BRENNAN: Let's start where we just left off with Senator Rubio.
The president is convinced that there was a spy or informant embedded in his campaign. And he is asking this question. He tweeted it yesterday: "Why didn't the crooked highest levels of the FBI or Justice contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?"
Can you explain why he says the intelligence community did not inform him of this problem?
CLAPPER: Well, I can't say specifically, because this would be a judgment reached by specifically the FBI. And they may not have felt that the time is appropriate or that there would be any need for it, depending on how this progressed.
So, it's a question of judgment that the FBI would make, tactical judgment, to make at the time.
BRENNAN: But, as intelligence director, you didn't weigh in on a decision of whether or not to inform the campaign?
CLAPPER: No, I did not. I wouldn't have known about informants, for lots of reasons, principally the confidentiality of the program and to protect the individual, his identity, unfortunately, which has been exposed.
So, DNI wouldn't necessarily know about any of FBI's informants, nor should that be made known, anymore than, say, CIA assets.
BRENNAN: This has now become a talking point for many defenders of the president, that he should have been informed.
From your point of view, is a generalized briefing just saying, be on alert for counterintelligence attempts here enough, or should the president have specifically or his campaign been specifically warned about this targeting or risk?
CLAPPER: Well, again, not knowing exactly what the FBI concerns were or what they knew, what the predicate was, it's kind of hard to say.
But, subsequently, certainly, particularly when we became more aware of the Russian cyber intrusions, both campaigns were advised of that.
BRENNAN: Director, you have been critical in your book of the president. He in turn has been very critical of you, particularly this week.
And I want to play for you a little bit of sound that we have here in a statement he gave to reporters.
I will read it to you. We don't have it.
He said: "There's never been anything like it in the history of our country. If you look at Clapper, he sort of admitted that they had spies in the campaign yesterday, inadvertently, but I hope it's not true, but it looks like it is."
Can you explain what the FBI's intent was here? And is the president misunderstanding it?
CLAPPER: Well, first of all, it is -- I have an aversion to the use of word spy.
But let's just, for the sake of discussion, use that term, which conventionally means the use of tradecraft, using a formally trained case officer who would mask identity, who would attempt to recruit.
So, none of the classical attributes of spycraft, if I can use that term, were present here. That is the most benign form of information gathering. So to characterize it as a spy or spy gate is, of course, part of the narrative, and it's directly antithetical to what I actually said.