John Brennan, Former C.I.A. Director, on Being Targeted by Trump

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

John Brennan is or was a career CIA man.

He did daily intelligence briefings for Bill Clinton.

He held senior CIA positions under George W.

Bush.

And Barack Obama made him director of the agency.

Brennan's tenure included the controversial drone program, as well as the infamous steel dossier on presidential candidate Donald Trump.

We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia.

It was all bullshit.

At the very end of his tenure, the CIA compiled a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And after that report came out, Donald Trump revoked John Brennan's security clearance.

Now, as the Jeffrey Epstein controversy is roiling this administration, The Russia investigation is back into the headlines.

Trump's Justice Department has opened up a criminal investigation of John Brennan, and James Comey, the former FBI director, is also being investigated.

The FBI is investigating Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress.

James Comey and John Brennan, now under criminal investigation related to the Trump-Russia probe.

Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?

Well, I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you, I think they're very dishonest people.

I think they're crooked as hell.

And

maybe they have to pay a price for that.

I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people.

So whatever happens, happens.

I reached former CIA Director John Brennan last week, and he was speaking from a hotel room.

Are you on the road somewhere?

Yeah.

I'm in an area that you are very familiar with and grew up in.

I'm in Saddlebrook, New Jersey right now.

Because I I think you have roots in.

I'm a Hillsdale born.

Right, Hillsdale Paramus.

I guess you were born in Hackensack.

Somebody slipped you a little Wikipedia or something.

No, well, I'm an intel officer.

Yeah, I was going to say you know more than that.

Well, I grew up in Hudson County, so this is the area.

Do they use Wikipedia in the CIA?

I'm sure they do.

I see.

I see.

You've been having a hell of a week.

I've been having a hell of a life and career.

This is all very interesting.

Do you feel under

the deluge of the press of the United States in a very direct way?

Well, it's hard not to when he routinely throws out your name in these various press conferences and other settings.

So yeah,

I know that I am somebody who

he focuses on a fair amount.

So I never expected this to happen.

Here I am, eight years removed from my professional career in retirement.

Well, let's begin with the election interference case of 2016.

This has been litigated, investigated, discussed, ad nauseum.

But now you're under investigation by the FBI and you're being accused of lying to Congress.

Accusations include claims that information about Russian election interference that people say was unverified was included in a 2017 intelligence assessment.

Why is this being brought up again now in the year of our Lord 2025, almost a decade later?

Well, simple answers,

I don't know.

It's up to the individuals involved here to say exactly what is motivating them.

But I will point out that, yes, I've seen reports in the press that I'm under investigation, but I've not heard anything from the Department of Justice or the FBI or the CIA or the Office Director of National Intelligence.

No one has contacted me about anything.

So I know there are a lot of assertions and allegations that have been put out there publicly.

And over the course of my career, and including since I retired from the government on January 20th of 2017, I have very willingly appeared before congressional committees, both in open and closed door hearings.

I've answered whatever questions individuals might have.

I haven't had to be subpoenaed.

I've done all this voluntarily.

I've spoken openly about what happened in the 2016 presidential campaign season, what we did when we pulled together the intelligence community assessment.

So I feel very comfortable and confident that what we did was appropriate, consistent with our authorities.

That's why I'm willing to speak out, including to you, about this.

Why they have resurrected this, disinterred it,

after eight years, I think

is more politically motivated than substantively grounded.

This IntelliCommunity community assessment and the work that we did in 2016 when the Russians were interfering in the election has been looked at and reviewed and scrutinized over the years

by years-long investigations in terms of the Durham investigation, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Review, the Mueller investigation also looked at the Russian interference.

And all of these have basically validated what happened in terms of Russian interference and validated the way we handled the production of the intelligence community assessment.

In fact, as I recall it, and I follow this very carefully as somebody who's very interested not only in American politics, but in things Russian, to say the least.

As I recall, some of the biggest criticism leveled at the Obama administration is that they took their time and were, if in anything, overly deliberative

about releasing information so as not to interfere with the election?

Well, that's right.

When I briefed Obama in late July of 2016

about what we had discovered about this very

broad

and worrisome Russian influence campaign that was directed by Vladimir Putin, And in the subsequent months leading up to the election, he made very clear to us he wanted us to try to uncover everything the Russians were doing, but also not to do anything that would in any way interfere in the election.

So we took great steps, extraordinary procedures, to try to protect a lot of this information and not have damaging reports released before the election, and including the reports, as the Intel's community says, that the Russians favored Donald Trump in that election.

So

we were very, very careful to do our job to make sure that we were informing the national security team and President Obama about what was happening.

But at the same time, we didn't want to become involved in any way,

even unintentionally, of having an impact on that election.

When was the first time you became aware this time around

that Donald Trump was going to come after you?

And have you felt repercussions in terms of

your personal safety?

Well,

I think pretty early on, and maybe even before his inauguration, he was sending signals about what he was planning to do during Trump 2.0.

And

even before the inauguration, some of the professional affiliations I had

evaporated

because people were concerned that Trump was going to retaliate against me and if I was

affiliated with their companies, that they would be hurt.

That your presence would scare them away.

Right.

Or that it would be a deterrent to anybody who wanted to remain on favorable terms with Donald Trump.

So there has been professional impact, and I think this is intentional.

Clearly, there's been reputational

harm in terms of things that have been thrown out there, these specious allegations.

And unfortunately, I think

a lot of the followers of Donald Trump who tend to be rather

expressive and

even using violent terms, it's a concern.

But, you know, I Again, I've been in the Washington arena for the last 45 years or so.

I know that intelligence and intelligence officials can frequently be used as political footballs by those who really are

not concerned about others.

And this, I think, is the most unfortunate chapter, the most tragic chapter, I think, of the long history of

the recriminations that somebody in the White House decided to engage in.

These are very nasty and mean-spirited

allegations that can really have unfortunate resonance among certain quarters and potentially cause harm.

Aaron Powell, you have been lumped in with James Coming

as sources of these renewed accusations.

Trump recently accused Obama himself of treason when it came to intelligence reports about election interference in 2016.

All of these accusations fall well outside of the five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes.

How is it possible to even launch this investigation now?

And what do you divine is the purpose of it all?

Well, for people who might be politically motivated, making these referrals to the Department of Justice, I don't think they have to worry about statute of limitations or what is right and appropriate and consistent with the law.

And

there have been

some testifying that I've done

within the past five years that they could point to.

It's not lost to me that there is a real coincidence in timing between these allegations and the challenges that Donald Trump is facing right now related to the Epstein files and other things.

So is the motivation to put something out there that the MAGA base will respond to because it's trying to show that the deep state was a real problem and they're finally going to have some accountability here?

So,

you know,

unfortunately, right and wrong doesn't have anything to do, I think, with what's going on right now.

You know, I've pointed out a number of times that, you know, what it appears that the Trump administration is doing, it's following the, I think, some of the political theories of Carl Schmidt, the German jurist and political philosopher of the 1930s that really served as the basis for a lot of thinking of the Nazi Party, which is, you know, if you, especially if you're going to go after the liberals and the progressives, don't worry about right and wrong,

you know, or good and bad, whatever.

You want to do everything possible that's going to vanquish your enemies.

And so you lie, you cheat, you misrepresent, you push out disinformation, you do everything possible because, you know, especially liberal progressives are not going to reply in kind.

And do you feel that that is a fault of liberals and progressives, that they don't fight back in kind?

I think it's certainly a vulnerability.

And I think, you know, some of the liberals and progressives right now are wondering whether or not they should continue to play by the Marcus State-Queensbury rules.

You know, as the Republicans now are thinking about redistricting the congressional districts in Texas to be able to gain more seats, you know, now some of the Democrats in California and New York are saying, well, maybe we can do the same thing to offset that.

It really is quite worrisome from the standpoint of trying to protect the foundations of democracy

when you have individuals who really don't care about doing the right thing.

They're just going to do whatever allows allows them to, again, prevail and to win against their enemies.

I'm speaking with John Brennan, former CIA director, and we'll continue in a moment.

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Ramnick, and I'm speaking today with John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Brennan served in the CIA for nearly 30 years and under six presidents.

Under Brennan, the CIA issued a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which was quite a damning report to Trump and the people around him.

But Trump was never indicted.

Now, the Justice Department under Trump is opening a criminal investigation into John Brennan.

And this is while Trump is claiming that Barack Obama could be guilty of treason and more.

I'll continue my conversation with John Brennan.

I want to ask you a question about some of your decisions

after being at the highest level of

national intelligence, and that is to, to some extent, to become an overtly political person, to go on, in particular a great deal,

MSNBC, and be overtly political and have

quite firm opinions about Donald Trump and much else.

That's not something that all

past intelligence officers allow themselves to do.

Tell me about your decision to do that.

Why?

First of all, I disagree with your characterization.

I'm not overtly political.

I'm overtly outspoken, certainly.

Throughout the course of my career, and I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, never been registered with either party.

While I was director of CIA, it was the Democrats in Congress and the Senate who were calling for my firing and resignation.

And ever since I retired, and even before I retired,

before Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017, he equated CIA officers with Nazi Germany.

To me, a real disparagement of the women and men of CIA.

And I felt an obligation to push back against those characterizations.

And I have spoken out

over the course of my retirement about things that I believe are important.

I'm a private citizen.

Throughout my professional career, I defended and worked hard to defend Americans' right to freedom of speech.

Well,

I don't believe that just because I served as director of CIA in these positions, it means that I have to bite my tongue when I see the foundations of our government, the democratic foundations of our government being torn down.

And the six presidents I worked for,

I didn't agree with all the policies of any of them, but I respected their integrity, their attempts to do what is in the best interest of the United States.

With Donald Trump, there are things that he has done.

When he takes the side of Vladimir Putin against the considered judgments of the U.S.

intelligence community, yeah, I speak out.

When he continues to just misrepresent the facts and speak dishonestly, yeah, I speak out.

So, again,

I know it's hard for people to believe that I'm not political.

I'm not, but I am someone who served in this government for well over 30 years.

I've seen how government needs to function.

I believe that the government is really in place to be able to serve the best interests of the people of the United States.

U.S.

intelligence has always had an extremely close relationship with Israeli intelligence, among other agencies, but extremely close.

Do the events of the past year,

year and a half, give you pause about that?

I am just

devastated by what I've seen happen over the last year and a half in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel.

Obviously, the horrific, awful, murderous attacks of Hamas were the trigger.

But the Israeli response in Gaza has been way over the top.

Intentional killing of civilians.

Not that they're targeting civilians, but the

disproportionality of the willingness of the Israeli military to kill innocent Gazans because they're going after Hamas operatives.

That is wholly inconsistent with the laws of war.

And I think it's just criminal in terms of what has happened and the starvation that is going on and the choking off of humanitarian assistance.

Again, it's a very complicated situation.

I can understand how difficult it has been for the Israelis to work this and to try to free those remaining hostages, and every effort should be made to do that.

But the devastating military operations,

the killing of 60,000 or so Gazans,

that number,

and there seems to be a lack of

appreciation for that number of people.

Can you imagine 60,000 Israelis killed?

What the outrage, the uproar would be.

But unfortunately, I think there are too many governments, including our own, that have been willing to

chastise the Israelis and say, no, you shouldn't do that, but not take firm action.

You mean

just sort of tut-tut and move on.

Yeah, you know, not even a minor slap on the wrists.

You know, okay, they might, you know, pause, you know, military weaponry.

Those are, that's U.S.

military ordinance that's being brought there.

I mean, ordinance that's been, you know, manufactured in the United States.

It's U.S.

weapon systems.

The critique you'd get, the critique, as you know, that you would get in Israel in some quarters anyway, would be, you know,

that's interesting, but what about the firebombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, even some of our actions in the Middle East in recent years

during the battle against ISIS.

Do you take that as legitimate criticism?

I think it's legitimate argument

about

the appropriateness of dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the bombing of Dresden, and other things.

You know,

in war, yes, war is hell,

but so many innocent lives have been snuffed out.

And I think

without looking at really what the alternative would be.

Now, there are arguments as to why we dropped the bombs.

You know, it saved the lives of U.S.

forces and so on, and same thing in Dresden and so forth.

But I think

the tremendous capabilities of weapon systems these days, it makes it too easy to opt for that.

You know, if the most powerful weapon you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And

what is happening to the Palestinian people, you know, is just awful.

And this is the culmination of many, many years of maltreatment, mistreatment, of

avoidance of dealing with the underlying issue about Palestinian rights.

So then I return to the question.

Do you think the United States should have the kind of

relationship that we've traditionally had with the Israelis, Israelis, whether it's in terms of military cooperation, intelligence cooperation, and all the rest?

Well,

you know, the intelligence agencies and military services take their direction from the White House in terms of what they should or shouldn't do in terms of the boundaries.

If I were the White House, if I was the President of the United States, I would sharply limit what it was that we were doing with the Israelis.

I would also take very strong measures to get the Israelis to stop

these just ruthless and brutal military operations that are leading, that have just destroyed Gaza.

Gaza was not a good place to live even prior to all this.

It is now just rubble.

And looking at those pictures of starving and

death by starvation is exceptionally, exceptionally awful and painful.

But

Netanyahu just seems to be ignoring the reality of what's happening on the ground there.

As we speak, he denied in front of a group of American

evangelical Christians, I believe, the fact that starvation existed at all in Gaza.

Yes, yes.

And why do we treat Palestinian deaths and suffering so differently than we treat death and suffering on the part of Israelis or

Europeans or Westerners?

Why do we ignore basically basically what's going on in terms of in Sudan and other places?

It's just

to me, it's

I think a lot of our approaches

are not

taking into account that every life is precious.

That's the reason why I really

not just enjoyed, but I felt a great privilege to work for President Obama, who told us in our counterterrorism operation anything, do everything possible to prevent the loss of innocent life.

He recognized that, you know, lives are precious.

And I think there is this, you know, sense among a lot of government officials, including Netanyahu,

including others in the West, that just look past the death, the destruction, the starvation, the suffering, the inhumanity that is going on in these locations.

Aaron Powell,

what's going to be necessary, in your view, as you try to look

in whatever the intelligence version of a crystal ball is, what are you anticipating in terms of threats to this country that we haven't discussed so far in this conversation

that are really bound to take us by surprise, even though we seem not to be discussing them?

Well, we haven't talked about Ukraine, and Donald Trump just basically said that he's shortening the timeline for Putin to agree to ceasefire.

Again,

and whether he does that or not.

But

Putin, as despicable personally is, he is a very clever and cunning chess player on that global stage.

And I think we're at a very dangerous time right now in terms of how Putin is going to react to all of this.

I don't think Putin is just going to say, okay, we're just going to give in to you.

And

how he is going to somehow counter this.

I don't know.

So I just think the next several months on the Ukraine-Russia front are ones that may, in fact, we see new developments.

Putin for many years has tried to kill Zelensky.

Zelensky, even though he is facing some domestic challenges, he's the glue that has held that country together.

You remove him from the political scene, and who knows what's going to happen as far as a follow-on government leadership.

Xi Jinping also is a very, very smart global chess player and thinks about things from a longer-term perspective.

And so how is he going to play this chess game with Trump?

What is he going to do as far as Taiwan is concerned, other things?

And so there are a lot of things that are going on in the world that I think are going to be challenging the United States and our interests.

And

what are the intelligence chiefs doing right now?

They're focusing on an eight-year-old document and conspiracy theories.

John Brennan, thanks so much.

Thank you, David.

I enjoyed it.

Thank you.

John Brennan served in the CIA for nearly 30 years, and he was director of the agency under Barack Obama.

The Trump administration recently announced an investigation of Brennan and also FBI Director James Comey.

A quick word of thanks to everyone who wrote in to us with legal questions for our correspondents, Jeannie Sup Gerson and Ruth Marcus.

You sent a boatload of good questions, and we'll answer as many as we can get to on next week's episode.

I'm David Remnick.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

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