Trump-spy agencies gulf widens

Ex-officials say capricious leader, lack of trust harms working relations

WASHINGTON — After his election last fall, President Donald Trump often seemed at war with the CIA and the 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies.

He likened them to Nazis. He mocked their judgment that Russia intervened in the campaign to help him win. And he repeatedly accused them of leaking to the press to embarrass him and undermine the White House.

But Trump’s acrimony with America’s spy services has escalated sharply over concerns that he disclosed highly-classified intelligence to senior Russian diplomats. The intelligence had been obtained in Syria, reportedly by Israel, and had been given to Washington on condition it go no further.

“This is going to set (Trump’s relations with U.S. intelligence) back even more,” warned Michael Hayden, a retired general who headed the CIA and National Security Agency under Democratic and Republican administrations.

Intelligence veterans believe “their jobs are being made far more difficult by having to deal with the unpredictability of the president,” Hayden said.

“The key to intelligence is discretion, but how do you operate with a boss who is congenitally indiscreet?” asked Derek Chollett, a former senior Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council official during the Obama administration.

Trump’s disclosure of sensitive threat information to the Russians — which national security adviser H.R. McMaster defended National security adviser H.R. McMaster defended President Donald Trump’s disclosure as “wholly appropriate.” Tuesday as “wholly appropriate” — raised fears that U.S. allies could scale back intelligence-sharing, cutting off a vital source of spying tips, if they cannot trust Trump to keep closely-held secrets.

The damage could go deeper if Trump, who heads to the Middle East and Europe on Friday on his first major foreign trip, grows even more convinced that some U.S. intelligence officials are using leaks as payback for his disparaging remarks, and trusts them less.

U.S. officials faced a more immediate dilemma because Trump’s disclosure concerned an Islamic State threat to aircraft from computer laptops, and the U.S. has not shared the same details with European allies believed to be directly at risk, according to a former senior U.S. official.

In March, U.S. and British officials barred passengers from bringing laptops and tablets in carry-on bags aboard flights departing from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The ban was based in part on intelligence that Islamic State had acquired airport screening equipment and was testing ways to hide bombs in portable electronic devices larger than a cell phone, the former official said.

The Trump administration has been considering expanding the laptop ban to passenger flights from Europe just as the summer tourist season starts. Senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security are supposed to brief their counterparts Wednesday at a meeting in Brussels.

To intelligence officials, attuned to the need to protect intelligence sources and methods, Trump’s comments last Wednesday to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, crossed a red line because it involved intelligence provided by an ally on condition it not be disseminated further.

To Trump and his aides, his disclosure in the unusual Oval Office meeting, which was first reported by The Washington Post, was just the latest damaging leak to the media that they blame on intelligence officials.

“I think national security is put at risk by this leak and by leaks like this,” McMaster told reporters Tuesday at the White House.

Trump could not have divulged sensitive intelligence sources and methods because he had not been briefed on them, McMaster said, adding that the president “wasn’t even aware of where this information came from.”

McMaster did not dispute that a senior White House official had alerted the CIA and NSA about Trump’s disclosure to the Russians after the meeting.

House and Senate Committees investigating Russia’s role in the election indicated they may now broaden their probes to include Trump’s meeting with the Russian envoys. CIA Director Mike Pompeo briefed the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday in closed session in what officials said was a previously scheduled session.

Other presidents have had frosty relations with America’s spies.

Richard Nixon carried a grudge against the CIA for his election loss to President John F. Kennedy in 1960, believing the agency had failed to debunk Kennedy’s false claim that the U.S. had fallen behind the Soviet Union in intercontinental ballistic missiles, the socalled missile gap.

After Nixon was elected in 1968, he never met privately with the three CIA directors who served under him other than in ceremonial meetings. He only had a single telephone conversation with William Colby, who headed the spy service during the Watergate resignation scandal, the agency revealed last August.