DECLASSIFIED BY COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT WARRINGTON on 10 July 2026
Director, Election Threat Analysis
National Intelligence Council/DNI Election Threat Executive


From:
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2020 8:36 AM
To:
Subject: (U) RE: For IC coord by Wed. 7 Oct.: NIC alternative analysis on china/election

Classification:

I really appreciate this. Thank you very much      !


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(U

CI SME
East Asia CI Division
Operations/IIA/Office of East Asia Pacific
Senior Advocate, English as a Second Language (ESL) Employee Resource Group

(U
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From:               -DNI-
Sent: Monday, October 5, 2020 4:36 PM
To:
As I’m sure many of you have gathered through coord comments, COI discussions, or other
conversations, NIO Cyber and I have a somewhat different take on the China/election story than
what has appeared in production so far. Rather than continue to argue about this and drive you all
nuts, we are opting to publish an alternative analysis NIC memo. We think this is the best way for us
to put our perspective on the record while not getting in the way of what the rest of the community
wants to say. The lead, in short non-compartmented form, is that we assess that Beijing has taken
some low-level, exploratory steps to denigrate the President and shape voter perceptions ahead of
the election.

We have really appreciated everyone’s efforts to community coord all election-related production,
and in that spirit I’d like to offer you all the chance to comment on this piece. However: we are
clearly labeling this as alternative analysis and highlighting that it is the perspective of NIO Cyber and
myself only. Which means that we will most likely not be taking comments on board; we already
know most of you disagree. But fear not. We are including a large text box laying out the mainline
view.          and                have helped us craft this, but we would very much appreciate your
input on it to make sure that we’re capturing your views accurately. The intention is to show an
honest analytic difference, not to set up a straw man version of the IC line to knock down.

Like most of the China/election production, this piece uses                            . The IC
Mainline Analysis text box uses                . Though mostly      If you have at least      and
would like to coordinate on this box, please let me know. We are looking for input by COB
Wednesday 7 Oct.

The full piece uses                                 . I’m still fixing some formatting issues, but can
work with you to get you some version of the paper.

Thank you all—we look forward to continuing conversation on this topic.


Director, Election Threat Analysis
National Intelligence Council/DNI Election Threat Executive


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