Intel experts worry Trump will go rogue [View all]

[babylonsister]

Intel experts worry Trump will go rogue
By Katie Bo Williams - 01/07/17 10:59 AM EST


President-elect Donald Trump’s skepticism of the Intelligence Community’s findings on Russian election interference has raised fears among experts that Trump will bypass intel analysts and demand that his personal team conduct its own analyses of raw data.

Tossing aside career analysts can create false conclusions, critics warn — like the George W. Bush administration’s incorrect assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

“The risk is that you request raw data to support a conclusion and you avoid seeing anything that contradicts it,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill. “We can already see we have a president-elect who has difficulty with facts that are at odds with the narrative that he wants to tell or diminish his achievements.”

Presidents receive so-called “raw intelligence” all the time — recordings, satellite images and other data that hasn’t been evaluated and contextualized by career analysts. But there is also plenty of precedent for a president who wants to cherry-pick information to advance his own policies.

Onlookers doubt that the firebrand president-elect is likely to sift through data himself, but they are worried he will send a team of loyalists to go through the information and brief him themselves.

In a Trump White House, that could be anyone from retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick for national security advisor, to Steve Bannon, the incoming White House chief strategist.

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http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313123-intel-experts-worry-trump-will-go-rogue