More than 100 former intelligence chiefs and senior government officials have rallied around former CIA Director John Brennan after President Trump, angered by Brennan’s increasingly partisan and polemical broadsides, revoked his security clearance. In response, Brennan has threatened to sue Trump.
Brennan and his colleagues who’ve rallied to his cause are hypocrites. Put aside the lack of self-awareness on the part of the retired Gen. David Petraeus, who signed the letter despite subordinating his own oath to ego. While I share Brennan’s concerns about many of Trump’s policies, and the manner in which Trump treats the institution of the presidency, Brennan’s partisan broadsides do more damage to the intelligence community than Trump. They reinforce all of Trump’s suspicions about the partisan nature of the CIA and the inability of its employees to separate personal political leanings and policy preferences from analysis.
The simple facts are these: There is no right to retain a security clearance upon the conclusion of one’s employment. Traditions and policies are not legal rights. Increasingly, public figures like Brennan misuse their clearances to imply inside knowledge as they seek public platforms, often raking in substantial speaking fees or media contracts in the process. If Brennan or any predecessor had a need to consult on any particular program with current employees of the intelligence community, the director of national intelligence or other intelligence agency heads could read them into certain programs on a limited or temporary basis. Perhaps now is time to end the privilege by which any security clearance is extended beyond term in office.
Brennan’s real hypocrisy, however, is to complain about Trump politicizing security clearances when, for years, it has been the intelligence community that has corrupted the process. Consider the CIA’s revocation of clearances for National Security Council staffers with whom they have had policy disagreements.
Recall this Politico story on former national security adviser Michael Flynn from February 2017:
Or this story about the Pentagon also playing politics with security clearances:
In both cases, politics, rather than security, influenced the decisions, and yet Brennan and those rallying to his defense remained silent.
There have also been a number of cases of opponents to the Trump administration celebrating revocation of interim clearances, normally issued after cursory review because backlogs for full clearances take so long. Remember this headline from CNN: “The White House chief calligrapher has a higher clearance than Jared Kushner.” Let’s put aside the fact that calligraphers with clearances show just how out of control the clearance process has gotten. The whole reason administration opponents went after interim clearances — part and parcel of every administration during its first years — was to try to win through technicalities what they could not through elections and policy debates.
There is an irony when the media and partisan actors defend clearances for people who are out of office but celebrate withholding them from those actually working in this or any administration. Trump may be acting out of selfish motives, but it has been Brennan’s over-the-top polemics that undermine the intelligence community and the hypocrisy of his colleagues that weaken the clearance process itself.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
