If you’ve listened for even just a few moments when President-elect Donald Trump discusses the national intelligence community, you know he takes a rather dim view of their assessments.
Exactly why that might be isn’t entirely certain, but one can surmise it starts with the intelligence assessments that led to the invasion of Iraq and has continued with the ongoing politicization of the CIA under both presidents George W. Bush—the son of a former CIA chief—and Barack Obama.
It would certainly explain why the president-elect doesn’t regularly take the Presidential Daily Briefing offered by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He instead relies more heavily upon his own intelligence advisers, led by National Security Adviser-designate Lt. Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn.
But, according to reports, Trump isn’t the only one who is questioning the CIA’s assessment. The career agents of the FBI also dismiss the notion that Russian hackers somehow influenced the election the president-elect’s behalf.
According to the ZeroHedge blog:
The FBI did not corroborate the CIA’s claim that Russia had a hand in the election of President-elect Donald Trump in a meeting with lawmakers last week.
A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau’s view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats.
The CIA believes Russia “quite” clearly intended to send Trump to the White House. The claim is a bold one and concerned Democrats and some Republicans who are worried about Trump’s desire to mend relations with an increasingly aggressive Russia. The CIA report was “direct, bold and unqualified,” one of the officials at the meeting told The Washington Post Saturday.
The FBI official was much less convinced of the claims, providing “fuzzy” and “ambiguous” remarks.
What is developing is concrete evidence that the CIA and FBI took sides in the election, a deep divide that doesn’t bode well for the nation going forward if it isn’t fixed early on in the new Trump Administration. Of all the divisions that need to be healed in our country, this might be the most important. {eoa}
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