Being obliged to no-one, the president-elect can shake up the spooks, the ‘bogeyman’ of all presidents, writes Stuart Alan Becker Outgoing CIA director John Brennan at a forum at the University of Chicago last week. President-elect Donald Trump has been widely critical of US intelligence services.a If you look at the fireworks between President-elect Donald Trump and the American intelligence community under Barack Obama — about whether the Russians hacked the US election in favour of Mr Trump — it’s helpful to research history for clues that may explain how a president-elect could have become so hostile to America’s own spy agency.