Entering month three of Team Trump's reign of Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing, the White House continues to be overtly hostile towards the nation's intelligence services.
The approach appears to be based, at least in part, on the White House's anxiety over the Russia investigations, which threaten to seriously weaken his presidency. It also reflects a deep distrust of the intelligence community among his political advisers, including government newcomers who have never dealt with classified information or covert programs.
One of their solutions? Bypass the thing-knowers as much as possible.
Officials have expressed an interest in having more raw intelligence sent to the president for his daily briefings instead of an analysis of information compiled by the agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials. The change would have given his White House advisers more control about the assessments given to him and sidelined some of the conclusions made by intelligence professionals.
That would be known as stovepiping, and is a process you might be familiar with from its role in allowing the George W. Bush White House to regularly “leak” bogus claims about Iraq-al Qaeda connections that were the early cornerstone of the administration's arguments for launching a staggeringly bloody and costly war that many non-stovepiping Americans would lose their lives over.
In this case, however, one could be forgiven for presuming that the reason the White House wants more visibility into the nation's raw intelligence streams is so that members of that White House have a better window into the state of intelligence investigations involving the White House.
Given that that's exactly what just happened, after all.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2o0eDa3
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment