“Yeah, I don’t buy it,” he said dismissively, waving his hand. “It’s total bullshit.”
He was egged on by Mike Flynn, an intelligence community dropout who eventually became Trump’s first national security advisor but was soon removed for lying about his contacts with Russia. “He’s right,” Flynn later agreed. “It’s all politicized bullshit.”
People around him were stunned. What did he say? Why on earth did they think the intelligence had been made up?
As the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Flynn knew better. As the Republican nominee, Trump should have as well; he’d already started getting official US intelligence briefings. The bizarre reaction stoked fears, including within Trump’s circle, that he was somehow in Putin’s pocket. Once elected, he went on to further deride the official assessments, telling reporters who asked about the spy agencies’ conclusions aboard Air Force One, “I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks.” That’s one way to describe people who would give their lives for the country. His casual dismissal of assessments by intelligence experts was disturbing. The intelligence community had been working hard since its major error about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to strengthen information gathering and analysis. Without their dedication, we never would have found Osama bin Laden or thwarted deadly attacks against the United States, yet Trump is willing to put his “gut” instincts ahead of their expertise.
Donald Trump wasn’t always so dismissive of the intel community. At points he tried to stand up for them. Trump repeatedly faulted Barack Obama for allegedly skipping intelligence briefings. During the 2016 campaign, he seemed to imply the professionals sent to brief him (whom he said he had “great respect for”) felt alienated by Obama, who supposedly didn’t take their advice. “In almost every instance, and I could tell—I’m pretty good with body language—I could tell they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.” That all changed when he decided they were out to get him as part of some Obama conspiracy. Once elected, Trump suggested a president doesn’t need daily intelligence briefings. “I get it when I need it,” he told Fox News’s Chris Wallace. “I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”
When he does sit down for a briefing on sensitive information, it’s the same as any other Trump briefing. He hears what he wants to hear, and disregards what he doesn’t. Intelligence information must comport to his worldview for it to stick. If it doesn’t, it’s “not very good.” As a result, the president of the United States is often ignorant on the most serious national security threats we face and is, therefore, ill-prepared to defend against them. In fact, I’d submit that he’s less informed than he should be on almost every major global threat, from nuclear weapons proliferation to cyber security.
Trump further insults these hardworking professionals by behaving recklessly with the information they give him, which he’s supposed to protect. In May 2017, the president allegedly revealed highly classified information in an Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. The incident was detailed in a report by the Washington Post, which claimed Trump disclosed details about spying operations in Syria. As soon as the story hit, it spread like wildfire. “What the hell happened?” aides texted one another.
Intelligence officials—already on edge by the president’s public comments—were mortified by the allegations. Whether the story was accurate or not, the fact that anyone thought it was plausible for the president of the United States to leak intelligence to an adversary says a great deal about the growing perception of the nation’s chief executive. Only a few months earlier, Trump was caught on camera reviewing sensitive documents about North Korea on an open-air terrace at his Mar-a-Lago resort, using the light of cell phone screens (which of course have cameras on them) to read in the darkness alongside his visiting counterpart from Japan.
Trump’s inept handling of intelligence was on display again one day when he flashed a peek at classified documents to a reporter at the White House. “See?” he said, holding up a fistful of papers and waving them as he tried to make a point about how in-the-know he was on world issues. “Many countries have given us great intelligence.” Although the reporter couldn’t see the content, the incident was discussed within the White House. The president has the authority to classify or declassify information as he wishes, so technically he could have shown the journalist whatever he wanted. Still, top National Security Council staff fretted about the president’s carelessness, which they speculated could put secret programs in jeopardy.
The growing list of security lapses threatened a result more woeful than the exposure of “close hold” information. Some realized it could put people in danger, increasing the risk of harm to American citizens, and compromising the agents we recruit to collect such information—those who put their lives on the line to help America see around corners and anticipate new threats. According to press reports, agencies were forced to devise a plan to extract a high-level intelligence source from a hostile foreign country, partly out of fear that Trump’s repeated disclosures might put the person in danger. Regardless of the veracity of the report, Trump’s behavior certainly had a chilling effect throughout the national security community, making the already difficult jobs of those charged with safeguarding our country that much harder.
As if to outdo himself, the president tweeted a photo of a failed Iranian missile launch in summer 2019 to taunt Iran’s government. The problem? The photo reportedly came from a US spy satellite and was shown to the president during a sensitive briefing. We were baffled. The “sources and methods” used to collect intelligence overseas are some of America’s most closely guarded secrets, which Trump seemed to be putting at risk again out of ignorance or indifference. Former officials publicly voiced concerns that our adversaries could use the president’s tweet to “reverse engineer” how the United States monitored the Iranian missile program, but it didn’t take the skill of foreign adversaries. Within days, amateur researchers used the clues in the photograph to identify the alleged government satellite in the night sky that had taken the picture, which, if true, could allow those researchers to track it in the future.
Worse than his inability to keep a secret, Donald Trump is the ultimate “politicizer” of intelligence. Say what you want about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leading the country to war by supposedly cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq. Their claims were at least based on real information collected at the time, backed by intelligence community analysts, and accepted by bipartisan majorities in Congress. Trump wants the information given to him to support his agenda, and he wants his intelligence officials to be “loyal,” rather than to give it to him straight. This is the opposite of what our spy agencies should do. More than that, it’s actually a threat to the security of the country because our commander in chief doesn’t really care about the truth.
When intelligence professionals don’t give him the assessments he wants, Trump attacks them. His biggest worry is when they appear in public or before Congress because he knows they will tell the truth. He doesn’t want them sharing information that contradicts his views. On more than one occasion, the president has thought about removing an intelligence chief for offering a nonpartisan, impartial assessment to the American people’s representatives in Congress.