Trump & The CIA

 All the talk about how Trump had a list of "CIA Agents" amongst the documents he allegedly kept illegally at Mar-A-Lago is missing some very, very important context. 

What most people call CIA Agents are more correctly called CIA Case Officers. These are employees of the US Government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency. They are background-checked, possess a Top Secret security clearance, pass a polygraph, are trained at Camp Peary (amongst other places,) and referred to as "Blue Badgers," after the blue background on their CIA ID card. 

Employees of other governmental agencies and organizations (like the NSA and military members) that need consistent and regular access to CIA facilities are issued a badge with a green background and are referred to as...you guessed it, Green Badgers. 

The people in Trump's lists are neither. 

They are correctly called assets, or local assets. They are the people the Case Officers have recruited in other countries to gather information for the United States. They can be called "spies." The overwhelming majority of them are NOT U.S. citizens, but locals who are in sensitive positions that give them daily access to information of interest to the U.S. 

They are "employees" of the government in the sense that the ones that want to get paid (not everyone spies for money) are paid from government funds, usually black budgets that are not completely disclosed to Congress.

This is no way should diminish the outrage people feel about what Trump has done. It's almost certain that Trump has disseminated this information to both Russia and Saudi Arabia, which has led to the death of several dozen people spying for the US. But none of them were citizens or "CIA Agents."