Source: Flynn Pushed Idea of DNI Shakeup
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening. Topping the hour, there's breaking news, and President-elect Trump's running battle with the Intelligence Community. Late word, he's planning some kind of a shakeup that's taking place against a loud and contentious backdrop. The President-elect today casting fresh doubt on the intelligence consensus that Russia meddled in the election, appearing to place his trust in the WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, instead. It's a far cry from his view of Assange a few years back when he essentially called for the man's head.</s>BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: And he's going to talk about WikiLeaks. You had nothing to do --</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, but I think it's disgraceful. I think there should be like death penalty or something.</s>KILMEADE: You do think it's disgraceful.</s>COOPER: Well, today, a different tune. And last night, this tweet on his upcoming briefing with the heads of the CIA, FBI and the Director of National Intelligence, the tweet read, "The intelligence briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday. Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange." U.S. officials dispute Mr. Trump's claim, factual claim, that there was any delay. We'll talk more about it in a minute. First, the breaking news though tonight and CNN's Jim Sciutto joins us now. So, what are you learning about the possible future of the Intelligence Community once the President-elect takes office?</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Our reporting is Trump wants to limit or reassess the power of the Director of National Intelligence. To be clear, this was something that was founded, recommended after 9/11, as part of the 9/11 commission hearings to have a Director of National Intelligence to oversee the 16 agencies, make sure that there was cooperation, intelligence sharing. As you know, that was one of the concerns. Pre-9/11 is that those agencies weren't sharing that intelligence so that they could prevent attacks like we saw on 9/11. But I will say, this is not entirely new, there's been talk about this for some time. A lot of those agencies have bristled at the idea of having some sort of overarching body. So it's a little bit of an administrative thing. Our understanding is, it's being pushed by his National Security adviser, General Michael Flynn, who I should note, was pushed out of the head -- of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama in part by the Director of National Intelligence. So there's some internal politics behind this as well.</s>COOPER: How concerned are people or how are they reacting inside the Intelligence Community as the President-elect continues to publicly cast doubts about their work?</s>SCIUTTO: Anderson, I say that the word I hear is dismay, right? I mean, you have intelligence agencies working very hard, oftentimes under very difficult, certainly, sometimes dangerous circumstances to keep the President and the government apprise of the threats, whether it's terrorism in North Korea, Russia, you name it, and you have the President-elect coming in and publicly via Twitter, you know, questioning not only their ability, their capability but really their politics here. So there's dismay. There's also confusion. And we saw some of that this week where Donald Trump said yesterday that his intelligence briefing on Russian hacking was delayed. Fact is, it was never scheduled for yesterday. It was always at the end of the week after the president gets his own briefing on this review he ordered. So there is real concern inside those agencies as to what this means for them.</s>COOPER: And Trump, he has had intelligence briefings in the past with high ranking officials, is there a difference between the Trump they see in meetings and the message he's sending out in public?</s>SCIUTTO: There is. We hear from intelligence officials that the Trump that you see on Twitter is one thing, but in those briefings, those presidential daily briefings, which he's getting not every day but several times a week, that Trump is more differential, he asks, you know, substantive questions in those briefings. He's not berating them in private. It's just that then in public he dismisses them. And it's difficult for them to rectify what is the true Trump. The trouble is, it's hard to rein in those public comments because it raises overall questions about the capabilities of the intelligence agencies, and when you have a real threat, if it's imminent attack on the U.S., a terror attack, North Korea, et cetera, you have the President-elect who is called into question in public and repeatedly --</s>COOPER: Right.</s>SCIUTTO: -- the capability of these organizations. They're very concerned.</s>COOPER: All right, Jim Sciutto. Jim, thanks. As we said at the top, his public statements at least put Mr. Trump in conflict with a lot of intelligence professionals. It also leaves him at odds with a number of highly influential people from his own party. CNN Sara Murray has that.</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Donald Trump's relentless skepticism toward U.S. Intelligence and praise for Julian Assange highlighting a sharp split between the President-elect and other GOP leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan unleashing a wave of criticism against the WikiLeaks founder who published the hacked e-mails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.</s>REP. PAUL RYAN, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: I think the guy is a sycophant for Russia. He leaks, he steals data, and compromises national security.</s>MURRAY: As Senator Lindsey Graham offers this advice to Trump.</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R) SOUTH CAROLINA: Not only should he ignore Julian Assange, he should condemn him for what he's done to our country.</s>MURRAY: Assange insists his information isn't coming from the Russian government.</s>JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: Our source is not a state party. So the answer for our interactions is no.</s>MURRAY: As CIA Director Brennan questions his credibility.</s>JOHN BRENNAN, CIA DIRECTOR: He's not exact lay bastion of truth and integrity.</s>MURRAY: And implores skeptics to wait for the upcoming intelligence report on Russia.</s>BRENNAN: I would suggest individuals who have not yet seen the report, who have not yet been briefed on it that they wait and see what it is that the Intelligence Community is putting forward before they make those judgments.</s>MURRAY: Today, Vice President-elect Mike Pence is backing up his boss's leeriness of U.S. intelligence.</s>GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT: I think that the President-elect has expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions.</s>COOPER: Sara, has Donald Trump explained exactly why he distrusts these intelligence sources?</s>MURRAY: He has not explained it exactly for himself, but Sean Spicer who's the incoming White House Press Secretary told reporters earlier today that it's not the raw intelligence that Donald Trump is doubting but rather it's the conclusions that intelligence officials are drawing that Russia then meddled in the U.S. election. Spicer said that is what Donald Trump is hoping to press intelligence officials for on this meeting on Friday is a better explanation for how they were able to conclude that Russia did try to interfere in U.S. elections. But there's another component to this, Anderson, and it's the fact that Donald Trump is personally offended by part of this. Sources say that they believe that he believes that this is an opportunity for intelligence officials to try to undermine his victory, to undermine his legitimacy as president. And so, there's a little bit of a point of pride explaining itself out here as well, Anderson.</s>COOPER: All right, Sara, thanks for the update. Perspective now from a former diplomat who knows firsthand how vital the relationship between decision makers and Intelligence Community can be, Eliot Cohen, is a professor of strategic studies at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. He's also author of the new book, "The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force". I want to start by asking you about the -- this "Wall Street Journal" report which is just out tonight that Donald Trump's transition team, they're looking to restructure basically scale back the office of the director of National Intelligence and also kind of lower the staff numbers of the CIA in Langley and get more people out in the field. What do you make of this?</s>ELIOT COHEN, AUTHOR, "THE BIG STICK": I don't know. I guess I tuned to think this is a sort of a distraction from the feud that President- elect has decided to have with the Intelligence Community, a reception of issues. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is kind of an umbrella organization. There's been a lot of disagreement about whether even creating it was a good idea or not. But this is really, actually, pretty petty stuff and I -- it's not particularly important. What is important is the President-elect deciding that he knows better than the National Security Agency and the rest of the Intelligence Community.</s>COOPER: What do you think the impact of that is? I mean, the President-elect tweeting out, you know, kind of mocking the Intelligence Community, putting intelligence in quotes, obviously, putting Russian hacking in quotes. He clearly seems to believe that the Intelligence Community is far too politicized or in some way, he seems to be siding with Julian Assange over that.</s>COHEN: Who knows what he believes, but it's -- this is dangerous.</s>COOPER: Dangerous.</s>COHEN: It is dangerous. It sets up an antagonistic relationship between the Intelligence Community, which does exist to serve the President and the administration, and the President. And it seems to indicate that he has this kind of sleepwalker's confidence in his own judgment, in his own reading of things. And I think it sends a terrible message to the world that he prefers to side with Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange were both in different ways reprehensible characters.</s>COOPER: I might say though that, well, look, pushing back on the Intelligence Community is maybe a healthy thing, maybe it raises the bar, maybe it makes them, you know, scrub things even harder.</s>COHEN: Absolutely. Pushing -- you know, I was a government official for several years. And I spent a lot of time pushing back on the Intelligence Community. The way you do that is you get a lot of briefings, and they say things, and you say, well, explain to me, how do you know that and what is the logic chain here, and it's done not by tweets. It's done by hours of serious conversation. You know, somebody like, say, former Vice President Dick Cheney was actually quite good at that. And despite what people think, the Intelligence Community did not mind being grilled by Dick Cheney. It made them better. But this was done quietly. It was done in secret. It was done in your office. It was not done by blasting out tweets which dismiss the Intelligence Community in favor of Russian dictator and a traitor.</s>COOPER: The idea that he's tweeting out messages to North Korea or whether to North Korea, but I doubt (ph) North Korean that they're certainly going to read, this is uncharted waters. This is ...</s>COHEN: This is completely unprecedented, abnormal, and, again, it's dangerous. Look, on the substantive policy towards North Korea, it might or might not be the right thing. But it's very important to do this in a deliberate way, to have these kinds of things argued out.</s>COOPER: In more than 140 characters.</s>COHEN: Right, in more than 140 characters and not at 3:00 a.m. And, you need to have your Secretary of State, your Secretary of Defense. You need to think through what are the possibilities, how could this play out. This is reckless. And this will get us in trouble, because either he will commit himself to dangerous courses of action or he will equally possibly back down. And then, ironically, perhaps, the same thing that happened with President Obama, a red line that turns out not to mean anything. And, you know, part of the pattern here is he tweets something at 3:00 a.m. and Kellyanne Conway walks it back when she wakes up five or six hours later.</s>COOPER: I want to ask you about the book, "The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force". I mean, essentially, you are arguing that in this age where so much has -- this notion of soft power, you're basically pushing back on that saying, "Look, that military force, there is a role for that in a number, perhaps more than ever, in a number of circumstances."</s>COHEN: Yes, well, look, I -- you know, one thing I say is the limits of soft power not the soft power is not important. It is important to say put sanctions on the Russians or on the Iranians. We just need to understand that it has limits, you know. No counties have been sanctioned more than North Korean. And, in very short order they'll be able to hit the continental United States with nuclear weapons. Military power is tremendously important. And part of what the book is about is a case for what is really now the traditional American policy of global leadership. And what I try to argue about -- argue out in the book is the way in which military power undergirds that in places like Europe for example, or say in the South China Sea.</s>COOPER: Congratulations on the book. It's got great views --</s>COHEN: Thank you very much.</s>COOPER: -- and I look forward to it to reading it. Thank you so much for being with us.</s>COHEN: Thank you.</s>COOPER: A lot more ahead tonight, including a closer look at where U.S. intelligence agencies have indeed failed to get it right and where they're clearly succeeded. Also the Pence factor, could he be the most powerful vice president since Dick Cheney? Take a closer look at that when we continue.