Another hazard of exerting this kind of control over agencies is that it diminishes the power of government as a sum of its parts.
The Bush II administration demonstrated this dilemma in lurid Technicolor as described by Alasdair Roberts in his book The Collapse of Fortress Bush. Here is how he puts it:

..the administration made ill-fated decisions that could have been avoided if top policy makers had given more weight to bureaucratic advice or had succeeded in inducing key bureaucracies to collaborate and develop the capacities needed to achieve the administration's goals. To the extent that the administration achieved control, it did so in a very narrow meaning of the term, in the sense of an assertion of the right to command. The administration did not achieve control in the broader sense of mastery of the public service-that is, the harnessing of bureaucratic power to its ends. This would have required time, negotiation, and a presumption of bureaucratic good faith. It might also have required a willingness to surrender the administration's ambition for substantial policy change. The price of comity might have been incrementalism.
   Moreover (and this is the second sense in which the attempt to impose discipline failed), the Bush administration could not sustain control, even in the narrow sense of the term. Quickly, and with increasing intensity, the administration encountered resistance from bureaucrats and political appointees who objected to such treatment. It is critical to note the terms in which protests against the Bush administration were couched: not only (or even primarily) as disagreements about the substance of policy but as complaints about the refusal to accord respect and allow a proper hearing to opposing views. Dissidents within the administration had coherent ideas about what fair treatment required - and they were prepared to resist unfairness. Appointees and bureaucrats alike knew that were now alternatives to acquiescence.

In the context of exerting control in the "narrow sense" described above, there is an important difference between the Bush and Trump teams: Bush came into power surrounded by veteran insiders who knew where all the buttons and levers were. Trump's inner circle are going to have trouble just locating the bathrooms.

[edited to correct quotation]

It's disingenuous, ignoring Trump's own comments about Putin that he then tried to take back. But Greenwald hates Clinton, and it infects anything he writes related to her - sometimes he can be such a putz.

This emphasis on motivations does not advance the discussion any more than leaping to conclusions does.

I do not see that as either a strong or, strictly speaking, a valid criticism of the article. Because Greenwald was attempting to make the case that we do not know anything of substance that we did not know the day before yesterday, I think it fair of him to point out reasons [such as confirmation bias] that reactions to the anonymous allegations are not more thoughtful and why those reactions should be guided by extreme skepticism. Pointing out, or speculating about if you prefer, that confirmation bias and other reasons are now allowing the case to be considered as proven by so many is different from speculating about motive if done in a job of reporting rather than in an essay intended to convince that bad reporting is being done which leads to acceptance as fact of allegations which should be viewed with hefty skepticism at least. I'm just picking at a nit but I think that pointing out why people may have jumped to conclusions is part of pointing out the danger of jumping to conclusions. 

My own bias, which has been confirmed a thousand times, is the belief and expectation that authoritative entities within our government will both lie and conceal the truth. They also selectively release factual information and a half truth is often more powerfully damaging than a lie. The reason is often to establish beliefs intended to make us, the American public, accept policies or actions that have actual motives behind them that might otherwise cause us reject them.  I understand people getting invested in their feelings and conclusions about what politicians tell them. At one point in my life I was willing, actually trying, to kill people based on believed lies that the government told and the situation that the lies helped to create.