Pod Save the World - Revoking John Brennan's security clearance

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

Tommy talks with former acting CIA director Michael Morell about President Trump's decision to revoke his opponents' security clearances. They discuss why the politicization of intelligence is so dangerous and why many former spy chiefs decided to speak out on Brennan's behalf. 

Welcome back to POTSave the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for tuning in, as always. It has been a weird week in intelligence and national security circles. You see a whole lot of people that have spent their entire lives and careers in the shadows, quietly working, suddenly speaking out. A whole bunch of people that are normally apolitical that have worked for Republicans and Democrats have been speaking out in harshly criticizing the current president of the United States.

And that is because of President Trump's decision to, start stripping national security officials of their security clearances. So I wanted to talk through how big a deal that actually is what it means in practice and then to take on some of President Trump's charges against John Brennan and others and see if there's any merit there. My guest is the former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morel. He's been on the show before. He is one of the most seasoned and smartest analysts I've ever met and worked with.

He's someone who's delivered the PDB to multiple presidents who's widely respected and is, you know, through his entire career, has been pretty much apolitical until 2016. So I'm incredibly grateful for him for joining. You should check out his podcast, Intelligence Matters, if you enjoyed this interview. And as always, it would mean a lot to me if you like the show to share with your friends and rate and review us in the iTunes store. It really does help people find the show and get new listeners. So with that, here's Michael.

So, Michael, last week, President Trump, decided to take away former CIA director John Brennan's security clearance. He did it by having his press secretary read a 566 word statement attacking John's character in Trump's name, mind you, from the podium at the White House briefing, so very classy. In that statement, he floated that he may take away clearances from other critics, subsequently send a bunch of angry tweets and attacking John and other national security staffers. So a real fun weekend. So Michael, can we start with the basics? Why do former officials like John Brennan keep your clearances, people like you, John Brennan, keep your clearances after leaving government services.

And realistically, how often do those individuals get called on to talk about classified matters? Tommy, that's a great place to start. There's a long tradition of former senior officials keeping their clearances when they leave government. The fundamental reason is not, you know, let me emphasize not to benefit the individual. It is to benefit the government. So it allows former officials to come in and spend time with current officials, advising them on what happened on past issues. I did that with my predecessors, getting their advice on current issues. I did that with my predecessors, and just getting their wisdom, right, just sitting down and have a cup of coffee or breakfast and talking about things in general. And I did that with my predecessors. And I've done that at CIA in the last

five years and in other parts of the government as well. The other reason you want former senior officials to have clearances is to serve on commissions, both congressional commissions and executive branch commissions where security clearances are a requirement. So I've served on two since leaving government. I served on one for President Obama in the aftermath of the Snowden disclosures on the best ways to handle that and recommendations to the president on politics. policy changes, and I'm serving on one right now, a congressional commission on the defense needs of the United States, both of those required security clearances. There's a third reason why you want former senior officials to have these clearances, and that's because they serve

companies in the private sector, and here they do make money. Let's be honest about that. They do make money, but these companies are serving the U.S. government. So these are defense contractors, intelligence contractors who are doing work for the government and who need people to sit on their boards of directors and oversee classified contracts on the behalf of their shareholders. It's an extraordinarily important function for the private sector, and that's an important piece of this too. So lots of different reasons, all of them at the end of the day to the benefit of the government. Got it.

So just to dig in on this a little bit. I mean, you mentioned the Snowden Commission in 2013. I think it was called the President Obama's review group on intelligence, communications, technologies. Is that the more likely avenue that someone like you or John Brennan would be called on to discuss intelligence matters? Or is there a chance there could be a specific operational issue that was conducted over a long time frame that only a small group of people were read into or knew about,

which would make a specific individual's knowledge even more importantly? I'm trying to imagine a scenario where you, or John might be called back in knowing that the politics right now probably make that unlikely for John? So it's both. So when I was deputy director at CIA, I can think of a specific instance. I can't say what it is for obvious reasons, but I could think of a specific instance with an extraordinarily sensitive issue where there was not a lot of written material at the agency,

but where my predecessor, Steve Kappas, had intimate knowledge of it. And I needed to bring Steve in. and sit him down and have him tell me everything that he knew about it. And I'll tell you that my successor, Everell Haynes, you know well, there was a specific instance after I left, and she was the deputy where she needed to bring me in to do exactly the same. So it really cuts across all sorts of issues. I actually know people, no former Obama administration officials who have spent a lot of time with the Trump administration. I don't think either group spends, you know, time publicly talking about that,

but it has spent a lot of time with Trump administration officials helping them think about national security, and I think that's extraordinarily important. I actually know one who received an award from the agency they were spending time with for the value of what they were providing at no cost of the government. Huh. That really helps me understand this issue better, because something like the president's intelligence advisory board, which has a broader mandate to review policies writ large, I imagine there are a lot of people that could serve on that board. I want people like you.

I want people like John with experience, but there's a lot of folks that are highly qualified. Something narrow like what you're discussing, depriving yourself of the former CIA director's insight on a very specific, closely held operation seems to be actually extremely damaging because, as you know better than anybody, in the Intel world, just because you have a clearance doesn't mean you know something, right? And only a few people get read into sensitive matters. Exactly. And people do ask, you know, do you really need a clearance in order to be able to do that, right? A standing clearance. Isn't it possible that Gina Haspel could call me in to talk to me about something and give me a one-day clearance? And the answer to that question is, yes, but you actually, when you give these one-day clearances to people, you actually want to have

some sense that you can trust them. And so these former senior officials who have these clearances actually continue to go through the reinvestigation process. And so they continue to be cleared over time. So this is not a lifetime without another look at the individual. So the fact that they have these clearances and the fact that they continue to get looked at from a security perspective gives you confidence if you're in these current jobs, right, to be able to trust these people who you're having these conversations with. Yeah. You mentioned this charge, that Trump keeps making, that officials are making money off of their security clearance. Can you explain that a little more? I mean, I've heard you talk about on your podcast,

Intelligence Matters, how the government does not pay you to be on these advisory boards. But you mentioned the private sector in this oversight capacity. Could you explain that a little more? Yeah. So in terms of the service you provide on executive branch or congressional commissions, that is purely pro bono. I've been on two. I didn't receive a dime. actually there was a significant opportunity cost because of the amount of time that it takes, right? I mean, there must have been a ton of work. Absolutely. And you don't get paid for that.

You do it because of your commitment and dedication to the country. And by the way, you're not working from home or your summer house. You're like in a skiff somewhere, right, in an agency facility? Yeah, you're in a skiff and your phone's outside, right? And you run out every once in a while and check it. And, yeah, it's tough. And then when you go in to consult with Kernith, When I go into the agency, and I've done that a lot in the last five years, you don't get paid for that either, right?

So the only time you get paid is when you're working for the private sector and you absolutely get paid. But the important point is that the private sector is still working on behalf of the government in that case, right? So the government is still the ultimate winner even though you're being paid. Right, right, right. I read in The New Yorker this morning that some people in Trump's team pushed him to strip away President Obama's clearance. but that actually, H.R. McMaster, the former national security advisor, convinced President Trump not to. How often do former presidents get national security briefings? And why is that custom or that courtesy extended to them? That is a great question. And I read that article too. And I was absolutely shocked that the discussion inside the White House even happened.

So paranoid. So former presidents and going, you know, I was in the agency for 33 years and going back at least that far, I know that former presidents had a right. to get an intelligence briefing anytime that they wanted. When I was briefing President Bush every day, his father would occasionally sit in on the briefing. That was super cool, right? Two presidents sitting there. So they would get a briefing anytime they wanted it, right?

And that's important, not for them to be able to come in and advise the current president, right? That doesn't happen very often. But former presidents do work international, continue to work international issues. they continue to meet with foreign leaders and it is extraordinarily important, right, for them to be able to understand

where an issue stands for them to continue to work on behalf of the United States when they are in those conversations. So it's something that's been going on for a long time and it's extraordinarily important and, you know, shocking to me that they even discussed taking away Obama's clearance. I know from talking to, you know,

friends of yours, colleagues of yours that you think this conversation and what the president is doing, to politicize national security and security clearances, causing real long-term damage to the country. Can you explain why you believe that? Yeah, and I think that's a great question, and I think probably, Tommy, we need to unpack it a little bit. Sure, please. You know, if I was briefing this in the sitting room in the old days, I would tell you there's like three buckets here, right?

There's three types of damage. You know, one is to national security, I think. And that breaks down into a couple different pieces. One is the stripping of clearances, you know, directly undermines the ability of former officials to serve the government directly, as we've already discussed. The second is it undermines their ability to serve it indirectly through the private sector, as we discussed. But I think the threat, the third damage to national security here is that the threat to strip clearances, I think, can impact current national security work. And by that I mean, if there are senior officials today or even mid-level officials who believe that their future opportunities outside of government are at risk, right, if they say the wrong things to the president, it could affect what they say today. Yeah.

And they might hold back. And I think that is a particularly damaging possibility that we need to think about. So there's this big bucket of damage to national security. Then there's also this bucket of damage to the economy in terms of what we talked about, the importance to shareholders of having somebody on a board who can make sure that these companies are managing these classified contracts in an important way, right? That's an important economic function for our country and the national security industry that supports it. And then perhaps the biggest damage is the third bucket, Tommy, which is the damage to the public debate

or the damage to the public square, if you want to call it that. And there's two pieces to that. One is to the extent that people with clearances are intimidated from speaking out, the public loses. And when folks were signing on this weekend to a statement in support of John Brennan

and opposed to the president's actions here, I saw a handful of people who said, you know, I would love to sign this, but I can't because I'm concerned about X, Y, or Z. So I saw it firsthand this weekend that some people were holding back in terms of what their views really were because they were concerned about having their security clearance is stripped, right? That damages the country at the end of the day. Yeah. And then I think even there's a broader issue than just those folks. with clearances, right? And this gets to the heart of the First Amendment issue here, which is if you're an ordinary American who speaks up and you don't have a clearance,

you're an ordinary American without a clearance, but you do speak up, you do speak your mind, you know, on podcasts or on the, you write outbeds or whatever, this may give you pause, right? Because you may think, all right, he's taking security clearances away today in order to try to intimidate people into silence. What will it be tomorrow? Will it be IRS audits, Right. So it potentially has a dampening effect on the public debate across the board. That's why, in a public debate sense, that's why this is so critical. Right, right. That first scenario you outlined really concerns me because, you know, for example, we have a president that tweeted, the threat for North Korea's nuclear program is all gone.

Everything is rosy. And you may have to be an analyst someday who goes into the PDB into the Oval Office and says, in fact, sir, they haven't gotten rid of any of their nuclear weapons. We just discovered this new secret. nuclear program that they have that they hadn't disclosed to us previously, you know, things are not good. I mean, was that a big part of your job delivering a message to a president that anchored them or damaged them politically? So a big part of my job was telling presidents what they didn't want to hear, right? Yeah. It wasn't very often that it hurt them politically. It was often information or analysis that said to them, you know, sir, your policy is really not working. And you didn't pitch it that way, right? But that was the clear message. And that's something that intelligence officers, the director of

national intelligence, the director of CIA, have to do, you know, on a daily, weekly basis. It also worried me when I see him attack current officials, whether they're intelligence or law enforcement. I mean, he was hammering Peter Strauch. He's run the FBI's counter-espionage unit until he finally was fired. Now one of his favorite targets is Bruce or the current DOJ lawyer. Should we be even more worried about the signal this sends to current government officials who can't respond or defend themselves and might, you know, change the way they conduct business in real time? So the Bruce Orr issue is actually potentially more damaging than everything else we've already talked about, right? Because Bruce is an active Department of Justice employee who is during extraordinarily important work. And to take Bruce's security clearance away because of issues relating to,

do with his wife, right, means that he could not do those anymore. Yeah. Right. And we all know what he's working on. And it sends a really powerful signal, right, to anybody who's working on those issues. Gosh, you better look over your back, right? And you don't want your intelligence officials or your law enforcement officials to be thinking about that.

Yeah. There's a New Yorker story out this week about how John Brennan made the decision to speak out. And it talks about general rules of the road for political speech for former members of the military and the intelligence community. And you had a couple of really interesting quotes in that piece. The article makes the point that the military specifically discourages officers from expressing political views after they retire. And you're quoted saying there's no similar ethos in the intelligence community. There's no instruction book for former professionals.

But you also tell new recruits to leave their politics in the car and don't bring it inside the building even. How do you guys navigate working in the government and an environment that is so inherently political and not let it impact your decisions? It seems almost impossible. So it's beat into you from day one, right? It is absolutely, it's part of the culture, it's part of the training, it's part of the daily conversation, that you do not let your political views and you don't let your policy views affect your work in any way, right? Affect how you collect information or affect how you assess it. And that's what I used to, you know, when I used to talk to young officers about this, I would say you leave those things in your car, right? You don't bring those in. And in my many years in the CIA, there was always people who supported the current president politically and those who opposed the current president politically. You know, these people vote. These people have views. These people have views on policy. So in the run-up to the Iraq war, there were people who were supportive of President Bush's decision to do it. There were people.

people who were opposed. In fact, there were a lot more people who were opposed, but you don't let any of that, right, affect your work. And it really is, Tommy, it really is a remarkable organization in that respect. I was actually at CIA headquarters last Friday. So this is, you know, one day after the president's drip John of his security clearance and, you know, literally 12 hours after former directors and deputy directors, including me, put out a statement, criticizing the president, you know, really remarkable first time that that's ever happened in the history of former intelligence officers. And I probably talked to 50 people at this retirement ceremony, and nobody, nobody raised either John having his security clearance has taken away or what I had

done the night before in terms of signing onto this statement. Nobody raised it. So politics is just not in the hallway there. It's just not. It is a deep, deep part of the culture that it stays out of the building and it stays out of the conversation. That's interesting. That was true in the situation room, too. I think people don't believe me when I say that, but I remember maybe one time politics was raised, and I think Dennis threw the person out of the building. Exactly.

Along those lines regarding that letter, a conservative commentator that I'll be honest, I don't usually listen to because I think he's a little bit of a MAGA deadender, said something over the weekend that resonated with me, that he was surprised to see McRaven, Adam McRaven, who ran the bin Laden operation, among other things, and unbelievably decorated, impressive individual. He went to the mattresses on the issue of John Brennan's clearance. He wrote an op-ad, harshly criticizing President Trump's decision. Now, I obviously care about John Brennan personally.

He's a friend of mine. He's someone I greatly respect. And I agree that freedom of speech is just a foundational part of what makes America America. But I also thought this commentator had a point because certainly like banning all Muslims from entering the country will harm more people, right? abandoning Puerto Rico cost more lives. And so I guess the question is why is this the issue, John's security clearance, that got normally silent individuals to finally sign on to a letter criticizing Trump?

And how do you personally make the decision about when to speak out or bite your tongue? Yeah, those are great questions. So with regard to Bill, right, I don't know what motivated him. You know, I would bet in part it was the same thing that motivated me, which was it was the breaking of another norm. right? It was using a national security tool, in this case, the granting and the revocation of security clearances for a political purpose, right? So that's why I think so many former intelligence officials have spoken out, and I think that's part of why Bill spoke out. But I would bet also that part of Bill's logic was his very close relationship with John and his knowledge of the things that John did both at the White's, White House and at CIA to defend the country, to protect the country. You know, Bill is among a

handful of people who know that there are Americans alive today who would not otherwise be so without the work of John Brennan. And I think that, you know, that certainly helped motivate me and I think probably Bill McRaven too. I saw, you know, some former officials have expressed concern that the letters like the one that you signed and a whole bunch of other very senior and not so senior officials have signed could actually back up President Trump's claim that there is a deep state and that deep state is conspiring against him. So two questions. One, is there a deep state? Is it conspiring against President Trump? And does that concern worry you at all that this could play into his narrative? There is absolutely not a deep state. If there is,

I've never seen it in my 33 years. In fact, just the contrary, right? What I experienced at the agency and what I saw in other agencies is they are fully supportive of what the president is trying to accomplish in order to protect the country. There is nobody who is, you know, slow rolling the president, trying to undercut the president. They are doing whatever they can to help the president protect the country. So, you know, there's absolutely no deep state. So stepping back, like one of the risks with everything around Trump is that he creates these sideshows. And they distract us from talking about other important issues, including critical national security. issues that are out there. So in fact, that's probably why he did what he did to John. They've basically

leaked as much to The Washington Post. But luckily, we have this show. We have your excellent podcast, Intelligence Matters, which everyone should check out to dig into some of these issues. So let's do that for a minute. You wrote a piece, an op-ed recently, about how to actually deter Putin. What do you make of the U.S. government's response to date, including, you know, Obama-era sanctions and what have you? And what steps do you think we should be taking to actually stop Putin from interfering in our elections again. Tommy, the point I was trying to make in the op-ed is that all of the steps we've taken, whether taken by President Obama or President Trump, have not deterred Putin.

We know for a fact that he has continued to interfere in our democracy since the 2016 election. It hasn't stopped. There is evidence now that he is playing in the midterms. So it hasn't stopped. So we have not deterred him. And in my view, the reason we have not deterred him is because of the types of sanctions that we have imposed. We've imposed sanctions on specific entities and specific individuals who were involved in these intelligence activities, Russian intelligence activities against us. And those sanctions have not hurt the Russian economy.

Those sanctions have not undermined the Russian economy. And therefore, Vladimir Putin has not paid a political. price from those sanctions. And in fact, those entities and those individuals actually wear those sanctions as a badge of honor in Moscow. Of course, those people can't come to the United States and visit here and do banking here, but, you know, they'll wear the badge of honor in exchange for that any day of the week. So what's necessary are more broad-based sanctions, exactly the kind of sanctions that we use, the Obama administration used against Iran, broad-based sanctions that are actually designed to hurt the economy and put political pressure on the leadership of a country

to stop doing something that they're doing or come to the negotiating table, as in the case of Iran. So that was the point I was trying to make. I don't think that President Obama had it quite right, and I don't think President Trump has it quite right. Is your sense that we really need to lean in to actually deter him and that, you know, they view this whole process as a success and none of the responses have created enough of a disincentive? Yes, exactly. And it's not only important from a Russian point of view to deter the Russians, but we're also trying to deter other countries from following on and doing what the Russians are doing. So a recent podcast of mine, I had two people on, Laura Rosenberger and Jamie Fly from the George Marshall Fund,

and they do a lot of terrific work in what the Russians are doing in the United States and Western Europe. And one of the points, one of the really powerful points that they made, Tommy, was that the Chinese, have been watching what the Russians are doing. And the Chinese are now doing this domestically, and they're doing it in their region, particularly against the Taiwanese. And it doesn't take a big leap in logic to think that the Chinese could start doing it here.

And they have the resources to do it on a much larger scale than the Russians have been able to do it. And so we not only need to deter Putin from doing it, but we need to deter other countries, most importantly China, from following Putin. lead. That's scary, especially knowing the Chinese are sitting on millions and millions of

personnel records and social security numbers and all the info they've stolen about us over the years. Yeah, yours and mine, right? Yours and mine. One other big issue, and I'll make this my last question that you've been talking about, and I think you did a big interview with the former ambassador to Pakistan lately, is the country of Pakistan and the trajectory there. You told Axios that you believe it could soon be the most dangerous country in the world. Why do you believe that? So I do believe that, and I think it is. And I think, you know, it's not today we're going to see that play out or next year or even five years from now, but 10, 15 years from now it certainly could. And here's the logic train. The Pakistani economy is going nowhere. It has no life to it. It has essentially failed. The Pakistani demographic picture is a nightmare. Some of the most rapid population growth in the world, rapid labor force growth. And so there's all these young people who are coming into the economy with no jobs for them. And on top of that, you've got folks coming into the economy without any skills

because the Pakistani education system is among the worst in the world. Kids in Pakistan, and I've actually seen with my own eyes, go to schools that are broken, and I mean literally broken, where they're sitting on rubble in class, right? They're not inside of a building. They're sitting on the rubble that used to be their school. And this explains why so many Pakistan. parents send their kids to religious schools rather than Pakistani public schools. One of the implications of that, Tommy, is that extremism continues to grow in Pakistan

to include in the Pakistani military. So it's not impossible to think that in 10, 15 years or maybe even sooner than that, there could be an Arab Spring-style movement in the streets of Islamabad where you end up with an extremism government in Pakistan with a whole bunch of nuclear weapons, right? That's the nightmare scenario. where you essentially have al-Qaeda running a government with nuclear weapons. Yeah, that is the nightmare scenario. Well, hopefully President Trump's team is thinking about and working on these issues in secret

and not as focus as President Trump is on political attacks on former intelligence officials. Maybe with the help of former senior officials. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. Michael, thank you so much for talking with me. Everyone should check out intelligence matters because you get the best of the best guests to walk through in real substantive detail. the most important intelligence issues out there. And it's a fascinating show.

So thank you for doing this one. And I look forward to seeing you soon. All right. Take care, Tommy. Have it going. Thank you, as always, for listening to POTS day of the world. If you made it through this episode all the way through, you now have a top secret security clearance.

So congrats to you. Please don't tweet about President Trump or that shit will be gone in a hurry. Have a great week.