For Trump, things got off to a bad start with the intelligence community right from the start. When he received an intelligence briefing on August 17, 2016, he came out afterwards and declared that he could tell from the “body language” of the briefers that they didn’t like President Obama or agree with his policies. It didn’t sit well with the intelligence community, and they sent messengers out to let this be known. For example, the former Executive Assistant to Director of the CIA, Paul Pillar, said:
“Those selected for this task would have been the most professional of an elite corps of intelligence officers. One of the last things they would do is express either verbally or through body language preferences” how they feel about the current administration in Washington.
Former acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell said that Trump’s remarks demonstrated that he has “got zero understanding of how intelligence works.”
“This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it’s the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties. To me this is just the most recent example that underscores that this guy is unfit to be commander in chief.”
Both Pillar and Morrell have extensive experience in creating intelligence reports and briefing the president. Morrell led the team that created the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) for President George W. Bush. To say that they don’t like or agree with Donald Trump is putting it mildly. And it shouldn’t shock you to see Pillar quoted in David Corn’s new piece on a classified memo he’s seen instructing briefers to keep Trump’s PDB short and free of nuance.
“These issues about the overall length of the book as well as whether there are going to be conflicting interpretations—that unfortunately sounds like…bowing to the reality of a president with a short attention span and little ability to deal with ambiguities,” says Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University.
These leaks and the comments about these leaks are what are known in the business as “the long knives.”
Trump is literally being carved up before our eyes, which makes it unsurprising that he’s got a plan to fight back.
President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials, an effort that members of the intelligence community fear could curtail their independence and reduce the flow of information that contradicts the president’s worldview.
The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president.
It’s unclear how effective Feinberg can be in cleaning house. At least ostensibly, his mission won’t be to purge the intelligence community of critics, and most changes to the way we do intelligence would require sign off from Congress.
Still, Trump has to do something because things have escalated to a point where now the intelligence community is running to the Wall Street Journal to tell the country that they won’t share intelligence with the president because they don’t trust him.
The two salvos Trump is fielding this morning complement each other in an ironic way. On the one hand, the intelligence community is withholding information from him because he may be a Russian agent, and on the other hand they’re mocking him for wanting a very short PDB that contains no conflicting information. It would seem that denying him information would solve itself. He hardly wants any in the first place.
Or as I linked in Booman’s previous article on Trump / Russia ties:
He will die in jail.
The president* really doesn’t realize that he is messing with the wrong people. The intelligence community would think nothing of ruining the likes of this president*. Can’t say that the president* isn’t being warned.
LOL!! He’s not going to jail. It’s hilarious that people treat Schindler(aka 20Committee on Twitter) as a serious source for anything.
[person x] it not to be trusted!
– another post by Phil Perspective
It can come as no surprise to anyone that watched Trump’s rise that he would be at odds with anything having to do with intelligence.
Yep. No one expected the donald would be that guy spotted on the grassy knoll with Boris and Natasha.
Sometimes I think this whole thing is a little overwrought. At any rate at this point, I doubt Trump will be deposed or die in jail. He does seem more friendly to Russia than I would like but, then again, maybe he is looking for a way out of this endless war footing.
Don’t get me wrong. I carry no brief for him. And all of his appointments have been horrendous. But maybe this is getting ahead of the evidence.
Leaks from the IC are basically claiming they have the goods on Trump. That might not be true. The fact is we won’t know until the investigations ramp up. But things right now are not looking good for him.
If they get him, it is ok with me for sure.
Do you think Pence would be that much better than Trump?
Said it before, I’ll say it again: Pence could blow up the country; Trump could blow up the world.
Any POTUS could blow up the world. That has long called for getting rid of these strategic nuclear weapons and not have to rely on the mental ability, stability, and health of the various people in positions that could lead to a nuclear conflagration. How close is Pence to the Armageddon freaks? How much does Trump like his wealth and creature comforts and longing for Trump Towers and golf clubs in Tehran, Moscow, etc.? Would he trash all of that along with the dynasty he believes he’s established?
Yes.
He would trash it inadvertently and blame someone else.
He’s either that incompetent or that careless.
Or both.
Yes. Pence would be horrible, but Trump is unstable and utterly incompetent in ways that can really harm the country.
One would think that even a collection of misfits as third rate as the Trumperite inner circle would know that stopping a calculated leak campaign by the spies is an impossible task. But King Canute tried to hold back the tide, so whatever.
As Der Trumper brings in a new Gestapo officer beholden only to him to root out the disloyal elements of the IC, it seems clear that no accommodation is possible. Yet Trumper doesn’t want the Daily Brief (“I’m too smart and busy to hear the same thing every day!”), and the briefers don’t want to give info to the Russian conduit operation…er, WH anyway. As you say, you’d think the problem would solve itself….
CIA: “You want that daily brief tomorrow, Chief? Not much goin’ on.”
Trumper: “Nah, I’m good. I’ll call you!”
CIA: “Sounds good. Catch ya later.”
Rinse Preetus: (to himself) “Thank God…”
The difference is, King Canute knew damned well his commands couldn’t stop the tide; he was teaching his sycophantic courtiers a lesson in humility:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves
The story’s been twisted over the years to portray Canute (a/k/a Cnut or Knut) as an arrogant deluded fool who really thought he had such power. In that sense, it does fit our current would-be monarch quite nicely.
The Chair of Cerberus Capital Management is one Dan Quayle. The firm is a major investor in weaponry companies (Does that characterization mean both the private gun industry and the defense industry?)
Feinberg was a large contributor to the Trump campaign and likely to Republican causes as well.
Trump has one power over Congress. He has the absolute power to declassify any classified document in the government. Other categories of government-held information, such as personally identifiable information (such as tax returns) or personal health information (such as Medicare invoicing information) are likely more protected from the President than “national security” information. He has the motive to classify everything between January 2009 and January 20, 2017. His equivalent of nuking the filibuster is to declassify everything to the beginning of classification itself. That would get the intelligence community scrambling like the natural resource agency personnel who are offloading government-funded studies.
The intelligence community has not been properly audited for its financial transactions in 68 years (since the Congress make that information secret from the public and, more importantly, from itself. Feinberg, at a minimum could create a report that would drive Congress to do such an audit. Especially if it punishes some of the past intelligence community leadership who endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The elite is ranged against the elite. Given the effectiveness of the intelligence community in providing meaningful intelligence that averts disaster, watching this tempest with popcorn in hand might be advisable. It is likely both sides will hurt themselves.
On the President’s daily briefing, the intelligence community should deliver it exactly in the form that Trump wants it. I suspect he wants them to develop options instead of his (likely divided) National Security Council. And provide plausible deniability when he screws up.
Interesting that it is Murdoch’s rag, not Bezos’s that is getting this hit job.
We will not see whether there is an independent deep state or not. Could be very clarifying.
That’s a recommendation?
We’ve seen open battles between two branches of the federal government. Behind the scenes battles between Congress and the WH and agencies, WH and Pentagon, CIA, or FBI (or other agency such as Dept of Energy),and between agencies fighting for turf and money. But never before so much of the IC in various agencies aligned and publicly doing battle with a presidential nominee, winner, and then actual POTUS. Both sides of this coin are super scary and anyone that claims she/he can predict the complete outcome (at least four years down the road) aren’t making educated guesses, only guesses.
They way I wrote this piece, I did not even close to suggesting that I was taking Pillar and Morrell’s side.
In fact, taken in isolation, this piece would justify a complete purge of the IC community since they’re nakedly trying to stage a coup.
But you always bring your own myopic view to everything.
Read my latest piece for why I actually have to side with the more empirical side in this feud, and that’s saying something considering they’re all paid liars.
Josh Marshall has a good piece on the fraught nature of the situation, and why he thinks it’s less problematic than might be considered at first blush.
It’s an interesting dilemma, to be sure. The IC feels free to target this President… who’s to say they wouldn’t turn on a future American version of Jeremy Corbyn that becomes President?
What Flynn did is potentially a crime. It’s very likely Trump knew about it. The contrarian left is once again used to provide cover for Trump.
Trump does have an opportunity here to purge the IC. All it takes is one Trump supporter in the spook world who knows names to rat out the opposition. It won’t take many prosecutions for folks to get the message.
I wonder who’ll get who first.