|
Leon Panetta: Trump ‘undermining the credibility' of intel community with Twitter tirades
[Wash Times] President-elect Donald Trump is "undermining the credibility" of the U.S. intelligence community by using Twitter to discuss and dispute matters of national security, former CIA Director Leon Panetta said Friday.In an interview broadcast by NBC’s "Today" show, the former CIA chief said it was "unheard of and unprecedented" for the president-elect to be publicly sparring with the nation’s intelligence community after Mr. Trump used his widely followed social media account to challenge its claims concerning a hacking campaign waged against the 2016 White House race by the Russian government. "When he sits down with our intelligence community and hears what they have to say, I think he’s going to realize that this is a very important issue that must be dealt with seriously," said Mr. Panetta, who at separate times ran both the CIA and Department of Defense under President Obama. "He’s going to find that it’s easy to tweet about reactions to all kinds of issues. But to seriously deal with our national security and deal with the threats to our country is a business that ought to be done in the confines of the Oval Office," he said Friday morning. Although Mr. Panetta has been hardly reserved in the past with respect to expressing his opinion of the president-elect, his latest comments proved especially timely given that Mr. Trump was scheduled to be briefed by intelligence officials Friday afternoon on the Russia’s hacking campaign. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-01-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=477824 |