The US Intelligence Community Is Not Liberal!
It has never been liberal. the NSA, CIA, DIA and various other intelligence agencies you probably wouldn't recognize are generally not aligned with any political party. Instead, they are pretty much tied closely to the military and are rather incestuous in organization and loyalties. Their job is to collect information about foreign government activities, and operate pretty much independently of whatever administration is in power.
If anything, there is a conservative bias that permeates them all. They're suspicious by nature and engage in the collection of intelligence information worldwide. Yes, they focus on governments and military organizations of nations who are not deemed to be friends of the USA, but their snooping doesn't end there. Not at all.
The major agencies are competitive, rather than cooperative with each other, and all are skeptical about the FBI, which is our civilian, internal intelligence agency. At times, that competitiveness has led to disagreements on analysis of information, and sharing of intelligence gathered by each agency with other agencies is spotty.
All of those agencies report, in one way or another, to the President. Sometimes that reporting is not direct, but passes through an administration's Director of National Intelligence. Presidents get intelligence briefings and analyses, but almost never get complete information about how the intelligence was gathered or analyzed. Instead, Presidents get some sort of overview, but without details.
I know this to be true, because I worked at one time at the NSA, while in the USAF. I was there during one President's initial tour of that agency and know what was discussed and what was never mentioned at the briefing I attended as a sort of mouse in the corner, since my role was minuscule. But I was there, and was even introduced to the President.
Bottom line, really, is that the intelligence agencies are not particularly trusting of anyone. Not the President and his staff. Not the person appointed by any President to oversee their operations. Not Congress. Not any nation that is not the USA. Not even other intelligence agencies, foreign or domestic. However, if all of them agree that something is happening, you can take it to the bank that that something is, indeed, happening.
If Donald Trump actually takes office, he will likely be the least trusted President ever by the intelligence agencies. The President does not control what information he receives. The agencies control what information a President is given. If they believe he should not receive information, he will not receive it. That is how it works.
Here's the deal. If the intelligence agencies say the Russians meddled with the election through hacking and data theft, it is true. So far, 17 agencies have indicated that it happened. It happened. Donald Trump doesn't like intelligence briefings. That will suit the various agencies just fine, I think. They aren't going to trust someone with ties to a government that is one the the least trusted on the planet by those agencies.
And that's my assessment, without further information provided, due to restrictions that are still in force. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
that as the WMD programs were shut down the electronic and satellite intelligence on them would have slowed possibly to a trickle and that should have tipped off somebody if they were paying attention. And somebody was apparently paying attention since Clinton sent some cruise missiles in there as late as 1998.
