As Caroline Downey reported, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director and former NSA director under the Bush administration, contended earlier this week that the modern GOP is the most treacherous political force he has encountered in his lifetime.
As I laid out in yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, comments like this one from Hayden are a lot of D-words – disappointing, deplorable, disturbing and dangerous. It reminded me of former FBI director Jim Comey reinventing himself as a #Resistance celebrity and yukking it up on Stephen Colbert’s couch, a turn that disturbed retired FBI agents who saw it as the former director embracing the perceived politicization of the Bureau, instead of pushing back against it.
I have no doubt that a lot of former CIA directors, FBI directors, high-ranking military officials, etc., have strong political views. They are free to have whatever opinions they like. But when you step into a role like theirs, you have to appear purer than Caesar’s wife, and that means keeping those strong opinions to yourself and minimizing your role in partisan politics.
For a long time, most former directors of key law enforcement or national security agencies faded into semi-obscurity in retirement; maybe they taught a class at a university, or wrote a memoir, or went into corporate consulting. Today, social media enables these former powerful officials to blurt out every political thought they have, and those off-the-cuff sneers and denunciations cumulatively burn away at public trust like acid.
Institutions like the FBI, CIA, NSA etc. have a lot of power, and the inherent secrecy of their work means that ensuring those agencies are held accountable is a constant challenge. These agencies cannot function effectively unless they are widely perceived as above partisan politics – institutions that are pro-America, not pro-Left or pro-Right. (Probably the closest analogue on the right would be former FBI director Louis Freeh, and he was much more subdued that Hayden’s tweets; I suppose if you count the Defense Intelligence Agency as an institution on that level, you could put Michael Flynn in there.)
A director’s duty to the institution he ran doesn’t end the day he retires. If you suddenly rip off the mask, Scooby-Doo-style, and sound like Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, the public will conclude you were always a partisan hack, and regard your former institution with suspicion and mistrust.
The wise philosopher Ben Parker famously taught us, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” And even if you think Donald Trump is the greatest example of irresponsible power on earth, that doesn’t justify your choice to act irresponsibly.
Few positions in the U.S. government come with greater power than directing the CIA, NSA, FBI, or other key law enforcement, intelligence, and national security agencies. When you agree to accept that power, you are voluntarily relinquishing the future path of becoming an outspoken in-your-face political pundit. Otherwise, people really do start to buy into the idea of a “deep state.”