Russia puts Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on its wanted list
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
The U.S. intelligence community "struggled" to brief U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in 2016, achieving "only limited success" in educating and developing a relationship with the incoming president, according to a newly released unclassified history of the transition period published by the CIA's in-house academic centre.
Although Trump spent substantial time with briefers on a routine basis throughout the transition period, his free-wheeling style and deep mistrust of the intelligence community presented them with "greater challenges" even than U.S. President-elect Richard Nixon, who blamed the CIA for his election loss in 1960 and cut the agency out as president, the history found.
The 40-page narrative — a regular update to a CIA book on briefing presidents-elect written by a retired intelligence officer — offers only a few new details but confirms widely reported press accounts of the former President's approach to intelligence.
It offers an inside window into the intelligence community's struggle to adjust to a president who was "suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process" and, in the words of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, prone to "fly off on tangents." And it narrates how, at every turn, the relationship between the new President and the intelligence community was undermined by the political imbroglio stemming from the Trump campaign's alleged relationship to Russia.
"Looking back at the Trump transition, one must conclude that the IC achieved only limited success with what had always been its two fundamental goals with the briefing process: to assist the president-elect in becoming familiar with foreign developments and threats affecting U.S. interests with which he would have to deal once in office; and to establish a relationship with the new president and his team in which they understood how they could draw on the Intelligence Community to assist them in discharging their responsibilities," the history recounts.
The history reports that during the transition period, Trump was typically "pleasant and courteous" during his briefings, which were given by career intelligence officers drawn from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the Department of State. Together, the team of 14 briefers "comprised the largest and most organizationally diverse group of experts ever deployed for transition briefings of candidates and presidents-elect."
Even later in his presidency, at moments when Trump was publicly expressing deep frustration with the intelligence community, "briefings continued as usual and Trump's demeanor during the sessions remained the same," the history reports.
But as the intelligence community was drawn into the major political dramas surrounding Trump — in particular, the public furor over a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer containing purported compromising information on the president-elect that Trump believed had been leaked by the IC — he increasingly lashed out at the intelligence community in public.
According to one previously unreported anecdote, Trump during his second pre-election briefing on Sept. 2, 2016 assured his briefers that "the nasty things he was saying publicly about the intelligence community "don't apply to you."
"Trump was like Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted," the history reads. "Rather than shut the IC out, Trump engaged with it, but attacked it publicly."
The history also confirms myriad press accounts of Trump's dissociative style during intelligence briefings.
"The irreconcilable difference, in Clapper's view, was that the IC worked with evidence," according to the history. "Trump 'was fact-free—evidence doesn't cut it with him,'" according to Clapper.
Trump rarely, if at all, read the daily classified briefing book prepared for him during the transition, according to the lead intelligence analyst responsible for briefing the president-elect.
"He touched it. He doesn't really read anything," the history quotes Ted Gistaro, the career CIA analyst tapped for the job. Still, as is typical, the intelligence community tailored the briefing book to the new president, reducing the number and the length of articles. Former Vice President Mike Pence reportedly told briefers to "lean forward on maps." Clapper agreed with Gistaro, saying "Trump doesn't read much; he likes bullets."
Trump would "listen to the key points, discuss them with some care, then lead the discussion to related issues and others further afield," according to the history.
Unlike previous presidents-elect — and some members of his own national security team — Trump himself received no briefings on the CIA's covert action programs until several weeks after his inauguration. The history terms this chain of events "a significant departure from the way briefings were handled during the previous two transitions," but does not offer an explanation.
The history primarily focuses on Trump's time as a candidate and president-elect, and only briefly covers his relations with the intelligence community during his presidency. It reports that after the 2020 election, Trump's "PDB" — his presidential daily briefing — continued only for a time.
Trump typically received the PDB twice a week while in office. He was scheduled to resume receiving the PDB on January 6 after a holiday break, the history reveals. But according to an interview with Beth Sanner, Trump's regular briefer, none were scheduled after the assault on the U.S. Capitol that took place that day.
The history also provides some insight into briefings given to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, recounting one pre-election intelligence briefing given to Clinton at the FBI field office in White Plains, New York, in August of that year.
"Given all that Clinton was going through related to her handling of personal emails during the campaign, Gistaro regretted that the first question the security officer asked Clinton as she approached the room was whether she had any cell phones with her," the history recounts. "The Secretary very professionally assured the questioner that she had left her cell phones at home.
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A man accused of arson in a January Old Strathcona apartment fire is expected to be charged with manslaughter after a body was discovered in the burned building late last month.
Ontario Provincial Police say two people were killed after a car and a transport truck collided in the westbound lanes of Highway 417 near Limoges, Ont. on Tuesday afternoon.
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
A candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left party in next month's election for the European Parliament was beaten up and seriously injured while campaigning in an eastern city, the party said Saturday.
Police are investigating after a BMW exploded in the St-Lambert Exo train station parking lot on Montreal's South Shore.
A group of lawyers has written what they call a groundbreaking book about how mental health is perceived in the legal profession.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.