American intelligence officials are "deeply disturbed" about Trump having access to US intelligence

[Cali_Democrat]

Putin’s Buddy Trump Is About To Get National Security Briefings. Intel Officers Are Worried.
By Ryan Grim

Members of the intelligence community are worried that Donald Trump ― who has deep ties to Russia and is apparently the preferred presidential candidate of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin ― could have access to highly classified national security briefings as early as Friday.

Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will begin receiving the briefings after the Democratic National Convention ends on Thursday, ABC News reported Monday. As the Republican nominee for president, Trump is now among a handful of people who do not hold a security clearance but have the potential to get these briefings. But he also has closer ties to a foreign government than perhaps any presidential candidate in recent history.

Trump has called for following Moscow’s lead on various global issues and questioned whether it’s necessary for the U.S. to always defend other members of NATO, the alliance created during the Cold War to protect American partners from an expansionist Soviet Union. His rhetoric about foreign policy neatly matches the message coming out of Moscow: that America has little need for its long-time partners in Europe ― particularly in NATO ― or elsewhere, and that the U.S. should have less influence internationally. Trump has extensive business and financial ties to Russia. The Washington Post has described his relationship with Putin as a “bromance.” Troll accounts tied to the Russian government have promoted Trump on Twitter, the New Yorker’s Adrian Chen noted last year. And this week, mysterious hackers released internal Democratic National Committee emails ― a move that security experts and reporters are increasingly convinced was an attempt by the Russian government to swing the presidential election to Trump.

Trump’s deep relationship with Russia has the intelligence community worried.

“Never have we had a candidate so tied to a foreign power, especially one that is so hostile to the U.S. in many ways, and one that is actively messing with our election,” said one former senior intelligence official. “Many in the intelligence community don’t care about U.S. politics and pride themselves on being nonpartisan, but the ties to Russia are deeply disturbing.”

Read more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-trump-national-security-briefings_us_57963cd6e4b02d5d5ed2476b

[Iliyah]

1. Yeah, but Paul Ryan didn't see the need to be somewhat cautious

and only focused on HRC.

[kestrel91316]

2. They need to look long and hard at his indebtedness to the Russian Mafia as a

risk factor for blackmail, sabotage and treason on his part.

[smirkymonkey]

3. K&R

Trump becomes more terrifying by the day.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. This morning, I was thinking what kind of bizzaro world are we living in - where we

are actually wondering if a presidential candidate may be in cahoots with Russia. What the hell?

[Rex]

5. I don't blame them, he could be a spy for Putin.

I feel sorry for the folks that have to brief him, they must already know he will blab government secrets.

[Duval]

6. They were released by Wikileaks/Julian Assange.

Russia has nothing to do with this. That is a made up bunch of bull. And he'll be releasing more soon. Assange is hiding in the Romanian Embassy.

[Cali_Democrat]

7. The question is....how did Wikileaks get the information? This story sheds light:

In the wee hours of June 14, the Washington Post revealed that “Russian government hackers” had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. Foreign spies, the Post claimed, had gained access to the DNC’s entire database of opposition research on the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, just weeks before the Republican Convention. Hillary Clinton said the attack was “troubling.”

It began ominously. Nearly two months earlier, in April, the Democrats had noticed that something was wrong in their networks. Then, in early May, the DNC called in CrowdStrike, a security firm that specializes in countering advanced network threats. After deploying their tools on the DNC’s machines, and after about two hours of work, CrowdStrike found “two sophisticated adversaries” on the Committee’s network. The two groups were well-known in the security industry as “APT 28” and “APT 29.” APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat—usually jargon for spies.

CrowdStrike linked both groups to “the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services.” APT 29, suspected to be the FSB, had been on the DNC’s network since at least summer 2015. APT 28, identified as Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, had breached the Democrats only in April 2016, and probably tipped off the investigation. CrowdStrike found no evidence of collaboration between the two intelligence agencies inside the DNC’s networks, “or even an awareness of one by the other,” the firm wrote.

This was big. Democratic political operatives suspected that not one but two teams of Putin’s spies were trying to help Trump and harm Clinton. The Trump campaign, after all, was getting friendly with Russia. The Democrats decided to go public.

Read more:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-being-behind-the-dnc-hack?trk_source=homepage-lede

[Ilsa]

8. Maybe they should test him with some disinformation.

See where it ends up. Does he tell Jr or Manafort and they tell Putin, or does DT blab it himself to Putin or just in public?