15 Minutes

Steven Hall spent more than 30 years in the CIA, the bulk of them running and managing intelligence operations in Eurasia and Latin America.  He has experience both in counterintelligence and counterterrorism and has overseen intelligence operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union.  When he retired from the CIA in 2015, he did so as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, a small cadre of officers who are the senior-most leaders of the CIA’s Clandestine Service. Hall is also a Cipher Brief expert who was reading the president’s tweets about his Intelligence leaders after Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats delivered the IC’s annual threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last month.  A clearly upset President took to Twitter after media reports highlighted differences between the IC’s assessment of threats, and recent statements made by the President. Without missing a beat, the President called his IC leaders ‘naïve’, and suggested they go ‘back to school’. T