Once upon a time, successful intelligence agents were neither seen nor heard, at least in the media. The point of the game was to keep operations secret, at the time and after the conclusion.
Times have changed. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, now the director of National Intelligence, is aggressively and publicly accusing the administration of former President Barack Obama of a criminal conspiracy, with President Donald Trump cheering her on.
In November of 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower spoke at the cornerstone ceremony of the new CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He emphasized that in this field, “Success cannot be advertised; failure cannot be explained. In the work of intelligence, heroes are undecorated and unsung, often even among their own fraternity.”
Director Gabbard charges that after the 2016 election, Obama officials, including the president, conspired to undermine newly elected President Trump by spreading falsehoods about Russian interference in the campaign, especially that the Republican candidate and campaign had colluded with the Russian government.
She is trumpeting the charges in the media, and even quotes herself on her agency’s website. She is also hardly unique today in discussing intel matters publicly.
Soon after the 2016 election, the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA (National Security Agency) and the director of National Intelligence launched a public relations offensive highlighting how Russia, including President Vladimir Putin, meddled in the race for president, including hacking into the emails of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
With great fanfare, they met with President-elect Trump to present evidence behind those conclusions. With equal hype, top officials testified before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
There is no denying that Russian hackers meddled in the 2016 election. But, serious analysts doubt this had any serious impact. The fact of that interference is also not news. President Obama publicly revealed these developments in October 2016, just before voting took place. After the election, he ordered a review and analysis of the interference.
There is no evidence that Obama directed or tried to influence the conclusions of this review.
Why did the intelligence officials go public with lights, cameras and melodrama after the 2016 election? They could have briefed Trump in private, which would have been standard intelligence practice.
But, they wanted to protect themselves in the contemporary political warfare of Washington. This was an effort to create a shield from political retribution, and that worked to a degree. Nonetheless, Trump’s efforts to promote hostile conspiracies began and continue.
During Trump’s first term, Democrats in Congress seized on the topic of alleged Russian collusion to launch a massive two-year investigation. Millions of dollars were spent on a demonstrably biased effort that nonetheless concluded there was no persuasive evidence of Republican campaign collaboration with Moscow.
The Mueller investigation, along with a separate investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, drew attention to a controversial “dossier” prepared for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Both efforts underscore the partisanship then going on.
President Eisenhower’s statement about the distinctive and very thankless nature of intelligence work reflected direct, disciplined, continuous engagement with security matters at the very top, over many years.
Eisenhower was in the White House during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and that nation’s numerous allies. Earlier, he led the largest, most challenging military alliance in history against Nazi Germany.
Failure would have been catastrophic.
Officials then regularly replied “no comment” when asked about particularly sensitive matters.
Today’s pervasive partisanship and nonstop media reflect our security and self-indulgence. We may yet pay dearly.
Arthur I. Cyr is the author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia.” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan)
Contact acyr@carthage.edu
