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CIA Starts Recruiting Its Newest Asset: Donald Trump
Langley is ready to woo the new president like a foreign leader. The key? Flattering his ego. ‘He is extremely insecure like an adolescent boy,’ one analyst told The Daily Beast.
Kimberly Dozier
01.24.17 1:15 AM ET
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A less flattering way to look at it? Multiple officers said: Flattering his ego will be key.
“He is extremely insecure like an adolescent boy,” one former analyst said. “If you are very secure with yourself, you don’t talk about yourself all the time. People who are loud and bragging and projecting confidence, they are overcompensating for their own personal insecurities through their behavior.”
That’s a vulnerability that can be exploited both inside and outside the U.S. government.
“He could get hoodwinked on the details,” if a foreign leader tells him what he wants to hear, but obscures key facts, another officer said.
Trouble ahead will come in the form of briefing the Trump White House on things that don’t match their understanding of events, like Russia’s attempts to influence U.S. voters by releasing hacked Democratic emails.
“You’re going to have to have your arguments really tight,” a third former senior official said. “When you say something they don’t think is true, you’re going to have to be standing on granite.”
The key will be getting a person into his inner circle whom he trusts as much as his National Security Adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.
Multiple Trump advisers and intelligence officials say Flynn has been playing the most prominent role in teaching Trump about intelligence. Flynn had a sometimes contentious relationship with the CIA when he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he sought to expand its clandestine spy service which the CIA saw as an unnecessary addition to its own.
“They have got to get somebody in there to establish a personal relationship with Flynn or have a strong enough relationship with the president so they can be a voice to add” to the debate, one of the senior former officers said. “That’s going to be extremely difficult.”
“We’ll get past this,” McLaughlin said, especially now that Trump’s pick Pompeo can get to work. “People there are mature enough to know that this is Trump. At the end of the day, they are dedicated to supporting a president. That’s in their DNA.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/24/cia-starts-recruiting-its-newest-asset-donald-trump.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon
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