A Misstep in the IC

For John, BLUF:  At least some folks are beginning to understand there are consequences to the current rush to find a way to pry President Trump out of office, because he is "unfit".  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Ex-Spy Chief: Russia’s Election Hacking Was An ‘Intelligence Failure’

The sub-headline:

Former acting CIA director Michael Morell says the agency missed the meddling until it was too late.

From Politico, by Reporter Susan B Glasser, 11 December 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

The politics of spying in America has never been more intense.  President Trump has taken to publicly bashing his intelligence agencies and continues, a full year later, to question their conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. election on his behalf.  For their part, an array of career spooks have come out of the shadows where they spent their careers to challenge the commander-in-chief in once unthinkably public terms.

Michael Morell is one of the career types who’s broken with decades of practice to confront Trump.  A veteran of nearly three decades in the CIA, Morell rose from within the ranks to become the agency’s longtime deputy director, twice serving as its acting leader before retiring during President Barack Obama’s second term.  In the summer of 2016, he broke with tradition to endorse Hillary Clinton over Trump, and he has continued to sound the alarm ever since.

But in a revealingly self-critical and at times surprising interview for this week’s Global POLITICO, Morell acknowledges that he and other spy-world critics of the president failed to fully “think through” the negative backlash generated by their going political.  “There was a significant downside,” Morell said in the interview.

Someone I know, a former Navy Intelligence Officer, summarized this 7,000 work document as follows:

Morell acknowledges that he and other spy-world critics of the president failed to fully “think through” the negative backlash generated by their going political.  “There was a significant downside,” Morell said in the interview.

“As we were trying to protect the country from terrorists,” he said, “we became more blind to what was going on in the rest of the world, both from a collection perspective and from an analytic perspective.  And that was a cost….  When you make choices, you leave significant risk on the table.”

Just this fall he [former DNI Clapper] said, I learned the extent to which they [the Russians] were active on these platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which was not something I really was aware of.

So, it’s a useful critique of analysts.  But the other important players here are intelligence collectors, right?  So, the failure to see this coming, and the failure to take some time before you actually see what’s happening is also a collection failure.  It means you haven’t penetrated the right places with the right assets—CIA and NSA are the two big ones here—to tell you exactly what the Russians are doing.  So, it’s a couple of important failures there.

I would not be surprised if Bob Mueller concludes that the Trump campaign did not violate the law with regard to its interactions with the Russians.  I’m really open to that possibility.  Why?  Because, as you know, The New York Times, The Washington Post, every media outlet that is worth its salt has reporters digging into this, and they haven’t found anything.

There was no opposition leader to stand up and paint a different future for Venezuela, one that challenged Chavez’s future.  And, as a result of there being no political opposition, the Venezuelan media became the political opposition. And in becoming the political opposition, it lost all of its credibility with the Venezuelan people.  Sound familiar?

There are government offices that need to be particularly neutral at a political level.  The military, of course, and the Intelligence Community.  Then there is the Department of State and the Department of Justice.  I would say next is the Federal Reserve.  And, of course, the Supreme Court of the United States.

If your Department is not politically neutral should you still expect the White House to take you seriously, to give your views full belief, to trust you to be the ones to execute policy?

Regards  —  Cliff