In fact, two officials with knowledge of the situation said on Saturday that Trump’s transition team has made only “incidental contact” with the Central Intelligence Agency. This is despite the fact that Trump’s choice to head the CIA, U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, has limited experience working with the agency. The Kansas Republican served on the House Intelligence Committee and the select committee investigating the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who have been briefed on the Russian activities share the intelligence agencies’ alarm about Trump’s plans for the 17-agency intelligence community, which includes the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Privately, some members of the clandestine service, the CIA’s body of spies, said they would resign rather than obey any order to resume waterboarding or other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Trump endorsed during his campaign.Elsewhere in the $70 billion-a-year intelligence community officials on Saturday said they fear that Trump might invite legal trouble by trying to vastly expand electronic and physical surveillance of suspected terrorists based on their religion or national origin.
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