Intel politicization

Wayne Madsen: CIA Interference in US Election is Without Precedent – Blackmailing McCain & Graham

Although the Central Intelligence Agency has had a long history of undermining presidents-elect and prime ministers-elect in other countries, the United States has never witnessed the intelligence agency so blatantly attempting to politically weaken a U.S. president-elect just a few weeks prior to the inauguration. What the CIA is doing in forcing Donald Trump into shifting from his campaign promise of restoring good relations with Russia to one of outright hostility to Moscow — favored by the CIA, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the neo-conservatives within the Republican and Democratic party establishments — is nothing less than an overt threat to American democracy.

Amid pressure from the CIA, DNI, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense’s under-secretariat for Intelligence, Trump has vowed to revamp the U.S. Intelligence Community. Trump has also questioned the politicization of U.S. intelligence, particularly the January 5 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony of DNI James Clapper, NSA director Mike Rogers, and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre. Clapper, in particular, not only called out Russia for hacking election-related computers at the Democratic National Committee but also using “fake news, social media and RT to influence the recent US elections.” That was a slap at Trump’s incoming national security adviser, former Defense Intelligence Agency chief retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who stood accused of re-tweeting, along with his son, “fake news.”