Experts say stakes aren't that high with the briefings presidential candidates receive. | Getty Experts: Stop freaking out about Trump getting classified briefings ‘There’s not a tremendous amount of extremely sensitive stuff here,’ says a former CIA director.

Democrats have issued dire warnings about Donald Trump receiving classified intelligence briefings, saying he would be a loose cannon with the nation’s top secret material.

Likewise, Republicans have argued Hillary Clinton’s “extremely careless” track record with classified emails shows she shouldn’t get anywhere near explosive state secrets.


In reality, the stakes aren’t really that high.

“I think there is some alarmism,” said Michael Morell, who led the Central Intelligence Agency at various points in the Obama administration and has participated in briefing candidates. “There’s not a tremendous amount of extremely sensitive stuff here. These are analytic judgments.”

With Trump and Clinton officially becoming their parties’ nominees, the two candidates are now eligible to receive a closed-door rundown from U.S. intelligence officials about global risks and domestic security threats.

Public fretting about the risks of divulging state secrets reached new heights after Trump on Wednesday encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s email server to try to recover the 30,000 emails she deleted. (He later said he was being “sarcastic.”)

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was just the latest Democrat to raise an alarm about Trump getting briefed, calling him “part of a foreign power.”

“I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous,” Reid told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. “Fake it, pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information.”

Trump, meanwhile, has tried to turn the tables back on Clinton.

It’s Clinton who should be barred from briefings, Trump argued on Wednesday, pointing to both her deleted emails from her time as secretary of state and her relationship with top aide Huma Abedin, whose husband, Anthony Weiner, has a notorious lack of impulse control on Twitter. (Incidentally, some Democrats have cited the same diagnosis for their concern about Trump briefings.)

"How can Hillary Clinton be briefed on this unbelievably delicate information when it was just proven that she lied," Trump said. "The word will get out.”

But for these briefings, the word is supposed to get out. Or at least, it’s supposed to affect what candidates do and don’t say on the stump to avoid making global hot spots worse, say people familiar with their content.

With musings about banning Muslims, dropping NATO commitments and leaving Japan and South Korea to mount their own nuclear defenses, Trump’s public statements have already put him far outside of the U.S. foreign policy mainstream — and, critics say, alarmed allies and inflamed enemies.

“I think the question is less whether he should get a briefing than whether it will do any good," Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said at a POLITICO event in Philadelphia on Thursday.

Concerns about the briefings appear to be based on the misconception that the briefings are like the Presidential Daily Briefing. They’re not, Morell said in a recent interview. They’re usually just a few multi-hour sessions, not regular updates.

“If I were still in my old job, I would specifically tell the analysts, don’t self-censor here. You give the same briefing and you answer the man’s questions,” Morell said. “There are certain places you don’t go. If he says, ‘How did you learn that?’ you don’t answer that question.”

Only once a candidate is actually elected would he or she start receiving something more akin to the daily report to the president.

Before that, intelligence officials are likely to outline broad assessments about specific threats, like ISIS, China, Iran and — yes — Russia, experts said. But they won’t get into sources or methods.

On Thursday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Reid was playing a “dangerous game” with his call for Trump to receive fake information.

“The system of government Harry Reid is advocating — where the intelligence apparatus provides disinformation to one party and actively supports another — does indeed exist: in Putin's Russia, not in the United States,” Cotton said in a statement.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest promised evenhandedness on Thursday. He said the administration is “confident” that the intelligence community “can both provide relevant and sufficient briefings to the two major party presidential candidates while also protecting sensitive national security information.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also dismissed any concerns on Thursday, citing the “long tradition” of the intelligence community offering such briefings.

“We have to work out logistics. We have a team all prepared and have for some time,” Clapper said at the Aspen Security Forum. "There is no stipulation anywhere [that] requires a security clearance for any presidential candidate. The fact that they’re a candidate qualifies them. It's not up to the administration and me personally to decide on the suitability of a presidential candidate. The American electorate is in the process of deciding suitability of these two candidates as commander in chief. They will make the decision to pick someone who will be cleared for everything. We will brief both candidates if they want it."

While officials have promised to make the same information available to both candidates, the sessions may not be so similar in practice, driven by the candidates’ own backgrounds.

“My sense is that these are going to be two completely different kinds of briefings at the end of the day,” Morell said. Clinton, after all, spent four years as secretary of state, while Trump has no formal foreign policy experience.

“I would just imagine that his questioning and answering is going to be more elementary,” Morell said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that he doesn’t know this issues as deeply as she does.”

Schiff made a similar point on Thursday to explain why he’s not worried about Trump getting briefed.

“I think he will get a very, very top-line brief,” Schiff said. “That's probably the only digestible form for him anyway.”

Tim Starks contributed reporting from Aspen, Colorado. Nick Gass and Nicole Narea also contributed to this report.