“Internal talking points from Donald Trump’s spy chief reveal tensions between Trump and the intelligence community.” By Mattathias Schwartz, special to ProPublica, July 28, 2017
Last week, Dan Coats, the former senator from Indiana and current head of the U.S. intelligence community, was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt in front of a live audience at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering where diplomats, journalists and top U.S. officials mingle with business executives in between livestreamed panel discussions on world affairs. (The hour-long discussion was posted on YouTube.)
ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats’ aides, anticipating questions that Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: “How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?”
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Trump’s opinions are out of step with the conclusions of the agencies he is supposed to be leading. At Aspen, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he was “confident that the Russians meddled in this election, as is the entire intelligence community.”
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