Staff Reports
The White House’s Government Transparency Task Force just dumped a packet of declassified intelligence files into the public square. The documents include a “Defensive Briefing Spreadsheet” and a DNI slide deck tied to an FBI assessment called “Round River.” The files label dozens of people and outlets as either alleged “targets” or alleged “conduits” of foreign disinformation — and the FBI has now sent a letter saying it found at least 14 Confidential Human Sources who reported derogatory material about Joe Biden. This is the development everyone should be talking about, and fast.
What the packet actually shows: Round River and the Defensive Briefing Spreadsheet
The packet contains the Defensive Briefing Spreadsheet and DELTA/Round River slides. The spreadsheet classifies many high-profile names as “targets” or “conduits.” On the same list, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama are labeled “targets,” while former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Attorney General William P. Barr are labeled “conduits.” The DNI slides describe Round River as an FBI Foreign Influence Task Force review of old CHS reporting about Ukraine and Burisma that flagged some reporting as foreign disinformation.
Why this matters: who labeled whom, and why we should care
This is not just bureaucratic finger-pointing. If an intelligence unit quietly marked legitimate reporting as foreign disinformation, it could have shaped what policymakers and investigators saw. The FBI’s own letter — signed by Director Kash Patel — says the FBI identified at least 14 Confidential Human Sources whose reporting included derogatory material on Joseph Biden and that the bureau is probing whether FITF work “undermine[d] or influence ongoing investigations” by focusing on Biden-related material. In plain English: someone may have tossed important leads into the “disinfo” trash can.
Labels are not verdicts, but they carry power
To be clear: an analyst’s label in a spreadsheet is not a court ruling. But these internal designations matter. If the government treats certain people and outlets as “conduits” of foreign disinformation, those people face reputational damage and may be excluded from defensive briefings. If the same process treated others as mere “targets,” that raises the question of who decided which leads merited follow-up and which were quietly set aside.
What comes next: FBI review and political consequences
The FBI letter says Director Patel disbanded the FITF unit that produced Round River and that the FBI will hand CHS reporting to the task force for review. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. Journalists and Congress should demand the underlying CHS reports and clear answers: who made the determinations, what standards guided those choices, and whether the labels influenced prosecutions or briefings. Conservatives should press for transparency now — because if the intelligence community is in the business of quietly branding political actors, American voters deserve to know the rules of the game.
Bottom line: the White House packet and the FBI’s response are a fresh development that raises real questions about internal intelligence practices and political influence. Watch the Round River files closely. If bureaucrats were deciding which stories were “real” and which were “foreign disinformation” behind closed doors, that is not homeland defense — it’s gatekeeping. And gatekeepers should never get to write the final chapter on politically charged reporting without being put under a bright light.
