Re: faith in the public announcements of US intelligence agencies.

Whatever the country, intelligence services only tell you what their political masters allow them to tell you. In the USA, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI et al report to President Obama- not to the American people. The president has enormous influence over what those agencies reveal. He is their commander-in-chief after all. We saw this during the Bush administration, when intelligence reports were blatantly cooked to say that Iraq had WMD. Bush needed that "assessment" in order to justify going to war. So it's disturbing to see people today blindly accepting the word of those same intelligence services. Especially given that each of the services is run by an Obama political appointee, over a very political matter.

Personally I think Trump is an appalling choice for president. But on this matter he's the target of the outgoing administration's manipulative politics. It's a toss-up which sides politics are uglier.