who penetrated our base. these are very real sacrifices. these are my friends and colleagues. all of us at c.i.a. have a commitment and an honor-bound obligation to uphold the memory of those officers, mothers who have left their children to go to the field and sometimes have given in their all in service of this country. thanks, senator cornyn. senator reid. thank you. you ve been working with the administration now 15 months. you have had the opportunity to brief the president. have you ever been alone with the president? senator, i m usually there with senator coates, a brilliant analyst who delivers the actual analytic briefing, and usually the national security advisor, the vice president.
fact that hasn t appropriately been looked at, considered or appreciated in your view. what do you do at that moment? senator, thank you. i ve already worked with this president and his team for 15 months. i think i have a great reputation with them at the table with secretary mattis and general the dunford and secretary mnuchin. i m at many of the principle s meetings. i back up the former director in the oval office. i m part of director coates s team. sue gordon is with me. we bring a high-quality product. as a senior intelligence officer, someone who spent a lot of time overseas in these places the president turns to me for my view on certain countries and certain experiences. i give him my best advice. but i always separate my view, as someone who has been out in
doing your job, all of you, who head up these agencies, relative, but if you need me to say, direct you to do it, do it! so it is a top concern. the white house is gauge engage has been. the nation s top intelligence official shot back against accusations that the trump administration is not doing enough to counter russian efforts to meddle in u.s. elections. but director of national intelligence, dan coats, did not provide details about the actions being taken by the administration. joining us now is california democratic congressman, eric swalwell, a member of the house intel committee. congressman, thank you very much for being here. director coates statements today were different from what we heard, i believe, last week coming from admiral mike rogers. tell me about how they, how those sync up and whether or not they do sync up. mike rogers was saying, no, they don t have enough they
haven t done enough, they re not ready, and coates is now trying to pull that back. yeah. good afternoon, katy. actions speak louder than words. and if you look at our actions right now, we re doing nothing. we re on our heels and we re about to fall into the ropes from russian intervention. here s what we could do. we could impose the sanctions that congress passed and counterpunch against russia. we could have an independent commission to understand the vulnerabilities and make sure that we hold responsible those who attacked us and that we know what our response should be when this happens again. we also should make sure we devote federal resources to every state and county. they re voting right now in texas, but they don t have any stress tests that have been conducted. they don t know if the russians are in their system. we ve done nothing and if we re going to defend this democracy, we must do much, much more. let s talk about doing something. coates said the treasury is abou
information. that apparently didn t happen here, and there s no real explanation for it. i ve heard speculation about it, but it s very difficult to understand. and bob, when the white house when the fbi director in his very measured tone ran methodically through these four different steps in the security clearance process for mr. porter, ending, of course, in the fact he was not cleared to work in this job at this title, did that indicate anything to you like it could be fatal for someone at the other end like a general kelly? it s very hard to say who knew what when based on the public reporting up to this point. but one thing is clear, somebody s going to wind up having to answer for it. that s what struck me about director coates comment about the process being broken. i don t know if the process was broken based on the fbi director s report, it seems like timely information was provided