President Trump’s appointment of Rich Grenell as acting Director of National Intelligence has sparked quite a bit of Twitter fury. One concern being raised is that Grenell doesn’t have prior intelligence community or military experience.
And that’s true. But here’s a question: Why is this experience gap a problem for Grenell when it wasn’t for others?
Take President Barack Obama’s inaugural CIA director, Leon Panetta.
While Panetta spent two years as an Army intelligence officer during the mid-1960s, that was the only relevant foundation for his 2009-2011 tenure at the CIA. Panetta was known for his custodianship of budgetary matters in Congress and for his time as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton. He also served as chief of staff. This isn’t exactly relevant to counterterrorism. Would anybody argue, for instance, that Reince Priebus’s tenure as chief of staff counted as intelligence experience? Indeed, I would suggest that Grenell’s seven years at the United Nations and his time as ambassador to Berlin provide at least as much intelligence-related experience as Panetta’s pre-2009 record.
Yet while some senators raised eyebrows over Panetta’s appointment, his nomination received nowhere near the scorn that Grenell’s nomination is now meeting. Much of the media was quietly sympathetic, still in love with newly sworn-in Obama.
But here’s the thing.
Panetta’s tenure at the CIA was actually very successful! It was under Panetta, after all, that the CIA had to recover from losing seven employees in an al Qaeda attack on a base in Afghanistan. Panetta doesn’t deserve blame for that loss: Accepting risk is part of any successful intelligence service. But Panetta regrouped his agency and ensured it could collect the intelligence and complete the analyses that enabled Navy SEALs to locate and kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
My point here is simple. Perhaps Grenell will thrive as the acting director. Perhaps he’ll fail. But it is silly to see so many now attacking Grenell’s “lack of experience” when so few applied that same mantra to Panetta.
