Declassified NSA Memo Shows Agency Delayed 2016 Election Interference Report Over ‘Deep State’ Concerns

A newly declassified internal National Security Agency memorandum from March 2020 reveals that the agency’s deputy director blocked the release of a completed analytic report on foreign targeting of U.S. elections, including activity related to the 2016 presidential contest, primarily out of concern that publication would associate the NSA with the “deep state” label then being applied to other intelligence agencies.

The memo, written by an NSA analyst who had worked on the product and dated March 13, 2020, recounts a meeting in which Deputy Director George Barnes explained his decision. According to the document, Barnes was concerned that releasing the report “at this time – in the current political climate, with an acting ODNI who had been tasked (according to DDIR) to ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community, and with an administration that is suspicious of the IC and aggressive in removing anyone who stands in their way – would damage NSA’s credibility.” He believed questions would inevitably arise about why the agency was choosing to release information most obviously pertinent to the 2016 election more than a year after the fact, and that the NSA would be accused of acting for political purposes.

The memo further records that Barnes viewed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, and to an extent the FBI as having already been “tarred as hosting or being part of the ‘deep state,’” while the NSA had largely escaped that association and retained public trust. Publishing the report, in his assessment, risked destroying that trust, undermining the credibility of NSA reporting more broadly, and creating morale problems within the workforce. The deputy director preferred alternatives such as a watered-down summary or incorporating the material into a new product focused on 2020 activity.

The underlying report addressed foreign targeting of the United States that began as early as 2014 and included election-related activity in 2016. Analytic work on the product had been completed in a timely manner, with a proposed release date around December 2018. It then faced roughly 16 months of delay, partly due to requirements under the Gates Procedures for handling information that could contextually identify members of Congress even after names were removed, and partly due to repeated failures by higher levels, including the ODNI, to render timely decisions. By February 2020 the distribution list had been approved, but final release remained pending approval from then-NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone.

The analyst who authored the memo pushed back against further dilution of the product, arguing that a sanitized version would still carry contextual identification risks and could appear even more selective—and therefore more political—if only certain elements were retained. The analyst also maintained that the original analytic language and the foreign actors’ expressed policy preferences retained lasting foreign-intelligence value beyond the 2016 cycle. An earlier, more limited version of related reporting had already been published, but the fuller assessment remained withheld.

The memorandum was declassified in August 2026 by White House Counsel David Warrington. It formed part of the documentary record reviewed by Intelligence Community Ombudsman Barry Zulauf for his 2021 report examining allegations of politicization in intelligence assessments of foreign election interference.

The decision described in the memo presents a clear institutional tension. Senior leadership explicitly chose to withhold completed intelligence on foreign election targeting in order to protect the agency from being perceived as politically motivated or as part of a “deep state.” In doing so, the agency prioritized its own institutional image and insulation from political criticism over the timely dissemination of finished analytic work on a matter of national security interest. That choice—delaying the release of election-related intelligence specifically to avoid the appearance of institutional bias—itself constitutes the kind of self-protective, selective handling of information that critics of intelligence community practices have long described as the defining characteristic of a deep state. The memo does not allege fabrication or alteration of the underlying intelligence; it documents a deliberate decision to sit on it for political-reputational reasons.