Trump and Intelligence: a Conversation with Mark Lowenthal

Charleyne Biondi (CB): Donald Trump’s rhetoric has often reflected a certain skepticism toward what he referred to as the “deep state,” implying that federal agencies, including elements within the intelligence community, were working against him. This has sparked an ongoing debate about how he may interact with intelligence. Based on his first term, what do we know about Trump’s relationship with the intelligence community, particularly in terms of how he received and engaged with the President’s Daily Briefs? And in what ways did his approach differ from his predecessors?

Mark Lowenthal (ML): Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s was the first president to receive a tailored intelligence briefing book every morning, which set up the President Daily Brief (PDB) as we know it. While the name suggests that the president receives it daily, the frequency actually depends on the preferences of each president. Some, like George W. Bush, received the brief six days a week. Barack Obama preferred five days a week, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump only had it a few days a week. There’s no set rule, it is entirely up to the president and how they choose to engage with their intelligence officers. The PBD is structured as a written document, but how it is consumed varies significantly. For example, Trump disliked reading documents and preferred to be briefed, only to be briefed. President Bush read and was briefed at the same time. President Obama would review it and then hold a meeting to discuss its content. Under the current framework, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence oversees the PDB process. A designated briefer typically delivers it, and since the Bush administration the Director of National Intelligence has also attended these meetings. This allows the director to provide additional context and, crucially, to understand what’s on the president’s mind–what he is most worried about. In Trump’s case, his briefings were not only less frequent, there were also certain constraints about what he wanted to hear about. He was particularly focused on topics like how he was perceived overseas and how people were reacting to him.

CB: Trump’s peculiar style of communication has often raised questions-and at times concerns-about his relationship with facts and information. This becomes especially critical when the information in question involves intelligence. Beyond the trust issues Trump reportedly had with the intelligence community as an institution, do you think he also struggled with intelligence as a discipline? 

ML: Well, I don't think he understood it. Most presidents come into office with no real experience of intelligence. Since the modern intelligence community was created in 1947, only Eisenhower, Nixon and George H.W. Bush had experience of intelligence. All the others did not. Why would they? It’s not something a senator, a governor, a businessman would know about. Trump really didn’t understand intelligence. Before he was inaugurated the first time, he said: "I’m like, a smart guy, I don’t need to be briefed on the same things every day-you can just bring me up to speed if there’s a crisis." But that’s not how intelligence works. It is a cumulative process. You build understanding over time, you slowly get a better sense of what’s going on, and you can’t just catch up in the middle of a crisis-it doesn’t work that way. Trump also really didn’t like human intelligence. In an early briefing, he said "Well, these people are being paid-they just tell you what you want to hear," which shows he really didn’t trust the process. Over the four years of his first presidency, it didn’t seem like he ever developed a good feel, a good grasp of what intelligence is and how it works.

CB: Trump’s comments which you just quoted seem to suggest a form of disregard for the intelligence he was provided. Can you explain how this manifested during his first term, particularly in instances where the intelligence he was presented conflicted with his personal beliefs or political agenda?

ML: The clearest example is from 2019. Every year, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), along with the heads of the other intelligence agencies, gives an open congressional briefing called the Worldwide Threat Assessment. We've been doing these since the 1990s. This is where the director lays out the key concerns and issues that the intelligence community sees as major threats. At that time, Dan Coats was the DNI, and he gave the briefing. Trump was furious about it because Coats said that North Korea wasn’t likely to give up its nuclear weapons-something a lot of us believe, since without these weapons North Korea would lose most of its leverage. Coats also said that even though the U.S. had withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, Iran was still complying with the terms of the agreement. And Trump was outraged by this. He called Coats, Gina Haspel (then CIA director), and Christopher Wray (FBI Director) into the Oval Office-there’s even a photo of them sitting in front of the Resolute Desk-and he basically scolded them, saying they were naïve, they needed to go back to school, and claimed they were misquoted. But they weren’t misquoted: they had said exactly what the record shows. Trump later fired Coats and his deputy, Sue Gordon, a career intelligence professional.

The last DNI during his term, John Ratcliffe (who has now been nominated as future director of the CIA) even announced that they would no longer hold public testimony of the Worldwide Threat Assessment. Now, the Democratic Congress has since passed a law to make that public testimony for the Worldwide Threat Assessment a legal requirement. It will be interesting to see how the new DNI will handle this, especially since Trump does not want it to happen, but Congress has mandated it. There’s definitely a clash brewing there. 

CB: Regarding the politicization of intelligence, during Trump’s first term we saw significant appointments like Mike Pompeo at the CIA, and John Ratcliffe replacing Dan Coats as DNI. Ratcliffe, who has now been nominated to lead the CIA under the upcoming Trump administration, has no practical field experience as an intelligence officer. This raises questions about the intent behind these political appointments.

ML: To be clear, all appointments are political. I don't think you necessarily need to have a background in intelligence to successfully lead an agency. For example, Bill Burns, the outgoing CIA Director, was a career diplomat, and he’s been one of the most effective directors we’ve had. Similarly, my boss at the State Department, Mort Abramowitz, who just passed away, was also a diplomat and did an excellent job leading State Department intelligence. The key isn’t about having an intelligence background-it’s about understanding how to shape the work of the agency to serve policymakers effectively. My concern with Ratcliffe, though, is his track record of politicizing intelligence at Trump’s request. And that does not bode well if he's running the CIA. Again, I don't condemn him for not having the right past, but I do worry about his past performance.

CB: Right. As a former head of analysis at the CIA, do you think having someone like Ratcliff-a perceived loyalist to the President-leading the CIA could pose a threat to the objectivity or quality of intelligence analysis? 

ML: That's one of the concerns people have, yes. How do professional analysts respond if the director tries to push a political agenda, and how the director and the president react when analysts provide assessments that they believe are accurate but may not align with what leadership wants to hear. I think there’s a clash waiting to happen here. 

CB: And in terms of the institutional processes within the agency, are there any safeguards to protect analysts from political interference? 

ML: No, there's not a lot. In fact, that the CIA is exempt from most of the civil service protections, you can be fired at will by the director, so analysts are in a difficult position. Yes, I think that they could have a problem. 

CB: I would imagine that certain topics, certain types of intelligence are more at risk of being politicized than others. For example, there are areas like counterterrorism which are rather "consensual," politically speaking. And then there are topics like political intelligence on foreign countries which are inherently more divisive, more susceptible to interpretation. You’ve mentioned earlier his outrage over the Worldwide Threat Assessment findings on North Korea and Iran. Does his habit of politicizing everything, of making it all personal, prevents him from being receptive to intelligence reports on foreign matters? 

ML: Well, he clearly ignored the intelligence he was given about Russian interference in the 2016 election. I mean, he publicly did that with Putin, during the press conference in Helsinki in July 2018.

CB: He did dismiss U.S. intelligence findings publicly, but one can’t help wonder if that was just for show. Did he actually also ignore it in private settings? 

CB: "There are known knowns, there and known unknowns…" was that Rumsfeld?

ML: Right. But I don’t think Trump understands that there are things he doesn’t know, areas where he needs advice. He is very self-confident, he knows what he wants to do. That makes things difficult. I think there are certain issues-like Ukraine, Israel, or economic policy-where there’s likely to be a clash between what he believes to be the right course of action and the assessment he may be given by intelligence analysts. 

CB: The unknown unknowns. So it’s not just an act. He actually doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

ML: I don’t think so. 

CB: Okay. Moving on to the question of institutional autonomy versus presidential influence: Trump’s leadership style has often been described as highly personalized, with a tendency to centralize decision-making and prioritize loyalty. In the context of intelligence, how might this approach impact the autonomy of agencies like the CIA? For instance, when addressing complex issues such as the Israël-Palestine conflict, we’ve seen CIA directors take on roles that go beyond traditional intelligence work, such as acting as mediators or negotiators, engaging with Hamas when diplomats and politicians could not afford to. Do you think Trump’s leadership style would support or hinder such a role for the CIA director in the future? 

ML: I don't think there's a known answer to that. Burns isn’t the first CIA director to be used in a mediator role. George Tenet was used in a similar way by Bill Clinton during negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump might feel that someone like Ratcliff would be more responsive to him than the State Department, which is a very, very hard bureaucracy to move. Presidents frequently turn to the CIA in such situations. In Trump’s case, he relied on Mike Pompeo, then the CIA director, to handle the opening to North Korea rather than Rex Tillerson at the State Department. For the CIA only works for one customer, and that’s the President.

CB: Let’s shift to the foreign policy dimension and the relationship between U.S. intelligence and its allies. Reflecting on Trump’s first term, did his presidency have any tangible impact on intelligence cooperation between U.S. agencies and their counterparts in alliances like the Five Eyes, or within the EU, particularly in countries such as France? 

ML: I was told that there were some moments when Five Eyes partners were worried about sharing intelligence with the United States. That's all I can say about that. The Five Eyes alliance, as you know, is a very strong institution, but there was definitely some concern. Trump was somewhat cavalier in his use of intelligence. Now, there’s no hard rule about what a president can or cannot say-he’s the president, after all. But there were instances where others felt he was being too careless with sensitive information, and that understandably made some allies nervous. 
That said, at a certain level, these liaison relationships tend to operate independently of who’s sitting in the White House. Even so, there were concerns about Trump not being as cautious as he should have been with liaison-provided information. For example, there was an incident involving classified images on his desk of an Iranian site, which raised alarm among some. But again, he’s the president, so he ultimately decides how to handle such material. 

CB: Besides allies’ concerns about his handling of liaison-provided intelligence, I’d like to tackle Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy in general. As you mentioned earlier, he seems to have this belief that he can negotiate almost anything, and in fact we’ve seen it play out with NATO and other international agreements. Do you think there’s a plausible scenario where U.S. intelligence cooperation could become similarly transactional? For instance, could allies such as France ever find themselves in a position where they might literally have to pay for the U.S. intelligence services’ cooperation?

ML: I don't think it would be paying in the overt sense of money, but there might be more quid pro quos. Now, all liaison relationships are based on quid pro quos, on the idea of mutual exchange: I'm sharing this with you, but you're going to share some with me. But it might become more pointed under Trump’s leadership, I think that’s conceivable. And if the DNI or the CIA director were explicitly instructed to withhold intelligence unless certain conditions were met, if it was that direct, well, that would be a change, yes. 

CB: And where do you think that would leave European and French services?

That’s just the reality. I don’t see how a genuinely integrated EU intelligence service could ever be achieved. It’s not going to happen. Let’s just move on. 
Now, other services, like those in France, would likely choose to rely more on themselves and strengthen alternative relationships instead. I can see that as a possible outcome.

CB: For cooperation between agencies-especially between foreign countries-to be effective, the key factor is trust: people have to trust that the information shared is factual and unbiased, not politicized. So, do you think the politicization of key intelligence roles under Trump, such as appointing Ratcliffe, could undermine the credibility of U.S. intelligence?

ML: At a very high level, yes. At a working level, no. At the operational level, you have agents working with other agents, officers working with other officers. Liaison relationships are happening at multiple levels. So, while successful collaborations may continue lower down, there could be questions and concerns about how things are handled at the very top. 

CB: That makes sense. Thank you very much. Any final thoughts? 

ML: There’s still the issue of nominations. Ratcliffe will likely be confirmed, but the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as DNI seems much weaker. This could lead to challenges in the Senate nomination process. There are still a lot of unknowns. That’s something to keep an eye on.

Copyright image : Mark WILSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel and President Donald Trump attend the swearing-in ceremony for Haspel as CIA director at agency headquarters, May 21, 2018 in Langley, Virginia.