We appear to be entering a period where after the Iraq invasion and the perceived misinformation coming from intelligence sources, governments can now dismiss their own spies information.
President elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that a CIA conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election was “ridiculous”, and that he did not believe that the Kremlin had tried to bolster his candidacy.
“I don’t believe it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “Every week it’s another excuse.”
According to the Guardian
Two days earlier, the Washington Post reported that in a secret assessment, the CIA had concluded the Russian government sought to influence the election by hacking into Democratic party emails.
During the campaign, the intelligence community accused Russia-backed actors of hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Thousands of the emails, which intelligence officials said were provided by individuals with ties to the Russian government, were published by WikiLeaks. At the time officials said Russia hoped to undermine confidence in the election, but did not explicitly say the Kremlin favored Trump, as the CIA later concluded.
On Saturday, Trump’s transition team issued a statement that invoked the faulty intelligence used to justify the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The split was reflective of a growing rift between the CIA and Trump, who has declined daily intelligence briefings. The president-elect, who receives intelligence briefings just once a week claimed on Sunday he could skip the briefings because: “I’m, like, a smart person
”“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement read.
“I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day,”
But a bipartisan group of senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two of the most outspoken Republicans on foreign policy, echoed the concerns of the intelligence community.
This cannot become a partisan issue,” the senators said in a statement. “The stakes are too high for our country.”
McCain later told CBS:
“It’s clear the Russians interfered. Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to elect a certain candidate, I think that’s a subject of investigation.
“But facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign
McCain said he hoped to create a select committee to investigate the interference. He also expressed doubts over Trump’s reported decision to nominate Exxon Mobil’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, as his secretary of state
“It’s a matter of concern to me that he has such a close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. And obviously they’ve done enormous deals together,” McCain said, referring to a 2011 deal to access Arctic oil, potentially worth $300bn.
“That … would color his approach to Vladimir Putin and the Russian threat.”
Now llegislators overseeing the CIA and other intelligence agencies have told the Guardian they will be vigilant about reprisals from Donald Trump
Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said
“When the president-elect’s transition team is attempting to discredit the entire intelligence community [IC], it has never been more important for the IC and Congress to guard against possible political pressure or retaliation against intelligence analysts,”
However it brings to question however what do we need Intelligence sources for ?
If our leaders can ignore it when they choose , then why can't we ?
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