The Russia Probes: How Will They Know and When Will They Know It?

Inside a secure room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., about 11 miles from Capitol Hill, there are several thick binders filled with thousands of pages of highly classified documents. It is this intelligence, which likely includes transcripts from phone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency, that formed the basis of the report issued in January by the U.S. intelligence community concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin covertly ordered his government to intervene on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

For the past several weeks, as part of dueling investigations by the House and Senate into Russian interference in the election, teams of congressional investigators have made regular trips to this room to pore over the documents, which contain some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets. Sometimes they’re joined by lawmakers, including the chairmen of both the House and Senate intelligence committees. The work is laborious and decidedly low-tech. No phones, cameras, or recorders are allowed inside. Weeks into the probe, investigators were still reading through the documents, and Senate staffers were negotiating with the CIA about putting a computer in the room.