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Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell advises Malcolm Turnbull: tell Donald Trump 'how wonderful he is'

Deborah Snow

A former CIA deputy director who openly campaigned against Donald Trump before the US election has a word of advice for Malcolm Turnbull next time he has to get on the phone to the US President: flatter him.

"There is a way to get on his good side, which is to tell him how wonderful he is."

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull quizzed on his 'frank and forthright' phone call with Donald Trump when he appeared on Channel Nine's 60 Minutes on Sunday.

"Some people have figured that out. Vladimir Putin was the first one," Mr Morell said at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Tuesday evening.

Michael Morell rose to some of the most senior positions in the Central Intelligence Agency before leaving in late 2013 and was in the room with George W. Bush during the twin towers attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 and again with Barack Obama when Osama Bin Laden was killed by US special forces.

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Before the US election, Mr Morell said Mr Trump's character was damaging to national security and he had become an "unwitting" agent for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Tuesday, he reflected on the Australian Prime Minister's tempestuous first phone call with the US President, which Mr Trump reportedly cut short after Mr Turnbull pressured him to honour a deal with the Obama administration to take asylum seekers from Nauru and Manus Island.

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"I would tend in this administration to push substance down [ the command chain] ... to a level where you get a proper hearing. I'm not sure if I was an ally that I would talk substance.

"I might leave that to my Foreign Minister to talk to the Secretary of State, or to my national security adviser."

Asked if the US intelligence establishment was effectively at war with Mr Trump, Mr Morell said he felt the tensions would "blow over", especially after the resignation on Tuesday of Mr Trump's first pick as national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

General Flynn stepped down over his private dealings with the Russian ambassador.

"There is a rule in Washington that the cover-up is almost always worse than the sin," Mr Morell said of the resignation and General Flynn's failure to fully brief the President and Vice-President on a phone call he had with the ambassador before Mr Trump's inauguration.

Mr Morell said the President was a "wild card' on foreign policy who did not have any deeply held ideology or policy views.

He described Mr Trump's foreign policy mindset as: "If there is a direct threat to the US we will deal with it, other than that we should withdraw from the world and take care of our own problems."

He said Mr Trump was pulled between two poles, that of the traditional US national security establishment which saw Russia as an adversary; and the competing influence of Mr Trump's arch right wing adviser Steve Bannon, who saw Islam and China as the main enemy and Russia as a potential ally. 

He encouraged US allies to "be an influence to pull the US in the right direction" and said that Australia's intelligence community should not alter close ties with their American counterparts because of the turbulence jolting the first weeks of President Trump's administration.

Mr Morell slammed Moscow again for its interference in the US election, repeating his claim that Mr Trump had become an unwitting agent for the Russians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said, was a former intelligence agent adept at "identifying people's vulnerabilities".

"What I still think I saw was Putin identifying the President's narcissism and ego and playing to it and knowing he would get a positive response [ from Trump] and he did."

In other remarks Mr Morell said:

  • It was " dangerous"  and " highly inappropriate" for Mr Trump's chief strategist, right-wing populist Steve Bannon, to be on the top committee of the National Security Council because "you don't want politics to be influencing national security in any way";
  • He did not believe that the National Security Agency was withholding information from President Trump for fear of security leaks, as some former Washington insiders have alleged;
  • The Russians had created and amplified "fake news" during the US Presidential election campaign in a way that was probably even more effective at influencing the outcome of the election than the better-known hack of the Democrat campaign emails.

Asked if Mr Trump would last four years as President, Mr Morell said he could not say, but that "if there is to be an issue it will be an issue between the administration and the courts, it's going to be some constitutional crisis created by lack of respect, lack of restraint ... but I'm not sure I would bet on this, I just don't know."

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