To the public, the U.S. intelligence community can look like one big, black, secretive hole. The 17 agencies that make up the community are staffed with tens of thousands of workers who put their lives on the line for their country. But for understandable reasons, most people don’t know what’s going on, lest any slip of the tongue result in botched operations.
But there is a cost to secrecy as well. Overclassification is a recurrent problem — just ask a John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, who is unable to acquire some of the most rudimentary statistics from the U.S. military. With more secrecy comes less transparency, which can correlate to a less informed public.
The one opportunity we have to hear from spy chiefs directly is through the Worldwide Threat Assessment, a report from the Director of National Intelligence that succinctly lays out the dangers, issues, and regional developments that may affect U.S. and global security over the coming year. Traditionally, the assessment is accompanied by a public hearing from the nation’s top spy chiefs, including the Director of National Intelligence and heads of the CIA, FBI, and NSA, where they provide a little more detail. It’s the one time the public is permitted to witness intelligence community leaders answering questions from lawmakers.
Those same leaders, however, are now in discussions with the congressional intelligence committees about possibly canceling the public hearing altogether and replacing it with testimony behind closed doors. The reason given for the cancellation isn’t protecting sources and methods, keeping adversaries out of the loop, or any of the other justification you would normally expect from a Pentagon bureaucrat. The reason, rather, is that they don’t want to disagree with President Trump in public or upset him if their assessments stray from the White House position.
In short: They want to sacrifice transparency and public oversight in order to save themselves from being scolded by the boss.
It’s easy to sympathize with experts who want to avoid a scolding from a boss who’s worried about negative news cycles. Nobody wants to provoke Trump’s fury and risk seeing their budget decline or influence wane. CIA Director Gina Haspel and former DNI Dan Coats have first-hand experience with a Trump tirade — after last year’s threat hearings, both were summoned to the White House for a verbal spanking.
There is a difference, however, between protecting yourself and covering your behind. Choosing to duck your oversight responsibilities for the sake of having a more pleasant day is the latter. Private briefings in the inner sanctum of the intelligence committees are fine and indeed necessary, but they don’t compensate for the glare of the lights bearing down on the witness table.
It’s understandable why intelligence officials prematurely recoil from the spotlight. They’d rather plug away in their offices and keep disclosures to the public to an absolute minimum. There is a reason why you don’t see many intelligence community directors dying to give speeches.
But need we remind them: The taxpayers fund their salaries, the salaries of their workforces, and all of the technology, gadgets, sources, and brainpower they use to keep the United States safe and ahead of the game. The U.S. intelligence community requested a $62 billion budget in fiscal year 2020, all covered by taxpayer dollars.
The least the intelligence community can do is humor the public’s elected representatives for a few hours so they know where some of the money is going.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
