President-elect Donald Trump is soon getting briefed on the so-called crown jewels of national intelligence, according to a new report.
Trump will learn about the most secretive intelligence-gathering programs used by America’s military and spy community, CNN reported Thursday.
{mosads}CNN said it confirmed the briefings with a U.S. official familiar with the president-elect’s next steps.
The sessions were created in recent years, it said, so an incoming president is capable of making national security decisions immediately after their oath of office.
“The new guys may come in feeling good, but after they walk out of one of those briefings, their faces fall,” a retired official who participated in such briefings for past White House administrations told CNN.
CNN said Trump would learn the specific sources and methods of U.S. intelligence collection, which ranks among the nation’s most sensitive information.
Trump would also become familiarized with America’s spy agents and their operations overseas, it continued.
CNN added the briefings concern matters such as the National Security Agency’s (NSA) signals intelligence collection methods.
Other topics Trump will encounter entail the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command and CIA overseas intelligence collections operations.
The “crown jewel” briefings will coincide with the more traditional President’s Daily Brief, according to two U.S. officials knowledgeable of the matter.
The logistics of all of Trump’s briefings remain in the planning stages but will occur very soon, they added.
Trump stunned the world by defeating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
The Republican’s victory was unexpected as he trailed Clinton in national polling averages as Election Day opened Tuesday morning.
Some Democrats argued Trump’s unpredictable temperament presented a national security concern before the billionaire’s White House win.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), for example, suggested in May Trump could leak classified information.
“He wouldn’t think twice of taking classified information and putting it out in the public realm if he thought it served his political purposes,” he told BuzzFeed on May 5.