Coming Out of the Woodwork: The CIA Purge

December 13, 2016–Already you can see the storm clouds gathering over Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which is being shunned by President-elect Donald J. Trump and seems to be headed for trouble. So much so that the “Formers,” the newfangled lobbying group of past agency directors and deputies, are coming out of the woodwork to defend it. The immediate issue, of course, is the widely-suspected Russian hacking of American political parties ahead of the 2016 presidential election, which the CIA has now concluded formed part of a purposeful intelligence operation intended to influence the outcome, throwing the election to Mr. Trump.

Trump, who has expressed sympathy for Russian leaders and is packing his appointments list with like-minded prospects, resists the analysis, CIA’s briefings, and has done nothing to keep his security adviser-designate, one-time Defense Intelligence Agency chieftain Michael Flynn, from indulging in even more inflammatory remarks. It is fair to expect a purge at Langley is in the offing.

Meanwhile the Formers are speaking with loud voices. Among the loudest is retired general Michael V. Hayden, who hardly ever misses an opportunity to grab a soapbox, and has been ranked here as a fabulist. Hayden continues telling tales in today’s Washington Post, where he has an op-ed article castigating the Trumpists with a damaging disregard for intelligence.

Mr. Hayden makes some good points–and the issue of Russian interference in an American election is a vital one–so perhaps we should not be too hard on him. But the irksome thing is that Hayden’s past fabulism weakens his warnings against dismissing the Russian intervention. Where the general, a past boss at CIA and NSA, plus a deputy chief at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, deplores Mr. Trump’s resistance to “facts and fact-bearers,” he once said of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB)–the locus of many of these facts–that “if it’s a fact it’s not intel”–and doesn’t belong in the PDB.

In today’s sally Hayden raises the question of the statute that requires the CIA to keep Congress “fully and currently informed” on all significant intelligence activities. That’s something he resisted doing as CIA director. When it came to the agency’s torture program, for example, Hayden left Senate officials enough material at a single April 2007 briefing to fill twenty closely-printed pages with examples of misleading representations. As a matter of fact the same oversight statute Mr. Hayden invokes in his op-ed article to cite a CIA obligation to inform Congress goes on in the very next passage to stipulate the agency cannot deny anything necessary for Congress to accomplish its oversight duties–and at his confirmation hearing for CIA director General Hayden professed complete ignorance of that text.

The Formers, to include the present outgoing squad of spy chieftains, are now hoist on their own petard of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. Their efforts to keep the American public stoked up with fears of terrorism and other threats contributed mightily to constructing the atmosphere which enabled Mr. Trump to win this election. Now, when there is a real threat of foreign cyber action capable of disrupting American institutions, the response may be crippled by the politics of selfishness and the stupidity of partisanship.

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