Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” former CIA director Michael Morell accused President-elect Donald Trump of undermining the “morale in the intelligence community” by questioning the source of hacks in the 2016 presidential election.
Morell said, “The president-elect has done two things, right? He has questioned the capabilities of the intelligence community publicly, but the other thing he has done, which is actually more damaging, I think, is he has questioned the intelligence community’s integrity by implying that their assessment was politically motivated. And that is a gut punch to people who go to work every day, nonpartisan, apolitical, trying to call it like they see it. So there are two different issues here.”
“The president-elect is wrong about the capabilities question,” he continued. “The CIA, for example, looks at every single judgment they make a year later and they say did we get it right or did we get it wrong and the batting average is very high. It looks like a free throw percentage in basketball. And on the intelligence question he is just as wrong. This is the most apolitical institution I know, they actually — it doesn’t have a political bone in its body. So he has both of those points wrong and it has undermined morale in the intelligence community and the CIA, and that is a big issue.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.