Donald Trump News: President-Elect To Restructure US Intelligence Agencies

President-elect Donald Trump, who has expressed disdain for the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies, reportedly is planning to overhaul the nation’s top spy agency, calling it bloated and politicized.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday Trump plans to restructure and downsize the office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as restructure the Central Intelligence Agency to push more people out of the Langley, Virginia, headquarters and into the field.

Quoting people familiar with the planning, the Journal said Trump also wants to improve the way the intelligence agencies interact.

Trump has rejected U.S. intelligence assessments about who was responsible for hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Gmail account of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Intelligence officials blame the Russians but Trump has rejected the assessment and repeatedly has brought up false intelligence conclusions about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Russia has denied it was behind the hacking, and Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, which published the leaked missives, has said the emails came from elsewhere.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told CNN he finds it disturbing that Trump is siding with Assange.

“Mr. Assange is a fugitive from the law, hiding in an embassy, who has a history of undermining American interests,” Graham said. “I hope no American will be duped by him. You shouldn't give him any credibility.”

Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to the United States to face possible charges stemming from WikiLeaks publication of classified information on the Iraq war and embassy cables that may have endangered U.S. troops.

The controversy also has set the intelligence community on edge.

"It's a sad day when politicians place more stock in Russian President Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange than in the Americans who risk their lives daily to provide objective, nonpartisan intelligence analysis," an official told CNN.

A senior transition official said during intelligence briefings, Trump has questioned analysts’ conclusions but not the underlying data presented. Trump is scheduled to be briefed Friday on the full scope of intelligence on the Russian hacks.

"The intelligence community is not saying that Vladimir Putin won the election for Trump," an intelligence official said. "We're saying they did a series of things to sow doubt and some people think they wanted Trump to win, but no one has ever said they got into the mechanics of the ballot boxes."