After Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, he began to interview many different individuals for possible Cabinet and Administration positions. Immediately, there were nearly daily leaks as to whom was being considered for what position, and whether a given individual’s stock was rising or falling. After this had gone on for a few weeks — with sometimes wildly differing information coming out of Trump Tower and its environs — I talked with my close friend and co-blogger, Bruce Henderson, and wondered if Trump was carrying out a classic information security exercise: giving specific bits of information to specific individuals and then seeing if that information showed up in the press the next day or so. If it did, then the source of that leak was unmistakable identified. Henderson thought it plausible, but there was no way to prove that this was going on.
However, a recent letter (reproduced at the post above) from the Director of National Intelligence suggests Trump actually did this and showed a leak within the Intelligence Community.
Something we may find out during Trump's administration is the extent of partisanship in each part of the bureaucracy. What if we find out the IC in general is partisan? How could a problem like that be solved? These are the folks who have permission to hide information from us and lie to us for our own good, whose job is ideally proper management of information, but who could easily manipulate it for their own purposes, all protected from scrutiny by law.
Some time ago we talked about Trump requesting private security guards. Maybe he needs them. Maybe he also needs his own private intelligence team. And now that I'm thinking about this, didn't some people in the Bush administration feel they needed a team that went around the normal IC channels?
3 comments:
Trum's days are numbered if he counts on Hussein's packaged SS.
It's better to rely on Clan, just ask Julius Caesar.
Trum as a 70 yo Demoncrat understands very well what his side is capable of. Now that he has hitched his cart to some other horse.
Bush had a lot of trouble with the CIA especially, yes.
Trump doesn't need private security, though. Recall the numbers on the support for him among US Marines, which are the branch that protects the President.
It is nevertheless alarming to see the government taking sides like this. "We can't count on the CIA, but the Marines are still reliable" is not where I'd hoped to be. (Or, from the other side, "The Agency could save us from Trump, but possibly the military will back him." Good gracious.)
Yes, but the Secret Service, where are they, now?
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