The feud between former Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency (DCIA) John Brennan and President Donald Trump points out an important
clarification that needs to happen with respect to former officials engaging in
active public debate to current administration policies and strategies.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Mr. Brennan disagreeing
with the President. He is an experienced and insightful man with a long history
serving his country. He has his own opinions as an independent pundit that he
is very much entitled to. Where he has gotten himself into trouble is the use
of his security clearance as a professional bona fide to imply he is a person of
authority in current public policy debate. Personally, I doubt Mr. Brennan
himself would imply this; but, he is in the employ of media organizations, the
so-called 4th estate, that can and do imply to the public that his
words carry such weight. They do not. Official weight comes only from the
present officials in power holding the offices, doing their duty.
It is wrong for Mr. Brennan to overly project himself into the
affairs of the keepers of the current watch no matter how much he believes in
his views of the world. He’s not the one in the room looking at the current lay
of the land, with both the clearance and the need to know to make today’s
decisions. He should defer to the
people who hold the active-duty positions in government to affect the national
policy of the United States of America.
For instance, Mr. Brennan as DCIA oversaw a period of
operations in the Middle East where the US engaged in a campaign of using unreliable
operatives that didn’t quite work out as hoped. The campaign was designed by
his predecessor DCIA David Petraeus who, fresh from his experience gaming
warlord vs. warlord in Afghanistan, had the idea of stabilizing the western
portion of the northern Middle East using proxies against unfriendly
governments. And so began a CIA led effort that armed unreliable Sunni factions
of Saudi sympathizers in Syria that would ultimately give birth to ISIS and
create an opening for Iran to attempt to create the so-called “Shia Crescent”. We
couldn’t balance our strategy with Shiites because the Imams of that sect are
from hated US enemy, Iran; so we turned to the Kurds which, because half of
them are in Turkey, eventually strained relations with that ally. It was a
brilliant plan designed to fail. I remember hearing Petraeus discuss this at a
Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California
once. My net assessment instincts were tingling with alarm bells. The strategy
violated basic sphere of influence with respect to the one player the CIA brain
trust underestimated, Russia and its commitment to the official government of
Syria, the Alawite tribes of Bashar al-Assad. The net projection did not
compute. And in the end, the what did compute is what happened, the entire
campaign to unseat Assad failed. Mr. Assad is today, mopping up the last of the
opposition forces enabled directly and inadvertently by the CIA of 2012 to
2016.
I recant this to make the point that the current “cooks in
the room” are dealing with a very different set of global stability
circumstances than that of the pre-Trump era. I could have used examples from
the situations in NATO, North Korea, the South China Sea and others. Even our
relationship on what the best going forward strategy to deal with China, an
economic competitive and influence balance problem, and Russia, a boundaries of
influence problem with a heavily nuclear armed, 1/10th GDP size of its
opponents problem. My point here is not that Mr. Brennan does not have opinions
on these matters. My point is that he is NOT
IN THE ROOM. Clearance be damned, he does not have the need-to-know to make
current US policy and strategy decisions. That he has personal reservations about
the team now in the room is immaterial. They are also diligent and experienced
people. And I’ll remind all those who have been told this, the greatest ethic
of all in national matters. “Beyond this
point, there is no left of right, there are only Americans.” My problem
with Mr. Brennan is that he seems to have lost faith in our nation and its
remarkable ability to persevere. I never lost it when he was in power. I do not
know why he fails to do the same now that someone else is.
Then comes the media problem. Mr. Brennan exacerbates the
situation by expressing his views in the mainstream media, a medium currently
struggling for relevance in the political landscape against its
disintermediation by the Internet, a replacement medium that is increasingly
being adopted by world leader ship as a primary pathway for expressing
international policy bypassing traditional media. As the media struggles
believing it self to be part of policymaking when it is in fact merely an
observer of the process, it places former officials like John Brennan into a
difficult situation. Personally, his advice and counsel are better served with
in the traditional private world of consultative discussions between current
and former officials that has been how we carry on the long-term corporate
memory of the Nation. That Mr. Brennan clashes with the administration outside
of these confidential circles is what causes the current problem that President
Trump has been placed in a difficult position to deal with.
I believe that it is important for the
United States to clearly delineate between consultative efforts by former
officials in support of the government from public punditry that may interfere
with the conduct of the work of the current watch. In the past, we relied on
the discretion of these former officials to understand this difference. In the
current environment of former officials becoming part of an opposition message
marketed news media, this ground rule and assumption begins to falter. The nation
must now deal with a cost benefit trade off between the advice that a former
official can give versus the damage that a former official can do. The most
poignant example of this problem stands before us in the personage of John Brennan.
I would respectfully suggest to President Trump that a rule
should be established that a former official who, of his own volition, chooses
to leave the cadre of consulted former officials to become a
member of an opposition
motivated industry should relinquish all connections to the government
as part of becoming a member of that media. It is in our national interest that
both the administration and Mr. Brennan make it clear that anything he says on
the air is formulated from his considered opinion in complete isolation from
what is officially happening inside the security and stability policy processes
of the government of the United States.
I believe it would be good for both the US government and
for Mr. Brennan to formally declare a hard disconnect to make it clear that the
debate and disagreement that may or may not continue going forward is based on
truly independent and carries no color or implication of authority. Now, I do
not believe Mr. Brennan would do this himself. But I believe his employers in
the media are doing so as part of their campaign to market the good old days of
the Obama administration to their resistance-oriented viewers. Ethically, I
don’t think Mr. Brennan should be comfortable being in such an awkward
position.
I personally encourage Mr. Brennan to stand on his own soap
box alone and proud with his thoughts. I welcome hearing them. However, he
should not sanction to imply that his thoughts continue to carry the weight of
officialdom well after the end of
his tenure in government service. I believe that at some point Mr. Brennan may
end his participation in the media. At that time, when he is ready to re-enter
the cadre of old guard consultative voices in confidence again; that is when
reconsideration of regranting him clearance should occur. In the meantime, his
best service to the Nation may be to be the boy blue sounding his horn in the
wilderness of the mainstream media.
To President Trump, I would say that I think this is a fair
test that all who have at one time served the United States in some capacity of
confidence should embrace. We all took an oath. We all made a promise. We all know
that that promise is for life. We all know that when our shift ends, we turn it
over to the next guy. That’s what makes sense for a great America.