Watching the continuous rants and ravings of those who oppose our sitting government, especially those who supposedly dedicated their lives to support it, is disgusting. The latest example is the former director of the CIA, John Brennan.
In all my years of public service to our country, be it active-duty military, as a police officer, or even later as a security contractor with the Departments of Defense and State, the thought of going after the commander in chief, my local police chief or those in the rarified air within the Pentagon or the Department of State, never crossed my mind. Of course, there were times that I did not always agree with a decision or particular direction that a leader chose, but they were in charge, and that was it.
I can recall a time or two over the last 40 years or so when leaving an organization was perhaps a not too happy parting of ways. However, that being said, it would never occur to me to denigrate anyone still associated with an organization I had just left.
Recently, I watched an ex-Secret Service officer, one who stated he was a staunch Democrat, say that he would never speak poorly of the administration. His job was to protect the President, period. He had the same attitude that I feel is essential. The duty is to the system or the administration. As long as the orders are legal, you follow them.
It is not the subordinate’s job to make policy; that is for those elected to office. The duty is to support the initiative espoused by those whose very job is to make those decisions and then carry them out. The endpoint is duty is not to a single person but the ideal. This is called ethics, and that is something that is lacking in several ex-administration officials and department heads.
Today it seems that the standard tactic is to try to destroy the people in the administration you don’t like for either personal reasons, out of revenge for a perceived slight, or because of political party affiliation.
These misguided people are missing the point. They did not work for, swear an oath to, or merely support a particular person; they were working for us, the people. To try to destroy our government for one’s gain or because you get your feelings hurt (there is another term, but I will not go there) is abhorrent to me.
This is the height of disloyalty. I don’t mean disloyalty to the current administration or another that was in office at the time, I mean it is disloyal to the very idea of our government.
When I see people that were at the very top of our trusted government organizations try to cast the leaders, past and present, as poorly as they can I wonder if they were ever actually working for us or merely serving their egocentric agenda.
Here is a perfect example and a case in point. John Brennan, the director of the CIA under President Obama, has been stripped of his security clearance. He has threatened to sue the government to get it back. The actions of the former CIA director exemplify the hubris of Mr. Brennan. If you are not outraged, in my opinion, you should be.
When I was in government service, much like many of the contributors here at OpsLens.com, I too had a security clearance. It was of a level that some characterized as a “nosebleed” clearance, but when I left government service, I did not expect to be “gifted” in some way so that I could keep it.
A security clearance is not like a prize you win. It is a tool of the occupation, for a specified period, and Mr. Brennan is no longer in government service. His actions, comments, and retaining of his clearance while in the employ of an arguably less than unbiased news agency leads one to no other conclusion – he no longer needs it. Brennan no longer requires to “be read in” or has a “need to know” about anything of a secret, sensitive, or compartmentalized nature. He no longer rates the access.
Mr. Brennan has been accused, and it is just accusations at this point, of leaking and using classified information for his own political goals. He has accused the President of treason; something he knows is legally incorrect. But even before that, he was rightfully accused and had to admit that he had misled Congress during his tenure as CIA director. The accusation was that the CIA was spying on the Senate computer system and removing damaging information from systems the committee had access to during their investigations.
In March of 2014, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein accused the CIA of secretly removing classified documents from her staff’s computers in the middle of an oversight investigation into the aggressive interrogations methods used and supported by Mr. Brennan.
Brennan openly stated that the CIA denied the accusations and said that they, the CIA, would never do that.
“As far as the allegations of CIA hacking into Senate computers – nothing could be further from the truth. We wouldn’t do that. I mean that’s, that’s, that’s just beyond the scope of reason,” Brennan told the Council on Foreign Relations.
Brennan said in a statement that he was “deeply dismayed” that some members of the Senate have made “spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts.”
Then in July of the same year, after an IG investigation, then-Director Brennan apologized to the Senate committee and stated that the CIA had in fact been spying on the Senate investigation.
“I recently received a briefing on the IG’s findings, and want to inform you that the investigation found support for your concern that CIA staff had improperly accessed the SSCI shared drive on the RDINet when conducting a limited search for CIA privileged documents,” Brennan wrote, according to the document.
“In particular, the OIG judged that Agency officers’ access to the SSCI shared drive was inconsistent with the common understanding reached in 2009 between the Committee and the Agency regarding access to RDINet. Consequently, I apologize for the actions of CIA officers,” he added, expressing a commitment to fix “the shortcomings that this report has revealed.”
Feinstein said that she had “grave concerns” the CIA search of the Senate staff systems may have violated federal law regarding domestic spying as well as congressional oversight responsibilities under the Constitution.
Although Brennan remained the CIA director, this lack of candor would have, for anyone else with his level of clearance, be immediate grounds for revocation of that clearance or even dismissal.
What Brennan is doing now is striking back at a President he doesn’t like. Shortly after being removed from his CIA director’s position, Brennan became a paid commentator for CNN. He regularly speaks out against the Trump administration and, in turn, the sitting government of the United States. Brennon’s action is like the spoiled child. He is displaying the very face of petty, revengeful, and morally repugnant activity by one who swore to serve.
If Mr. Brennan thinks he knows better and will make decisions that as far as he is concerned are of a higher calling, he is fooling himself. The old story of the emperor’s new clothes comes to mind. He seems to believe that the law or the rules simply don’t apply to someone such as he.
Evidently, Mr. Brennan thinks he will save the country from what he perceives as an evil administration even though it was duly elected by the people of the U.S. His contention that a foreign government, or a conspiracy, or maybe even the tooth fairy installed Donald Trump is delusional, no matter how much he wishes that were true.
He has abandoned the oath he swore to uphold and now belongs in the same category as the holier-than-thou, I- know-better-than-you, self-inflating individuals such as Snowden, Manning, and Reality Winner.
