Outgoing CIA Director John Brennan brushed off Donald Trump’s personal criticism of him in a Monday evening interview but said the president-elect’s attacks on the intelligence community crossed a line.
“I think it’s the right and indeed the responsibility of the president of the United States to challenge the conclusions of the intelligence community,” Brennan told The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s when there are allegations made about leaking or about dishonesty or a lack of integrity, that’s where I think the line is crossed.”
{mosads}Last week, Trump tweeted that he feels like he is “living in Nazi Germany” after reports of an unverified dossier containing compromising information on him came to light.
Brennan fired back on Sunday, saying he takes “great umbrage with that” comparison.
“Tell the families of those 117 CIA officers who are forever memorialized on our wall of honor that their loved ones who gave their lives were akin to Nazis,” Brennan said Monday.
“Tell the CIA officers who are serving in harm’s way right now and their families who are worried about them that they are akin to Nazi Germany. I found that to be very repugnant, and I will forever stand up for the integrity and patriotism of my officers who have done much over the years to sacrifice for their fellow citizens.”
Brennan also responded to Trump’s tweet from late Sunday questioning if he’s the “leaker of Fake News.”
“Was I a leaker of this? No,” Brennan told the Journal.
“First of all, this is not intelligence community information,” he noted of the dossier published by BuzzFeed, which he said had been circulating for “many months.” The dossier was allegedly put together by a former British intelligence official as opposition research commissioned first by Republican political opponents of Trump and later by Democrats.
“I would have no interest in trying to give that dossier any additional airtime,” he said, but “there was an interest on the part of the bureau to make sure that the president-elect was aware of and informed of” it.