Haspel sworn in at CIA

President Trump lauds agents, slams former director Brennan

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump praised Gina Haspel as the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency at a swearing-in ceremony Monday, just hours after accusing the fifth CIA director of disgracing the office and engaging in a “political hit job” against him.

In comments less than three hours apart, Trump lamented what he said was the destruction of faith in the intelligence community and called the CIA “the most elite intelligence professionals on the planet Earth.”

That juxtaposition highlights Trump’s uneasy relationship with intelligence agencies, which serve as the president’s eyes and ears around the world but are also investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election that Trump won.

On Twitter on Sunday, Trump ordered an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his campaign to spy on him, leading to the now wide-ranging investigation into whether the campaign colluded with Russian agents to influence the election. Then on Monday, he accused former CIA Director John Brennan of being “the genesis of this whole debacle.”

“John Brennan is panicking,” Trump tweeted Monday, quoting conservative radio host Dan Bongino. “He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the FBI.”

Trump has accused Brennan — now an MSNBC commentator — of being among “the biggest liars and leakers” in Washington. Also on Trump’s “liars and leakers” list: former FBI Director James Comey and former director of national intelligence James Clapper.