"UNUSUAL":

ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats' aides, anticipating questions that Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: "How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?" [...]

There's no doubt that Coats, the statutory leader of the 16-agency intelligence community, is operating in an unusual environment. Normally, American intelligence agencies do their work quietly, avoid public political disputes, and settle whatever differences they have with the White House privately.

But President Donald Trump's willingness to openly criticize the intelligence community has altered that equation. Days before taking office, he compared America's spies to Adolf Hitler's Gestapo. "Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public," Trump tweeted, referring to allegations contained in the Steele dossier, the controversial, unverified research that purportedly raised the possibility that Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail. "Are we living in Nazi Germany?"

The differences between the White House and the leadership of the intelligence community are severe, in the view of former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden. "This is a bit of a true-believer administration," he said in an interview with ProPublica at the Aspen conference. "Faith-based, faith with a small 'f.' They think they know all the answers. And then you've got people living in this fact-based, empirical, inductive world. They're talking to people who, as an article of faith, know what the answers are. That creates great tension at the very top."

Tweet   @brothersjudd