"I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press," James Clapper said. | Getty Spy chief trashes leaks, assures Trump of loyalty James Clapper says the intelligence community 'stands ready to serve his administration.'

The outgoing U.S. director of national intelligence has extended an olive branch of sorts to Donald Trump — denouncing media leaks, casting skepticism on a report that Russia has damaging material on the president-elect, and assuring Trump that America's spies stand ready to serve him.

In an unusual statement, James Clapper said he had spoken Wednesday evening with Trump, five days after the spy chief and some of his counterparts met with the incoming president to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election, possibly to help him win.


The assessment has badly aggravated existing tensions between the intelligence community and Trump.

On Tuesday, CNN, BuzzFeed and other media outlets reported that, during Friday’s briefing, the intelligence officials told Trump about an unsubstantiated private report that detailed how Russia's government allegedly had salacious information about him. In addition, BuzzFeed published the apparent dossier, which Trump has since denounced as “fake news.”

"I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security," Clapper said of the information that has come out since last week's intelligence briefing.

Clapper’s statement represented a dramatic turn of events only 24 hours after initial leaks about the intelligence leaders having told Trump of the dossier. And while Clapper’s statement indirectly confirmed the media reports of the briefing, it also could be viewed as a concession of sorts from an intelligence community that has come under repeated, direct fire from the president-elect.

Trump had compared the leak from his briefing to “Nazi Germany” on Twitter on Wednesday morning, writing, “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

In a news conference, also held Wednesday, Trump defended the comparison and elaborated further, saying, “A thing like that should have never been written, it should never have been had, and it certainly should never have been released.”

Clapper, however, said he did not believe the leaks to the press came from the intelligence community. At the same time, he indicated that the intelligence community decided to share the material with Trump because its mere existence was important for the incoming president to know about.

As far as the "private security company document," Clapper said, "I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions."

"Part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security," Clapper added.

Clapper's statement comes amid extraordinary strains between the spy world and Trump, who takes office next week. The president-elect has been resistant to U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia intervened in the election, although during a press conference Wednesday morning Trump admitted that Moscow likely did do some hacking.

Steven Hall, a former head of Russian operations at the CIA, said Clapper’s statement didn’t appear to be an all-out apology, but that it was possible the spy chief wants to try to patch up the tensions between Trump and the intelligence world before he himself steps down in just a few days.

“He just might very well be like, wow, this really has kind of gotten out of control,” said Hall, who described Clapper as an “old-school, principled” kind of guy. “This might be his parting attempt to say, look at the very least after more than a 50-year career in intelligence, I don’t want this to be what I’m remembered by.”

Trump has said the U.S. should cooperate more with Russian President Vladimir Putin, going against the stance of many of his fellow Republicans, not to mention Democrats, as well as many intelligence experts.

There is a sense among some in the intelligence community that Trump’s resistance to their assessments about Russia’s election interference is largely due to his sensitivity about how it could undermine his legitimacy as president, not because he doesn’t believe in the overall merits of the U.S. spy apparatus.

Regardless, the increasingly bitter clash between Trump and the intelligence world has threatened to cast a dark cloud over the start of his presidency, which already faces skepticism from ethics experts and national security leaders who worry that Trump has too many conflicts of interest and is too erratic for the Oval Office.

But according to Clapper, during their conversation Wednesday, the president-elect "again affirmed his appreciation for all the men and women serving in the Intelligence Community, and I assured him that the IC stands ready to serve his administration and the American people."

Attorney General Loretta Lynch suggested earlier Wednesday that by sharing the information with Trump, the intelligence community was simply trying to put him on notice of what the Russians were up to.

Lynch declined to discuss any specifics, but said U.S. authorities often give such warnings. “I can tell you that information is conveyed to individuals if we think they may be a victim, obviously, of any type of influence,” she said.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this story.

