Intel chiefs remain at odds with Trump
For security team, it’s just easier to focus on threats
WASHINGTON — Sitting side-by-side at a long, blackdraped table, six U.S. intelligence chiefs all sounded the same alarm — Russian meddling in U.S. politics didn’t stop after the 2016 presidential race and could get worse in this year’s midterm elections.
It was a striking display of unanimity and one that left President Donald Trump at odds — again — with his own hand-picked national security team.
Trump has downplayed and even denied Russian meddling in the U.S. election, which he largely portrays as a Democratic “hoax” meant to delegitimize his victory, leaving the nation’s spy services straining to prevent a repeat performance in November.
“This is the largest gap I have ever seen between the urgency of the intelligence community and the response of the chief executive,” said Michael Hayden, who headed the CIA and the National Security Agency under President George W. Bush.
Hayden said it will be hard to adequately address Russian political interference without presidential direction because the issue requires a coordinated response.
Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and secretary of defense under President Barack Obama, and as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, said U.S. intelligence officials seem determined to press forward despite disinterest from the White House.
“The national security team is trying to keep the country focused on the key threats that are out there whether or not the president agrees or disagrees,” he said. “I think their hope is that if they keep pressing on the importance of these threats from Russia that at some point the president will follow.”
Panetta said that’s not how the process is supposed to work on sensitive national security issues. Pushback normally happens inside the National Security Council, not in public.
“In any other administration that I’ve been a part of … having somebody out there contradict the president would be unacceptable,” he said.
At the Senate hearing Tuesday, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, and Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and three other intelligence chiefs challenged or contradicted White House claims involving Russia, a declassified Republican memo about surveillance, and the security review for a senior Trump aide forced out for domestic violence allegations. They are hardly alone. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week explained part of the disconnect during a visit to the Middle East. “The president’s tweets don’t define the policy,” he said.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis felt compelled to tamp down fears of military conflict with North Korea last August after Trump tweeted that “Talking is not the answer!” The Pentagon chief publicly disagreed, saying “We’re never out of diplomatic solutions.”
Gordon Adams, a professor emeritus at American University’s School of International Service, said it’s increasingly hard to figure out who is addressing the range of threats facing America.
“The incoherence, the inconsistency, the persistent disconnect is quite unprecedented,” Adams said.
The dispute over Russian meddling is the most glaring. During the Senate hearing, the spy chiefs struggled to answer when Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked if Trump had given specific orders to blunt Russian interference in the fall campaign — or had put anyone in charge of coordinating a response.
“We’re taking a lot of specific efforts,” Wray said.
“Directed by the president?” Reed pressed.
“Not as specifically directed by the president,” Wray conceded.
Reed then asked Pompeo if the president has “singled out the Russian threat, which appears to be critical to this election coming up.”
Trump has asked the agency to “do everything we can to ensure that we thoroughly understand this potential threat,” the CIA director responded.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is leading a criminal investigation into whether anyone from Trump’s orbit assisted Russian attempts to interference with the 2016 campaign. The president has denied any collusion.
On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said “it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election.”
But that’s not what intelligence officials concluded. “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” said the report released shortly before Trump’s inauguration.