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<\/div>\nMore than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that\u2019s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA\u00a0analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.<\/p>\n
But the name of a government official fitting that description \u2014 Eric Ciaramella \u2014 has been raised privately in impeachment\u00a0depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous\u00a0 witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.<\/p>\n
RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public\u2019s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official’s status as a \u201cwhistleblower\u201d is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has \u201csome indicia of an arguable political bias \u2026 in favor of a rival political\u00a0candidate” — as the Intelligence Community Inspector General\u00a0phrased it<\/a>\u00a0circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.<\/p>\n Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia \u201ccollusion\u201d investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.<\/p>\n Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah)\u00a0left his National Security Council posting in the White House\u2019s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has\u00a0since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,\u201d said a former NSC official, speaking on\u00a0condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.<\/p>\n Also, Ciaramella huddled for \u201cguidance\u201d with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff\u2019s office had recently recruited from the NSC. (Schiff is the lead prosecutor in the impeachment inquiry.)<\/p>\n And Ciaramella\u00a0worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who\u00a0dug up dirt<\/a>\u00a0on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government.\u00a0\u201cHe knows her. He had her in the White House,\u201d said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.<\/p>\n Documents<\/a>\u00a0confirm the DNC opposition researcher attended at least one White House meeting\u00a0with Ciaramella in November 2015.\u00a0\u00a0She visited the White House with a number of\u00a0Ukrainian officials\u00a0lobbying<\/a>\u00a0the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.<\/p>\n With Ciaramella\u2019s name long under wraps, interest in the intelligence analyst has become so high that a handful of former colleagues have compiled\u00a0a roughly 40-page research dossier on him. A classified version of the document is circulating on Capitol Hill, and\u00a0briefings have been conducted based on it. One briefed Republican has been planning to unmask the whistleblower in\u00a0a speech on the House floor.<\/p>\n On the Internet, meanwhile, Ciaramella’s name for weeks has been bandied about on Twitter feeds and intelligence\u00a0blogs as the suspected person who blew the whistle on the president. The mainstream media are also aware of his\u00a0name.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows.\u00a0The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,\u201d said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national\u00a0security adviser to Trump, who has fielded dozens of calls from the media.<\/p>\n Yet a rare hush has swept across the Potomac. The usually gossipy nation\u2019s capital remains uncharacteristically \u2014 and curiously \u2014 mum,\u00a0especially considering the magnitude of this story, only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.<\/p>\n Trump supporters blame the conspiracy of silence on a \u201ccorrupt\u201d and “biased\u201d media trying to protect the whistleblower\u00a0from due scrutiny about his political motives. They also complain Democrats have falsely claimed that exposing his\u00a0identity would violate whistleblower protections, even though the relevant statute provides limited, not blanket, anonymity \u2013 and doesn\u2019t cover press disclosures. His Democrat attorneys, meanwhile, have warned that outing him\u00a0would put him and his family \u201cat risk of harm,”\u00a0although government security personnel have been assigned to protect him.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re hiding him,\u201d Fleitz asserted. \u201cThey\u2019re hiding him because of his political bias.”<\/p>\n A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from\u00a0the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama\u2019s national security adviser. He also\u00a0worked closely with the former vice president.<\/p>\n Federal\u00a0records<\/a>\u00a0show that Biden\u2019s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted\u00a0for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey\u00a0and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper.<\/p>\n Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was\u00a0unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.<\/p>\n Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when\u00a0the vice president was President Obama’s “point man” for Ukraine.\u00a0A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak\u00a0Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.<\/p>\n He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually\u00a0transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was moved over to the front office\u201d to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former senior White House official, where he \u201csaw everything, read everything.\u201d<\/p>\n The official added that it soon became clear among NSA staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president\u2019s foreign policies. \u201cMy recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing \u2013 Ukraine,\u201d he said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president\u2019s policies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if he was the whistleblower,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n In May 2017, Ciaramella went \u201coutside his chain of command,\u201d according to a former NSC co-worker,\u00a0to send an\u00a0email<\/a>\u00a0alerting another agency that Trump\u00a0happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a\u00a0week earlier.<\/p>\n Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials\u00a0about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called \u201ccrazy, a real nut job.\u201d<\/p>\n In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the \u201cPutin fired Comey\u201d narrative, according to the research dossier making the\u00a0rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.<\/p>\n Ciaramella allegedly argued that \u201cPresident Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey,\u201d the report said. \u201cIn the\u00a0days after Comey\u2019s firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of\u00a0the special counsel to investigate \u2018Russia collusion.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Putin. Ciaramella\u2019s email was\u00a0cited in a\u00a0footnote<\/a>\u00a0in his report, which mentions only Ciaramella\u2019s name, the date and the recipients \u201cKelly et al.\u201d Former colleagues said the main recipient was then-Homeland Security Director John Kelly..<\/p>\n Ciaramella left the Trump White House soon after Mueller was appointed. Attempts to reach Ciaramella were unsuccessful, although his father said in a phone interview from Hartford, where he is a bank executive, that he doubted his son was the whistleblower. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have that kind of access to that kind of information,\u201d Tony Ciaramella said. \u201cHe\u2019s just a guy going to work every day.\u201d The whistleblower’s lawyers did not answer emails and phone calls seeking\u00a0comment. CIA spokesman Luis Rossello declined comment, saying, \u201cAnything on the whistleblower, we are referring to ODNI.\u201d The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n In his\u00a0complaint<\/a>, the whistleblower\u00a0charged that the president used \u201cthe power of his office to solicit interference from\u00a0a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.\u201d\u00a0 Specifically, he cited a controversial July 25 phone call from the White House residence in which Trump asked Ukraine\u2019s new\u00a0president to help investigate the origins of the Russia \u201ccollusion\u201d investigation the Obama administration initiated\u00a0against his campaign, citing reports that \u201ca lot of it started with Ukraine,” where the former pro-Hillary Clinton regime\u00a0in Kiev\u00a0worked with Obama diplomats and Chalupa to try to\u00a0\u201csabotage\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s run for president.<\/p>\n Later in the\u00a0conversation<\/a>, Trump also requested information about Biden and his son, since \u201cBiden went around\u00a0bragging that he\u201d had fired the chief Ukrainian prosecutor at the time a Ukrainian oligarch, who gave Biden\u2019s son a\u00a0lucrative seat on the board of his energy conglomerate, was under investigation for corruption.<\/p>\n House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff argued the whistleblower’s\u00a0complaint, though admittedly based on second-hand information, amounts to an impeachable offense, and they subsequently\u00a0launched an impeachment inquiry that has largely been conducted in secret.<\/p>\n The whistleblower filed his \u201curgent\u201d report against Trump with the I.C. inspector general on Aug. 12, but it was not publicly released\u00a0until Sept. 26.<\/p>\n Prior to filing, he had met with Schiff\u2019s Democratic staff for \u201cguidance.” At first, the California lawmaker denied the\u00a0contacts, but later admitted that his office did, in fact, meet with the whistleblower early on.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella\u2019s closest allies at the NSC \u2014 both whom were also Obama holdovers — to join his\u00a0committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August \u2014 the same month the whistleblower complaint was\u00a0filed.<\/p>\n During closed-door depositions taken in the impeachment inquiry, Misko has been observed handing notes to the lead counsel for the impeachment\u00a0inquiry, Daniel Goldman, as he asks questions of Trump administration witnesses, officials with direct knowledge of\u00a0the proceedings told RealClearInvestigations.<\/p>\n Republicans participating in the restricted inquiry hearings have been asking witnesses about Ciaramella and repeatedly injecting his name into\u00a0the deposition record, angering Schiff and Democrats, who sources say are planning to scrub the references to Ciaramella from\u00a0any transcripts of the hearings they may agree to release.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir reaction tells you something,\u201d said one official familiar with the inquiry.<\/p>\n For example, sources said Ciaramella\u2019s name was invoked by GOP committee members during the closed-door\u00a0testimony of\u00a0former NSC official Fiona Hill on Oct. 14. Ciaramella worked with Hill, another Obama holdover, in the\u00a0West Wing.<\/p>\n During Tuesday\u2019s deposition of NSC official Alexander Vindman, Democrats shut down a line of inquiry by\u00a0Republicans because they said it risked revealing the identity of the whistleblower. Republicans wanted to know with\u00a0whom Vindman spoke within the administration about his concerns regarding Trump\u2019s call to Ukraine. But Schiff\u00a0instructed the witness not to answer the questions, which\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0sparked a shouting match between Democrats\u00a0and Republicans.<\/p>\n Determined to keep the whistleblower’s identity secret, Schiff recently announced it may not be necessary for him to\u00a0testify even in closed session. Republicans argue that by hiding his identity, the public cannot assess his motives for striking out against the president. And they worry his political bias could color inquiry testimony and findings unless it\u2019s exposed.<\/p>\n Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, asserted the American people have the right\u00a0to know the person who is trying to bring down the president for whom 63 million voted.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough to determine someone\u2019s credibility if you can\u2019t put them under oath and ask them questions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Added Jordan: \u201cThe people want to know. I want to get to the truth.”<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/49\/492857_5_.jpg\")
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