General in firing mood

The National Security Council is being whittled down to staunch McMaster devotees. Anyone recruited by the disgraced Lieutenant-General Mike Flynn, McMaster's predecessor, is being sacked. Six officials have gone in as many weeks. The latest was Ezra Cohen-Watnick. But here's the thing (I love that expression), this guy was the key contact between the National Security Council and the intelligence services. That was his job, and he is 31!!! Now I'm not being the opposite to ageist, but isn't 31 just too young for someone to be holding such a key job and dealing with veteran intelligence officers who have been in the field for 20 years and have more experience about secret work than Ezra Cohen-Watnick knows about pizza-making. I don't want to be rude, but shouldn't the National Security Council be filled with the best of the best, men and women with incredible talent and experience, plucked from the CIA, the Pentagon, State Department and Treasury? OK, he had an intelligence background but only for a fairly limited time. He joined the Defense Intelligence Agency (Flynn's old stamping-ground) in 2010, trained at the CIA's special training centre known as The Farm and served some time in the Defense Clandestine Service (a sort of rival to the CIA) in Afghanistan. He obviously found favour with Flynn who was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, but did his six/seven years with the DIA make him eligible to be appointed Senior Director for Intelligence Programmes on the NSC? I can just imagine how the CIA top hierarchy must have been pissed off having someone of limited intelligence experience from the DIA turning up and demanding this and that. First of all he was DIA not CIA. Under Flynn, the DIA had tried to compete with the CIA by having its very own clandestine service. This angered the CIA at the time because it meant when a DIA officer was posted abroad to a diplomatic mission, there was always rivalry with the CIA station members. Flynn even tried to say that in some embassies it should be the DIA man in overall carge of intelligence-gathering, shunting the CIA resident chief down a peg. Leon Panetta was CIA chief at that time and he had a row with Flynn and told the White House that the CIA had to remain the kingpins in overseas postings. Panetta was a bigger cheese than Flynn and won the day. But that was under Obama. Then along came Trump who made it clear he hated the CIA. He accused them of all kinds of dastardly deeds. Huge rows ensued. When he appointed Flynn as is National Security Adviser (a DIA man not a CIA man), he let Flynn appoint whom he wanted to join his team. For the top intelligence job, he went for Ezra Cohen-Watnick, his protege from his DIA days. But, as everyone knows, Flynn made big Ruskie mistakes and he was OUT. Cohen-Watnick's days were, thereafter, numbered. But he had two "mates" in the White House, Stephen Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, son-in-law etc etc. Doesn't he get around, old Jared? So when McMaster tried to fire him on an earlier occasion, he whinged to Bannon and Kushner and they spoke to Big Donald who stopped the sacking. But McMaster had a second go and this time Trump agreed. Trump probably isn't at all worried about pissing off the CIA, but McMaster has had good relations with the CIA in the past and during his time at the NSC, and he will want to make sure that the intelligence services get a better and perhaps more experienced liaison guy in the NSC. McMaster rules.