![](\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/5d3f6d6e7abb970008b02c75\/master\/pass\/security_dni_19209833955029_featured.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2019 22:03:24 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n The president\u2019s intent <\/span>to nominate Robert Mueller\u2019s chief Capitol Hill inquisitor<\/a> to head the nation\u2019s intelligence community might just be the Trump administration\u2019s most alarming personnel decision yet\u2014even in an administration whose list of departed, disgraced, and indicted former top officials reads like a casualty list from Game of Thrones<\/em>.<\/p>\n The news Sunday that Trump planned to tap representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) as director of national intelligence, replacing former senator Dan Coats, left many even on Capitol Hill scratching their heads: Who?<\/em> \u201cI don\u2019t know John. I\u2019ve met him a couple times, seen him on TV,\u201d Senate Homeland Security Committee chair Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) told Politico<\/em><\/a>, among other choice quotes it gathered.<\/p>\n Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg<\/a>) is a contributing editor for WIRED who covers national security. His next book, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9\/11<\/em><\/a>, will be published in September. He can be reached at\u00a0garrett.graff@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indeed, very few Americans had ever heard of the congressman from Texas\u2019s fourth district until last Wednesday\u2019s House Judiciary Committee hearing, when Ratcliffe lambasted former special counsel Robert Mueller about \u201cnot exonerating\u201d Donald Trump. Watching the hearing on TV with a group of journalists, I turned to my colleagues and said, \u201cHe\u2019s auditioning to be DNI.\u201d<\/p>\n Days later, Axios scooped<\/a> the news of Ratcliffe\u2019s impending nomination, saying Trump was \u201cthrilled\u201d by the congressman\u2019s performance at the Mueller hearing.<\/p>\n That the administration is so predictable in its terrible choices should not make those terrible choices any less troubling.<\/p>\n The men who have occupied the relatively new role of DNI so far are among the most experienced intelligence leaders and diplomats in the country. After the job was created as part of the post-9\/11 reshuffling of the US national security apparatus, George W. Bush tapped an experienced hand to fill it: John Negroponte had served as an ambassador in four countries, including Iraq; been UN ambassador; and worked at the National Security Council. His successor, Mike McConnell, was a vice admiral in the Navy and a former director of the National Security Agency. Barack Obama\u2019s first DNI was another admiral, Dennis Blair, who had led Pacific Command and served as associate director of the CIA.<\/p>\n James Clapper, Obama\u2019s second pick as DNI, was arguably the most experienced intelligence officer<\/a> in the entire country\u2014a career Air Force intelligence officer who had served for four decades, risen to the rank of lieutenant general, and personally headed two of the nation\u2019s most critical intelligence agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Clapper had also served as undersecretary of defense for intelligence, where he oversaw all three of the Pentagon\u2019s intel agencies: DIA, NGA, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs the nation\u2019s spy satellites.<\/p>\n And even though Coats, the outgoing DNI who Ratcliffe may replace, had no field intelligence background, he served in the Army during the Vietnam War, spent nearly 30 years in Congress\u2014in both the House and the Senate, including stints on the intelligence committee\u2014and had served as ambassador to one of America\u2019s top allies, Germany.<\/p>\n Ratcliffe\u2019s experience pales in comparison to any of his would-be predecessors. He served as the mayor of Heath, Texas\u2014population 8,000\u2014for a decade, and while he did a brief stint as a politically appointed US attorney in Texas in the final months of George W. Bush\u2019s administration, his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 on national security matters is practically nonexistent.<\/p>\n He had previously claimed<\/a> to be involved in a single terrorism-related case, against the Holy Land Foundation<\/a>, but appears to have far overstated<\/a> his role. As ABC News\u2019 James Gordon Meek reported<\/a> Tuesday, \u201cThe fact is that @RepRatcliffe<\/a> did not convict anyone in the Holy Land Foundation trial. His staff now admits he simply reviewed the first mistrial and issued no report to [attorney general Mike] Mukasey, which is why no one we contacted remembers him at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly confounding, he asserts<\/a> on his House website that he once \u201carrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day,\u201d which would have been quite a feat, since US attorneys don\u2019t have arrest authority<\/a>.<\/p>\n That lack of experience is almost certain to make Ratcliffe an ineffective DNI, a position that has little direct power and whose few levers and moral suasion only Clapper\u2014the longest-serving DNI yet\u2014managed to handle effectively.<\/p>\n But while Ratcliffe will likely have trouble herding the cats that make up the nation\u2019s 17 sprawling intelligence agencies, ranging from the Justice Department to the State Department to the Pentagon to even the Energy Department, that\u2019s not what seems primed to make him a dangerous DNI.<\/p>\n The biggest danger Ratcliffe poses is to the integrity of the job of director of national intelligence in the first place; the core principle of the intelligence professional is to speak truth to power.<\/p>\n The US spends $60 billion a year on the nation\u2019s intelligence apparatus, a workforce of tens of thousands ranging from CIA officers and FBI agents to NSA cryptologists and hackers, NGA analysts, interpretation experts at the NRO, financial wizards at the Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and much more.<\/p>\n All of that money and all of those workers share a simple uniting goal: To ensure that the president of the United States is, in every conversation and decision, the most informed, knowledgeable, best-prepared person in the room. They enable the president and his advisers to anticipate problems and opportunities; understand the mind, decisionmaking, and internal pressures of foreign leaders far and wide; know from satellites overhead, cables underground, and agents in the field what\u2019s happening the world over\u2014and why.<\/p>\n The career analysts, agents, officers, and leaders of the intelligence community work every day to ensure that the information flowing up to the Oval Office is the most thorough, accurate, and best-analyzed it can be. That mission requires that the information presented to the president be presented in a fair, objective, nonpartisan, and apolitical manner. (The rare instances where the CIA or other agencies have skewed their intelligence toward political ends, as with the run-up to the Iraq War, only underscore the devastating consequences of anything less than fair-eyed analysis.)<\/p>\n That the administration is so predictable in its terrible choices should not make those terrible choices any less troubling.<\/p>\n It\u2019s here that the DNI plays his most important role. By statute, the DNI is the president\u2019s lead intelligence adviser. That\u2019s supposed to mean that the DNI leads the effort to provide the President\u2019s Daily Brief\u2014the world\u2019s most elite newspaper\u2014filled with daily intelligence and big-picture analysis of global, geopolitical trends affecting the US, its allies, and its adversaries. That role of chief intelligence adviser is one that Coats, Trump\u2019s outgoing DNI, never quite grew into. Mike Pompeo arrived first in the administration as CIA director, before Coats was confirmed, big-footed the PDB, and hit it off with Trump before Coats could really establish a bond with the commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n Yet Coats did try to speak truth to power. He spoke up when it mattered, was honest about Russia\u2019s attack on the 2016 election<\/a>, and was willing to contradict<\/a> Trump publicly on the future of North Korea\u2019s nuclear program. One of Coats\u2019 final acts as DNI actually was to appoint the nation\u2019s first election security czar<\/a>. That honesty appears to be a not insignificant part of why Coats was shoved aside, and ultimately out the door.<\/p>\n With a president so divorced from daily reality as Trump, it\u2019s all the more important to fill the role of DNI with someone whose first duty is to puncture the Fox News fever swamp bubble that surrounds the White House, provide real facts and grounded analysis, and ensure\u2014to whatever extent possible\u2014that the information that flows into the Oval Office and the decisions that flow out of it are informed and strategic.<\/p>\n There\u2019s little evidence that Ratcliffe is the man for the job. Beyond his antics cross-examining Mueller last week, he\u2019s long been on the leading edge of criticizing the Russia investigation writ large. He was even the congressman who started the completely false rumor<\/a> that the FBI\u2014one of the intel agencies he is set to oversee\u2014had an anti-Trump \u201csecret society.\u201d<\/p>\n Ratcliffe seems to appeal<\/a> to Trump for the same reason most of the sycophants around him do: Loyalty first and foremost to No. 1<\/em>. But the DNI is not supposed to walk through the door of the Oval Office attempting to please the president\u2014he is supposed to tell the president whatever he needs to hear, consequences be damned.<\/p>\n Trump wants nothing of the kind. Instead, as he told<\/a> reporters Tuesday afternoon, \u201cWe need somebody strong that can really rein it in. Because as I think you've all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok. They've run amok.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that Trump, who has skirmished<\/a> with the intelligence<\/a> community<\/a> ever since the campaign, still sees the truth-telling tradition of the intelligence world as making them his adversaries rather than his allies underscores how little Donald Trump has risen to the role of the commander-in-chief. As The New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s David Rohde wrote this week, the message Trump sends with Ratcliffe's appointment is clear: Be loyal or leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a recipe for the type of geopolitical mistake that gets Americans killed.<\/p>\n The idea that a person prone to wild conspiracy theories might soon occupy the role legally designated to be the final voice in the president\u2019s ear on intelligence matters should terrify Americans\u2014as well as both its allies and adversaries the world over. The fact that Senate GOP members have so far been relatively muted in their support for Ratcliffe encourages hope that maybe this disaster-in-waiting might be averted.<\/p>\n WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here<\/a>. Submit an op-ed at opinion@wired.com<\/em><\/p>\n