TRUMP | James Clapper: Trump is 'making Russia great again'
By Kevin Johnson, USA Today
ASPEN, Colo. — Top former U.S. intelligence officials who helped author the assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections voiced searing criticism Friday of President Trump's continuing disregard for the undisputed conclusions and his repeated rebukes of the U.S. intelligence services.
Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan held nothing back during a panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Security Forum. They seized on a stream of Trump's tweets in which he accused officials of leaking unsubstantiated information about the president and compared the alleged actions to the gestapo tactics of "Nazi Germany.''
Brennan called Trump's "disparagement" of the intelligence institutions as "disgraceful," adding that he should be "ashamed."
Clapper, playing off the president's own campaign slogan, said that Trump's actions were "making Russia great again."
"It's painful for me to speak like this,'' Clapper said, reflecting on a career in government service that spanned the administration of several presidents, both Democrat and Republican.
In a Jan. 6 meeting with Trump prior to his inauguration, Clapper said he and other top officials offered a "compelling case'' pointing to Russia's involvement in the election. The director of national intelligence said he provided the president with the government's full array of evidence, all pointing in one direction: the Kremlin.
Clapper said officials "didn't get a lot of push back'' until five days later when information compiled in a lurid, unsubstantiated dossier about Trump was made public in news reports. Brennan and Clapper said Trump was briefed on the contents of the dossier during the Jan. 6 meeting, as a precautionary measure.
Days later, Trump accused intelligence officials of leaking the information, which by then had been widely disseminated to members of Congress and reporters. The incident began Trump's ongoing criticism of the intelligence community. Clapper and Brennan denied any involvement in leaking the information.
Meanwhile, Clapper and Brennan also expressed serious security concerns about the decision by Donald Trump Jr. and other top Trump campaign officials to meet with a Kremlin-connected lawyer last June on the pretext of receiving information potentially damaging to the Clinton campaign. According to emails Trump Jr. made public, the information was being provided by the Russian government.
It has since been disclosed that the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was accompanied to the meeting by Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who once served in an intelligence unit of the Russian military, and Ike Kaveladze, an executive working for Russian real estate developer Aras Agalarov.
Trump Jr. was joined at the meeting by Jared Kushner, now a senior White House adviser to Trump and Paul Manafort, then Trump campaign chairman.
Brennan said it was "profoundly baffling'' for senior campaign officials to take a meeting with Russian operatives.
Robert Mueller, the Justice Department's special counsel overseeing the investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia, is now investigating the meeting.
"It raises a lot of questions,'' Brennan said. "They should have known better. If they didn't, they shouldn't have been in those (campaign) positions.''
Clapper suggested that the meeting represented "typical Russian trade-craft'' in an attempt to exploit a new source of intelligence for Russia's benefit.
James Clapper
James Robert Clapper Jr.[1] (born March 14, 1941)[2][3] is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and is the former director of national intelligence. He served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1992 until 1995. He was the first director of defense intelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and simultaneously the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.[4] Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. He served as the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from September 2001 until June 2006.
On June 5, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Clapper to replace Dennis C. Blair as United States Director of National Intelligence. Clapper was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for the position on August 5, 2010.
Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing NSA practice of collecting telephony metadata on millions of Americans’ telephone calls, two U.S. representatives accused Clapper of perjury for telling a congressional committee that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans earlier that year. One senator asked for his resignation, and a group of 26 senators complained about Clapper’s responses under questioning. In November 2016, Clapper resigned as director of national intelligence, effective at the end of President Obama's term. In May 2017, he joined the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Intelligence and National Security.
| James Clapper | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 4th Director of National Intelligence | |
| In office August 9, 2010 – January 20, 2017 | |
| President | Barack Obama |
| Deputy | Stephanie O'Sullivan |
| Preceded by | David Gompert (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Mike Dempsey (acting) |
| Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence | |
| In office April 15, 2007 – June 5, 2010 | |
| President | George W. Bush Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Stephen Cambone |
| Succeeded by | Michael Vickers |
| Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency | |
| In office September 2001 – June 2006 | |
| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | James C. King |
| Succeeded by | Robert Murrett |
| Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency | |
| In office November 1991 – August 1995 | |
| President | George H. W. Bush Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Dennis Nagy (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Kenneth Minihan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | James Robert Clapper Jr. March 14, 1941 Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Education | University of Maryland, College Park (BS) St. Mary's University, Texas (MA) |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service/branch |  United States Air Force |
| Years of service | 1963–1995 |
| Rank | Lieutenant general |
| Battles/wars | Vietnam War |
| Awards |
|
Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing NSA practice of collecting telephony metadata on millions of Americans’ telephone calls, two U.S. representatives accused Clapper of perjury for telling a congressional committee that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans earlier that year. One senator asked for his resignation, and a group of 26 senators complained about Clapper’s responses under questioning. In November 2016, Clapper resigned as director of national intelligence, effective at the end of President Obama's term. In May 2017, he joined the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Intelligence and National Security.
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