What Trump and Clinton will find out in their classified intelligence briefings

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published 28 July 2016

Soon after the Democratic National Convention wraps up Thursday evening, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will sit down for their classified intelligence briefings. While considered a traditional part of presidential campaigns since 1952, concerns have been raised from both sides of the aisle about classified information getting passed around in what certainly marks a less-than-traditional election year.

So, just how much are Trump and Clinton going to know after they sit down with the intelligence community? Yahoo News' Olivier Knox broke it down:

The briefings are top secret, these officials say, but omit truly sensitive information like the sources and methods used to scoop up the intelligence, or ongoing covert operations."The candidates are not given the crown jewels, and these are more courtesy briefings," a retired senior intelligence official who served under Bush told Yahoo News."So a candidate might hear how concerned we are about Iran's support for [Syrian strongman Bashar] Assad but won't be told we tapped someone's phone or whatever," another former senior official said. "If the SEALs are on their way somewhere, that's also not something they get."A third former official, who asked not to be quoted, said that the two candidates might not be offered much more than Clapper gives Congress in public at annual worldwide threat assessment hearings — but that the secret nature of the conversation is necessary in order to enable the potential commander-in-chief to get answers to sensitive questions. [Yahoo News]

And, one former intelligence official pointed out, the briefings are as good an opportunity for the candidates to assess the intelligence community as it is for the intelligence community to assess the candidates.