OPINION:
When Sen. Kamala Harris grilled President Elect Donald Trump’s pick for CIA Director Mike Pompeo last week, she demanded to know his personal views on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement.
Never mind, the growing jihadist threat, how the agency missed Russia’s invasion of Crimea, the potential of a nuclear-enabled North Korea, and the growing expansion of China in the South China Sea. Altogether, it was a bizarre exchange.
But apparently, she was onto something.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal, departing CIA Director John Brennan said he wants his legacy to be the work he did to advance the LGBTQ community.
“During his tenure he has put particular emphasis on promoting the interests of gay, lesbian, and transgender officers,” the Journal reported. “He was the first CIA director to attend an annual social gathering of LGBTQ employees and has been known to wear a rainbow lanyard around the office as a symbol of solidarity.
For Mr. Brennan, who said his perspective was informed by growing up ‘a white male from New Jersey,’ diversity of backgrounds leads to better analysis, which in his estimation can prevent intelligence disasters,” the Journal said.
‘”I just think that having those varied perspectives really adds greater color and dimension and diversity to how we look at problems,’” Mr. Brennan told the Journal. “’It gets us away from groupthink.’”
That’s all good – however, the CIA has had some big misses under Mr. Brennan, and the agency has grown more political, as witnessed through the many leaks against Mr. Trump in recent weeks.
It’s time to restore the CIA from policymaker to information provider.
“It will be the CIA’s mission, and my own, if confirmed, to ensure the agency remains the best in the world at its core mission: collecting what our enemies do not want us to know. In short, the CIA must be the world’s premier espionage service,” Mr. Pompeo said in his prepared remarks last week.
Amen.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.