NBC’s Wednesday night “Commander-in-Chief Forum” gave some insights into how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump might handle the job, but I first want to deal with the danger it illustrated for the Intelligence Community when it comes to providing classified intelligence briefings to political candidates running for president in a bitter campaign.
I was worried what would happen if, as I wrote here last month, “one or the other candidate appears to misuse or even distort the information they had been given.”
Last night that happened when Trump, who has had two such briefings, was asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer whether anything he heard did “shock or alarm you?”
Trump responded, after praising the briefers, that “one thing that shocked me” was that President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry “did exactly the opposite” to “what they [the briefers] had said.”
It’s pretty well known that intelligence briefers – and the ones meeting with Trump and Clinton are among the most savvy and professional – are there to provide facts and analytical judgments and not to suggest policy decisions or make recommendations.
When Lauer followed up by asking whether the briefers had told Trump anything that contradicted some of his repeated statements – such as that he would defeat ISIS quickly, where it is known that intelligence experts expect that goal to be in the distant future – Trump replied, “No, I didn’t learn anything from that standpoint.”
Then Trump went on to say, “What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts and our truly — when they call it intelligence, it’s there for a reason — what our experts said to do.”
If that wasn’t enough. Trump went on saying, “And I was very, very surprised. In almost every instance. And I could tell you. I have pretty good with the body language. I could tell they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they [the briefers] were recommending.”
For the public at large that is an astounding claim. Their president and top government officials did the opposite of what their best intelligence was suggesting be done. It fits directly into Trumps repeated claim that their leaders are either stupid or inept.
Now who, within the intelligence community, is going to step forward and correct this record. The Director of National Intelligence press office is not commenting so far.
Several former officials are quoted in The Washington Post as questioning Trump’s remarks. Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell was one, but he has come out in support of Clinton so those who read what he said may consider his view as political rather than professional.
At a press conference Thursday morning, Clinton was asked about Trump’s statements and responded, “I think what he said was totally inappropriate and undisciplined. I would never comment on any aspect of an intelligence briefing that I received.”
Sad to say only Director of National Intelligence James Clapper can speak authoritatively about what went on in the Trump briefings.
Clapper said as recently as late July at the Aspen National Security Forum that he wants to keep the community out of the political campaign. He did slip a bit, giving his personal opinion at Aspen that Trump’s previous remarks about maybe if he were president he would not support all NATO allies was a “very bothersome” statement to some foreign partners.
Clearing up these latest Trump remarks would take a far more difficult statement for Clapper or any other current official to say on the record. But the intelligence community is now a player in the campaign, and lacking someone making an authoritative statement, there is nothing to stop Trump from repeating these same remarks day after day to larger and larger campaign audiences.
The NBC forum illustrated danger to another institution along with the intelligence community – the journalist moderators selected for the upcoming presidential debates.
Lauer has been thoroughly criticized by other journalists for failing to follow up on Trump’s inaccurate and often vague statements while at the same time spending almost 10 minutes questioning Clinton about her emails.
But the lesson here is for the future moderators, and whether they see themselves as needing to fact check the candidates as they go along. Chris Wallace, who will do the final debate on October 19, has already been quoted as saying it is up to the other candidate to do that. But will they get the chance?
One problem with the NBC forum was time, just 30 minutes for each candidate to respond to questions about difficult subjects that are hard to answer with a quick sentence or two or with a bumper-sticker remark, particularly if you are Clinton, who has wrestled with their complex facets in the past.
On ISIS, Clinton repeated much of what she has said before, that in Iraq and Syria it has to be the Arabs and the Kurds fighting on the ground.
But she opened the way for confusion by saying the U.S. will support them with “special forces, as you know, they have enablers, they have surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance help.”
She followed that by saying, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we’re not putting ground troops into Syria. We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops. So those are the kinds of decisions we have to make on a case-by-case basis.”
On Thursday she had to clarify there are small units on the ground saying, “I think putting a big contingent of American ground troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria would not be in the best interest of the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups. In fact, I think it would fulfill one of their dearest wishes, which is to drag the United States back into a ground war in that region.”
Clinton is a realist as shown when she was asked by Lauer, “Can you guarantee people that after four years of a Clinton presidency, they will be safer on the streets of San Bernardino or Boston than they are today?”
Her answer was, “Well, Matt, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that that’s the result. I’m not going to, you know, promise something that I think most thinking Americans know is going to be a huge challenge.” Lauer never asked Trump that question.
He also left standing a series of Trump quotes that by themselves imply something that remains unstated. For example, when Lauer asked whether his statement, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me,” was true, Trump went off on his complaint, “The generals under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have not been successful.”
Asked a second time, Trump responded, “I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble.”
Lauer never got Trump to say what he, Trump, knew about ISIS, nor of course did he get to know what Trump’s secret plan was to defeat them “quickly.” Trump’s newest wrinkle is to give the Pentagon 30 days to come up with a plan – as if they have not been working on one over recent years.
My other favorite question and answer was when Trump was asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offensive acts having “annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computer.”
Trump’s first response was to say, about hacking of the Democrats, “Well, nobody knows that for a fact.” Congress has been told it was the Russians, based on initial investigation of cyber signatures, but the results have not been completely proven.
It’s Trump’s next offhand remark that needed Lauer to ask a follow up. Trump said, “But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?” implying that his own president and his own country had done or were doing things comparable to Putin’s actions.
One of Lauer’s first questions to Trump about possibly becoming commander–in-chief was, “What have you done in your life that prepares you to send men and women of the United States into harm’s way?”
Trump’s answer was, “Well, I think the main thing is I have great judgment. I have good judgment. I know what’s going on.”
Lauer should have followed up by asking, "Just what is going on, Mr. Trump?"
Walter Pincus is a senior national security columnist at The Cipher Brief.
