REUTERS - President-elect
Donald Trump's rejection this weekend of U.S. intelligence analysts' conclusion
that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help
him win the White House is
the latest in a string of conflicts between Trump and the intelligence
community he will command.
Most of them involve
Russia, which has grown increasingly aggressive - according to what U.S.
intelligence agencies have told Congress and the administration of President Barack
Obama - in Syria and Ukraine. The agencies also reported that Russia has
ratcheted up activities in cyberspace including meddling, sometimes covertly,
in European and U.S. elections.
The intelligence
agencies have concluded with "high confidence" that not only did
their Russian counterparts direct the hacking of Democratic Party organizations
and leaders, but they did so to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton,
not just to shake confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official
said on Friday.
The
president-elect's transition office responded by releasing a statement that
exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence
community's work on Iraq, but did not address the analysts' conclusion about
Russia.
"These are the
same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," the
statement said. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest
Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make
America Great Again.'"
In a statement
issued on Saturday, California Democrat Adam Schiff, a member of the House
intelligence committee, called the Russian hacking of the U.S. election
"spectacularly successful."
"One would also
have to be willfully blind not to see that these Russian actions were uniformly
damaging to Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton and helpful to Donald
Trump," Schiff said. "I do not believe this was coincidental or
unintended."
Trump has rejected
the intelligence agencies' finding.
"I don't
believe they interfered," he told Time magazine about Russia in an
interview published this week. "That became a laughing point, not a
talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, 'Oh, Russia
interfered.'"
Russian officials
have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
The president-elect
has been receiving the President's Daily Brief (PDB), one of the most highly
classified documents in the U.S. government and which can include details of
U.S. and allied covert operations, only once a week. That is far less often
than most of his predecessors.So far, intelligence officials said, Trump has
not requested a special briefing on Russia, despite the agencies' warnings that
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine trans-Atlantic unity
and test U.S. and allied resolve.
'INCIDENTAL CONTACT'
In fact, two
officials with knowledge of the situation said on Saturday that Trump's
transition team has made only "incidental contact" with the Central
Intelligence Agency. This is despite the fact that Trump's choice to head the
CIA, U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, has limited experience working with the
agency. The Kansas Republican served on the House Intelligence Committee and
the select committee investigating the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic and
intelligence facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Democrats and some
Republicans in Congress who have been briefed on the Russian activities share
the intelligence agencies' alarm about Trump's plans for the 17-agency
intelligence community, which includes the National Security Agency, the
Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Privately, some
members of the clandestine service, the CIA's body of spies, said they would
resign rather than obey any order to resume waterboarding or other
"enhanced interrogation techniques" that Trump endorsed during his
campaign.Elsewhere in the $70 billion-a-year intelligence community officials
on Saturday said they fear that Trump might invite legal trouble by trying to
vastly expand electronic and physical surveillance of suspected terrorists
based on their religion or national origin.
None of that may
come to pass, of course, and campaign rhetoric and tweets do not always predict
policies, the officials conceded.However, Trump's statements about Russia and
business dealings there, as well as those of retired Army Lieutenant Michael
Flynn, his choice for national security adviser, are worrisome to many of the
officials tracking Putin's growing aggressiveness from seas to skies to
cyberspace.
Obama has ordered
the intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into
the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the
White House said on Friday.
Obama's homeland
security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters on Friday the report's results
would be shared with lawmakers and others.
"The president
has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what
happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned
from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the
Congress," she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science
Monitor.
REUTERS
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