Never Give an Inch, page 15
This is not to say we should exercise our capabilities—military and otherwise—irresponsibly. The best way to keep America safe isn’t by getting into unnecessary confrontations that could cost American lives. The best strategy is to be so strong and so willing to use force over a handful of no-BS imperatives as to stop adversaries from inflicting harm. Deterrence requires convincing your rivals not to take certain courses of action because of the intolerable consequences they will suffer in response. Drawing clear lines of deterrence and defending them relentlessly stops bad actors. Weakness provokes them.
There is precedent in American history for this idea. President Teddy Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy encompassed something of a deterrence principle when he famously said he preferred to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Before rising to the presidency, Roosevelt was an assistant secretary of the Navy, and he was heavily influenced by the book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, by Alfred Thayer Mahan, a Naval War College professor who argued that control of the seas was the key to geopolitical power. Later, Roosevelt built a fleet of modern and powerful battleships—“The Great White Fleet”—and showed off this armada to the world. This waterborne big stick signaled to other world powers not to screw with America. During the Cold War, America’s nuclear arsenal served as the ultimate deterrent against the Soviet Union and any other enemy contemplating a dramatic attack against the United States or our allies. When you wield the threat of unspeakable destruction against your adversaries, it causes them to think carefully about their actions.
Like President Reagan before him, President Trump was willing to talk to enemies such as Kim and Putin, but they always knew that we would bring out the hammer if we had to. Whether by words (threatening North Korea with “fire and fury”), kinetic action (the Soleimani strike), or economic warfare (vigorous sanctions against Iran and Russia), our enemies knew we would punish bad behavior. In addition to wringing greater amounts of defense spending out of NATO allies, we also set up America’s future deterrence capabilities by funding our military to the tune of $700 billion at the end of 2017. We needed to revamp a military that risked losing its edge to China—and there is still much more work to do there, especially in bolstering our naval- and cyber-warfare capabilities. And judging by the situation in Ukraine that rages as I write, the United States must remain prepared to meet the menace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia—and all bad actors—with strength. I’m proud to say that the world can learn from the Trump administration’s example of drawing clear lines of deterrence and then defending them relentlessly.
UNDERSTANDING THE PUTIN REGIME
Establishing deterrence is most important when it comes to dealing with the actors that can harm America most. Today, that’s the CCP, first and foremost. But Russia is a threat, too. While the Soviet Union that I confronted as a young lieutenant is no more, there are still important reasons to maintain deterrence against Russia and its efforts to undermine the West. The country is led by a regime—not just one man—that is not afraid to use hard power. It maintains a global footprint, with partners in China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria. Russia is striving to control the Arctic territory adjacent to the United States, and has developed powerful space and hypersonic capabilities to deliver nuclear warheads, of which it has about 4,500. Russia continues to flood the world’s screens and smartphones with fake news. The wily man in the Kremlin still runs the world’s eleventh largest economy as of 2020—one with an ability to shape energy and commodities markets. Even if that ranking has dropped since the invasion of Ukraine, Putin still wields quite a bit of leverage.
To understand the Putin regime’s enmity toward the United States, you must understand the man himself, as well as those around him. Ever since becoming the president of Russia in 2000, Putin has been on a messianic quest to restore Russia’s lost Soviet-era power. A former KGB agent, Putin regards the downfall of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” and he wants a revived Russian empire. Putin sees the West as an obstacle to this goal, and he is committed to undercutting the United States and our allies everywhere. His aggression is also a reaction to shortsighted Western strategies of regime change or open-ended military campaigns. American interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in this century have heightened Putin’s paranoia—an enduring characteristic of Russian leaders. He fears that he could be the West’s next target for removal.
Of course, Putin’s project of returning Russia to glory has completely backfired with the humiliating performance of the Russian military in Ukraine, and the coalescing of the West against his deranged effort. A true resurrection of the USSR is impossible, he must know. But the Finlandization of the former Warsaw Pact nations—limiting their choices of allyship with the threat of force—is a project worthy of Putin’s effort. It might well succeed if the West fails to protect the sovereignty of NATO’s eastern flank allies. We must draw lines of deterrence and defend them relentlessly.
Further from Europe, Russia wants to be a power broker in the Middle East and has in the last few years solidified relationships with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Russian mercenaries unofficially under Kremlin control, such as the Wagner Group, have fanned out across poorly governed countries such as Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Mali. Hiring private contractors helps the Putin regime avoid official casualty counts and gives the Kremlin plausible deniability for abuses such as looting, torture, executions, and forced disappearances. Closer to the United States, Russia has successfully cultivated relationships with atrocious regimes in Cuba and Venezuela as part of a plan to gain military footholds in the Western hemisphere, close to America’s borders.
Most troubling for the United States is the bond between Russia and China. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share the goal of weakening the United States and the Western alliance. In early 2022 the bear and the dragon gave each other a sloppy wet kiss, when Putin and Xi formalized what they are calling a “no limits” partnership between their nations just prior to the Beijing Olympics and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and I suspect the Chinese are lying that they didn’t know Putin’s invasion was imminent. Those who suggest that the United States try to forge a partnership with Russia as a hedge against China are untethered from the reality of Putin’s unyielding hostility toward the United States and his complete untrustworthiness. An American partnership with Russia is a fool’s errand so long as Putin and his thugs are in power. We must therefore deter Putin from pursuing his dreams of a revived empire, as well as limit Russia’s ability to operate as part of a powerful bloc that includes China and Iran.
THE RUSSIA HOAX’S DAMAGE TO AMERICAN DIPLOMACY
From our first meeting in November 2016, President Trump and I were both seeking to build our policy around these twin objectives. Getting to a better place with the Russians was a worthy goal but difficult to achieve.
Between Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the US-Russia relationship was already badly strained even before 2016. Then things got even worse because of Russia’s feeble but real efforts to sow chaos around the 2016 presidential election. I often reminded the “Russia, Russia, Russia” crazies that Ted Kennedy believed the Russians were messing with US elections as far back as the 1980s. Call it more than four decades now that Russia has been trying to foment strife in the United States. There is nothing new under the sun.
This brings me to January 6. No, not that January 6, the one the Left wants to exploit for political advantage. I’m speaking of January 6, 2017—two weeks before we came into power. On that day, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report, the Russia Intelligence Community Assessment, or the Russia ICA. It alleged, among other things, that Putin sought to influence the presidential election and that he and the Russian government preferred a Trump victory. On that same day, FBI director Jim Comey presented President-Elect Trump with the classified version of that same document.
It was a setup.
I first learned of this meeting from Steve Bannon. I was still a member of Congress when Bannon asked me to come to Trump Tower for an intelligence briefing with Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and Admiral Mike Rogers, then the head of the National Security Agency. The CIA opposed my attendance—after all, I was but a mere congressman, and they assertedly were worried that this would impact my confirmation. Ultimately, because I had a top-secret security clearance already in place, they relented. I was one of the few people that attended that gathering that had a clearance sufficient to read the most highly compartmentalized version of the report.
This gang presented a rather dry summary of the Russia ICA. When the meeting ended, Director Comey asked President-Elect Trump if he could have a few minutes alone. We all left. Being the only participant in the meeting with a preexisting clearance, I headed down the hall to a secure facility where the top-secret, compartmentalized version of the ICA was in a safe. As I read it, I instantly came to two conclusions. First, this issue was going to be part of my life for my entire time at CIA. Second, this product was different from all the other intelligence products I had previously read during my time on the House Intelligence Committee. The intelligence regarding Russia’s effort was real, but the ICA’s narrative was something else. It seemed to me that the ICA was a political document designed by political leaders—which is to say, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan—to provide a foundational myth that Trump and his team were tainted by Russian ties.
How was this like no intelligence estimate I’d encountered in my years of reading these documents?
First, it is only on the rarest of occasions that a president would direct his intelligence community to prepare an intelligence estimate on a foreign adversary’s clandestine activities for the express purpose of publishing it in a few weeks. The speed suggested a rush to damage Donald Trump before he took office.
Second, the fact that the director of national intelligence, the national security advisor, the FBI, and the CIA all created specially focused teams to perform this miracle was highly unusual.
Third, it struck me as irregular that the intelligence community had produced three separate versions: an unclassified version for the public, a secret-level version for congressional oversight committees, and a top-secret-level, highly compartmentalized version, which was the one that I read that day. This top-secret version had been shared with only a handful of folks inside the intelligence community, plus the Gang of Eight group of top leaders in the House and Senate.
Fourth, President Obama had demanded the document itself be prepared on a timeline that was uncharacteristically short for a deep and important assessment. It should have taken months. This came together in weeks.
All of it added up to one thing: this was a political document.
Of course, I didn’t know much of this on January 6, 2017. I learned many of these details after I became the director. But even then, a simple reading of the document, combined with the bizarre briefing, suggested something was wrong.
As for the end of the January 6, 2017, meeting, I did not know what had transpired when Comey asked to be alone with the president after the larger group briefing. I thought it might be that Comey was offering to tender his resignation. Trump was a new president, so perhaps Comey thought it useful to let the president have his choice for FBI director. It also crossed my mind that the president would provide Comey with a vote of confidence by rejecting a tendered resignation, thus giving Comey valuable approval from the new administration. While I do not know exactly what happened between the two of them, I know it wasn’t Comey offering to resign. Imagine you’re a brand-new president, with zero experience, receiving complex, arcane intelligence briefings, sitting alone with an FBI director you don’t know. Then you’re told there is information proving that you did what the dirty Steele dossier alleged? You’d come to be leery of the intelligence community, too.
The release of the Russia ICA turned the volume up to eleven on the amount of noise surrounding Russia and the Trump campaign. Talking heads on TV intensified their speculation that President Trump was a Russian asset. The president, in turn, was constantly lamenting how President Obama had spied on him and his friends. One day, I was briefing the president in the Oval Office on a remarkable new American espionage gadget. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats suggested we call it “the Trump.” The president, without skipping a beat, offered, “No, it should be called the Obama, because its purpose is to spy on people.” On another occasion, he insisted, “My Mike, the only interactions I’ve had with Russia involve pageants.”
Overall, the Russia Hoax created twin challenges. A president wrongly accused of being an asset of a foreign country had nearly zero space to befriend that nation, in any way. Secondly, it drove an unproductive wedge between the FBI and the president as well as, to a lesser degree, the president and the entire intelligence community.
A few weeks later, shortly after becoming CIA director, I launched my own effort to get to the bottom of the ICA business. It was like chasing a ghost. The CIA team that worked on the project was loathe to share all that they knew. They answered my questions, but I could tell early on that it would take near-waterboarding to get them to volunteer a single fact. I don’t think it was because they were partisans. I think they were doing their best to protect the institution that they knew had been subject to inappropriate political influence. Most of what I learned about the ICA came from those who had been kept away from its drafting. I discovered that senior analysts who had been working on Russia for nearly their entire careers were made bystanders. Indeed, the head of the analysis unit, a man with forty years of experience, along with his deputy, were almost entirely shut out of developing the ICA’s conclusions.
In February 2017, a senior career analyst and his colleague approached me to say that they had formally and vigorously objected in writing to two of the central features of the ICA. Their objections were twofold. First, it was their judgment that there was no basis for the claim that Putin had sought to undermine Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump. Second, they believed that the ICA’s mere mention of the unvetted, lie-ridden document known as the Steele dossier—which instigated a raft of unlawful FBI spying on the Trump campaign—was analytic malpractice. They told me that Brennan believed this second point, too, but Comey didn’t. So, Brennan and Comey struck a compromise in the drafting process and referred to the Steele dossier in a footnote. These two analysts were enraged even at that outcome and protested to Brennan in emails that I have read. They were essentially told to pound sand. The politics of burning Donald Trump mattered more than anything else. These two officers had known Brennan for decades. They were not surprised at how he had navigated this one.
I consider it darkly humorous that after leaving Langley, Brennan unwittingly advanced Putin’s goal of inflaming American civic disunity by stoking the Russia Hoax on TV. Historically, former CIA directors have stayed out of the limelight immediately after leaving office. Brennan did just the opposite: He was a regular on MSNBC and CNN, saying that Trump was a Russian stooge or worse. I sent him a polite message asking him to back off. I reminded him that he had told me how important it was that intelligence leaders never permit themselves to be drawn into political battles. Yet he continued to spin lies. My team described Brennan as a liberal hothead and suggested it was best to leave it alone. But eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. The entire process of the ICA was a political hit job on President Trump, and it was clear much of it was Brennan’s doing. With every TV hit, Brennan damaged American national security by constraining the president’s ability to deal with Russia. I called him directly.
“John, you need to get off stage. Your commentary is hurting morale. They know the attacks you’re leveling are political, and that’s not consistent with the agency’s traditions.”
“Mike,” said Brennan, “Trump is threatening our democracy. It’s not just Russia. You all are going to hand the Iranians a nuclear program.”
“John, you all had a different approach on Iran. You were idiots for providing a terrorist regime $150 billion.”
“Mike, I’m not going to stand for that!”
“Yeah, that and the national anthem!”
Click.
* * *
Meanwhile, in May, former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as a special counsel to investigate the allegation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and subsequent Russia-related developments. In June 2017, the Mueller team asked to interview me. Apparently, they wanted to ask about a particular meeting in the Oval Office from the previous March—one that I surely would not remember, given that I briefed the president nearly every single day. Moreover, if President Trump had asked me to do something improper, illegal, or even merely bothersome—Team Mueller’s theory—I would absolutely have remembered. So, my first thought was to tell Mueller to take a hike. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe it was important to kill their conspiracy theory with the facts on how I had interacted with President Trump over the investigation. I also wanted to tell them what I knew about how the ICA had been built.
We set a date for the interview. I didn’t tell the president or anyone else. The media didn’t report on it. The interview focused on an occasion I was thought to have stayed behind with the president. The investigators wondered if the president had asked me to deny key documents to the oversight committees, including the House Intelligence Committee led by Adam Schiff, a partisan Democrat. The questioning, conducted in my office at Langley, went something like this:
