Battle ensues around Trump's rumored pick for top intelligence job

A very strange thing is happening in national intelligence these days. Last week we had National Security Agency chief Admiral Michael Rogers publicly declaring that a "nation state" (read: Russia) had meddled in the presidential election "to attempt to achieve a specific effect" (read: get Donald Trump elected). Then, director of National Intelligence James Clapper announced that he was retiring and news broke that Rogers was being vetted for the DNI job. 

But suddenly, the knives came out for the NSA chief, as the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and DNI Clapper had urged the White House last month to remove Rogers from his job.

The Post article—on the front page of Sunday’s newspaper—noted that Rogers had met with Mr. Trump on Thursday without notifying his superiors, reportedly angering officials inside the Intelligence Community, as the Post report said that DNI Clapper was specifically the one who wanted Rogers booted.

But on Saturday, an official with close ties to Clapper explicitly denied that the DNI was trying to get rid of Rogers, further clouding the dispute.

Clapper and Carton have had long-running concerns about how Rogers was handling the agency—the request that he be fired was made well before the election. There have been two serious breaches of sensitive hacking tools at the NSA in the past 18 months. Beyond that, the Post reported, there "have been persistent complaints from NSA personnel that Rogers is aloof, frequently absent and does not listen to staff input." In fact, FBI agents investigating one of those breaches "were appalled at how lax security was at the [Tailored Access Operations hacking unit], officials said." So maybe that was behind Rogers' unprecedented discussion about Russia's interference in the election—putting pressure back on the FBI which may or may not be investigating that.

Meanwhile, here comes a Republican congressman to the rescue.