Transcript

I'm Keith Olbermann and this is The Resistance.

Do you think Donald Trump realizes

that the American intelligence community

has already started to kill and eat his presidency?

The leaks, the drip, drip, drip,

the tiny revelation

that cost Michael Flynn the national security advisor's job,

the slightly larger revelation

that was the play by play

of how and why his first three choices to succeed Flynn

didn't succeed Flynn,

the larger revelations

that put the backbone in the New York Times and CNN stories

about the Trump campaign talking with Russia

while still hiding the potentially disastrous details

of exactly what they said,

and the far more meaningful revelation

but the far more subtle revelation

that the so-called British dossier

is gaining credibility within the intelligence agencies

because they have been able to confirm

so many little details

like how the claims of meetings and phone calls

on specific dates are turning out to be exactly right.

You think Trump understands what all these things are?

They are warnings.

They are the cop letting the belligerent drunk

see just the tip of the gun.

They are the poker player putting down the $20 chips

then smiling at the mark,

then pulling back the $20 chips

and replacing them with $100 chips.

They are warnings.

Stories based on sources usually bear no resemblance

to what you see in the movies or on television dramas.

It's not all All the President's Men

with indefatigable and annoying pests

overwhelming reluctant individuals

until the latter do the right thing.

I mean you might have enough sources

who are around the center

but not at the center of the given story

and with all the circumstantial evidence

they have provided you,

you might once in awhile, be able to persuade

that key reluctant source

to confirm what you have already proved to them

that you actually know

but this is almost always true,

a source does not give you a story

because you want them to give it to you,

a source gives you a story

because they want to give it to you.

And there are sources, a lot of sources,

a lot of very well placed, very well informed sources

who want to tell the world about Donald Trump.

The details they are dolling out have a dual purpose,

they get these stories out

that confirm the correct perception

that this administration is like a giant fire hose

that the firefighters have lost control of.

But more importantly,

they are there to get the message to Trump

and those around him

that there is an iceberg

and it will be revealed one square foot at a time

so stop screwing around.

Maybe he's not smart enough to get it,

maybe he's not sane enough to get it,

maybe he's not experienced enough to get it,

that individuals sitting on details

potent enough to pick off his national security advisor

hours after Kallian con job

said he had Trump's full confidence,

they're also clearly sitting on a hoard

of far more embarrassing, far more destructive,

far more lurid details about Trump.

So why aren't those lurid details known already?

Well, this part is entirely speculative of course

but the way leaking in the intelligence community

or as they sometimes phrase it, story placement

was explained to me

it is supposed to be done

with the minimum expenditure of assets.

In other words,

to go back to that analogy of the poker player

pulling back the $20 chips

and replacing them with $100 chips,

you want to use as little of your stash as possible.

Each chip, each story you confirm or promulgate

involves something

you then can no longer use for its original purpose.

The essence of intelligence is secrecy.

Reveal a secret to a reporter

and you may reveal

within the worldwide intelligence community,

1,000 details of how you learned that secret.

Why spend the $100 chips

when you might get the job done with the 20s.

And it's clear that the Oliver Stone version

of the intelligence community

is at best an exaggeration,

Trump derided the IC as it calls itself during the campaign,

insulted the IC after the election,

impugned the IC during the transition

and yet, for the most part,

the spies kept quiet.

Whatever they thought of Trump,

with their great restraint and to their great credit,

they clearly wanted to grin and bear

through a Trump administration.

And then it became clear he wasn't gonna stop.

But what pushed them over the edge?

Again, just a guess,

but I suspect that speech at CIA headquarters

with Trump's disingenuous, shallow, fawning over them

while he bought his own employees along to applaud him

that was certainly the end of the beginning

as far as the intelligence community's forbearance.

And then came his noted disinterest in their products,

their briefings

and finally came the night he took in the details

of the North Korean missile test

while the gawking patrons at night Mar-a-Lago

the Judge Smails and the Dr. Beeper

and the Havercamps and the Mrs. Crane

of Trump's real life enactment of the movie Caddy Shack

while they all took cell phone pictures.

And the next thing you knew,

the Wall Street Journal had a story

about how U.S. intelligence agencies

are not telling Trump everything

for fear it could be leaked or compromised.

And then CBS News had a story about Trump

yelling about that story at his CIA director

and then Huffington Post had a story

about how the president only wants bullet points

in his intel briefings

and how he really likes maps.

And Newsweek had a story

about one Western European ally

intercepting the Flynn phone calls

with supposedly the Russian ambassador

and Politico had a story

about a senior national security council official

criticizing Trump and his team and getting fired for it

and the New York Times just happened to hear

about a military conference where the general

in charge of U.S. special operations command

suddenly blurts out, Our government continues to be

in unbelievable turmoil.

And later clarifies to a reporter,

As a commander,

I'm concerned our government be as stable as possible.

Remarks that seemed about as subtle as saying,

Golly, as service members

who love and honor the Constitution,

we would hate to have to do

a military takeover of the government

but bullshit McGee over here is a whack job.

And none of it registers with Trump.

On he goes, threatening the leakers,

the leakers he compared once to Nazi Germany,

the leakers who have all the chips,

the $20s, the $100s, for all we know the millions.

On he goes, tweets this a week ago,

Information is being illegally given

to the failing New York Times and Washington Post

by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?)

just like Russia.

The real scandal here is that classified information

is illegally given out by intelligence like candy.

Very un-American.

Un-American, just like Russia, Nazi Germany,

whereupon somebody asks John Schindler,

a former NSA guy who left his job at the naval war college

under embarrassing circumstances,

but whose tweets about Trump

and the intelligence community

have been remarkably prescient,

What do you think is going on inside NATSEC right now,

national security,

after Trump's intelligence tweet this morning?

And Schindler tweets back,

Now we go nuclear.

IC, intelligence community,

war going to new levels.

Just got an EM from senior IC friend.

It began, He will die in jail.

Do you think Donald Trump realizes

that the American intelligence community

has already started to kill and eat his presidency?

Resist,

peace.