One Of The Toughest Battles In Intelligence

If Possible, To Be In A Position To Announce Who Is Going To Step In As The Interim Immediately. And If Possible, To Announce Who You're Going To Nominate To Replace That Person. For That To Be Somebody Of Impeccable Integrity And Reputation Disarms A Lot Of The Worst Criticism That It's Some Kind Of A Power Play. It's A Professional Approach To Replacing A Senior Official, Which Is Always Going To Get A Lot Of Attention.

I Think That Vladimir Putin Is Certainly Getting A Lot Of Publicity For What The Russians Are Doing. And I'm Not Sure That's Unwelcome To Him. I Think This Is A Guy Who Saw The U.s. Basically Come Out Against Him In His Reelection Campaign In 2012. He Saw The U.s. Being Behind All Of The Color Revolutions In Eastern Europe And In Georgia And Ukraine And So On. So His View Is The West Has Been Interfering In His Politics For Years.

Often, Loyalty Means Telling People Things They Don't Want To Hear. It's Not Being Sycophantic, It's Not Telling Them How Wonderful They Are Every Day. It's Being Willing To Tell Them The Days They're Not Wonderful.

On The Foreign Policy Side, There's The Risk Of Being Too Spontaneous And Too Disruptive Where You End Up Doing More Harm Than Damage. And Figuring Out That Balance Is Where Having Strong People Around You Matters.

I Think In The Policies That Have Been Followed Since The President Donald Trump Came Into Office, There Really Hasn't Been Any Slack Cut For The Russians. And I Think One Of The Things That Has Surprised People Has Been That The Relationship Between The United States And Russia Has In Fact Deteriorated Since The Election.