This is my latest article for a new digital magazine called Medium, founded by the guys who started Twitter.
In my opening remarks, I take on the conflict between the Intelligence Community and leakers. The arguments we hear from Congress and agency heads add up to “Trust us.” I assert that the reason we have trouble trusting them to do the right thing is that during the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 they DIDN’T do the right thing. And then we discovered a torture regime built in our name.
The Intelligence Community has done nothing to atone for the gross failures of competence and ethics committed before and during the Iraq War – all under the brand name of “intelligence.” The IC continues to operate as if its credibility was not gravely damaged by the Bush Administration. Moreover, the Obama Administration has failed to ensure some form of accountability under the rule of law once he took power. It continues to assert that its secret programs should be accepted by the public without question because of supposed integrity that the Community itself has neglected to safeguard.
The Intelligence Community has a brand crisis that dates back to Dick Cheney and John Yoo. They can start to fix it by admitting the severity of the failures a decade ago.