Slow-rolling the president
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Slow-rolling the president is the term John Kiriakou used in May 2017 for what he expected the CIA to do about Donald Trump: not resist him, not leak against him indefinitely, but outlast him.

The call from overseas

Asked what his former colleagues were saying, Kiriakou described a friend still serving who had telephoned him recently from an overseas post, asked whether he had been following the news, and then asked the question directly: "do the American people realize how bad this is?" Kiriakou's answer was that they did, "I think Congress is pretending that it's not bad, but I think the American people realize that this president, so early in his term, is just simply out of control."

The specific charge is about competence with intelligence rather than about policy: "he doesn't understand intelligence, he doesn't understand the purpose or use of intelligence, he doesn't like or trust the CIA."

Waiting him out

The agency, on Kiriakou's account, was briefly unsure how to respond, and then settled on the tactic available to any permanent institution facing a temporary occupant:

> "I think in the end the CIA is going to slow roll this president. And what I mean is, they know they can wait him out. Most senior officers in the CIA have been in the organization for 20, 25, even 30 years. They've waited out other presidents, and I think that they believe they can wait out this one, that he won't be around for long."

The arithmetic is the whole argument: a career outlasts an administration, and an institution that need not win an argument need only survive it.

See also

- Donald Trump
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Deep state
- Senior Executive Service
- No good guy
