Here's the one document that must be declassified - but nobody is talking about it.
The DIA's 2017 Flynn letter to Reps Cummings and Chaffetz has critical redactions and all of the attachments are still classified. Why?
Why the DIA’s 2017 Flynn Letter Must Be Declassified—Now
When former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe sat in front of Congress and was asked whether Mike Flynn’s December 2015 trip to Moscow had triggered an FBI investigation, he didn’t hesitate: “It was an ongoing preliminary inquiry.” The excerpt (highlighted in yellow in the screenshot above) tells us two crucial things:
Flynn’s RT-sponsored gala appearance—complete with a seat next to Vladimir Putin—was the official predicate for what became Crossfire Razor and then Crossfire Hurricane.
Even at that early stage, the Bureau viewed the trip as suspicious enough to keep the inquiry alive.
Yet the FBI never bothered to pick up the phone and call the one agency that actually briefed and de-briefed Flynn about that trip: the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The Missing Piece: DIA’s April 7 2017 Letter to Cummings & Chaffetz
That oversight is spelled out—mostly in redactions—in the DIA’s response to House Oversight leaders Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings, dated 7 April 2017. The letter is unclassified cover but packed with SECRET/NOFORN redactions inside. Page 2 alone features two monster grey boxes that wipe out every detail of Flynn’s reported foreign contacts and the DIA’s internal security assessments. Page 3 hides entire paragraphs describing embassy cables between DIA Headquarters and the Defense Attaché in Moscow during Flynn’s visit, plus a chunk of e-mail traffic among senior DIA components. Page 5 lists 12 enclosures—everything from Flynn’s SF-86 background updates to a thumb drive of “Leading Authorities Inc.” material—but most of the titles are blanked out.
What survives the censors is still revealing:
DIA confirms it did run Flynn through pre-trip briefings and post-trip de-briefings.
DIA admits it kept Flynn’s security clearance active after retirement and maintained direct contact into 2016. Reminder: this was Obama’s DIA that kept his security clearance active.
DIA stresses that large portions of its records are still withheld under § 424 (the statute protecting the names of intelligence officers). In other words, the bulk of what the agency knows about Flynn’s Moscow adventure—and thus the real starting point of Russiagate—remains sealed.
Without those pages, the public is forced to argue over conjecture and partisan narratives. Declassifying the entire letter (and its dozen attachments) would solve three problems at once:
My Own Paper Trail—and the Stonewall
Several weeks ago I sent formal inquiries to the CIA, FBI, and the DoD Inspector General laying out these same gaps. The Pentagon responded that it had “forwarded the matter” to the proper component—and I’m still waiting for a response. CIA and FBI haven’t even acknowledged receipt. (Full text of the CIA letter is attached for readers.) Among other points, I asked why officials continue chasing the Steele Dossier’s tail when the DIA-Flynn connection predates Christopher Steele by nine months.
Flynn’s Own Evasions Fueled Suspicion
I argued in those letters, as I have in podcasts and on X, that Flynn’s behavior after the RT Gala significantly fueled suspicions that Trump was plotting with Russia. Reporters noticed something was off long before the FBI filed paperwork:
Shane Harris (Daily Beast) phoned Flynn in August 2016 about the Moscow trip and payments from RT. Flynn abruptly hung up after one question, then claimed later he had been disconnected.
Michael Isikoff (Yahoo News) pressed the same point months later; Flynn dodged again, insisting he had never been paid by the Russian government—only to file belated paperwork admitting otherwise.
As a top-level intel operative, Flynn knew better than most how to work with the press to achieve desired outcomes. Was suspicion of Trump his desired outcome?
Those exchanges raised perfectly legitimate questions inside the press corps and, apparently, inside Counter-Intelligence. But the entire controversy could have been short-circuited if the FBI had simply collected DIA’s pre- and post-trip memos.
The FBI spoke with the CIA and ODNI in 2016. Why did they neglect to speak with the DIA?
Narrative Control 101: Divide, Distract, Discredit
Every declass so far undercuts the cartoonish left-vs-right framing that dominates cable news. The common thread isn’t Republicans or Democrats; it’s an intelligence community (IC) that reflexively hides its own role, lets the vacuum fill with leaks, then uses the resulting chaos to enlarge division, budgets and authorities. The longer the DIA letter stays under wraps, the easier it is for all sides to keep fighting the last information war instead of solving the next one.
What Congress (and Substack Readers) Can Do
Demand a Clean Copy
House Oversight and Senate Intel members can compel DIA to produce the unredacted letter and its enclosures under 10 U.S.C. § 424(j). No excuses about ongoing investigations apply—Flynn’s case closed years ago.Hold an Open Hearing
Put the briefers and de-briefers under oath. PUT FLYNN HIMSELF UNDER OATH. Ask why no one looped in FBI counter-intel before or after the trip. Stream it live; post the transcript same day.Force a Cross-Agency After-Action Review
The inspector-general community already has the paperwork. What’s missing is a public-facing report on how “internal stove-pipes” spawned a multi-year national psychodrama.FOIA Flood
Journalists and citizens should blanket DIA, CIA, and FBI with Freedom of Information Act requests citing the specific enclosure names listed on page 5 of the letter. The courts can handle classification gamesmanship; we just need to push cases onto the docket.
Closing
Mike Flynn’s two-day junket to Moscow, along with the rumors about Republicans trying to buy the Hillary Clinton emails from Russian hackers, became the domino that tipped the FBI, the media, and half the country into the sprawling Russiagate saga. The DIA’s April 2017 letter is the one document that can show—with signatures, dates, and operational detail—how and why that domino was set up in the first place. Until those boxes come off the text, the debate over Russiagate will stay where the IC seems to prefer it: the left claiming “it’s all lies” and the right with “all the bad guys are on the left.
Sunlight ends that game. Let’s pry it open.
—Scott McMahan, BiggerTruthMedia.com