[Cooper:] Keeping 'em honest tonight, a question, which will the world get to see first? President Trump's tax returns or closely guarded information that might jeopardize American intelligence agents and assets around the world, including perhaps inside the Kremlin. And despite how it sounds, it's neither a loaded question or a joke. Last night, the president gave Attorney General Barr sweeping powers to declassify any intelligence related to the beginning of the Russia investigation, including FBI surveillance of his campaign. He signed the order just hours after accusing the former top investigators of treason.
[Trump:] If you look at Comey, if you look at McCabe, if you look at probably people higher than that, if you look at Strzok, if you look at his lover, Lisa Page, his wonderful lover, the two lovers. They talked openly. You know, they didn't use their private server, because they didn't want to get caught. So they used the government server. That was not a good move. He talked about the insurance policy, just in case crooked Hillary loses. And what didn't work out too well for them. So, you look at them, they wanted an insurance policy, so that should she for any reason lose, remember? One hundred million to 1. Maybe he said 100 million to nothing. But should she lose, we'll have an insurance policy and we'll get this guy out of office. And that's what they said and that's what they meant. That's treason. That's treason.
[Cooper:] Well, that's the answer he gave, by the way, after being reminded by a reporter that treason can be punishable by death. And today, as former and current intelligence officials or professionals alike raise questions about the wisdom of it all and what the president's words on treason industrial fresh still fresh, the president was asked some tough questions about his motivations.
[Reporter:] It sounds like you want payback, sir. It sounds like you want
[Trump:] Let me just tell you, it's not payback. I don't care about payback. I think it's very important for our country to find out what happened.
[Cooper:] He also said he was doing this in the name of transparency, which to his critics, is kind of rich, given his unwillingness to answer Robert Mueller's questions in person or telling former White House counsel Don McGahn to defy a house subpoena or fighting one court subpoena after another to keep the financial entanglements out of the public eye or paying to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Given all of that, is it any surprise the reporters asked him whether it's more about himself or the country? This time, the stakes couldn't be higher. Today, the director of national intelligence issued a rare statement reading in part: I'm confident that the attorney general will work with the I.C., meaning the intelligence community, in accordance with long established standards to protect highly sensitive classified information that if publicly released would put our national security at risk. Keeping 'em honest, this is the same attorney general who's now being accused of cherrypicking the Mueller report in his summary of it and doing it in a way that puts serving his boss above the truth. Now, the question now, would he do the same this time, selectively declassifying items to please the president. His defenders say absolutely not. But again, it's not an academic question, given the agents who could potentially be blown, even accidentally or incidentally in the process of declassifying what after all is very recent, very sensitive stuff, some of it from very highly placed individuals. Quoting from "The New York times" now, "The most prominent of those sources among them may well be a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the CIA about his involvement in Moscow's 2016 election interference." One of the former intelligence chiefs squarely in the middle of all of this, of course, is retired Lieutenant General James Clapper. He's the director of national intelligence during the 2016 presidential election campaign. He's also the author of "Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence." We're glad to have him on the program. Director Clapper, given how Attorney General Barr represented or misrepresented the Mueller report, is there any doubt in your mind that whatever he decides to do would be a cherry picked investigation that serves the President's interests? Or do you think it would be above board.
[Lt. Gen. James Clapper , Cnn National Security Analyst:] Well, I would hope it'd be the ladder, although I don't have you know, based on the history thus far, I'm not real confident in that. To me, Anderson, the bigger issue here, of which I'm unclear of on, is what exactly is the scope of this declassification authority? If it, in fact, means the entire Russia investigation, meaning the intelligence work done on the interference, which goes back years, or is it more narrowly focused on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation? And from the media reporting, it's not clear which it is. If you listen to the President, he's kind of all over the map on this. On one hand, he says it's everything. And he classifies millions of documents, which implies the broader scope. And in the segment you just showed, it seems to be more limited to the origins of the counterintelligence investigation, which is much more narrow. So it would be very useful for me, at least, and I think others, particularly in the intelligence community, to know what is the scope of this. But you're quite right about the potential for cherry picking. The bigger issue, of course, is potential as you alluded, potential compromise of some very sensitive sources and methods and the
[Cooper:] And that's real?
[Clapper:] Oh, yes. And the impact it's real in terms of potentially people's lives being at risk. And then, you know, ancillary effects like what do our both allies think about it and how confident are they going to be in sharing intelligence with us when they see potentially intelligence being used as a weapon, political weapon. And of course, adversaries are happy about it because they go to school on this so-called transparency. And then think about assets. Congressman Jim Himes from the House Intelligence Committee was on earlier today and he made a very good point about, you know, our great people, men and women out there in the field trying to recruit people. Well, how much confidence are potential recruits, intelligence recruits going to have when they see this sort of thing happening when we tell them, "Hey, you can trust us. We will protect you."
[Cooper:] You're talking about a foreign national working for a foreign government or whom ever who might be recruited by the CIA or intelligence agency, that they're going to be less willing to or potentially less willing to because they're afraid down the road, my name could be revealed.
[Clapper:] Exactly. I do take heart, by the way. I think I was really, really gratified, really pleased to see Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' statement, which I thought was very balanced and tempered. Yes, we'll cooperate, but we need to protect some things here. And I am really glad he made those statements.
[Cooper:] Do you think he was sending a message to Barr or a message to the intelligence community to try to allay concerns?
[Clapper:] I think both.
[Cooper:] The and it's rare for him to I mean, that's not kind of a statement you hear very often from somebody like Dan Coats.
[Clapper:] Well, this is no, it's not. I mean, he's very selective when he makes public statements. And when they as a consequence, when he does make public statements, they count for something.
[Cooper:] What happens if Barr requests certain things to be declassified, but Coats thinks it's inappropriate to do so? I mean, has there been a situation like that before to your knowledge?
[Clapper:] None that I can think of off the top of my head. No. I mean, we're, you know, this whole situation here, we're in uncharted waters. And so I don't know how that will be arbitrated. Obviously, the senior classification authority in this country is the President of the United States. So I guess if it came to a dispute between the two and I think I could predict how it would be resolved.
[Cooper:] So just lastly, you were clearly on the President's mind today as he was flying to Japan on Air Force One. He actually tweeted out a cartoon of you and former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. I'm wondering what you make of it? Either your actual physical portrayal or just the fact that the President of the United States on his way to, you know, an important stuff in Japan is tweeting out cartoons.
[Clapper:] Well, first of all, I thought the cartoon likenesses weren't bad. I don't know who the original artist was. It was pretty good. You know, I'm not sure what this is alluding to. There's been some discussion in some parts of the media about a discussion about whether or not to include the dossier or draw on the dossier as sourcing for the intelligence community assessment that we did in January of 2017. The important point here is it was not included as a source in the intelligence community assessment. So if there was you know, John and Jim have to speak for themselves. I wasn't aware of a debate or dispute between them. But I think the important point is how it all came out and the dossier was not included.
[Cooper:] General Clapper, appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
[Clapper:] Thanks, Anderson.
[Cooper:] Coming up, I'll talk with the father of Johnny "Mike" Spann, the CIA officer killed in the first weeks of the Afghan war, killed in an uprising of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners. The man Spann interrogated just before his death was John Walker Lindh, the American who had joined up with al-Qaeda to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh was freed as you probably know earlier from prison. In a moment, you'll hear what Mike Spann's father thinks of that.