Generals in national security posts
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People used to ask him all the time, John Kiriakou says, especially when David Petraeus was director of the CIA, what his thoughts were on having generals run the agency.

The objection

His answer is categorical and does not vary by individual. He is opposed to generals running the CIA, and to generals at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Defense Department, or in any of these national security positions, including national security adviser. 

The reason is a single sentence: generals became generals by saying yes sir.  What you need in a position like that, he says, is somebody who can say, Mr President, let me tell you why that's a terrible idea, and stand up. Generals don't stand up. Not to the commander-in-chief. They say yes sir. So we don't want generals in positions like that. 

The statutory backdrop

The exchange took place around the appointment of Lloyd Austin as defense secretary, and Kiriakou's interviewer laid out the sequence, Austin a four-star general and a Raytheon lobbyist, James Mattis before him also requiring a waiver, and the rule dating from 1948 with only a handful of waivers granted in the whole intervening period. Kiriakou agreed with each element as it was put, and confirmed that Austin was the third defence-industry lobbyist in a row in the post. 

A wider pattern

Kiriakou treats the general officer problem as one instance of a broader failure of candour at the top of American national security. Elsewhere in the same period he described what he had learned from a career spent among senior intelligence officials, diplomats and Pentagon generals: they can all be very convincing. Given a briefing on Afghanistan or Syria or Libya they can make it sound as though the thing is nearly won, and that pulling out now would be a disaster costing international prestige and lives, so give us six more months, give us twelve more months. And then six or twelve months later they repeat it, year after year, and the next thing you know you are bogged down. 

See also

- David Petraeus
- Mike Hayden
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- National Security Council
- Presidents and the CIA
- CIA political neutrality tradition
