Former CIA director John Brennan is concerned that President-elect Donald Trump will appoint people who will burn relationships with international leaders.
Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, Brennan explained that those in positions like the CIA, FBI, and DIA leaders are infamously apolitical, and changing that might hurt relationships with their counterparts or lead counterparts to distance themselves.
"So, I can tell you that there is quite a bit of concern within CIA, and I know within FBI and other non-policy organizations, that if you have somebody who is just used as a political tool of Donald Trump at the helm, there is a real risk, not just to the work of these individuals, but also to the national security of the United States," said Brennan.
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He predicted "disaster" could happen to U.S. national security if Trump puts a partisans at the head of such agencies.
"Our parties and allies around the globe, the intelligence services we work with closely, they take seriously the protection of sources and methods," Brennan said. "They want to continue the collaboration and cooperation with the U.S. intelligence agencies. But as you point out, we have somebody in the White House who is careless in terms of how he handles classified information, and The CIA and the intelligence community are going to be politicized; I think they'll do their own — take their own defensive measures."
Upon entering the White House in 2017, reports claimed that Trump gave intelligence to Russian leaders when he met with them.
When he left office, Trump took dozens of boxes of documents that included classified information, top secret documents, and even information that dealt with U.S. nuclear weapons, spy satellites and the U.S. military, Reuters reported at the time.
What that looks like, Brennan said, is that they may not "give us things for fear it could be, in fact, exploited, manipulated, and used for political purposes. It's worrying on so many fronts."
He said that he hoped that Trump wouldn't make good on putting political leaders in charge of national security.
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