So the one part of this whole story that has significance—that has had significance, since it first came to light following the election, and continues to have significance—is that the intelligence agencies are clearly out to get Trump. (One could make the claim that the slow drip-drip [sorry] of these revelations will undermine Trump's legitimacy. I do happen to believe, in my old-fashioned political theory way, that authority and legitimacy matter a lot for the exercise of power, but if you want to attend to that, I'd focus more on Trump's catastrophically low poll numbers and the growing divisions within the Republican Party. In our fear-driven zeal to paint Trump out to be a populist Hitler, we've not sufficiently attended to the fact that he really lacks a popular base of support.) But back to the intelligence agencies. The question is: What is driving them? Greg Grandin and I were just chatting and we speculated that rather than it being some grand structural battle within the security establishment over the fate of US global power and alignments, it might be much pettier. This is the intelligence agencies' personal retribution for his attacks on them, Chuck Schumer's "six ways from Sunday" that they have to get back at him. Maybe, but it seems like they picked the fight with him, not vice versa. But if it is over grand strategy—they fear his Russian overtures, etc.—why are they being so hapless about it? These are *intelligence* agencies. Surely they have to understand that Trump is not shameable either on sexual grounds or even on his ties to Russia (again, that's hardly a new story). The one possible thing that I could imagine would embarrass and compromise Trump politically is what Hillary Clinton said in the debate: he's not nearly as rich as he says he is, and in fact, may be one step away from debtors' prison. But if that is true, the intelligence agencies surely could release his tax forms, surely could dig up old depositions that have been sealed and all the rest. So I'm left with two questions here: First, what is the intelligence agencies' end game, and, relatedly, why are they doing this? Second, why are they so bad at it?