Vic Socotra

05 June 2010

Getting to Know (The General)

(Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, USAF-Ret., the prospective Director of National Intelligence.)

The nomination of Jim Clapper spread like wildfire late yesterday, and in all the places Spooks gather there was animated discussion. My pal Phil heard the word out at Langley, where he was attending the elevation of a Marine general to his second star and a key role in the National Clandestine Service. We had a drink at Willow to think through the implications.

I know the only career intelligence officer who has served as Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, and it now appears that I know the next one, too. That does not make me either special or influential. It just shows how small the community is.

I will say that there are damned few people who have coffee cups with pictures of the DNI though. My pal Paul created a few of them when we worked for General Clapper. I am going to put it prominently on my desk at the office to imply influence I do not have.

The other two gentlemen who have served in the alleged highest office in the chaotic Intelligence community were not from it, and that lack of intimacy with Spooks showed in their performance.

Ambassador Negroponte and Admiral Blair both came out of the brief aberration of Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense who hated the Spooks, and committed himself to bring us to heel.

He thought you could place general officers from the combat arms branches of the military in charge of the agencies and offices who were more responsive to the needs of the policymakers.

In Uncle Don’s time at the Defense helm, the director of DIA became an artillery officer and the Pentagon was filled with amateur intelligence officers who decided to pick and choose what to believe. In the critical days after George Tenent got canned, the Director of CIA was a politician who had a junior tour in the Directorate for Operations.

You can see how that worked out. This is an extremely complex business, wheels within secret wheels, and if you haven’t dealt with all the moving parts it is quite impossible to understand how it works- and does not work- in the sprawling world.

The cerebral Mike Hayden, a four-star intelligence general, took over at CIA after the disaster of Porter Goss and did a good job. The brief time when Secretary Gates, a career intelligence officer, presided at Defense over career intelligence officer Jim Clapper as his undersecretary for Intelligence. With Mike Hayden and Mike McConnell as DNI might have been as good as it can possibly get.

Not to put too fine a point on things, I would argue that if you can understand the subtlety of the intelligence community, the rest of national security is easy. Further, I think it likely that the success in Iraq (which at least enabled us to start an orderly exit from the fiasco) came as part of an alignment of people who could get along with one another.

Grand alignments rarely last. The Mikes were sent packing with the new Administration. Politician Leon Panetta drank the DO Kool-Aid, and has been an able administrator with the ear of the White House.

Admiral Denny Blair, a ship-driving Rhodes Scholar, was brought in to oversee the whole estate as DNI. He is a smart guy and I respect him immensely. Unfortunately, he got crosswise with John Brennan, the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

And Rahm Emmanuel. That is a combination that proved fatal.

Leon Panetta, with the backing of the Agency and tacit support of Brennan, stared down Denny Blair last fall over the matter of who would appoint the senior US intelligence officer in posts around the world. Forget the discussion of the Nigerian Underwear Bomber. The matter of the appointment of the Chiefs of Station is what tore it. There rest is just an excuse.

Jim Clapper is an outstanding choice for the job. You don’t see it in the official resume, but he started as an enisted Marine, and you can see that in the way he caries himself. He is smart, determined and ambitious and I like him enormously. He has served as Director of DIA and NGA, and currently as the Undersecretary for Intelligence. There is no more experienced person in the community to be DNI.

The only thing people could find to fault him is his inability to suffer fools- particularly the ones in Congress- with equanimity.

But of course, they also say that Leon Panetta turned the job down, and that speaks volumes about the way things really work.

My pal Joe summed it up in his usual brusque manner. “Likely the couldn’t find anybody else qualified and willing to take the job. A vacant DNI chair is a political liability for the President in an election year. He is vulnerable to be being perceived as weak on national security concerns.”

Joe is as close to a ringside commentator on the IC follies as exists. He then connected the dots, which is what all-source intelligence analysts do. What the appointment really means is that things stay exactly as they are. Jim Clapper becomes the ceremonial head of the Community, sort of like Queen Elizabeth.

John Brennan, who was unconfirmable for any office due to his association with enhanced interrogation techniques, will remain as the unofficial Chairman of the Board of the IC; Leon Panetta will be the Chief Executive Officer with the power to hire and fire the Chiefs of Station around the world.

You will note that NSA- the Fort whose universe looks in on itself- has not been heard from lately. That is because its Director has been on an independent mission. Keith Alexander has been given his fourth star, and will head a new Defense organization known as Cyber Command.

I have followed the career of General Alexander with great interest down through the years an helped clean up some of the wreckage of his passing through some of his commands, where he started so many initiatives that did not survive his tenure.

He is certainly a smart and ambitious guy. He is the first Army intelligence officer to make four stars; the only ones who have pulled that off before him are Bobby Ray Inman, Bill Studeman and Mike Hayden.

So Keith is a bit of a wild card in this new mix. Is it a functional system, with a strong central DNI justly directing the vast resources of the secret world as the 9/11 Commission recommended?

Of course not. It is way too complex for that. I am just hoping that everyone can get along.