Fear: Trump in the White House

On January 5, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Russian hacking. Clapper, who was to brief Trump the next day, testified. Angry at the criticism Trump was leveling at the intelligence community, he stated, “There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement. Public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial. And I’ve received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about . . . the disparagement of the U.S. intelligence community.”

The next day, Kellyanne Conway said on CBS This Morning, “Why would Russia want Donald Trump to win the presidency here? Donald Trump has promised to modernize our nuclear capability.”

In a telephone interview with The New York Times, Trump said, “This is a political witch hunt.”

Hope Hicks, 28, the public relations specialist who had been Trump’s press secretary during the campaign, was situated in a small 14th floor conference room in Trump Tower during the transition in early January 2017. She had two qualities important to Trump—loyalty and good looks. She had modeled as a teenager and now, with perfectly made-up eyes and long brown hair swept back on one side, she had the polished and glamorous look Trump liked. She also had genuine public relations skills.

Trump had asked her what job she wanted in the White House. Anxious to avoid the daily hand-to-hand combat with the press, she had picked strategic communications director so she could manage his media opportunities, which were, of course, now endless. She’d been the gatekeeper to his interviews. Everyone wanted Trump and she felt that he had lost some of his leverage with the media by being overexposed during the campaign. Exploiting those opportunities would now require careful calibration. As well as anyone, she knew that might be impossible with the president-elect.

Hicks was convinced the media had “oppositional defiance syndrome,” which is a term from clinical psychology most often applied to rebellious children. “Oppositional defiance syndrome” is characterized by excessive anger against authority, vindictiveness and temper tantrums. As far as she was concerned, that described the press.

Hicks was already working on a response to the reports of Russian meddling in the election. The excessive news reporting on what she called the “alleged hacking by Russia” only made the United States look weak and Russia more influential than she thought possible.

On January 6, the intelligence chiefs came to Trump Tower. Comey met Trump for the first time. In his book, Comey offers a description, perhaps to demonstrate his keen eye: “His suit jacket was open and his tie too long, as usual. His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coiffed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. I remember wondering how long it must have taken him in the morning to get that done. As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”

In the Trump Tower briefing, Clapper summarized the Key Judgments, the heart of any intelligence assessment:

• Russia has had a long-standing desire “to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” but in the 2016 presidential election there was “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity and scope of effort.”

• Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election . . . to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

• “When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.”

It was a mild formulation. Trump was a “clear preference” and the effort was aimed very much at “discrediting” and “undermining” Clinton. There was no suggestion that Trump or his associates had colluded or coordinated with the Russian effort.

All the sources fit together and told a consistent story from different vantages in the Kremlin, Clapper said. These human sources had been so-called “legacy sources”—they had been right in their intelligence and assessments over the years, and at least one source had provided reliable information going back a generation.

What has not been previously reported: One source was in such jeopardy that the CIA wanted to exfiltrate that person from Russia to safety abroad or in the United States. The source refused to leave, apparently out of fear of repercussions against the person’s family if the source suddenly left Russia or disappeared.

Clapper did not give the sources’ names to Trump, though he could have asked for them.