WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Woolsey stepped up with comments following an article in the Wall Street Journal in which outgoing CIA Director John Brennan said he was angry over Trump’s earlier allegations about intelligence leaks.
"Everybody needs to calm down," Woolsey told MSNBC on Tuesday. "They need to talk to one another. They need to start working together because they’re going to have run spies for the country and write intelligence analyses for the country… They [intelligence officers] need to have the confidence of the president and his near advisers."
At issue was a dossier alleging that Russia had compiled information on Trump behavior during earlier visits to Moscow that could be used to blackmail the president-elect.
Russia has called the information junk and Woolsey echoed the assessment.
"I was surprised that they [the CIA] went first to members of Congress before they went to him [Trump], Woolsey said. "If something comes in that’s clearly junk like this stuff was, and you decide that the president to be needs to know about it… you go first and foremost privately to him [Trump] and say ‘look at this, we know it’s junk, but you need to know about it.’"
"Maybe they [the State Department] need to invite some of the CIA people to the State Department," Woolsey noted.
Woolsey added that the senior people in the State Department and CIA — most of them — thought former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would be their next boss and are having a difficult time coming to terms with the incoming Trump presidency.
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