Did Joe Kent do the right thing?

The “should not have launched a war against Iran” crowd, of which this author is a minor member, generally seems to view the resignation by Joe Kent from his position as director of counter-terrorism under the Director of National Intelligence as an heroic, and correct, action. In fact, Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, has written an aritle entitled “Jack Kent a Hero, Tulsi Gabbard a [….] Zero”, Joe Kent Hero… Tulsi Gabbard, a Contemptible, Craven Zero, by Larry C. Johnson – The Unz Review on the grounds that Jack resigned but Tulsi did not. He also states that it was the DNI’s job to determine wether there was an “imminent threat” and that she got it wrong. Most of this group are making out Joe Kent to be a modern “Clark Kent” a/k/a Superman.

Let me offer a dissenting view.

Both Kent and Gabbard are (or were) in the intelligence side of the U.S. governmental apparatus – not the policy making side. Although each of them (as well as the other employees of DNI, not to mention CIA, DIA, ONI, etc. etc.) have opinions on the correctness of the recent Iran adventure, is it appropriate for them to express themselves on policy? Even in private, to the President? Or by a public resignation.

Another veteran CIA officer – Ray McGovern – expressed extreme discomfort when Biden made his CIA director (William Burns) a member of the Cabinet, on the grounds that mixing Burns’ intelligence function with policy risked compromising the integrity, or “even-handedness” of the intelligence being provided to the President.

Now, we are all adults, and realize that nominal “intelligence” officers have inserted themselves in attempted policy formation since at least the time of Allan Dulles, who came into the directorship of the CIA in 1953. But of course, that came (and comes) with a downside. It created the great problem of how the President obtains trustworthy intelligence from the CIA and other intelligence agencies when they are self-admitted policy actors. Namely, can you trust what they say if the underlying intelligence contradicts the policy the top CIA folks have already baked in? This was true for the attrociously bad – read mendacious – intelligence passed up from MACV (Militatry Advisory Command Viet Nam) under General Harkins by his G-2 (chief intelligence officer), General Winterbottom. Much of which was contradicted by independent DIA and CIA analysis coming from the same theatre of operations but utilizing people and a chain of command completely bypassing Harkins. See Neuman, JFK and Vietnam. This was also embarrassingly true for the “disinformation” provided Kennedy by the CIA while the “Bay of Pigs” invasion was being planned.

This problem was sadly instituted from the beginning at the CIA, since it was tasked from year one (1947) not just with collecting and analyzing intelligence, but also with undertaking operations (so-called “covert” operations). Thus, from the beginning, the CIA’s “water” risked pollution if the information collected related to any past, current, or prospective “operation”. And for this reason, JFK was thinking of severing the analysis wing of the CIA from the “operations” wing. But of course his “thinking” ended in Dallas.

In any case, if beyond the institutional problems in information purity already imbedded in the CIA and possibly other intelligence departments of the government, if the CIA and DIA – or today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – involve themselves directly and overtly in policy, the potential compromise to their intelligence is self evident. The President will rightly suspect that any information he gets from what in such cases can only be viewed as “cooked” and, if not valueless, not fully trustworthy.

So when and why should an intelligence officer resign?

The author’s view is that intelligence officers should resign only when they perceive that the core function of providing pure and accurate, or at least good-faith, intelligence is being compromised. For example, when Sam Adams realized that his analysis setting out the order of battle for the Viet Cong at 600,000 was binned and replaced with a 200,000 estimate, solely because the 200,000 figure was consistent with figures from Westmorland’s command, he would have been justified in resigning on such grounds. And he not only did, but sued Richard Helms – the then-CIA director – over the issue! Samuel A. Adams – Wikipedia.

In contrast, had Sam Adams simply opposed the Vietnam war, but had been comfortable that his intelligence estimates were being passed up the chain to the NSC and the President (albeit, completely ignored by them), his resignation would not have been justified. Of course, had he been serving instead in a policy role, such as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (W. Averill Harriman’s role in the Kennedy administration), his resignation might have been justified (depending, of course, on one’s view on the war in Vietnam).

In other words, if you are a plumber and are confident that pure water is getting up the pipe to the customer via the faucet, it is counterproductive to “resign on principle” just because the customer chooses to drink rat urine rather than the pure water your pipes have provided. In today’s context, the dubious choice by Trump to consume the “rat urine” provided by Israel and the DC neocon crowd as opposed to the “pure” water being put through the faucet by the Director of National Intelligence is not – in my peasant-like view — grounds for a resignation by an intelligence officer.

Tulsi Gabbard put out the following statement:

“Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country.” 1/

”Tulsi Gabbard speaks out on Iran after Joe Kent resignation – Newsweek.

This is an appropriate response. It is the job of policymakers – the principal of whom is the President – to make policy. To do this he needs unfiltered and unbiased intelligence. Regardless of Tulsi’s or Joe’s policy views, they need to make sure the President and other intelligence consumers understand that their office is transmitting up clean intelligence, unbiased by their personal views.

Although Mr. Johnson asserts that it was the DNI’s job to assess whether Iran posed in “imminent threat”, I hope not. If so, this itself represents “mission creep” beyond providing pure intelligence. What should have been provided is information on which either the military – read, the Joint Chiefs – and/or Trump and his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor could make that judgment, with the President – as required by the Constitution – having the final judgment – right or wrong. And in any case, is Mr. Johnson implying that just because an intelligence agency says “no imminent threat” (and its hard to believe any intelligence report worth the paper it is printed on would be that categorical about anything – it would likely at most be phrased “high likelihood that no imminent threat exists”) the President is debarred from taking action? That is a new Constitutional principle! Taking that point of view to the “action” end of things, Hitler would have been debarred from sending his tanks through the Ardennes, due to the contrary “findings” i.e. war plans, prepared by OKW (the German General Staff), Patton would have been debarred from crossing the Rhine before Montgomery, technically his commanding officer, and MacArthur would have been debarred from ordering the execution of the wildly succesful Inchon landing (the Joint Chiefs thought he was crazy, but did not dare move the President to order him not to).

And Joe Kent has nowhere suggested that anyone required him to doctor his intelligence findings to say there was an “imminent threat”. On the contrary, it appears for the last 9 months there s was a consistent message passed up by DNI to the National Security Council that there was no such threat. So clearly (a) there was no corruption of intelligence produced by and through DNI and (b) that intelligence got upstairs, at least as far, one presumes, as the NSC, Marco Rubio, and Hegseth. Kent makes no assertion to the contrary. His problem is the awful policy devised by those eminent “statesmen” irrespective of U.S. intelligence and apparently in reliance on Israeli intelligence. One presumes during that period that it got from the NSC to the President. The fact is, wisely or stupidly, the President discounted it, just like Tony Blair discounted his own MI6 intelligence to accept the – in retrospect – mendacious intelligence served up to him by U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq’s “imminent threat”.

So what has Joe Kent done by resigning publicly, on the grounds he stated in his public letter to President Trump?

To be blunt, he has compromised the trust that the President forthwith may have in DNI intelligence product. Had Kent not resigned with his inflammatory letter, Trump might well have grudgingly come around to the view that he had been royally screwed by Mossad, Netenyahu, and Rubio. Perhaps he would slowly have cycled back to consuming what appears to be the excellent DNI work product. However, now, that may be less likely. Kent’s resignation must signal to Trump that officers of DNI feel their duty is to make policy as much as to provide intelligence. This from the get-go corrupts trust in DNI intelligence. Moreover, it indicates that if the President takes actions notwithstanding the obvious implications of some stream of intelligence produced to him, his entire intelligence team may resign on policy grounds or perhaps leak to the press. The problem is that almost no intelligence is black and white, obvious or clear. And indeed, sometimes intelligence consumers with broader experience are much better at drawing sensible conclusions from analysis than the analysts themselves. If the President feels he cannot even receive intelligence without risking leaks and public criticism from his own intelligence providers, he will be much less likely to even allow them to provide him with intelligence in the future, thus compromising his “field of vision” in future policy decisions.

To come to the point, Joe Kent’s duty was in fact to stay in office to make sure the President got the cleanest and most honest intelligence product possible – especially as the Iran war turns into an increasingly unhappy disaster. And to resign only if that information product was being compromised. In his resignation letter, he gave no indication that this was the case.

Joe Kent has not helped the process towards resolution of the Iran catastrophe – he has hindered it.

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1/Now to be fair, Tulsi’s problem – and possibly Joe Kent’s had he stayed in the role – is if either are grilled in the Press or Congress as to what they advised the President. The proper answer to the press should always be “no comment”. The same answer should pertain to Congress, in general. In the event that they are forced to answer, they should of course tell the truth. But think how much easier it is to tell the truth when the only thing you conveyed to the President was, say, an array of possible outcomes in the event of an attack. And how much more embarrassing if you had taken it on yourself to render policy advice and had to convey that negative policy advice to Congress.