WASHINGTON \u2014 President-elect Donald J. Trump\u2019s transition was in disarray on Tuesday, marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.<\/span><\/p>\n One week after Mr. Trump scored an upset victory that took him by surprise, his team was improvising the most basic traditions of assuming power. That included working without official State Department briefing materials in his first conversations with foreign leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n Two officials who had been handling national security for the transition, former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Matthew Freedman, a lobbyist who consults with corporations and foreign governments, were fired. Both were part of what officials described as a purge orchestrated by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump\u2019s son-in-law and close adviser.<\/span><\/p>\n The dismissals followed the abrupt firing on Friday of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was replaced as chief of the transition by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Mr. Kushner, a transition official said, was systematically dismissing people like Mr. Rogers who had ties with Mr. Christie. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Christie had sent Mr. Kushner\u2019s father to jail.<\/span><\/p>\n Prominent American allies were in the meantime scrambling to figure out how and when to contact Mr. Trump. At times, they have been patched through to him in his luxury office tower with little warning, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.<\/span><\/p>\n President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt was the first to reach Mr. Trump for such a call last Wednesday, followed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not long afterward. But that was about 24 hours before Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain got through \u2014 a striking break from diplomatic practice given the close alliance between the United States and Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite the haphazard nature of Mr. Trump\u2019s early calls with world leaders, his advisers said the transition team was not suffering unusual setbacks. They argued that they were hard at work behind the scenes dealing with the same troubles that incoming presidents have faced for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n And Mr. Trump himself fired back at critics with a Twitter message he sent about 10 p.m. \u201cVery organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am the only one who knows who the finalists are!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The process is \u201ccompletely normal,\u201d said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who emerged on Tuesday as the leading contender to be Mr. Trump\u2019s secretary of state. \u201cIt happened in the Reagan transition. Clinton had delays in hiring people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani, who made his comments in a telephone interview, added: \u201cThis is a hard thing to do. Transitions always have glitches. This is an enormously complex process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n There were some reports within the transition of score-settling.<\/span><\/p>\n One member of the transition team said that at least one reason Mr. Rogers had fallen out of favor among Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers was that, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he had overseen a report about the 2012 attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which concluded that the Obama administration had not intentionally misled the public about the events there. That report echoed the findings of numerous other government investigations into the episode.<\/span><\/p>\n The report\u2019s conclusions were at odds with the campaign position of Mr. Trump, who repeatedly blamed Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent and the secretary of state during the attacks, for the resulting deaths of four Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official who had criticized Mr. Trump during the campaign but said after his election that he would keep an open mind about advising him, said Tuesday on Twitter that he had changed his opinion. After speaking to the transition team, he wrote, he had \u201cchanged my recommendation: stay away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He added: \u201cThey\u2019re angry, arrogant, screaming \u2018you LOST!\u2019 Will be ugly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Cohen, a conservative Republican who served under President George W. Bush, said Trump transition officials had excoriated him after he offered some names of people who might serve in the new administration, but only if they felt departments were led by credible people.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey think of these jobs as lollipops,\u201d Mr. Cohen said in an interview.<\/span><\/p>\n Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, weighed in as well. On Tuesday, he issued a blunt warning to Mr. Trump and his emerging foreign policy team not to be taken in by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom Mr. Trump praised during the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Obama administration\u2019s last attempt at resetting relations with Russia culminated in Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and military intervention in the Middle East,\u201d Mr. McCain said.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the early transition difficulties may reflect the fact that Mr. Trump, who has no governing experience or Washington network and campaigned as an agent of change, does not have a long list of establishment figures from the Bush era to tap. His allies suggested that might ultimately prove positive for Mr. Trump if he was able to assemble a functioning team that would bring new perspectives to his administration.<\/span><\/p>\n For advice on building Mr. Trump\u2019s national security team, his inner circle has been relying on three hawkish current and former American officials: Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; Peter Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman and former chairman of the Intelligence Committee; and Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration and a founder of the Center for Security Policy.<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Gaffney has long advanced baseless conspiracy theories, including that President Obama might be a closet Muslim. The Southern Poverty Law Center described him as \u201cone of America\u2019s most notorious Islamophobes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Prominent donors to Mr. Trump were also having little success in recruiting people for rank-and-file posts in his administration.<\/span><\/p>\n Rebekah Mercer, the scion of a powerful family of conservative donors and a member of Mr. Trump\u2019s executive transition committee, has said in conversations with Republican operatives and previous administration officials that she was having trouble finding takers for posts at the under secretary level and below, according to a person familiar with her outreach efforts. She told them that the transition team was more than a month behind schedule and on a tight timeline.<\/span><\/p>\n In another delay, Mr. Pence did not sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with Mr. Obama\u2019s aides until Tuesday evening, a transition spokesman said. Mr. Christie on Election Day signed a memorandum of understanding to put the process into motion as soon as the outcome was determined, but once he was ousted from the job, Mr. Pence had to sign a new agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n The paperwork serves as a nondisclosure agreement for both sides, ensuring that members of the president-elect\u2019s team do not divulge information about the inner workings of the government.<\/span><\/p>\n Teams throughout the federal government that have prepared briefing materials and reports for the incoming president\u2019s team are on standby, waiting to begin passing the information to counterparts on Mr. Trump\u2019s staff.<\/span><\/p>\n As of Tuesday afternoon, officials at key agencies including the Justice and Defense Departments said they had received no contact from the president-elect\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/16\/us\/politics\/trump-transition.html?_r=0<\/span><\/p>\n