FAILED INTELLIGENCE
Why Trump might not want to put all his faith in a miss-the-mark CIA
One of the strongest criticisms leveled against President-elect Donald Trump is his alleged indifference to the work of America’s intelligence community, including his disinclination to receive daily intel briefings as he prepares to take office.
But it’s off the mark. The top-secret Presidential Daily Briefing — designed and prepared for President Obama by his appointees — is being delivered via iPad as a courtesy to Trump during the transition, and he’s free to read or not: “I get it when I need it,” Trump told Fox News. Never mind that Trump’s not actually president yet, or that Obama treats his briefing exactly the same way.
And given the intelligence establishment’s sorry recent history, who can blame Trump?
Under such undistinguished chiefs as careerists Mike Morell (2011-2013) and current Director John Brennan, the CIA has become a partisan, politicized agency that exists primarily to tell Obama what he wants to hear — which is to hear and see no evil from the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency, which largely deals with signals intelligence, was badly stung by traitor Edward Snowden, who made off with bushels of secrets and decamped to Russia. Even the fiercely independent FBI came under intense political pressure from the Justice Department during the recent investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
Several recent presidencies have foundered on wishful, willful blindness to reality — Lyndon Johnson with Vietnam, Jimmy Carter with the Soviet Union and Iran, Obama with Islam. Others have suffered the consequences of faulty field work and institutional rivalry, such as George W. Bush in Iraq; by the end of the Bush administration, the White House was relying more on the Department of Defense than what insiders sometimes call the Langley Home for Lost Boys, so untrustworthy did Bush and his advis- ers deem the CIA that had badly burned them.
So, as Trump finalizes his new intelligence team — Rep. Mike Pompeo, a West Point graduate and Army vet, to the CIA; the pugnacious Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as national security adviser; and retired fourstar Marine Gen. John Kelly as director of Homeland Security — how does a modern president get the straight dope?
The first step is recognizing the current dysfunction of the CIA, which is still smarting from its demotion in the aftermath of 9/11 to a subordinate of the director of national intelligence — a post for which, tellingly, Trump has not yet officially nominated anyone. Although Carly Fiorina’s name has been floated, there’s also been speculation he may abolish the position altogether.
It’s a big job. The agency has long slanted center-left, reflecting a political consensus that prized the “stability” of the postwar world above everything else.
As a result, the agency was caught with its pants down for every important development of the past 60 years, including the Bay of Pigs, the toppling of the shah, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another smart move would be to clarify the line of demarcation between the CIA, whose job it is to spy on others, and the FBI, tasked with catching foreign spies in the US. The flap over possible Russian hacking of the John Podesta and DNC e-mails is a case in point: That’s a job for the bureau, not the agency, which is forbidden by law from operating within American borders yet sometimes plants politically useful stories in the media to aid its political allies. Trump would be well-advised to heed the FBI’s expertise, once the bureau ceases to be a political whipping boy.
A further way forward is to show more respect for the other agencies that make up the IC, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, which serves the armed forces. Flynn, for example, spent two contentious years as DIA chief, warning of the dangers of Islamic terrorism and, probably as a result, never once meeting personally with Obama, who eventually fired him.
He was right in doing so, but the pugnacious Flynn — who, like Trump, is an inveterate and sometimes heedless tweeter — has come under fire for spreading “fake news” and conspiracy theories on Twitter, including the silly rumor of a DC child sex-trafficking ring. The general would be best advised to get off social media and keep his advice to the new president private.
Finally, a crucial step in the reconstitution of our intelligence services is to get the CIA working together with the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, under whose aegis most of the IC actually falls. The nomination of Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense will bring together a cadre of former military officers at the highest levels who view the serious business of national security not as a career but as a mission to be accomplished — and who mean to get it done.
In the end, though, the buck stops with Trump, who’s already made it clear that his decisions will be made through a single prism: Is it good for America? For too long, the IC has wandered from its core mission of keeping Americans safe by keeping our enemies at bay. That’s about to change, and much for the better.