REUTERS - President-elect
Donald Trump is receiving an average of one presidential intelligence briefing
a week, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter, far
fewer than
most of his recent predecessors.
Although they are
not required to, presidents-elect have in the past generally welcomed the
opportunity to receive the President's Daily Brief (PDB), the most highly
classified and closely held document in the government, on a regular basis.
It was not
immediately clear why Trump has decided not to receive the intelligence
briefings available to President Barack Obama more frequently, or whether that
has made any difference in his presidential preparations.
An official on the
transition team said on Thursday that Trump has been receiving national
security briefings, including "routine" PDBs and other special
briefings, but declined to specify their content or frequency, saying these
matters were classified.
Trump has asked for
at least one briefing, and possibly more, from intelligence agencies on
specific subjects, one of the officials said. The source declined to identify
what subjects interested the president-elect, but said that so far they have
not included Russia or Iran.
Indiana Governor
Mike Pence, Trump's vice president-elect, has been receiving his own PDB at
least six days a week, the sources familiar with the matter said.
Former Central
Intelligence Agency briefer David Priess, the author of a book about PDBs, said
that traditionally, Trump and Pence's predecessors sat for "daily or
near-daily intelligence briefings" between their elections and their inaugurations.
He said Jimmy Carter
and Ronald Reagan did not start receiving their daily briefings until later in
November, while the delayed election result in 2000 meant that George W. Bush
did not start receiving his until December.
The briefings are
not compulsory. Priess said that after his first election, Richard Nixon
spurned face-to-face briefings, so paper PDBs were delivered to his office,
only for a "stack" of them to be later returned to the CIA, unopened.
Trump's casual
attitude to the briefings attracted criticism from Representative Adam Schiff,
the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
"It is deeply
disturbing that the president-elect has time for rallies but not for regular
intelligence briefings," Schiff said.
During the run-up to
the Nov. 8 presidential election, Trump and a handful of advisers received at
least two briefings from intelligence officials about broad national security
issues.
However, the
pre-election briefings did not include the kind of secrets that are included in
the PDBs that Obama, Trump and Pence now have access to. Such secrets include
information about U.S. espionage sources and covert operations overseas.
PDBs are presented
to presidents and their closest aides by representatives of the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI), though material in them is prepared by the
CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other
parts of the U.S. intelligence community, the officials said.
During and after the
election campaign, Trump raised questions about the intelligence on hacking of
U.S. political institutions.
In a statement on
Oct. 7, ODNI and the Department of Homeland Security expressed confidence that
the Russian government had "directed" hacking into "emails from
U.S. persons and institutions" that was "intended to interfere with the
U.S. election process."
Trump, however, has
repeatedly dismissed suggestions that Russia was behind the efforts, telling
Time magazine earlier this week: "I don't believe they interfered ... It
could be Russia. It could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New
Jersey."
(Corrects to say
Iran, not France, in fifth paragraph)
REUTERS
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