Donald Trump travel ban 'simplistic and wrongheaded', says former CIA chief

John Brennan told BBC Newsnight that president’s insistence
on using term ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ helped legitimise Isis

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday 4 April 2017 07.38 BST

The former CIA director John Brennan has described Donald Trump’s travel ban on visitors from Muslim countries as “simplistic and misguided”, predicting it would be counterproductive if implemented.

Brennan, who was director of central intelligence from March 2013 until the last day of the Obama administration on 20 January this year, was highly critical of a range of Trump policies and actions in an interview with the BBC Newsnight programme aired on Monday night.

He said the administration’s use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” served to legitimise terrorists in their own eyes, and warned that the president’s disparagement of US intelligence agencies would hurt morale and recruitment.

The former spy chief reserved his most critical remarks for the executive order (EO) stopping entry to the US for refugees and suspending entry for travellers from six predominantly-Muslim countries. Two successive versions of the ban have been halted by courts, most recently in Hawaii and Maryland, and the administration is appealing against those rulings.

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