President Joe Biden is making his first visit to an agency of the US intelligence community, looking to emphasise his confidence in national security leaders after his predecessor's incendiary battles against what he often derided as the “deep state".
Biden is scheduled Tuesday afternoon to visit the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the 17 US intelligence organisations. The White House said in a statement that Biden intends to express “admiration for their work and underscore the importance for our national security of intelligence collection and analysis free from political interference”.
President Donald Trump visited the Central Intelligence Agency on his first full day in office, praising the agencies but also airing personal grievances. Standing in front of CIA's memorial wall with stars marking each of the officers who have died while serving, Trump settled scores with the media and repeated false claims about the size of his inauguration crowd.
The relationship between the intelligence community and the president "went downhill from that very day,” said Glenn Gerstell, who then served as general counsel of the National Security Agency and stepped down last year.
Trump would go through four permanent or acting directors of national intelligence in four years and engaged in near-constant fights with the intelligence community.
In particular, he was angry about its assessment that Russia had interfered on his behalf in the 2016 presidential campaign and its role in revealing that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden, an action that ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment. Trump eventually fired the inspector general at the national intelligence office - the internal watchdog who brought that pressure to light.