U.S. spy agencies are reportedly freaked out about sharing intelligence with President-elect Trump

U.S.intelligence community is reportedly very nervous about President Trump

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

published 10 November 2016

It's always fraught business meeting your new boss, but for America's intelligence community, disclosing America's national security secrets to President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly especially nerve-wracking. Trump has been dismissive and disdainful of the conclusions reached by the spy agencies, especially regarding Russia and Syria, and suggested that as president, he would order the CIA to resume torturing suspects. "I cannot remember another president-elect who has been so dismissive of intelligence received during a campaign or so suspicious of the quality and honesty of the intelligence he was about to receive," former CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Washington Post.

As early as Thursday, intelligence officials will give Trump his first full intelligence briefing, likely the same daily intel briefing President Obama gets, and there's a "palpable sense of dread" in the intelligence community, reports The Post's Greg Miller. According to European intelligence officials cited by Newsweek, the Kremlin has a dossier on Trump, including potentially compromising video of Trump in a Moscow hotel room. Trump's only prominent adviser from the intelligence community is retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and then seen dining with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I'm half dreading, half holding my breath going to work today," an unidentified senior U.S. national security official tells The Washington Post. "It's fear of the unknown," he added. "We don't know what he's really like under all the talk.... How will that play out over the next four years or even the next few months? I don't know if there is going to be a tidal wave of departures of people who were going to stay around to help Hillary's team but are now going to be, 'I'm out of here.'" Also in The Post, Richard H. Kohn, an emeritus profess of peace, war, and defense at UNC, pleads with prominent Republican national security leaders to serve in the Trump administration, even though they "dislike and distrust" Trump. You can read Kohn's op-ed at The Washington Post.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.