[Infowarrior] - PEOTUS planning CIA/ODNI restructuring

[Richard Forno]

Donald Trump Plans Revamp of Top U.S. Spy Agency

President-elect works with advisers on restructuring Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Damian Paletta and
Julian E. Barnes
Updated Jan. 4, 2017 5:54 p.m. ET
616 COMMENTS

http://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-officials-frown-on-donald-trumps-dismissal-of-u-s-intelligence-1483554450

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said, prompted by a belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized.

The planning comes as Mr. Trump has leveled a series of social media attacks in recent months and the past few days against U.S. intelligence agencies, dismissing and mocking their assessment that the Russian  government hacked emails of Democratic groups and individuals and then leaked them last year to WikiLeaks and others in an effort to help Mr. Trump win the White House.

One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment on the plan.

“The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world [is] becoming completely politicized,” said the individual, who is close to the Trump transition operation. “They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.”

In one of his latest Twitter posts on Wednesday, Mr. Trump referenced an interview that WikiLeaks editor in chief Julian Assange gave to Fox News in which he denied Russia had been his source for the thousands of emails stolen from Democrats and Hillary Clinton advisers, including campaign manager John Podesta, that Mr. Assange published.

Mr. Trump tweeted: “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’—why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!”

Mr. Trump has drawn criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and from intelligence and law-enforcement officials for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, for attacking American intelligence agencies, and for embracing Mr. Assange, long viewed with disdain by government officials and lawmakers.

“We have two choices: some guy living in an embassy on the run from the law…who has a history of undermining American democracy and releasing classified information to put our troops at risk, or the 17 intelligence agencies sworn to defend us,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). “I’m going with them.”

But for Mr. Trump and some of his supporters, the accusations of Russian hacking and the criticism of WikiLeaks are seen as an effort to delegitimize the president-elect’s victory.

Since his November election, Mr. Trump has published close to 250 Twitter posts. Of those, 11 have focused on Russia or the election-related cyberattacks. In each of those tweets, Mr. Trump either has flattered Russian President Vladimir Putin—last month calling him “very smart”— or disparaged the investigation into the hacks.

This stands in contrast to his posts on other issues and countries, such as North Korea or China, where his views on national security risks line up more squarely with U.S. spy agencies.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established in 2004 in large part to boost coordination between intelligence agencies following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Many Republicans have proposed cutting the ODNI before, but this has proven hard to do in part because its mission centers are focused on core national security issues, such as counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and counterintelligence.

“The management and integration that DNI focuses on allows agencies like the CIA to better hone in on its own important work,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who believes dismantling the ODNI could lead to national security problems.

Mr. Trump’s advisers say he has long been skeptical of the CIA’s accuracy, and the president-elect often mentions faulty intelligence in 2002 and 2003 concerning Iraq’s weapons programs. But he has focused his skepticism of the agencies squarely on their Russia assessments, which has jarred analysts who are accustomed to more cohesion with the White House.

Top officials at U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, have said Russia orchestrated the computer attacks that hacked and leaked Democratic Party emails last year. President Barack Obama ordered the intelligence agencies to produce a report on the hacking operation, and he is expected to presented with the findings on Thursday.

Russia has long denied any involvement in the hacking operation, though Mr. Putin has said releasing the stolen emails served a public service.

The heads of the CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to brief Mr. Trump on the findings on Friday. Mr. Trump tweeted late Tuesday that this meeting  had been delayed and suggested that the agencies still needed time to “build a case” against Russia.

White House officials said Mr. Trump will be briefed on the hacking report as soon as it is ready. White House officials have been increasingly frustrated by Mr. Trump’s confrontations with intelligence officials.

“It’s appalling,” the official said. “No president has ever taken on the CIA and come out looking good.”

Among those helping lead Mr. Trump’s plan to restructure the intelligence agencies is his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who had served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was pushed out by DNI James Clapper and others in 2013. Also involved in the planning is Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who Mr. Trump selected to be his CIA director.

Lt. Gen. Flynn didn’t respond to a request for comment and Mr. Pompeo declined to comment.

Mr. Trump shares the view of Lt. Gen. Flynn and Mr. Pompeo that the intelligence community’s position that Russians tried to help his campaign is an attempt to undermine his victory or say he didn’t win, the official close to the transition said.

Mr. Flynn will lead the White House’s National Security Council, giving him broad influence in military and intelligence decisions throughout the government. He is also a believer in rotating senior intelligence agencies into the field and reducing headquarters staff.

Current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials have reacted with a mix of bafflement and outrage to Mr. Trump’s continuing series of jabs at U.S. spies.

“They are furious about it,” said one former senior intelligence official, adding that a retinue of senior officials who thought they would be staying on in a Hillary Clinton administration now are re-evaluating their plans following Mr. Trump’s election.

Current and former officials said it was particularly striking to see Mr. Trump quote Mr. Assange in tweets.

“It’s pretty horrifying to me that he’s siding with Assange over the intelligence agencies,’’ said one former law-enforcement official.

Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA who retired in 2005, said he was disturbed by Mr. Trump’s tweets and feared much of the intelligence community’s assessments could be filtered through Lt. Gen. Flynn, chosen by Mr. Trump as his national security adviser.

“I’m rather pessimistic,” he said. “This is indeed disturbing that the president should come in with this negative view of the agencies coupled with his habits on how he absorbs information and so on that don’t provide a lot of hope for change.”

—Carol E. Lee, Shane Harris, Devlin Barrett, Felicia Schwartz an, Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.

Write to Damian Paletta at damian.paletta at wsj.com and Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes at wsj.com