David M Jackson

USA TODAY

A former top official in the CIA is not only endorsing Hillary Clinton, but bashing Donald Trump as a potential threat to national security.

"The character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief," writes Michael J. Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, in The New York Times.

While praising the qualifications of Clinton, a former secretary of State, Morell hits Trump for "obvious need for self-aggrandizement," his lack of government experience and "his routine carelessness with the facts."

Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin comes in for special criticism.

"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation," Morell wrote.

Trump, who has said the U.S. should strive for better relations with Russia, says the problem is the Obama administration foreign policy.

"Obama's disastrous judgment gave us ISIS, rise of Iran, and the worst economic numbers since the Great Depression!" he tweeted.

Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, dismissed CIA complaints as pure politics.

"I suppose this is the same CIA that told the president that ISIS was the JV team," Pence said on NBC's Today show.