United States President Donald Trump speaks to 300 people at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters January 21, 2017 in Langley, Virginia.

United States President Donald Trump speaks to 300 people at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters January 21, 2017 in Langley, Virginia. Olivier Douliery / Pool via CNP /MediaPunch/IPX

No Way to Honor Sacrifice

On Saturday, President Trump stood in front of the CIA’s Memorial Wall and gave a speech that said more about himself than those the wall commemorated, or the agency they served.

On Saturday, in front of the Memorial Wall at the Central Intelligence Agency, President Donald Trump delivered a speech. It was heartening that Trump—along with his vice president and his chief of staff—visited the Agency on his first day in office. After a tumultuous period in which the president-elect had disparaged the Agency as the people who blundered into the Iraq War and compared its employees to Nazis, it was good and right that the president went to mend fences. And had the president delivered his speech off camera, inside “the bubble” at Agency headquarters, the whole thing would likely have gone over very well.

Instead, the president turned the Memorial Wall into a political prop and delivered a campaign speech. The speech was offensive in both style and substance.

It made me think back to my own introduction to the Agency. In the spring of 1999, when I was a junior in college, one of my professors asked to see me. I had hardly distinguished myself academically at the University of Pennsylvania up until that point, and in a class filled mostly with wealthy northerners—including the eldest son of the president—I was an outsider: from East Tennessee and paying my way through college via an Army ROTC scholarship. Nonetheless, I made friends easily and was popular with my professors—mainly because I always came to class eager to learn but didn’t seem to care about my grades (and had the grade point average to prove it).

My professor, who met me one Sunday after we both had left our respective church services, explained that he had an aunt living outside Washington, D.C., who would be interested in speaking to me. Telling me little more than that, he gave me a phone number, shook my hand, and wished me luck.

I somehow knew exactly what this was about, and that evening called my professor’s aunt. After a few conversations with her over the next several weeks, I went away for a summer of Army training and promised to call her when I returned.

That summer, part of which I spent at Fort Bragg doing an internship of sorts with the 82d Airborne Division, confirmed that I wanted to be an Army officer. In the fall, I called my professor’s aunt and politely informed her that I had decided to take a commission in the Army. The truth—and the reason I mention any of this—was that I was also intimidated: I wanted to serve my country, but at the age of 21, I couldn’t imagine choosing a career where I might face no end of hazards and not see my family for upwards of a year at a time.

Last year, while working at the Department of Defense, I went to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency for some meetings. On my way out, one of my Agency colleagues asked me if I had ever visited the Memorial Wall, which I had passed on the way in. I had not, and we walked over.

The Memorial Wall is one of the most haunting memorials I have ever seen in the U.S. federal government—more unsettling than any military cemetery I have visited, from Gettysburg to Normandy. Below the famous anonymous stars themselves sits a book that explains the year each star was added and, sometimes, offers the name of the Agency case officer or analyst killed. Some stars—even some stars going back decades, to the height of the Cold War—do not have a name that accompanies them.

It is sobering to realize that each of those stars on that wall represent hundreds of men and women who had the courage to do what I could not bring myself to do: leave their friends and family and sign up for one of the most lonely, demanding jobs in the U.S. government—all with the knowledge that if they were caught, they faced not only torture and a gruesome death but the prospect that their families might never learn how or why they died.

That’s why the Agency employees with whom I spoke over the weekend were appalled by the president’s speech—that he would cheapen the most sacred space at the Agency, that their leadership would allow it to happen, and that some of their co-workers would disgrace themselves and the Agency by raucously applauding lines from a stump speech.

It’s tough to place too much blame on the Agency’s leadership: Their position with the new president is tenuous, at best. The Agency needs some very important things from the president. It needs him to take his daily briefing, and to take seriously—and keep quiet about—the clandestine operations for which the Agency puts the lives of Americans at grave danger. There is little reason for optimism thus far that the president will deliver on either requirement.

But while it’s tough for anyone to say no to the boss—especially when placed at such a disadvantage up front—the Agency’s leadership is going to encounter a staff today that is livid with the way in which the speech was delivered. The fact the speech was given on a Saturday, when only those Agency employees most enthusiastic about the new president would come in off their weekends, will also be a point of dissatisfaction. For those who weren’t there or for the leaders sitting in the front row, some may feel they were made to look a fool, seeing their Agency turned into another campaign rally and hearing their professionalism questioned—yet again—by the media.

Quite apart from the Agency, though, all Americans should have been worried by the substance of what the president said. I have spent much of my adult life in the national-security institutions of this country and am inclined to consider them largely benign. But even I was unnerved by the president going before the world’s most powerful intelligence service and declaring war on the media.

Think about this, for one moment: The president stood before an organization that runs innumerable clandestine, deniable operations and called out, by name, a journalist who had displeased him before a laughing, clapping crowd. You do not have to be a member of the American Civil Liberties Union to be scared by that.

You also don’t have to be one of the several thousand Americans deployed to Iraq to understand how the line about taking Iraq’s oil will go down there. Trump’s rhetoric along these lines was a problem when he was a candidate. Now that he is the president, Iran’s militias and their media will have a field day, putting the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk.

Thankfully, Agency employees showing up for work on Monday will not share the political sympathies of Saturday’s self-selecting partisans. There are both Republicans and Democrats among them, but the staff is largely nonpartisan. Most Agency employees will have been as offended by what took place on Saturday as any other Americans, and few if any would support a crazy attempt to siphon off Iraq’s oil.

But this past weekend’s episode offered an important lesson.

As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. The president is exactly the man he was while running: petty, vindictive, and easily distracted by blows to his ego. Saturday afternoon’s surreal press conference—in which the president sent out his spokesperson to make demonstrably false claims about the size of the crowds at the inauguration—was consistent with the president’s remarks earlier in the day. Many Americans—and especially those on the right—convinced themselves that the man they were electing would be moderated by the office. That will not be the case. We have four years of this in front of the Republic.

NEXT STORY: The Foreign Crises Awaiting Trump

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.