'The Intercept' founder Glenn Greenwald joins Amy Goodman on 'Democracy now' to discuss the track record of the top intelligence chiefs, including CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who are meeting Friday with President-elect Donald Trump to give him a classified briefing on alleged Russian cyberthreats.



He said: "They have a long history—not just their agencies, but they themselves—of approving legally dubious, if not outright illegal, programs and lying to and deceiving the public."





GLENN GREENWALD: Well, interestingly, James Comey has become, after Vladimir Putin, probably the most despised villain in the Democratic narrative about what happened in the election. In fact, after the election, Hillary Clinton blamed not Putin or WikiLeaks, but Comey, for why she lost, because of the letter that he wrote shortly before the election, in which he said that he—the FBI was essentially reopening the investigation into whether she broke the law through the use of her emails. Comey was a Bush administration Justice Department official who was appointed not by George Bush, but by Barack Obama, to be the FBI director.



John Brennan was also a Bush-era CIA official, who is a supporter not of all aspects of the Bush torture program, but some aspects of it, including rendition and other interrogation techniques that are widely regarded as torture. And he was made the national security adviser in the Obama White House after Obama tried to make him CIA director in the beginning, and liberals objected and blocked his nomination, but he ultimately became CIA director. So these are Obama appointees who are running these agencies, even though they were high-level Bush officials in the middle of important, controversial war on terror policies. And they have a long history—not just their agencies, but they themselves—of approving legally dubious, if not outright illegal, programs and lying to and deceiving the public. And so, there are no angels in any of these machinations that are taking place as these various factions vie for power in this new scheme in Washington.