CIA

The source added that the draft, the contents of which were reported by The New York Times, is in fact an administration document being circulated to various agencies.

But the White House said Wednesday that the circulated paper was not an official administration product.

"It is not a White House document. I have no idea where it came from, but it is not a White House document," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

In a speech at CIA headquarters, Mr Trump praised the agency he had recently criticised as using Nazi-like tactics.

"These are really special amazing people - very, very few people could do the job you people do and I just want you to know that we're going to give you so much back, and maybe you're going to say 'please don't give us so much back'."

He told about 400 employees: "There is nobody who feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than me."

The records include UFO sightings and psychic experiments from the Stargate programme, which has long been of interest to conspiracy theorists.

The move came after lengthy efforts from freedom of information advocates and a lawsuit against the CIA.

The full archive is made up of almost 800,000 files.

They had previously only been accessible at the National Archives in Maryland.

He said spontaneity was not in the interests of national security.

Mr Trump is known for regularly making broad pronouncements on issues of national importance on his Twitter feed.

Mr Brennan also said that Mr Trump did not fully appreciate Russia's capabilities or intentions.

"I think Mr Trump has to understand that absolving Russia of various actions that it's taken in the past number of years is a road that he, I think, needs to be very, very careful about moving down," he said.

"The new administration -- and any president -- needs to recognize that this is a challenging and dangerous world, and that the intelligence community and intelligence professionals can help to keep this country safe and protect our national security interests," Brennan told David Axelrod on "The Axe Files," a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

"And any president or administration that does not recognize that is one that is putting this country's national security at great risk and peril," he added.

In a stunning response to widening claims of a Russian espionage operation targeting the presidential race, Trump's camp risked an early feud with the Intelligence community on which he will rely for top secret assessments of the greatest threats facing the United States.

"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," the transition said in a terse, unsigned statement.

"The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"

In a BBC interview, John Brennan also advised the new president to be wary of Russia's promises, blaming Moscow for much of the suffering in Syria.

In his campaign, Mr Trump threatened to scrap the Iran deal and also hinted at working more closely with Russia.

Mr Brennan will step down in January after four years leading the CIA.

So why should anyone believe American intelligence officials when they express confidence that they can monitor Iran's compliance with the just-completed nuclear agreement?

The main reason, according to a classified joint intelligence assessment presented to Congress, is that the deal requires Iran to provide an unprecedented volume of information about nearly every aspect of its existing nuclear program, which Iran insists is peaceful.