Repairing the incredible damage done by the Trump admin: Intel agencies edition

Trump’s prevailing attitude toward the intelligence community, current and former officials said, has been that he knows better—and that the agencies therefore need to be constrained to better align with his priorities.

He has also repeatedly made clear his distrust of the intelligence community, from comparing them to Nazis before he was even inaugurated to discarding their analysis of Russia’s 2016 election interference in favor of Vladimir Putin’s denials. He often uses quotation marks around the word “intelligence” in his tweets to signal his disdain. And he has been reckless with classified information, from revealing highly sensitive secrets about ISIS to the Russians in the Oval Office to tweeting out sensitive images of Iran taken by one of the U.S.’s most advanced spy satellites.

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Trump’s actions, and the endless partisan battles over the Russia probe and impeachment, have left the intelligence community bruised and battered. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s advisers and allies in Congress are already thinking about what a heavy lift it will be to restore morale inside the agencies, legitimacy on Capitol Hill and public trust in the intelligence community’s leadership should Biden defeat Trump in November, according to more than a dozen people close to the candidate.

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[Trump] has instilled a sense in some intelligence professionals that they have to be careful not to present information that might conflict with his political agenda. He fired the former acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, earlier this year for allowing a subordinate to brief lawmakers on Russia’s interference in 2020. And there’s been “tip-toeing” around Congress among analysts and briefers wary of their findings getting back to the president, as one former senior intelligence official put it — particularly in the presence of staunch Trump ally and Gang of 8 member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

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CIA officials have had some trouble getting through to the president on issues related to North Korea, former officials said, beginning early on in his presidency when he instructed them to consult with former professional basketball player Dennis Rodman on the subject.

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served as the director for European Affairs on Trump’s NSC until February, said the degree to which Trump has “shaken the faith in the executive branch” could undermine the progress that the Pentagon and intelligence community have made in responding more quickly to various threats, particularly in cyberspace. “That is another, in certain ways more troubling, issue that will have to be managed,” he said in an interview.

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Over the summer, a DHS whistleblower alleged that intelligence on Russia’s malign activities in the U.S. and the domestic terror threat posed by white supremacists was also being suppressed by senior DHS leadership so as not to anger Trump, though the White House pushed back on the claim.

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“I remember [former DNI] Jim Clapper and myself would be in NSC meetings in the Situation Room, and we knew we'd be the skunk at the party because we would be presenting intelligence that might be at odds with the prevailing view,” Brennan said. “I was questioned on it, challenged on it, and rightly so. But I never felt that they didn't want to hear it.”

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One approach Biden is considering [...] : placing people in charge who are experienced and who are already familiar faces to the intelligence community and its oversight bodies.

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Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst, said in an interview that “a targeted callback” of officers who were forced out or resigned under Trump might be one way of getting some of that expertise back.

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When Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe canceled in-person election security briefings for lawmakers over the summer, Biden accused the Trump administration of hoping Russian President Vladimir Putin would “once more boost” Trump’s candidacy.

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“A couple of people at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would have to go, absolutely,” said former CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, referring to Trump’s stocking the office with loyalists, like Ratcliffe, over the last few months. The former Texas lawmaker’s scant intelligence experience — fewer than two years on the House Intelligence Committee — was among the issues that scuttled his confirmation prospects when he was first nominated by Trump last year.

“Probably Gina Haspel would have to go, too,” Hayden said.

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She has clamped down on the flow of Russia intelligence to Trump—who is known to erupt in anger whenever confronted with news of Moscow’s malign activities in the U.S.—and stood and clapped for his state of the union address earlier this year, a move out of step with past directors’ efforts to appear apolitical.

“Gina is a good woman, but she would have to go,” Hayden said.

  Politico

And the fact that he thinks she's a good woman is concerning. I'm not crazy about putting some of the old fellows back in office, either. And that includes Hayden, Clapper, Panetta, Brennan, and Tenet, all of whom are considered by the politicos as fine people, and all of whom supported torture and mass data collection on citizens, and some of whom lied to Congress.

Among the names is former acting CIA director Michael Morell, former Obama national security adviser and close Biden confidant Tom Donilon, former Obama deputy national security adviser Avril Haines, former Deputy NSA Director Chris Inglis, and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Robert Cardillo.

I know nothing about any of them, but if and when they get placed, I'll check them out.

[Former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell, who retired earlier this year, said] a Biden administration will need to pull off a revolution in how the intelligence community thinks about and responds to a changing world—complex, transnational threats like climate change and pandemics—following the reduced focus on the war on terror and the onrush of new technologies.

“That transformation, which should have occurred in earnest years ago, has to be accelerated under Biden.”

Indeed. Maybe Gerstell should be recalled.

[Rep. Raja] Krishnamoorthi said it would be important for Congress to partner with a potential President Biden on whistleblower reforms and other measures introduced by Democratic lawmakers to help insulate the intelligence community from politics. Trump repeatedly and publicly attacked the whistleblower whose complaint led to his impeachment proceedings, and fired the intelligence community watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who brought the complaint to Congress—one of five inspectors general Trump dismissed in the space of six weeks earlier this year.

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Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, encouraged Biden to back legislation protecting the independence of inspectors general and whistleblowers that Democrats recently unveiled as part of a post-Watergate-style reform package.

"Fundamentally, the key thing is that there must be trust between the oversight committees and the intelligence community and that starts at the top," Maloney said, adding that it was “time to show the political hacks the door and bring back the nonpolitical professionals who care about our country's national security and who will tell it to us straight regardless of the politics.”

Alex Vindman, Fiona Hill, Michael Atkinson, Elizabeth Neumann.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.