The Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation have refused to comply with demands by President Donald Trump and his Office of the Director of National Intelligence to create a master list of espionage targets and potential recruits. The list aims to bring more oversight to the intelligence community as well as function as a sort of terrorist watch list, but the opposition to the list cites the risk of alerting espionage targets to monitoring.
“The Trump administration is demanding that American intelligence officials turn over the names of all foreign espionage targets, including suspected spies and potential recruits, to create a master list that some officials fear will be misused or compromise operations, according to people familiar with the matter,” The New York Times reported Monday evening.
The push to create a master list of intel assets is reportedly an effort by the President and the ODNI, a position vacated by Tulsi Gabbard on June 19. She was originally going to leave her post on June 30. The new director, Bill Pulte, appears to continue to push to create the list.
“The effort by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has intensified in recent months, frustrating counterparts at the FBl and ClA, who are skeptical of the claims that a master list is necessary to avoid inadvertent conflicts between agencies and to better track foreign intelligence threats in real time,” The New York Times said.
The detail which is perhaps the most alarming isn’t the refusal to create a list, but the apparent problem of being able to create a list in the first place.
“Officials still cannot agree on the most basic details, including how a list of what are known as foreign intelligence threat actors would be created, maintained and kept secure, the people said,” The New York Times reported.
The list which has been requested by Trump and the ODNI would include individuals the FBI hopes to investigate and potentially arrest in the future, as well as individuals the CIA hopes to recruit as assets.
“The disagreement over the master list continues to play out behind closed doors as officials spar over how much, if anything, to hand over to ODNI,” The Daily Mail said Tuesday.
2 Responses
They turned the animals loose too long ago. Even if they said they would acquiesce, they’d produce a phony list. Defying the President is just for show.
The list would probably contain a lot of people inside the U.S. Gov and names of well-known people in media, entertainment, business, medicine and sports.
Yeah, its that bad