“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life," Michael Morell said. | AP Photo Morell calls Russia's meddling in U.S. elections 'political equivalent of 9/11'

Former CIA acting director Michael Morell called the intelligence agency’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election to help President-elect Donald Trump “the political equivalent of 9/11.”

“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11,” Morell said in an interview posted Sunday on The Cipher Brief. “It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.”


His comments come on the heels of a Washington Post story published Friday that the CIA believes Russia attempted to help Trump when individuals supposedly connected to the Russian government provided WikiLeaks with hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.

Trump’s transition team blasted the CIA assessment after the report came out, saying that the same people had concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And in an interview with Fox, Trump called allegations that Russia interfered “ridiculous.”

“They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace,” he said.

Trump’s incoming chief-of-staff Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway, his senior adviser to the transition team, both later said Trump respects the intelligence community.

Over the weekend, a bipartisan group of senators, including Republican John McCain and incoming Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, called on Congress to investigate the allegations, saying that "this cannot become a partisan issue. The stakes are too high for our country.”

Morell, who was outspoken in his support of Clinton during the 2016 election, said it’s “not a good sign” that Trump appears to be feuding with the CIA publicly.

“In a world with so many threats and challenges facing the United States and in a city where politics and policy disputes color so many views, a President, if they’re going to be able to protect the country, they need someone to provide them with an objective, unbiased view of what’s going on in the world, and why it matters to them, and why it matters to the country. That job falls to the Intelligence Community led by the CIA, and that’s why the relationship between a President and the Intelligence Community and the CIA is so special," he said. “And right now that special relationship is being undermined.”