Colonel Ken Allard to General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence (DNI): Suggest You Resign Immediately
Date: 10/16/14 03:0
Subject: FW: Colonel Ken Allard to General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence (DNI): Suggest You Resign Immediately
ALLARD: An open letter to the Director of National Intelligence
By COL Ken Allard , US Army (Retired) - – Thursday, October 2, 2014
Dear Jim:
Because we have been friends for more than a decade, I think you should resign as America ’s chief intelligence officer. Both for your own integrity as well as an example to the nation’s foremost generals, you should do this immediately. I honestly wasn’t watching “60 Minutes” last Sunday night when President Obama threw you under the bus, claiming that you and the intelligence community had under-estimated ISIS .
Frankly, my concern centered more on the performance of Tony Romo than on Barack Obama. But Sunday evening revealed something deeply and profoundly troubling about the endlessly evasive Mr. Obama. How can a man smart enough to hoodwink the Electoral College twice in four years possibly be dumb enough to turn you and our colleagues in the silent service into his personal punching bags? What was that, Mr. President, another of your famous ‘latte salutes’?
Even with a complicit, compliant coterie of media fellow travelers waxing orgasmic over his every utterance, Mr. Obama surely knows that intelligence officers are fanatics about keeping records. Like when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed she was always being blind-sided by intelligence developments, our mutual friend, former CIA Director
General Mike Hayden, not only documented the dates when she had been briefed – but also had copies of the presentation slides.
The same story applies with the President’s Daily Briefing, which Mr. Obama may or may not have read. So how could this White House possibly believe that someone from Fox News won’t manage to track down Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, recently “retired” as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency? “General Flynn, how did your superiors respond when you first warned them about emerging threats from ISIS and the Khorasan group? And because of your well-known reputation for candor, were you fired as DIA Director for telling the
truth about ISIS ?”
Jim, your steady rise through our ranks shows that you always understood the First Rule of Intelligence Officers: Although the boss is never wrong, always be able to prove that your estimate was better than his. And that you tactfully told him so.
This principle has never been difficult to apply with a president who constantly alienates friends, embraces enemies and spouts endless torrents of disinformation. So we understood – sort of – when you testified to Congress in 2011 that Egypt ’s Muslim Brotherhood was a secular “umbrella group” that had largely “eschewed violence.” We knew that you knew otherwise and figured you were just providing cover for the boss, another clown act in the daily Capitol Hill circus.
But the problem with such dissembling is that the DNI is supposed to be the nation’s chief intelligence officer – trust being the key to his job performance and credibility. Any of us who have ever served in a craft where preserving one’s own secrecy, stealing the other guy’s secrets, and routinely employing deception to do so can create an uncertain moral universe. The intelligence officer’s personal integrity is one of the few constants in that ever-shifting hall of mirrors.
So what happens when DC ‘intell-i-crats’ shade the truth in congressional testimony or appear to tip the intelligence scales for purely political reasons? So is ISIS a threat to the American homeland – or not? Is Vladimir Putin the newest threat to European security or just a 19th century misanthrope soon to be eclipsed by 21st century modernism?
The candid judgments an intelligence officer is prepared to give often reflect his faith in a chain of command that has his back. In short, can he and his colleagues trust the boss?
Jim, you were selected as DNI because of your reputation as the kind of leader people instinctively trust. More than anyone else, you also understand that the president is responsible for the nation’s intelligence system, his decisions and preferences inevitably determining the quality of intelligence he receives.
If the chief executive deliberately averts his eyes from the real world, then the fault rests neither with you nor the intelligence community. Presidents are accountable for the advice they take as well as what they choose to ignore, including ISIS .
But if he won’t listen, then why should you stay? My friendly suggestion is that you and the nation’s other top generals step away from this president, letting history decide his fate.
A generation ago, your predecessors failed to confront their president over his leadership of the Vietnam War, thus sharing full responsibility with LBJ for every subsequent tragedy in that long debacle. The vital lesson from their example: Far better to resign with honor rather than to let down the American people who pay your salary.
Col. Ken Allard, retired from the Army, is a former NBC News military analyst and author on national security issues.
Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2014/10/colonel-ken-allard-to-general-james.html
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