US President Donald Trump and his CIA head Mike Pompeo have slammed the reputable global financial daily ‘The Wall Street Journal‘ for its “disgraceful” reporting on American intelligence community.
In its lead story, the daily said that the intelligence community was keeping its top secret information away from Trump, fearing that it might be leaked.
“The officials’ decision to keep information from Mr Trump underscores the deep mistrust that has developed between the intelligence community and the President over his team’s contacts with the Russian Government, as well as the enmity he has shown towards US spy agencies,” the report said.
“(The) Wall Street Journal did a story today that was almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Time’s story,” Trump told reporters at a White House news conference yesterday.
In a statement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the story was “dead wrong” and put it in the domain of gossip.
“Today’s Wall Street Journal story is dead wrong and impugns the integrity of thousands of professional intelligence officers by peddling gossip without citing a single example to support its claims,” Pompeo said.
“The CIA does not, has not, and will never hide intelligence from the President, period. We are not aware of any instance when that has occurred,” he said.
The office of Director of National Intelligence also disputed the allegations.
“Any suggestion that the US Intelligence Community is withholdinginformation and not providingthe best possible intelligence to the President and his national security team is not true,” it said.
“I’ll tell you something, I’ll be honest, because I sort of enjoy this back and forth that I guess I have all my life but I’ve never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest,” Trump said.
“But I will say that, I never get phone calls from the media. How did they write a story like that in The Wall Street Journal without asking me or how did they write a story in The New York Times, put it on front page?” he asked.
The Wall Street Journal story said that in some cases of withheld information, officials have decided not to show Trump the sources and methods that the intelligence agencies use to collect information.
Those sources and methods could include, for instance, the means that an agency uses to spy on a foreign government, the daily said.