Ex-Spy Chief Clapper Hits Back at Trump’s Criticism of Agencies
Ex-Spy Chief Clapper Hits Back at Trump’s Criticism of Agencies
(Bloomberg) -- Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a frequent target of Donald Trump’s ridicule, said there’s a difference between criticism of intelligence agencies and the pattern of disparagement coming from the president.
“The U.S. intelligence community provides its best judgment given the fact that it’s never going to have perfect knowledge, perfect insight,” Clapper said during an online event Wednesday evening. “It’s not a bad thing if a policy maker is skeptical about intelligence and challenges it.”
He added that “there’s a difference between that and disparagement and derision, which is kind of the occasional pattern we’re into now.”
Clapper also said there needs to be a certain degree of “independence and autonomy” on the part of the director of national intelligence a week after the Senate confirmed Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas as the nation’s spy chief, despite criticism that he’s too much of a Trump loyalist and has too little experience in intelligence issues.
“Independence, objectivity and separation from political considerations in the White House -- of course we’ve seen that all that kind of erode,” Clapper said at the event organized by the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Trump has criticized Clapper’s role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and whether anyone around Trump colluded in it. Lately, the president has been asserting, without evidence, that he was the victim of a conspiracy led by his predecessor that he calls “Obamagate.”
Earlier this month, Trump described Clapper, a retired Air Force general, as not “a smart guy” and asked, “How do you have not a smart person heading up intelligence?”
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