uP, a big mess, not of our making. And it

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was all we could do to try to conduct U.S. foreign policy in an effective way when
we had a whole lot of stray voltage coming at us.
MR. SCHIFF: Ambassador, just one followup question on that, and then

I

want to turn it over to Mr. Swalwel!.
In the category of one government at a time, were you surprised, after the

administration did level sanctions against Russia over its interference with the
election, that the Russians did not reciprocate?
MS. RICE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Was that atypical? Surprising? Shocking? What was

your reaction to that?
MS. RICE: We were surprised. I think we allwere surprised. We had

anticipated that they would. That's why we were calibrating quite carefully, you
know, how many we PNG'd, you know, how many facilities we closed, which ones,
blah, blah,

blah.

So, yes, I think we were all surprised that there was not a more

robust or any response from the Russians.
MR. SCHIFF: Do you think there's any conceivable explanation for that

apart from the Russians having the expectation that the incoming administration
would essentially do away with the sanctions that were imposed by the Obama
administration?
MS. RICE: I can't be certain, but, obviously, when there was no Russian
response and when the President-elect tweeted, you know, that Putin was really
smart not to respond, it raised all kinds of questions in any knowledgeable
person's mind.
Why would they not respond? What were they hoping for or expecting

subseguently? Had they had communications with the transition team about what

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the new administration might do in the future to undo or otherwise address the
sanctions and other "grievances" that the Russians had, in quotes? You know,
that was bizarre.
MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Swalwell.
MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Mr. Schiff.

And thank you, Madam Ambassador. I guess we're near the end, and so
this will be the puttingto-bed part of some of the questioning.

Would you agree that Russia's attack was a violation of U.S. sovereignty?
MS. RICE: Absolutely.
MR. SWALWELL: And you talked about some of the allegations that have
been leveled against you with respect to this phrase, "unmasking." And with your
experience at the NSC, do you agree that the White House today actually holds all
of the records necessary to prove if you did unlawfully unmask and that they could
show the world that?

MS. RICE: First of all, just for the record, I did not unlawfully unmask.
There's not

- first of all, to be clear, unmasking,

as you all like to call it,

deminimization is not unlawful. Leaking is unlawful. And there is a big

distinction. I did one. I unmasked when it was necessary for me to do my job.

I

never leaked. So, first point.
MR. SWALWELL: But would you agree that the White House holds those
records?
MS.

RICE: No, I don't know that they hold those records.

I mean, this is really

important. When I made a request for the identity of a

U.S. person, I did so one-on-one with my briefer. There were no records that

I

kept or that l'm aware of that anybody in the White House would have the capacity

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to create, because nobody else, beyond me and my briefer, knew what I had
asked for.
So my briefer, he or she, would take that request back to the originating

agency. And the originating agencies, as you well know, have

a whole process

that they go through to decide whether that identity would be provided to me or
any other requesting offlcial. And then it comes back to me and me alone, orally,
and not for further dissemination unless there's a subsequent process to decide
that it should be further disseminated.
So I wouldn't have any reason to understand how the White House could
have such documents unless they were provided to the White House by the lC.
MR. SWALWELL: And have you been informed by the Department of

Justice that you are under investigation for doing anything unlavvful?
MS.

RICE:

No.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay.
Speaking of
MS.

-

RICE: I hope you're not going to tellme something I don't know.

MR. SWALWELL:

No. No.

Speaking of investigations, you talked about Director Comey and the FBl.

ls it fair to say that, as the National Security Advisor, you were not read in on
active, ongoing investigations that the Department of Justice or the FBI were
conducting?
MS. RICE: Absolutely, that's the case. Those were law enforcement

mafters. They were not things that I was privy to unless the Justice Departnent
chose to share them with

me.

The Justice Department's normal contact in the

White House, at least in the Obama administration, for anlhing to do with law

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enforcement, criminal stuff was the White House Counsel.
There were rare occasions where the Justice Department would judge that
it was necessary and appropriate to consult national security officials, including

me, in which case they might do so, but it was a one-way street.

MR. SWALWELL: Now, on March 1st of this year

- I think the majority has

referenced it - there was a New York Times article. And in addition to talking
about what the Obama administration was allegedly doing, it also mentioned

contacts between the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, then-Senalor Sessions,
and the Russian Ambassador.
Now, just 3 days later, President Trump launched a series of tweets

claiming that President Obama had tapped his phones. A tweet on March 4 at

6:35 a.m. said, "Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my'wires tapped' in
Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"
At 6:49 a.m., a few minutes later, he says, "ls it legal for a sifting President
to be'wiretapping' a race for President prior to an election? Turned down by a
court earlier. A NEW LOW!"
Then he says, just at 6:52, "l bet a good lawyer could make a great case
out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October just prior
to the election."

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[12:59 p.m.]
MR. SWALWELL: And then they continue just 10 minutes later: "How low
has President Obama gone to tapp," t-a-p-p, "my phones during lhe very sacred
election process. This is Nixon Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"
Are you aware of any unlawful intelligence collection on U.S. citizens during
the time in the Obama administration?
MS. RICE: No.
MR. SWALWELL: Did the Obama administration tap President Trump's or

Candidate Trump's phones during the campaign or transition or any other time?
MS. RICE: No, not to my knowledge, and, as far as I can tell, not to the
knowledge of anybody else inside the administration.
MR. SWALWELL: On April 3rd,2017, The Washington Post published an

article: "Blackwater Founder Held Secret Seychelles Meeting to Establish
Trump-Putin Back Channel." Do you remember that story?
MS. RICE: ldo.
MR. SWALWELL: When the story broke, it referenced an Erik Prince, and
Mr. Prince accused the Obama administration of revealing his identity in
intelligence surveillance reports. He stated: They tried to create some nexus to
Russia for me doing a business meeting somewhere.

MS. RICE

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MR. SWALWELL:

MS. RICE:
MR. SWALWELL:

MS. RICE:
MR. SWALWELL:

I

MS. RICE
MR. SWALWELL:

MS. RICE:
MR. SWALWELL:

MS. RICE:

I

MR. SWALWELL: And, finally, as the former National Security Advisor and
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, what do you make of a sitting President

accusing a former President of wiretapping or surveilling them as a candidate or
as a President-elect, with respect to our foreign relationships or just domestic
policy?

MS. RICE: I find it outrageous. lt was

false. lt was defamatory.

lt was

a distraction. And I think it did harm to the United States internationally by making
us look like we were not serious.

MR. SWALWELL: How would you describe the integrity or work product of
then-Director James Comey, from your observations?
MS. RICE: His integri$?

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MR. SWALWELL: Yes.

MS.RICE: Unquestioned.
MR. SWALWELL: I yield back. Thank you.
MR. SCHIFF: We're at 1 o'clock. Willyou indulge us with a last few
questions?
MS. RICE: Yes, because, as Kathy said, this is your one shot.
MR. SCHIFF:

Okay. We only have a few finalquestions. ljust wanted

to follow up on something Mr. Swalwellwas asking about.

MS. RICE
MR. SCHIFF

MS.RICE:

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MR. SCHIFF:

MS. RICE
MR. SCHIFF:

MS. RICE:

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MR. SCHIFF:

MS. RICE:

As I sairl, ! don't put a great deal of stock in that.

MR. SCHIFF:

MS. RICE
MR. SCHIFF:
MS. RICE

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MS RICE

   

 

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with foreign officials during the transition, There's been an occasionalprecedent
with the Mexican, which has its own origins. But President-elect Trump very
quickly after being elected met with Prime Minister Abe and had a meeting in New
York with Prime Minister

Abe.

And we formally but privately protested to the

- I think Dennis McDonough (ph) spoke to Reince
Priebus -- because we can't have - again, one President at a time. We can't

President-elect's team

have various foreign officials coming and talking to the President-elect and may or

may not be talking to the President and conducting policy discussions. lt's just a
mess.

And the Trump team agreed to have no more head-of-state level meetings.
And, to my knowledge, they didn't have more after the Abe meeting, even though
there were lots of folks trying to get in the door.
So, actually, I think when the Crown Prince came, he did not see
President-elect Trump. He saw people around President-elect Trump, if l'm not

mistaken. He did not see President Obama

MR. SCHIFF: Ambassador, if I understood, you said originally

-

MS. RICE: Far more information than you allsought.
MR. SCHIFF: Well, you indicated that initially at the time, you thought it
was either, if I'm understanding conectly, either related to your visit to the UAE or

 I
either related to wanting to conceal the fact that they weren't that interested in
meeting with President Obama now that he was outgoing.
MS. RICE: And that he was not being succeeded by the person they
expected him to be succeeded by.
MR. SCHlFF

MS. RICE: When did that happen?
MR. SCHIFF: When did that happen,

MS. RICE:

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MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Heck

MS. RICE: I don't know why they couldn't wait.
MR. HECK: Madam Ambassador, thank you so much for giving so
generously of your time today.
So, when we talk about the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential

election, the ovenvhelming majority of the conversation is about the
misappropriation of information, its timely distribution or revelation that seeks to
influence, sometimes disinformation, modified and disinformation propagated in an
attempt to impact the outcome.
But a small minority of what we talk about, although we have here but in

passing, were the efforts to penetrate the election systems.
It was

represented to us that we didn't blow the whistle on that because, at least in part,
they may have been wanting us to do that in an effort to undermine the election
process, so why shine a spotlight on it?
MS. RICE: Hold

up. Just I want to make sure I understand what you're

saying because you seem to be conveying new information to me.

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MR. HECK:

No.

I'm not sure what the technicaldefinition of penetration

is, but it was represented to us actually in open hearing that they were in, in all

likelihood, but made no modifications.
MS. RICE: Allright.
MR. HECK: I don't know if that's what you meant by knocking, but -MS. RICE: That's what I would call knocking, but not getting in and
manipulating the substance of

-

MR. HECK: Getting in and manipulating are two different things'
MS. RICE: Right.
MR. HECK: So I actually lose sleep over this latter issue. And, again, it's

just a tiny part of what we talk about in terms of the nature of their intrusion in the
2016 election, what they tried to do or flirted with doing, whatever.

But I guess my question to you is, for whatever reason that we don't talk
about this more -- namely, they didn't manipulate or don't seem to have or maybe

we have a lot of confidence that our systems are hard enough that they cannot
manipulate -- even the prospect seems to me to be powerfully more dangerous
than allthe kind of propaganda things and illegal extraction of information outside
the election system.
So what I'm really asking is what your level of concem is over this aspect of

what might be done prospectively because part of our charge is what do we do
going fonrard, and, personally, I don't fee! like we're putting enough of a spotlight
on this

part.

Maybe you can help me sleep better by just saying it's not that big of

a con@rn, but I'm deeply wonied.

MS. RICE: I can't tellyou to sleep better on

this.

t share your

concem. lt

was a very real aspect of the administration's concern, as we were looking at what

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the Russians might do in the wake of the warning

It's why we put such stock in the statement that we sought from the Big

Four congressional leaders. And that's why, you know, we watched very carefully

over the course of the months between the warning the President issued to
Vladimir Putin in early September and the election for any evidence that that might
be what they were doing, because that would have prompted us to go full punitive
right then and there.
I still worry, as you seem to be also, that they might do such things in the

future. And I worry that our States are not sufficiently hardened. Maybe they
have taken subsequent steps since I've lefl government that I'm not aware of that

would give me greater confidence, but I do worry about

this.

And I think it's a very

serious concem, and I hope it's a priority for you as you think about
recommendations for the future.
MR. HECK: Thank you.
MR. SCHIFF: Thank you.

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MR. ROONEY: Thank you, Ambassador. I think that's allwe've got for
today and forever.
[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

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