8/17/18
An avalanche of retired senior intelligence officials and spies have joined more than a dozen of their former bosses in issuing a public rebuke of President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, the ex-CIA chief who has become a strong critic of the president. In a rare public campaign, a total of 60 former CIA station chiefs, analysts and operations officers — along with a former director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center — declared on Friday afternoon their “firm belief that the country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied before seasoned experts are allowed to share their views.” “We believe equally strongly that former government officials have the right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of being punished for doing so,” they added in a brief statement. The statement follows a similar one issued late Thursday by 11 former directors and deputy directors of the CIA and one director of national intelligence. They served in Democratic and Republican administrations, and decried the removal of the security clearance “as a political tool.” The back-to-back statements also follow a blistering op-ed by retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, who, in an act of solidarity with Brennan, appealed to Trump to revoke his security clearance, as well.
In his first live TV appearance since being stripped of his security clearance, Brennan told MSNBC on Friday that the president's move was "an egregious act" that "flies in the face of traditional practice, as well as common sense, as well as national security." Brennan said it was for those reasons, and not professional solidarity, that so many former members of America's intelligence apparatus felt compelled to speak out. "I think that's why there's been such an outcry from many intelligence professionals," he said. "Not to support me, but to support the principle that security clearances are something that's very, very solemn and sacred, and they never, ever should be used for political purposes — either to grant friends those clearances or to revoke clearances of your critics."
