This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 15th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The exit of Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor reveals more than just the details of an ill-advised conversation with a Russian official.

It reveals the degree to which intelligence agencies can use their troves of data to move politics and

policy makers without clear oversight.

Heater Senior Fellow Julian Sanchez comments.

We now know that Mike Flynn spoke with Russian Ambassador before the inauguration of Donald Trump, which raises some issues

with respect to changing administrations and sort of the timing of that call was problematic.

But we also know that there was this, how that information came to light with respect to the

reporting on it is also by itself problematic.

Yeah, I mean to the extent we have an ongoing conflict between the new administration

and the intelligence community.

I find myself thinking of the tagline for the action film Alien v.

Predator, whoever wins we lose, we have on the one hand an administration that has been

dismissive certainly all along of the growing and very strong intelligence community consensus that Russia had

interfered on their behalf, publishing hacked stolen emails from the DNC and from Clinton advisors. in and who, frankly, seems not particularly interested in pursuing that and who, indeed, as we now know,

thanks to further leaks, whose aides were in frequent contact with Russian officials throughout the campaign.

When you combine that with the context of Trump's surprising deference to an admiration for Russian autocrats, their intervention

to change the GOP platform to treat Russia more gently with respect to their

intervention in Ukraine. You know it's certainly not unreasonable to wonder whether something suspicious and untoward

is going on there, frankly because the conduct during the campaign was so bizarre and on the one hand you do have to

perhaps share the worry the worry that it seems many in the intelligence community

...