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- [00:01]
Frances
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the Aftermath.
- [00:32]
Mary Ford
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- [01:10]
Quinta Jurecik
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- [01:29]
David Ignatius
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- [01:30]
Quinta Jurecik
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- [01:51]
Mary Ford
I'm Mary Ford, Internet Lawfare with an episode for the Lawfare Archive for July 27, 2025 this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard waded into the debate over, quote, Russiagate. Among other allegations, Gabbard has claimed that members of the Obama administration participated in a, quote, treasonous conspiracy to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2016 election. This week, in his the Situation column, Benjamin Woodis argued that Gabbard's attacks of critics are not all that different from President Trump's demonstrated strategy for responding to scandal, retconning the narrative as a witch hunt, and redirecting the attention of the president's supporters onto political adversaries. For today's Archive episode, I selected an episode from May 6, 2017, in which David Ignatius spoke with General Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin, and Juan Zarate at an Aspen Institute event to take stock of President Trump's relationship with the intelligence community, where this relationship was headed at the time, and more. I'm Quinta Jurecik, and this is the The Lawfare Podcast. May 6, 2017 More than 100 days into the Trump presidency, the president's ongoing feud with the intelligence community has calmed somewhat. But while we're no longer treated quite so often to presidential tweets criticizing various intelligence agencies, there's still a long way to Go in Healing the breach. Recently at the Aspen Institute, the Washington Post's David Ignatius sat down with four former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden, former acting and deputy director of CIA John McLaughlin, and former deputy National Security Advisor for combating terrorism Juan Zarate in an event titled A House Examining the Intelligence Community White House Relationship. It's an engaging discussion on where the intelligence community stands under President Trump and where it may be headed. It's the Lawfare podcast, episode 222, A House Divided.
- [04:09]
Juan Zarate
Just to kind of give us the flavor of this topic and remind us that there's some real issues here that we need to talk about, I'm just going to read a few tweets, a few little snapshots from recent history. Like a tweet from January 11, 2017, which was just after presentation of intelligence findings about President Trump intelligence, I should say intelligence findings about Russian covert action raising the question of whether the Russians acted to benefit the Trump campaign. And he responded, intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news. He's referring here to the dossier by Chris Steele that was completely pile this fake news to leak into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany? I think that was one that people felt especially concerned about. 1 On January 15, again, as the investigation of Russian activities was coming more to the fore, the quote, intelligence research briefing on so called Russian hacking was delayed until Friday. Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange about that. The intelligence chiefs made a mistake here. And when people make mistakes, they should apologize. Media should also apologize. I could go on, but I think you're all familiar with the tone of these tweets. Very combative, I would say. Next to the news media, which in this same period was characterized by the President, the president will act as the opposition. The intelligence community was a principled target of criticism from him. So I want to begin our conversation by asking each of our panelists to say briefly, how much damage do you think has been done by these sometimes inflammatory comments? And by that I mean both to morale within the intelligence community and to the intelligence communities standing at home and abroad. And Mike, let me ask you to start and then we'll go down the, go down the road.
- [06:34]
Michael Hayden
Yeah. And I know we'll drill down on these specifics. So I'll be very brief. I mean, it is substantial damage. I would not call it irrecoverable yet. I think a repeat of this cycle would actually we'd be running out of altitude and airspeed. The trees in the house is getting bigger and the windscreen going down. But so far we've still got altitude and airspeed to correct. But it did do serious damage within the community, to the morale within the community. And frankly, it's the right word. The attempt to delegitimize those with whom you disagree, be it court or press or science or intelligence, was an unmistakable characteristic of this period. And if it were to continue, I do think we'd have that very, very dark scenario. We'll see if we can pull the nose up and get the level flight again.
- [07:31]
Juan Zarate
So, John, what do you think, and also, what do you hear about the degree of morale problems in the IC and how people have responded to this period?
- [07:47]
David Ignatius
Well, I agree with Mike's assessment. I would say I see four phases here and we're in phase three. And I'll let you all decide exactly how to label these phases. But the four phases I see are, are from the time of the election. Phase one would be a period of, let's say, total ignorance about intelligence, along with a lot of other things, by.
- [08:12]
Juan Zarate
The way.
- [08:15]
David Ignatius
A person spectacularly unprepared to be president. Certainly when it came to intelligence. Phase two would be a period that those tweets came from, a period that I would call a phase of hostility as facts put forward by intelligence came up against preconceptions or what I've heard Mike describe as faith based beliefs rather than factually based beliefs. And those tweets come from that period. Phase three, I think, is where we are now, and it's the phase where intelligence has become unavoidable. In other words, as North Korea is in your face, as chemical weapons are deployed in Syria, as you have to have your Secretary of State meet with Russia, someone has to, you have to turn to intelligence, particularly when your State Department is not well staffed, to find out what happened in Syria. How many nuclear weapons does North Korea have that's going to come from intelligence? And this is coinciding, I think, with, in phase three, the traction that some of the more experienced professional people in the administration seem to be getting. H.R. mcMaster General Mattis, the CIA director, I might add.
- [09:42]
Quinta Jurecik
And.
- [09:44]
David Ignatius
Phase four, we're not in yet. Phase four could be once we have the results of these three investigations that are underway, and the two intelligence committees and the FBI, we don't know what they'll produce, but they could produce something startling, interesting that will throw this thing, to use General Hayden's analogy, you know, kind of going back toward the trees. But at this point, to David's last remark, I would say morale in the community, as I hear about it, is not so bad. President Trump is getting a briefing every day. I hear that's going reasonably well. I hear the CIA director goes most days and there is an interchange that's starting to acquire elements of normalcy and see where we go from here.
- [10:37]
Juan Zarate
One, how do you read things?
- [10:40]
Quinta Jurecik
Well, first of all, David, I could listen to these two all day, and I think I'd like to. But let me just piggyback off of John's framework because I think I worry much less about morale, because I think morale is handled by proper leadership. You're seeing that certainly with Mike Pompeo at the CIA, focus on mission and then exposure to the leadership. And I think that's happening. And I think morale in some ways can recover pretty quickly unless there are repeat episodes and offenses, that kind of thing. But I worry less about morale. I think what we've seen is a maturation. We've seen a maturation of personnel, maturation of policy, maturation of awareness to get us to stage three that John described. What I really worry about are two things. One is the potential for undermining credibility in the intelligence community and the analysis that comes out of it. At a time of great cynicism, both domestically in the post Snowden era, and also at a time when intelligence serves as evidence with our diplomacy, with national security decision making. Mike Hayden uses a phrase in some of the works that he's done. The role of intelligence is really to enable action in the face of doubt. Well, if you're creating additional doubt or misperception about your own community and, and its work that disables your ability to do things. And I think this recent episode with Syria is a good example. You need the intelligence to then demonstrate the legitimacy of your action. And it's going to be rebutted by the autocrats, the tyrants who use the obfuscation of evidence, the demands for more proof as a way of driving their own legitimacy or evading responsibility. So that to me is the most long term potential damaging dimension of this. And then a related related problem, you saw this a little bit with the dust up with the British when there was accusations that the gchq, the British nsa, was involved in wiretapping the Trump Tower, I think the moment you begin to implicate foreign intelligence services with whom the US has very strong and important relationships, and those relationships serve as a basis for trust between countries, that is really dangerous as well. And so I don't worry about morale. I don't worry about the maturation. I think all that's happening and to Mike's point, I think the fact that you have serious people grappling with very hard problems, it requires intelligence, is going to force that maturation. I worry about statements or actions that undermine the long term legitimacy of the IC that then disables our ability to be effective in our national security decision making.
- [13:25]
Michael Hayden
Can I ask because I think it's a really valuable point because you asked and I answered the question fundamentally based upon the direct assaults on the intelligence community. But I think the long term danger is what Juan just suggested, which is the collateral damage to the intelligence community with the President pursuing one or another agenda. And the GCHQ fallout is a classic. But if you look at the whole, what do we want to call it, Susan Rice unmasking whatever thing which they won't let go. All right? And it's not about intelligence, it's about politics, you know, about which they will not let go. That is potential really serious long term crippling of the American intelligence community. Something was clear to be in government, really clear to me out of government, is that American espionage rests a bit uneasily inside American culture because American espionage represents power and secrecy, which of course makes anyone American valued, uncomfortable with the concept. But we're okay. We get by because we are viewed that we would never be asked nor would we be be allowed, would we allow ourselves to be used for political purposes. And therefore, even though it's an uneasy relationship, we continue to function. You just had the President say we were used for political purposes. And boy, that can be incredibly corrosive, let alone the nasty tweets about who.
- [14:58]
Juan Zarate
Do you believe in all.
- [14:59]
David Ignatius
And just let me add one small short point to that. What Juan said and what Mike just said. I think the GCHQ comment that the implication that they were involved in bugging the President was so ill advised and so easily avoided. If he had just picked up the phone or literally walked a few feet down the hall and asked someone like HR McMaster, could it be he would instantly have been told? Of course not. I was in the UK when that happened. I've never seen the British angrier and they conceal that pretty well sometimes. But they did not anticipation. My point here is if that sort of thing stops, we'll know we've turned a corner. But if it continues, that is impulsive statements like that, without checking with someone who could correct it, then. Then we haven't turned a corner.
- [15:57]
Juan Zarate
Just stay with us one minute more and ask Mike. Let me begin with you. Whether you think there is lasting damage to liaison relationships. CIA is the world's biggest, presumably world's best intelligence organization, but it needs help from its partners. And you keep hearing reports, you'd be three of you would be in a better position to hear them than I, that people are just getting a little weary. What about that?
- [16:33]
Michael Hayden
So a couple of things. Number one, to reinforce your point, liaison relationships are very, very important to American intelligence. We spend a lot of time on liaison relationships. And the secret sauce is our institutions are big, global, relatively rich and technologically talented. The other guys are small, focused, linguistically and culturally agile. Boy, it works really very, very well. And so turbulence here domestically with regard to the standing legitimacy confidence you have in American intelligence begins to affect again, so far, not so good so far, but that's got to put people on edge. We've seen it with the British explicitly. I think we would see it implicitly with others. All that said, if the worst is behind us, this is very manageable because in that relationship, which I said is really important to us, it's really important to them, they really are dependent upon us. So they're willing to give us a little space, willing to offer a bit of forgiveness, live with a little bit of discomfort. But there are limits beyond which particularly our Western democracy partners really can't allow themselves to go.
- [17:51]
Juan Zarate
John, what did you say to your British friends after this really quite egregious statement about GCHQ which led them to do a most unusual thing, issue a public statement. What did you tell them?
- [18:05]
David Ignatius
Same thing I did with the Australians.
- [18:08]
Quinta Jurecik
Remember that event?
- [18:14]
Juan Zarate
Not yet.
- [18:15]
David Ignatius
Seriously, I think the first thing you do is you say on behalf of our country, I apologize for that statement. And at the same time I said, let me, I've said this to a lot of international contexts. Let me give you some assurance that we have self correct correcting mechanisms in the United States, that we'll figure this out. A little bit of what Mike just said about the enduring partnership. I mean, after all, we learned a lot of what we know and do in the intelligence field from the British. It was essentially that I would say we have self correcting mechanisms and they are kicking in now. I think we are seeing some of them kick in.
- [18:59]
Michael Hayden
I just need to add because John mentioned.
- [19:01]
David Ignatius
Is that about right?
- [19:02]
Michael Hayden
Yeah, no, it's spot on. But I have had observers, not members of government, but keen observers of this stuff in 2,5 I partners approach me personally and simply say, we're okay. Right?
- [19:16]
David Ignatius
Yeah, five eyes.
- [19:18]
Juan Zarate
And what was your answer?
- [19:20]
Michael Hayden
Yes, we're okay, no, this is enduring.
- [19:23]
David Ignatius
Yeah.
- [19:24]
Michael Hayden
All right.
- [19:25]
Quinta Jurecik
And it's important for them to hear these voices actually. And frankly, the voices of credibility from the outside of John and Mike actually reinforces that because I think again, those relationships are enduring. They've survived diplomatic dust ups and problems we saw during the Iraq War period. 03. The intelligence relationships survived. The CT relationships were strong, even with the French and the Dragon Germans at the height of some of these problems. I think the real danger, David, to your question is do these services begin to not only feel that they're not valued, but do they begin to see that the US is beginning to politicize intelligence? To Mike's earlier point, And I think if they begin to see that intelligence becomes a plaything in our political theater, that then really does begin to undermine confidence and then it begins to affect operationally because what are they willing to share? What are the limitations? You know, we saw this a little bit in the, in the Guantanamo context, right, where when the Western European countries were concerned about use of intelligence and it was uncomfortable for them for legal purposes and for political purposes, they began to put limits on sharing of information, began to put limits on extradition, they began to constrain how they would cooperate. And so I think you've got to be very careful to tend to these things because it ultimately has operational impact on what information we actually get and what operations we can then coordinate.
- [20:55]
Michael Hayden
So John's point about the system kicking in, I must tell you, an emotional moment for me, like two or three weeks ago when you had the head of the federal police force, the director of the FBI, and the head of the largest intelligence organization in the country, Mike Rogers, head of nsa, in open session, answer a question about the accuracy of a statement made by the chief executive of the United States and the Commander in chief, and they answered it in open session and answered it loyally, politely, respectfully and truthfully. That is a remarkable moment for the, the non politicization and heaven forbid we need a whole bunch more moments like that. But I'm counting on the folks still in government, they've got to stand tall.
- [21:47]
Juan Zarate
That hearing was a good moment. It was followed by some not so good moments. But let me ask you to go to what I would think of as the heart of this question that we're exploring, which is the relationship of this president, as inexperienced as any president in my lifetime, maybe in our history for dealing with foreign policy, just doesn't have much background dealings of this president with the intelligence community. You each have sat in the Oval Office in The Situation Room often. And you know what it is to brief presidents. You know, president's needs for intelligence. You know that each president is a different consumer and is going to consume in different ways. So just ask you how you would tackle this puzzle of how to make intelligence useful to this president. Not somebody we might hypothesize, but this man. Mike, you want to start back?
- [22:51]
Michael Hayden
Sure. First of all, David's right to premise is we adjust every four or eight years. And you've got to learn the new client. You've got to learn not just policies and interests, which kind of set priorities, but personality. How does this human being absorb new information? I think John will agree, and he'll probably have a lot more color on this than I do. President Bush learned in the dialogue. He read. He really was. He did his homework, but he learned in the dialogue. President Obama learned in reflection. He learned in the quiet moment. I don't know about President Trump, all right. I mean, the story is out there is not a lot of patience, doesn't do a lot of reading, doesn't like to sit still for briefings. And so I'm kind of spitballing here, David, just, you know, what are the options? And maybe the way to get into President Trump's head is to talk to the vice president. Maybe the way to get into President Trump's head is make yourself invaluable to the national Security advisor. And so that when you get that small circle where you may not be there and the last person in the room might be the vice president, he turns to the vice president and you get, look, Zbigniew Brzezinski did that when he was national Security advisor. The president did not not take briefings. The national Security advisor kind of mixed the salad in the morning with all the inputs and then went in. That's not an ideal world. I wouldn't opt for that. But we've got to deal with the president as he is.
- [24:23]
Juan Zarate
Just to interject and then turn to John and Juan, I think one thing we've learned from our experience with this president is that his attempts to end run him. He wants to be the star in his White House. There's no other star. If you're Steve Bannon, you get to be a star. Uneasy lies the head. I mean, here comes the cleaver. So the idea that you go around him to get the intelligence. And for what it's worth, my sense of is that the briefers are figuring out ways to engage this personality in its.
- [25:09]
Michael Hayden
Please forgive me if I made the impression this was an end run, all right? It was simply take, like NFL football, take what the defense offers. When you go to the line of scrimmage, the President's going to give you a limited period of time. The vice President is a bit more religious about taking that briefing six days a week, so make sure he. He gets the full dose. The same with McMaster, the same with Mattis, and so on.
- [25:33]
Juan Zarate
John, you probably have in 30 years, and it must be many presidents that you. That you've briefed. So you know a lot about this. How would you think about ways to brief, inform, connect with this president?
- [25:50]
David Ignatius
Yeah, well, I was Clinton's first briefer, and I briefed, of course, all during the George W. Bush era, and I briefed Bush 41 on occasion and briefed Ronald Reagan after he left office. So let me start with the last one. When I went to brief Ronald Reagan, people who knew him said, have some jokes.
- [26:12]
Quinta Jurecik
No.
- [26:12]
David Ignatius
And they meant it seriously. In other words, they didn't. I found him to be actually very focused, very smart, very interested, but he had a sense of humor. And so I could tell you the corny jokes I told him about Poland and Germany, which were the subjects probably offending all of the polls in the room.
- [26:33]
Quinta Jurecik
No, no, don't. Don't do it.
- [26:34]
Michael Hayden
Okay.
- [26:35]
David Ignatius
But anyway, with Trump, if I were knowing what I know and what we see, my initial thought would be to reinforce Mike's point. This is probably a man who absorbs information orally, so I would focus on very short articles to give him no more than one page. A lot of white space, a lot of bullets, more than 140 characters, but not a lot of clutter. We use a lot of graphics, figuring a businessman probably is used to looking at charts and graphs, and I would try to encourage him to challenge us. One of the things that I'm sure Mike agrees with, that people don't realize about intelligence is it isn't delivered from Mount Olympus. It is incrementally acquired in an atmosphere where decision and conclusion is constantly demanded. And so there's a lot you don't know. And the dialogue with the President is, in a way, the most important thing. It's when the President asks a question and you have to say, I don't know. Exactly. Let me get back to you. That's not a bad moment. And it begins to instruct the President about what intelligence is. And if you do know, you know. So I think I'd approach it that way and see how it worked.
- [28:08]
Quinta Jurecik
Juan, I think, you know, part of this is Just conceiving of information differently now. We're deep into the 21st century now, and I think this is also a president who apparently likes to watch, I don't know, but apparently likes to watch cable tv. And so I would think about, and I think this has been borne out of the Syrian exercise based on news reports that a lot of this was visual. And you know, thinking about the PDB through visual terms, maybe it's video clips that are, you know, we see all the think tanks do it now, right? The two and a half minute, three minute video that gives the expose on a complicated topic and maybe you give him a 500 word synopsis of what the general issues are and then you play the video. I don't see any problem with that as long as you've got a dialogue and you also have an informal staff that he's listening to, ready to fill in the gaps and play in the gray. And so I think that's important.
- [29:05]
David Ignatius
Actually, I kind of like the idea of CIA tv.
- [29:08]
Quinta Jurecik
Yeah.
- [29:08]
Michael Hayden
Why not? Why not?
- [29:10]
David Ignatius
I mean, we had an Air Force once.
- [29:12]
Quinta Jurecik
Well, from the Bush to the Obama team, we had started to see this at the end of the Bush administration, but the use of iPads, the use of links to go to videos and things, things. And it was a little clunkier. I think it got better over time. But why not take a full leap forward and it probably would resonate more with him. Obviously, I think it did in the Syrian context. The other thing I would say is he obviously listens to some key voices and I think we get too fixated on the idea of briefing at the moment. And he seems to be, again, from the outside, I don't know the president, but from the, from the outside, he seems to be somebody who over time will evolve his positions based on information provided. And I think that means making sure Secretary Mattis is fully up to speed. And so that the next time he has a conversation with the president in the Oval on Syria or North Korea, he's up to speed on what we know and what we don't know. H.R. mcMaster, Mike Pompeo, same thing. So he's going to get information, maybe not in the one hour block of time, but in different ways. And I think the intel community has to adapt to that and enable those around the President to whom he's listening.
- [30:28]
David Ignatius
You know, there's kind of a greater than the sum of the parts issue in what the three of us have just said that suddenly occurs to me, and that is that you've heard all three of us emphasize the intelligence community will bend over backwards to face figure out how to serve a President. Even though we've sat here and said some pretty critical things about this President, if any of us were there now, we would be working very hard to figure out what does he need to best make his way through these difficult decisions and what is the best way to get it to him. So the kind of greater sum of the parts point here is whatever tensions are there between between the President and the intelligence community, frankly, I think the intelligence community sets that aside. You know, you don't get up in the morning and say, I'm really irritated with the President. You get up in the morning and say, how do I do my job in a way that helps him.
- [31:28]
Frances
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David Ignatius
Is that right?
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Quinta Jurecik
I mean, I think that's right, absolutely.
- [36:27]
Michael Hayden
And I think we all kind of came into it. It's the White House. You want to be informed. So when the president in that meeting, even though you haven't gotten what we classically get with the President, when he turns to other folks, they're reflecting. But can I make this work?
- [36:43]
Juan Zarate
Absolutely.
- [36:46]
Michael Hayden
It's just not in the presentation. All right. And how does this president absorb new information? You craft this. I mean, there's an epistemological challenge here. You craft the briefing to take the president from things he knows to things he does not yet know. And here I'm not talking about what you. You suggested earlier. Phase one, this is massive ignorance about international affairs. We'll work through that. We'll put bricks on that wall and build it up. David, I'm concerned about what's the president's framework. I think everyone we briefed was more or less an American internationalist, some with a little more emphasis on the pedal. Some. Some with less emphasis on the pedal. I don't know what President Trump inherently believes about this structure. We exchanged notes this morning about what we're going to talk about. CIA does threat analysis and plugs in there from time to time. Opportunity analysis. Other than threats, physical threats to the America. To America. What's threats would the President be concerned about? And what opportunities does he care about? Because I don't yet know the President's broad global framework. So I think beyond getting it right, getting it short, getting it to the Oval, there is this broader structure that needs to be communicated to the community. And we may have taken a modest step forward yesterday with some clarity with regard to positions, but that's really important to the folks out at Langley in terms of what is it the President needs.
- [38:35]
Quinta Jurecik
And this is where I'm actually optimistic, because I think not only is the form of information getting better in a way that he's obviously imbibing, but he's beginning to also trust the people around him in a way that he didn't. In phases one and two of John's framework, I think, you know, Mike Pompeo is his CIA director. He is seeing him daily. Mike Pompeo is bringing the experts from the agency to the table to inform and to fill the empty vessel, so to speak. And so I think that's actually very helpful because it then allows not only the education of the president, but a shaping of the policy. And I think we've seen that. I think this is a president that seems very malleable. He doesn't seem to have a guiding philosophy on foreign policy. He's getting criticized for apparently sort of shifting from his campaign promises. I see that as positive that he can learn. He's going to trust his people. And the intelligence community, frankly, is what they're good at. They figure out who their audience is and they figure out how to inform and influence. And I think that's going to be to the good.
- [39:41]
Juan Zarate
The certainly what we've seen in the last two weeks is president, to quote Tom Donilon comment I put in the paper yesterday, who's had whiplash like changes of position on key issues. Syria, Russia and China are the most obvious examples. I want to just ask Juan a small codicil on the counterterrorism issue. This is a president who campaigned on the danger to America. Fear was a central part of his pitch. Counterterrorism briefers are conveying truly frightening information and its potential implications. But it's a delicate process. Do you have any thoughts about how to inform the president without inflaming him in a way that would lead to outcomes that would put us more at risk?
- [40:47]
Quinta Jurecik
It's a great question. It's a great question because anyone who's dealt with the CT world, the threat matrices that emerge, all of the threats that have to wash out, but are incredibly horrifying if imagined to sort of fruition. You know, it's a really good question, David, because I think you have to inform the President of what's out there, how an ISIS is evolving, what some of their grand visions may be, what Al Qaeda is doing in adaptation. But to your point, you can't do it in a way that is going to shape a worldview that is highly reactionary or oversteps where we want to go. And I think that's the role of, frankly, H.R. mcMaster, it's the role of Tom Bossert, the Homeland Security Advisor, to make sure that the information is being conveyed in a way that not only lets the President know kind of the scope of threats that the US Is worried about, but also helps him understand how we're mitigating those threats. And I think that was often the conversations we would have in the Oval or in the Sit Room, which is, look, these are nightmare scenarios or nightmare cases, but these are the things that we're doing in concrete to mitigate the threats, to make sure that they don't come to fruition or to disrupt them. And if we need to take action to disrupt, here are the options. And I think, you know, doing that in a methodical way, demonstrating that, look, the counterterrorism community has evolved over time. It's very mature. There's something you can latch onto. You don't have to start anew. All of that, I think, is part of the education and maturation of the government. And I think that's, that's, that can be managed.
- [42:22]
David Ignatius
Here's another Juan's comment causing me to think of another breakpoint that we have to be prepared for. And that's the first time he's surprised, the first time that intelligence doesn't catch something. And terrorism is a good point area where that can happen. You're almost never going to be 1000% on terrorism. I remember in the early days of the Obama administration when the underwear bomber almost succeeded in 2009, that was their first experience with something that the intelligence world did not pick up. And they went into a bit of a panic about intelligence failure until they kind of got their bearings about how intelligent, that it isn't always right. It doesn't. It's mathematically certain that you'll miss something sooner or later. We haven't had that moment yet. And how he reacts if that happens is going to be another break point in this relationship.
- [43:25]
Michael Hayden
You've ratcheted that up not from the emergent and urgent, but kind of the backdrop analysis. The President ran on a campaign pain of apocalyptic danger from terrorism, which, frankly, I don't think the intelligence community would have written it up that way until you saw in the first days of the administration the executive order rollout with regard to an apocalyptic danger from refugees. And we have no idea who these people are, no idea, neither of which were true. And I don't think the order came from anybody in who we used to represent running down to the Oval saying, Mr. President, Mr. President, we've got a problem here that came out of the campaign and what was discussed during the campaign. So now the question becomes, in this most delicate area where no president can even envisage failure, how do you scope the President's concern about, about that? Because I'll speak for myself, but I think these guys are going to agree. You are driven to the lower left hand corner of the theft matrix, which is the one that's going to happen tonight, because some young fellow makes a bad decision at Dulles in the TSA line, and if you let yourself, your agency or your administration, they will be consumed by that part at the expense of a Whole bunch of other things. So how do you elevate the discussion down there out of the urgent and into the important?
- [45:03]
Juan Zarate
The question, obviously is whether the intelligence community should sort of preview with the President the possibility of surprise, of this kind of difficulty. One disturbing moment to me was after the Yemen Special Operations raid where Ryan Owens was killed. The president's initial reaction was to say this was recommended by the generals. The generals wanted to do it. They lost Ryan. It was sort of, it's their fault. Which I think goes to the the point that each of you is implicitly making that in CT issues there will be a temptation if something awful happens for the President to say, well, it wasn't my fault, it was somebody else's fault. Is there any way you can preview that, knowing it's a sometime something like that's probably going to happen? Juan, what do you think?
- [46:01]
Quinta Jurecik
Well, a couple comments. I think it's a great question. The Rose Garden press conference that he had with King Abdullah of Jordan was actually a really interesting moment in the context of Syria, because it was the first time you had the president say, this is something that's happened on my watch. I'm responsible. And I found that to be a really important moment of maturation for the president and the presidency. And so I think at this point you could have a president who sort of reverts back to campaign mode and points every which way if something goes wrong. But I think he realizes now he is the president, he's the commander in chief when it comes to security issues. And I think what you have to consistently do is make sure he understands he's the decision maker, right? And so he has to make decisions with respect to how far you're going to go in terms of preventative actions, what you're going to do operationally to disrupt counterterrorism activities, and ultimately, you know, the buck stops in the Oval Office with those decisions. And I think that may be the hardest thing for a president to realize. You know, they're making life and death decisions literally every day based on their policy calculus and their tactical decision. So I think the more you condition the president to have to make those decisions, to understand he is the decision maker, the more likely you're going to have success when something happens to say, you know, this is our responsibility, what do we do?
- [47:33]
Juan Zarate
One thing I think that's important about this sense that's emerged, especially in the last week, of the team, the team with a strong SecDef in general Mattis, a strong, increasingly strong Secretary of State in Tillerson somebody driving a good process in HR McMaster, is that as the team bonds, the likelihood of blaming members of the team, as opposed to saying, we're all in this together, I think is a little bit less. Let me ask you about something that has bothered me in terms of its future implications. It doesn't get a lot of discussion, but I think it goes to the. The Trump moment, if you will. And that is the argument that's been made on the right and on the left, too, that President Trump, this man who was determined to bring the elites to account, has been frustrated by the deep state. It's a term that we're used to hearing, hearing in reference to Turkey or Egypt. But in the narrative that's out there in social media on the left and right, increasingly there is discussion of this deep state that includes the intelligence community, my goodness, even the Aspen Institute, probably not to mention the Washington Post. And so that we're all in league. What's concerning about this is that it's precisely the narrative that our adversaries would most want to see promulgated because it's so divisive. It says to citizens, you know, you can't trust this, these elite institutions. Let me start with you, Mike. What is a sensible person, former Director of Central Intelligence, say and do about this increasingly current idea that's out there?
- [49:47]
Michael Hayden
Yeah, it's hard for the folks in government to argue back. So maybe it's the folks out of government, formally in government, who have to make the strongest argument. Frankly, my definition of the American deep state are veteran experts governed by the rule of law, who are in the United States government. All right. And one of my great fears, David, is that the trend lines are a bit positive now, that the president was going to govern with a small circle of family and friends detached from these larger institutions, as John suggested, whose only interest in life is to make him a more successful president. So one hopes we get over that and get maturation, you know, the inevitability of intelligence that the president recognizes that he depends on these folks for success.
- [50:40]
David Ignatius
I think the I. Well, personal opinion. And then I'll get to your operative question. The idea of a deep state is complete nonsense. And I put it in the category of sophomoric ideas that take hold when people can't explain what's going on around them. And I know something about sophomores. And I think it will fade as a footnote, you know, over time for the reasons that Mike just laid out. As sensible people in the administration gain traction and become important to the President. The idea of the Deep State will just recede as time goes on and eventually be seen as an artifact of this early weird period when this extraordinarily unique President was maturing.
- [51:37]
Michael Hayden
Let me give a footnote to the institution. John and I were part of CIA. Last three presidential transitions, 2000, nobody changed. President Bush kept George on. There were no changes in 2008. You are looking at the only person at CIA who was changed. And President Obama called my deputy Steve Capus saying, you can't go, Steve. You got to stay and keep all those other guys on the staff too. And now we've just had a transition in 2016 in which the director and the deputy director swapped out.012 period, right. Over a period of 17 years. Everyone else are long term intelligence professionals who serve Democrat and Republican administrations.
- [52:24]
Quinta Jurecik
I would joke, by the way, when I left government in 09 that I was the only member of the CT sort of governing council, so to speak. That was gone. Everyone else was the same. I do worry though, a little bit, a little bit more than John expressed. I worry that the deep state, which connotes an anti democratic, conspiratorial power grabbing bureaucracy, that that gets conflated with what are legitimate checks and balances internal to the government.
- [52:54]
David Ignatius
I agree with that.
- [52:54]
Quinta Jurecik
To Mike's point. Mike's point is right. You have to. I mean, Jack Goldsmith from Harvard Law wrote a very good book called Power and Constraint. It was largely about the, the Bush administration. But he makes the argument that, look, there are inherent elements of the American system, the media, lawyers, internal bureaucracy, diplomacy, all that constrain even the most imperial presidency. He wasn't claiming President Bush was imperial, but that was the point of the book. And the reality is that's the way the system is built. And to the extent that we begin to undermine the credibility of what are legitimate checks and balances on power by labeling it deep State because it does connote sort of some military intelligence coup that's in the offing, that's really problematic. And it does then equate sort of the American system to other systems that we consider to be illegitimate that don't abide by democratic principles, that don't. Don't abide by transparent checks and balances. So I do think we've got to do our best from the outside, with the media, with any voice we can to move away from that narrative because it is so potentially corrosive and cynical that I think it does damage to the appropriateness of checks and balances.
- [54:15]
David Ignatius
I think Juan has this exactly right. And if there were truly a deep state as portrayed by its detractors, the best reputation of it is we're here talking about this and we have, you know, and America right now is in the midst of a gigantic internal conversation about all of these things. And we'll sort it out. There's no deep state. There's one has this. Exactly right.
- [54:49]
Quinta Jurecik
Thank you, John.
- [54:52]
Juan Zarate
Without disagreeing with Juan or John, I do want to just note that this characterization of the CIA as part of an elite, that is a rogue elephant was the term. Evidence is overwhelming that that was wrong, but it was believed by large segments of the American public. We are just a democracy, you know, in our bones. You know, our national flag really says don't tread on me. And that's, I think left and right, Republicans and Democrats share that. And I think there has been for many decades a suspicion of the intelligence community as a threat to liberties. You know, this idea of black helicopters is, you know, it's become a laugh line. But there are a lot of people out there in America who have this feeling that these elite institutions do not serve them, but seek to control them. And I just want to note that because it's easy to caricature this and minimize the. The extent to which there's a problem.
- [56:09]
David Ignatius
I don't disagree with that. But you're a spy novelist, David.
- [56:14]
Juan Zarate
I have a black helicopter in my backyard.
- [56:18]
Quinta Jurecik
And he writes scripts too.
- [56:19]
David Ignatius
No, no, actually he's a very good spy novelist. I know foreign intelligence services who use his novels as training. But here's my point, and that's the truth.
- [56:32]
Juan Zarate
If they'd buy more copies.
- [56:36]
David Ignatius
So John Le Carre has, in Tinker Taylor, soldier spy, he has Bill Hayden say the following sentence. Intelligence agencies are not rogue elephants. They are the only true expression of a nation's self conscious. Think about that. I think if you really examine our intelligence agencies here, they very much mirror our democracy in many ways. Without disputing the perception that David has documented, there are no intelligence agencies anywhere in the world, anywhere, that experience quite the level of oversight that we experience with all of its flaws. And all of us here could do a dissertation on how bad it can be. But our Congress gets more intelligence information unfiltered than any other legislature in the world that I'm aware of, to the point that we have to be careful not to share with our Congress in intelligence information that other services give us, because they don't with their own parliaments. So I don't challenge the perception that's out there, but it's I guess where I would come out is we got to work against that because it's not really true, even though it's a deeply rooted perception, as David points out.
- [58:10]
Quinta Jurecik
Let me just two finger this because I think one thing that's interesting and maybe part of the maturation we're seeing, again, time will tell, is an understanding of what foreign intelligence services are doing and even non state actors are doing from an intelligence perspective. And I think that's something that the President has to grapple with. It's obviously something that the agency and NSA have to counter. But the reality for American citizens today is to be less worried about the CIA, NSA, or some deep state trying to control them. I would be more worried about Russian organized criminals getting access to my bank account, and I'd be more worried about Chinese government officials having our fingerprints, which they do, by the way. And that is the new kind of world we live in. And I think, you know, part of the maturation is understanding that this is a much more complicated environment than simply what the CIA or NSA does or thinks. It's actually a global.
- [59:08]
David Ignatius
And this is something too, that I think the three of us spend a lot of time doing as you do, David and Mike in particular, in writing your book, I think you said, my real effort here is to help people understand what this business is all about. A key background factor here, again without challenging that perspect perception, is that we're very young as what I would call an intelligence nation. So the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu was writing about intelligence in very sophisticated ways in the 6th century BC. It's still a handbook on humint. We've only been doing this at the national level, the way we do it now, since 1947. So the idea of intelligence fitting neatly into the American polity, it's got a long way to go. And that's why it's important for intelligence leaders, those currently active and those privileged to be formers, to speak to the American public about what it really does and why it isn't working against them, even though that perception may be out there.
- [60:21]
Michael Hayden
So that harkens to what I tried to say earlier about we rest a bit uneasily inside the American political culture for values we all share, share one impression. Daniel. This is tactile, not intellectual. All right? I've been out and about making speeches. The paperback edition of the book is out and so on. So I'm out in public audiences. What I get back is not the argument. You people scare me. All right, the black helicopter. What I am now getting back is this texture, this ambient feeling of we need you truth tellers to stand tall in the bunker in order to make sure too much doesn't fly off the rails with regard to an administration that I think we all agree is having a bit of trouble finding its footing. And that is a constitutional function that's performed by American espionage to be straightforward truth tellers not unlike your guaranteed rights in the First Amendment.
- [61:24]
David Ignatius
That said, there is a pendulum in American views on intelligence. One of my former my predecessors, a wonderful man named General Vernon Walters, used to say, when the American population public is scared, they can't get enough of us. When they're not scared, they think we're immoral.
- [61:47]
Juan Zarate
Please join me in thanking our panelists.
- [61:53]
Mary Ford
The lothair Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. Thanks this week to the Aspen Institute for providing audio. Our music is performed by Sophia Yan. Please spread the word about the live off your podcast and if you haven't already, do give us a rating and review in the iTunes Store. This episode was titled in honor of Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, but saw it coming and was angry. As always, thanks for listening.
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