The losses to the US intelligence community

America’s intelligence agencies are still reeling from the double dose of enforced resignations of two of the most senior members of their secret community. Like the revolving door of top officials coming and going in the White House, the state department, Pentagon and justice department under President Trump, the intelligence services have now suffered the same fate, with the departure last week of Senator Dan Coats, director of national intelligence (DNI), and Susan Gordon, his deputy. It was a shakedown at America’s top intelligence organisation. This clear-out of highly experienced officials has come at a time when the US needs the best of intelligence analysis about Iran’s interventions in the Gulf, China’s moves on the trade war, Russia’s deteriorating relations with Washington and North Korea’s real nuclear intentions. What worries the US intelligence services, already attacked on numerous occasions by a president who doubts their loyalty and judgment, is that Trump is determined to appoint someone to lead the agencies who will tell him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear. The DNI is the president’s principal intelligence adviser. He is in charge of America’s 17 intelligence agencies, including the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), and masterminds their overall budget of more than $50 billion (some reports say it's $70 billion). The office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), with a staff of around 2,000 people, was created by President George W Bush after 9/11. The al-Qaeda terrorist attack which killed nearly 3,000 people exposed an embarrassing lack of coordination and information-sharing between the different services and the FBI. The only comforting news coming from the White House was the president’s announcement that he had chosen retired Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire to be acting DNI after Mr Coats left last Thursday. As director, since November 2018, of the national counterterrorism centre, one of the mission branches of the ODNI, and a former US Navy Seal Team 6 deputy commander, Admiral Maguire has a wealth of intelligence experience. Navy Seals work closely with the intelligence services, as highlighted by the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. That was an operation coordinated between the Seals, the CIA and the national geospatial- intelligence agency (NGA) with its network of surveillance satellites. Admiral Maguire, 67, was named “Honour Man” by his class of fellow Seal trainees after he passed the rigorous selection process in 1977 while sporting a broken leg. Despite his credentials for the post of DNI, the US intelligence community fears he will just be a caretaker chief before Mr Trump turns to someone totally different for the permanent role, an individual who reflects his view of the world. "The selection of Maguire is a Band-Aid on what has otherwise been a series of serious blows Trump and his administration have inflicted on the professionals of our intelligence community,” a former CIA officer told me. “Maguire is a professional but my concern, and one that is shared by current intelligence officials, is that the temporary stewardship will represent the calm before the storm,” he said. “We have every reason to believe Trump wants a loyalist at the helm of our intelligence establishment, someone who will put his personal interests ahead of those of the American people,” he said. Coats, a political appointee without an intelligence background but with a long career of service in the Senate, survived as DNI for more than two years. But he clashed with the president on several occasions over key policy issues. They included disagreements over Russia’s malign influence in the 2016 presidential election – Mr Trump took a lot of convincing - and the president’s charm offensive with Kim Jong-un. Coats doubted the North Korean leader would ever give up his nuclear weapons, and said so in a public hearing in Congress. Once Coats had resigned, three weeks ago, and earmarked August 15 for his departure date, Susan “Sue” Gordon, his much-respected deputy with more than 30 years in the intelligence community, 27 of them in the CIA, was, by statute, the automatic choice to succeed as acting director of national intelligence. However, she was on a slippery slope. As soon as President Trump suggested he had other people in mind, she took the honourable course and wrote her letter of resignation. She too left last Thursday. US intelligence sources admitted the departure of both Coats and Gordon was a sad day. One source said Coats had been an ideal DNI who represented all the agencies as required but without interfering in the “nitty gritty” work of the different services. Ms Gordon, the source said, had left a deep imprint on both the CIA and the ODNI and her departure would leave a void in the close community. Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, had put it more bluntly. He said in a statement that the exit of Dan Coats and Sue Gordon was “a devastating loss”. "These losses of leadership, coupled with a president determined to weed out anyone who may dare disagree [with him], represent one of the most challenging moments for the intelligence community,” he said. When Coats announced his resignation, the intelligence community was shocked to hear that the president wanted to replace him with John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman and devoted supporter of Mr Trump. Representative Ratcliffe had little experience of the intelligence business. But he proved vulnerable to intense scrutiny by Congress and the media, and agreed to have his name withdrawn when the president contacted him. “The Ratcliffe nomination was an astonishing bit of political malpractice that blew up on the launch pad,” a former senior US defence official told me. “Forcing out Sue Gordon has made, and should make, people nervous about Trump’s plan to politicise intelligence assessments,” he said.