12 former top intelligence officials back Brennan

TRUMP REVOKING EX-CIA CHIEF’S SECURITY CLEARANCE IS ‘DEEPLY REGRETTABLE’, THEY SAY

In a remarkable rebuke to President Donald Trump, a dozen former US intelligence chiefs signed a harshly worded letter on Thursday in support of former CIA Director John Brennan, after Trump abruptly revoked his security clearance.

“We feel compelled to respond in the wake of the illconsidered and unprecedented remarks and actions by the White House,” reads the letter from the officials, who served both Democratic and Republican presidents. They called Trump’s action “inappropriate” and “deeply regrettable.”

Signing the letter was a virtual who’s who of American spy chiefs dating back to the 1980s, a striking show of solidarity from the top ranks of the national security establishment.

They included former directors of central intelligence William Webster, George Tenet and Porter Goss; former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta and David Petraeus; former director of National Intelligence James Clapper; and former deputy CIA directors John McLaughlin, Stephen Kappes, Avril Haines, David Cohen and Michael Morell.

The letter followed an angry open letter to Trump from retired Admiral William McRaven, who headed US Joint Special Operations Command and oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In an op-ed published by The Washington Post, he excoriated Trump’s “McCarthy-era tactics” saying he would “consider it an honour” for Trump to revoke his security clearance in solidarity with Brennan.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Wednesday that Trump had stripped Brennan of his security clearance, and therefore his access to classified information. Trump did so, she said, because of questions about his “objectivity and credibility” and his “erratic conduct and behaviour.”

In his statement, Trump said he also was considering revoking security clearances for other critics, including Clapper and Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI Director James B. Comey, and former FBI or Justice Department officials Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, as well as current justice official Bruce Ohr. Several of them have said they no longer have clearances.

Brennan has been a vociferous critic of Trump, and the president’s action was widely seen as an effort to punish a political enemy. Normally, senior intelligence officials keep their clearances in case their expertise is needed, and some use it to obtain lucrative jobs in the private sector. It’s not clear whether Brennan, who headed the CIA during President Barack Obama’s second term, has used his since he left the agency in 2017. He works as a paid security analyst for NBC News.

The 12 former intelligence chiefs praised Brennan as “enormously capable and patriotic” and dismissed allegations against him as “baseless.”