President Donald Trump fired Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and replaced him with Richard Grenell — who had been U.S. ambassador to Germany — shaking up the office of the top intel chief. Trump’s critics have been quick to point out that Grenell, a Trump loyalist, has no intelligence experience.
And two intel experts, John D. Negroponte and Edward M. Wittenstein, warn in an op-ed for the Washington Post this week that Trump is putting the U.S. at risk by politicizing intel in this way.
Negroponte served as director of national intelligence from 2005-2007 under President George W. Bush, while Wittenstein is a former DNI executive assistant who now lectures on global affairs at Yale University. And both of them find it disturbing that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been in such turmoil during Trump’s presidency. Continue reading.