TRUMP ISN’T FINISHED WITH THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s senior military and intelligence officials have been warning him strongly against declassifying information about Russia that his advisers say would compromise sensitive collection methods and anger key allies. An intense battle over this issue has raged within the administration in the days before and after the Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump and his allies want the information public because they believe it would rebut claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Trump in 2016. That may sound like ancient history, but for Trump it remains ground zero — the moment when his political problems began.
CIA Director Gina Haspel last month argued strongly at a White House meeting against disclosing the information, because she believed that doing so would violate her pledge to protect sources and methods, a senior Senate source said. This official said that a bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic senators has been trying to protect Haspel, though some fear that Trump may oust her.
Rumors have been flying this week about Haspel’s tenure, but a source familiar with her standing as CIA director said Tuesday that National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had both “assured her that she’s good,” meaning that she wouldn’t be removed. Haspel also met personally with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday. She sees him regularly as a member of the so-called “Gang of Eight” senior congressional leaders. But Tuesday’s visit was another sign of GOP support.
Haspel’s most unlikely defender has been Attorney General William Barr, who opposed a pre-election push to declassify the sensitive material, according to three current and former officials. At a showdown meeting at the White House, Barr pushed back against revealing the secret information.
Trump’s ceaseless attempts to argue that the Russia investigation was a “hoax” — and to force the intelligence community to declassify information he believes would support this view — may animate some of his otherwise inexplicable moves.
At the Pentagon, Trump replaced Defense Secretary Esper with acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, a former NSC official who had been nominated in March to run the National Counterterrorism Center. The job was vacant because Trump had fired Russell Travers, the previous acting NCTC chief, who had worked closely with former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who was bounced in February. Maguire’s supposed crime was that he had allowed intelligence officials to brief Congress on Russian efforts to support Trump in the 2020 election.
At NSA, the Trump team just installed as general counsel Michael Ellis, a former chief counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a locus of pro-Trump arguments that the Russia investigation was poisoned fruit. As the spy agency’s chief legal officer, Ellis could be an ally in a Ratcliffe-led campaign to declassify intelligence that would otherwise be tightly held because it might reveal sources and methods.
Senate Republicans, who might stop the post-election revenge campaign, face a growing tension between Trump’s demands and the country’s interests. The senior Senate source described it this way: “How much do you stay quiet during the tantrum period? What damage will it do to national security? That’s a real-time discussion that’s going on.”
Trump will depart the White House Jan. 20, barring an unlikely legal miracle. The question is how much damage he will do to national security before he leaves.