Ex-CIA chief backs Clinton, calls Trump national security threat
A former acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency just publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton and denounced Donald Trump as a threat to national security.
Michael Morell, a 33-year CIA veteran, who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, has served presidents from both parties and voted for politicians from either side of the aisle. As a government official, he chose to keep his preferences among presidential candidates private until Friday, when he announced his support for Clinton in the New York Times.
Morell — who was with President George W. Bush on Sept. 11 and President Obama when the U.S. took out Osama bin Laden — said he will vote for Clinton in November and do everything he can until then to help her win the election.
“Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief,” he wrote. “I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”
As secretary of state, he said, Clinton demonstrated the qualities necessary to being commander in chief: “prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive” and committed to protecting the country. He said she never brought politics into the White House Situation Room over the four years he worked with her and that she advocated early on for the raid that killed bin Laden.
In stark contrast with Clinton, Morell said, Trump’s political inexperience and character flaws suggest he would be a poor and possibly dangerous president.
“These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law,” he continued.
According to Morell, Russian President Vladimir Putin has identified and exploited Trump’s vulnerabilities with compliments, compelling the reality TV star to endorse positions that support Russian — rather than American — interests and to turn a blind eye to Putin’s aggression.
“In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Morell was deeply critical of Trump’s call for barring Muslim immigrants and tourists from entering the United States. He said the real estate magnate’s position “clearly contradicts” the country’s founding principles and plays into the hands of terrorists trying to frame the “global war on terrorism” as a battle between religions.
The op-ed apparently led to Trump’s issuing a statement in which the GOP nominee said, “It should come as no surprise that her campaign would push out another Obama-Clinton pawn (who is not independent) to try to change the subject” from Clinton’s own vulnerabilities.
“Hillary Clinton and President Obama bear the direct responsibility of destabilizing the Middle East, having let ISIS take firm hold in Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention their allowing Americans to be slaughtered at Benghazi,” Trump said.
