Spy chief ’s profile in candor
Should a person of principle somehow accorded a position of influence within the Trump administration resign in protest or, for the good of the country, try to get by? Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has in recent days provided a third answer: neither.
Despite President Trump’s astonishing suggestion this week that he was inclined to believe Vladimir Putin’s assessment of Russia’s role in the 2016 election over that of the U.S. intelligence chief he chose, Coats hasn’t resigned. But he hasn’t kept his head down either.
A former ambassador to Germany and Indiana senator banned from Russia for his stance on Ukraine, Coats has instead told so much of the plain truth that a White House official was quoted as saying he had “gone rogue,” which in this administration is tantamount to going reasonable. Coats’ strategy has the advantage of keeping an apparently responsible official in power, at least for the time being, while refusing to ratify the president’s deceptions.
Coats told an audience at the conservative Hudson Institute last week that “the warning lights are blinking red” over the Russian threat to the midterm elections, adding, “Today the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.” This was so at odds with Trump’s incessant whitewashing that he contradicted it the next day in an interview with CBS News’ Jeff Glor, saying, “I don’t know if I agree with that.”
That foreshadowed the public contradiction of Coats and the nation’s intelligence agencies by the president as he stood next to Putin in Helsinki, causing such a bipartisan furor that Trump preposterously tried to revise his remark the next day. One of the most powerful rebukes came from Coats, who in short order issued a statement reaffirming the Russians’ “meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy” while reiterating that intelligence officials would “continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”
Coats’ candor continued in an interview Thursday with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Security Forum, where he suggested that Trump should not have met privately with Putin, said he doesn’t know what the two discussed behind closed doors, and made no effort to seem aware of or pleased by the president’s plan to reprise their meeting in Washington this fall.
The intelligence chief thereby provided a healthy contrast with officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who at the same forum signed on to Trump’s propaganda by pretending the Russians weren’t striving to elect him. Indeed, precious few Republican members of Congress, the coequal branch designed to check the executive, have been as bold in doing so as Coats, a man who works for the president.
Employing an epithet that was, ironically, favored by another Vladimir — Lenin — Trump tweeted Thursday, “The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.” If the president’s definition of the term encompasses all who dare challenge or contradict him, he has a formidable enemy within.