Intelligence Recognizes Presidential Authority — A Case of Too Little, Too Late

Angelo M. Codevilla February 1, 2018,

Suddenly the agencies that were out to get him want Trump to protect them and maybe even keep them from going to jail.

The Intelligence agencies’ pressures on President Trump to block the House of Representatives’ decision to release a summary of the FBI’s highly classified misdeeds are instructive comedy. The House’s decision shows what no one should ever have doubted: the FBI, CIA, etc. are not the source of authority over America’s secrets. They merely administer secrets and clearances on behalf of the one and only authority over the Executive Branch: The President of the United States. He clears them — not the other way around. Congress, as a co-equal, popularly elected branch of government, may hold or release such information as it chooses, and pay such attention as it chooses to the President’s opinions. Thus far, the Constitution.

With regard to Donald Trump, however, the Intelligence Agencies have been pretending that they are in charge of such matters. They have tried that with other presidents — slow-rolling clearances for appointees they don’t like and threatening them with security violations (the Valerie Plame Case investigation that CIA and the New York Times instigated well-nigh paralyzed the G.W. Bush White House). Usually they have had little success. Barack Obama, for example, simply rejected the FBI’s non-clearance of key appointments, and made them personally, instantly. But Trump, by and large, has let them get away with it, bowing to the Agencies’ objections to his nominees — even refusing to prosecute high officials who have disclosed the sources and methods of communications intelligence to the press........To Read More.....