8/20/2018

CIA/INTELLIGENCE/NATIONAL SECURITY/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “More than 175 former U.S. State Department and Pentagon officials added their names to a statement signed by former national security officials criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan. New signatories to the statement, initially issued last week by 15 former directors and deputy chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of Director of National Intelligence, include former political appointees and career civil servants. They worked under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Among the most prominent individuals to sign a new version of the statement released on Monday [8-20-8] by senior officials from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations are former NATO Commander Admiral James Stavridis, former Deputy Secretaries of State Anthony Blinken and William Burns and former Undersecretaries of State Nicholas Burns, Wendy Sherman and Thomas Pickering. While they may not agree with all Brennan’s public attacks on Trump, the statement read, they believe ‘the country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied’ before former officials are allowed to voice their views.”

Mark Hosenball, “New outcry over Trump’s revocation of Brennan security clearance,” Reuters, August 20, 2018 4:30 am