‘Say That Again?’: Prospect of Putin White House Visit Surprises Intelligence Chief

The nation’s intelligence chief continued on Thursday to harden his warnings about the cyberthreat from Russia and expressed surprise at hearing that President Donald Trump planned to invite its leader, President Vladimir Putin, to the White House, but promised to deliver a candid assessment to Trump about the dangers of such a visit.

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, appeared genuinely astonished during a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, when he was told the White House announced plans to invite Putin to Washington.

“Say that again?” Coats asked Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the event moderator, before uttering an exaggerated and drawn-out “OK.” He added, “That is going to be special.”

In a follow-up question, Coats acknowledged his surprise. “We will be looking at what the potential intelligence risks could possibly be, and we will make that information available to the president,” he said.

Coats’ appearance was the latest in a string of episodes in recent days in which he has unexpectedly shown a willingness to contradict Trump’s on-and-off skepticism about the evidence that Moscow intervened in the 2016 election.

A confrontation could be brewing. Coats has been taking an ever-tougher line on Russia, and as he continues to ring the warning bell, current and former officials have wondered whether he intends to stay long in his job or if Trump will allow him to remain.

Coats said he had no intention of leaving. “As long as I am able to have the ability to seek the truth, speak the truth, I am on board,” he said during the question-and-answer session at the Aspen Security Forum.

For many in Washington, the emergence of Coats as the most prominent administration official willing to push back against the president, gently but repeatedly, has been a surprise. As a two-time Republican senator from Indiana, Coats was known for eschewing the flashy, focusing on pushing his agenda with backroom conversations, not news-making speeches.

But he was not alone in his skepticism over a White House invitation for Putin. Current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials expressed deep concern and skepticism. “It seems this is a reward for bad behavior,” said James Clapper, Coats’ predecessor as director of national intelligence.

Clapper said bringing Putin, a former KGB chief, into the White House would pose stiff intelligence risks. “This will be a complex intelligence and counterintelligence challenge,” he said.

Coats also said he was not fully aware of what Trump and Putin discussed in their one-on-one meeting Monday in Helsinki, but that he hopes to learn soon, a remarkable admission for a Cabinet-level national security official.

And asked whether Trump should avoid a similar one-on-one meeting with Putin if he comes to the White House, Coats said he would “look for a different way of doing it.” White House officials said Thursday that Trump planned to invite Putin to visit in the fall.

Coats also said, with a measure of diplomacy, that he had not been aware of the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, along with Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States. During their discussion, Trump revealed sensitive Israeli intelligence.

That meeting, Coats said, was “probably not the best thing.”

Coats’ appearance at Aspen after a week of controversy was itself something of a departure, given Trump’s avowed dismissal of establishment politics. The security forum is a gathering of foreign policy experts that some Trump supporters view as the playground of the deep state, the kind of establishment national security experts fiercely opposed by the current White House.

Earlier in the day, Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, faced questions defending the administration’s immigration policies, which are deeply unpopular with much of the crowd at Aspen.

In contrast, Coats’ tough line on Russia won him strong applause. Still, it risks the ire of the White House. For all the care Coats, an experienced politician, has taken to hedge his criticism of Trump, the gap between the president’s views and his has never been more clear or in the open. On Monday, at a news conference after the meeting with Putin, the president appeared to suggest he did not know whether to believe the intelligence community’s account of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election or Putin’s denial.

That prompted a relatively blunt response from Coats: “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.”

A day later, Trump tried to clarify his comments, saying that he misspoke and had previously noted intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the election.

On Thursday, Coats said he was just doing his job. He said he had promised Trump that he would be presenting him “unvarnished, nonpoliticized” information.

“What we had assessed, and reassessed, and reassessed, still stands, and it was important to take that stand on behalf of the intelligence community and behalf of the American people,” Coats said.

He said he had a good relationship with Trump and noted that since his statement on Monday, the president has made comments in support of his view of Russian interference in the election.

Coats also avoided wading into some controversies. He declined, for example, to weigh in on Putin’s request to interrogate Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Thursday that the administration had rejected the offer.

Despite the warning about Russia’s intent to undermine American democracy, Coats did say there was room for cooperation on terrorism with Moscow. He made clear, though, that he has told his counterparts in Russia it would be limited.

“I am only here to talk about protecting our people,” Coats said he told Russian officials. “We don’t agree about anything else.”