Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's office released two damning emails yesterday, the first being a letter from former DNI James Clapper to former FBI head James Comey, former CIA head John Brennan, and then-NSA chief Michael Rogers. Dated December 22, 2016, Clapper's letter explains how the chiefs should approach writing a new Intelligence Community Assessment, whose conclusion — that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump — had already been reported:

Mike John Jim;

Understand your concern. It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page. and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of "that's OUR story, and we're stickin' to it." This evening, CIA has provided to the NIC the complete draft generated by the ad hoc fusion cell. We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but, more time is not negotiable," We may have to compromise on our "normal" modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule.

This is one project that has to be a team sport.

Clapper's email was in response to a note about "concerns" from Rogers, the NSA chief who never upgraded his agency's confidence level in the "Russia did it for Trump" conclusion from "moderate" to high. The Rogers letter makes it clear that the head of the Pentagon's most powerful surveillance agency was being asked to sign off on a conclusion without seeing the most "sensitive" intelligence. From Rogers:

I asked my team if they'd had sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence. On both points my team raised concerns… I'm concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren't fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments… I do want to make sure that, when we are asked in the future whether we can absolutely stand behind the paper… I'm concerned we are not there yet.

This is a devastating exchange. It shows that in assembling perhaps the most high-profile group analysis since the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD program, four of America's most powerful enforcement officials said, "To hell with evidence, let's just put out a tale and stick with it."

In the specific context of this scandal, it makes a joke of years of public narratives about Trump, Putin, and Russia. Along with more documents funneled from Kash Patel's FBI to Just The News asserting that senior Justice Department officials squashed Hillary Clinton corruption investigations, and that Comey gave a middleman access to highly classified information to help plead his case to newspapers like the New York Times, the new Gabbard docs further elucidate how years of Russia mania were built on fraud.