Trump pulls ex-CIA chief ’s clearance

9 security experts also considered

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he was revoking the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent critic, citing what the president called his “erratic conduct and behavior.”

White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the announcement at the start of a previously unscheduled media briefing at the White House. She said Trump is also considering taking the same unusual action against nine additional former national security officials — all Trump critics — who served in the Barack Obama or George W. Bush administrations, or

both.

“Any benefits that senior officials might glean from consultations with Mr. Brennan are now outweighed by the risks posed by his erratic conduct and behavior,” Sanders said, reading from a statement by the president.

That statement also alleged that Brennan “has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this Administration.”

It continued: “Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the Nation’s most closely held secrets and facilitates the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos.”

Brennan responded on Twitter: “This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.” Many of the additional former officials on Trump’s target list said that they already had relinquished their clearances.

Sanders named nine more individuals whose clearances are also under review: James Clapper, former director of national intelligence; former FBI Director James Comey; Bush national security adviser Michael Hayden; former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates; President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice; current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr; former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; former FBI agent Peter Strzok; and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.

Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Yates were fired by Trump. Only Ohr remains in the government.

At least two of the former officials, Comey and McCabe, do not currently have security clearances, and none of the eight receive intelligence briefings.

Former national security officials often retain clearances to enable them to continue advising the White House and Congress, or to maintain helpful ties to foreign officials.

Brennan’s tenure as CIA director capped a quartercentury career at the agency, including postings in Asia and as the station chief in Saudi Arabia. He is fluent in Arabic. As Obama’s Homeland Security adviser, before becoming CIA director, Brennan was central to the covert effort that ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Appearing on MSNBC after Trump’s action, Brennan said: “I’ve seen this type of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants and despots and autocrats in my national security career. I never thought I would see it here in the United States.”

In what could have been his final provocation for Trump, late Tuesday on MSNBC, Brennan called Trump “dangerous to our nation” and “the most divisive president we have ever had,” who has “badly sullied the reputation of the office of the presidency.”

Sanders denied that the action against Brennan was retribution or an infringement of his free speech rights, contending instead that the decision was a matter of protecting classified information.

“The president has a constitutional responsibility to protect classified information,” she said.

Sanders cited as a rationale for the president’s action Brennan’s denials, as CIA director, that agency employees in 2014 had improperly searched Senate computer files amid the Senate intelligence committee’s investigation of the Bush-era program for harshly interrogating terrorism suspects. Ten CIA officials did get access to the files, and Brennan later apologized to the committee.

The president’s statement on Brennan was dated in late July, just after Sanders first told reporters that Trump might revoke the clearances of several of the critics named Wednesday, including Brennan. By waiting weeks to release it, the administration was widely seen as trying to shift the public’s focus: This week the White House has been roiled by attention to the president’s feud with former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who has called him a racist and released secret recordings of conversations with him and others, and by news from the trial of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

“This might be a convenient way to distract attention, say from a damaging news story or two,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the lead Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, tweeted. “But politicizing the way we guard our nation’s secrets just to punish the President’s critics is a dangerous precedent.”

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, tweeted, “An enemies list is ugly, undemocratic and un-American.”

Several Republicans also weighed in, with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., saying, “Unless there’s something tangible that I’m unaware of, it just, as I’ve said before, feels like a banana republic kind of thing.”

Hayden, the former Bush adviser, told the Los Angeles Times, “It’s disappointing that the president would do this. I do think he’s trying to change the narrative because it’s not been a really good week so far.

“Denying someone a clearance because they criticize the president isn’t warranted, although the president has absolute authority to grant or not grant,” Hayden said. “I just think it’s another example of using authority in a way that’s not productive.”

Brennan