The intelligence community has caught the spotlight thanks to what you might call presidential personnel actions. On the other hand, the IC has always been a cauldron of big personalities dealing with big issues and lots of opinions. Sue Gordon, who was the principal deputy director of national intelligence during the first Trump administration, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to give her insight.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: All right, so there have been these firings and, I mean, this is not unprecedented for a president to replace people in the IC, but give us a sense of what it’s like. I call it a boiling cauldron, but is that a good characterization?

Sue Gordon: We’ll hit two topics. No. 1, the firings. I guess it’s not unprecedented. And I think, as I said in my note, when I was one of the ones who was being shown the door, is on the one hand, the president should have his own team. On the other hand, the idea that you must replace these people who are career professional public servants because you are afraid that they have an opinion or a political view is just wrongheaded. And I think that’s one of the hardest things for political appointees and politicians to wrap their head around is though public servants and federal employees do express our political opinion every four years when we go to the ballot and we close that door. That isn’t who we are. We’re serving America and we recognize, I mean, I served how many? Eight presidents. So this idea that you need to be replacing us because somehow we have an opinion about the policies. It’s just, I think, it’s wrongheaded. And over time what we’re doing is we’re losing half the talent with each administration. And in the case of the most recent firings at NSA, what a terrible time to be losing two of our very best. So I think it’s just a misperception. I think makes us weaker. I think it’s based on what I know to be untrue and I guess it’s his prerogative.

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Tom Temin: Yes, and that was a question I wanted to ask you, too, about having people that you know may never agree with you. Say someone was like a junior Jake Sullivan from the Biden administration.

Sue Gordon: Right.

Tom Temin: Another Republican, say, or a different administration, would it be wise to have someone like that, even if you never agree with them, just so you hear that side?

Sue Gordon: Yeah. Everyone knows that diversity is good, especially for a leader. Everyone knows and sometimes you have such a tight team that you’ll designate someone to be the contrarian just so that you are hearing a counter idea. Certainly in national security that has arcanity to it, you need those leaders, particularly because they are not charged with setting policy. But they are, in a sense, advisers. You need them to be able to say whatever they need to say. And I think you’re seeing, and I think Signalgate, I just named it, is a great example of this gone terribly wrong. I mean, I don’t think the people that were on that call set out to do something that put the nation at risk. But I also think there’s a bunch of people that had no idea what their job really was and were so excited about advancing a policy that they lost sight of the other considerations that they need to. So I think it is problematic when you have people who are more desirous of doing what the boss wants than fulfilling their responsibility because any leader knows that the way good things happen is you have what I call perfect advocacy where everyone’s doing their job as hard as they can and then it comes together to hopefully great outcome. And I think we’re seeing the effect of not having that.

Tom Temin: And on the Signal thing, in particular, the use of that platform. I mean smart political people coming in would say to the career person, ‘Is this kosher?’ Tell me what I need to do to communicate just to make sure we’re following the rules of not getting information out. That seems kind of basic.

Sue Gordon: Yeah, and I think that’s the second piece we talked about the impact of replacing leaders. I think we can’t underestimate the impact of the term that’s going on just in the federal workforce because it is in fact the women and men, even leaders that are in a professional position rely on their women and man to be the keepers of, yeah, I know what I want to do, you can help me how I do that. And I think there’s just such turmoil and you have people who don’t know how to trust and have come in believing that they can only trust the five people that they brought in themselves. That you’re just seeing this kind of weakness happen. That is the reason why you have a stable bureaucracy in some ways in the past. If I were talking to the president today, what I would probably tell him is that His agenda probably isn’t being advanced as effectively as he would want, even if it’s an agenda that not everyone agrees with, because he doesn’t have that professional foundation helping him to achieve it.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Sue Gordon. She’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence and recently joined some boards. And you said your showing of the door. You had a couple of years in the first Trump administration. Was it that much turmoil as it seems to be right now in the IC?

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Sue Gordon: No, I was the first two years, so 17 to 19. So I’m like in the first group of political appointees. This isn’t asthma to a storyline going on. We weren’t trying to stop the president. We were trying to help the president do what he wanted to do within the construct of the system. So it was a lot of work. And I think there was a lot of impedance mismatch between a new president that was economically focused who had people he trusted more than the intelligence and national security communities and then a bunch of professionals who thought that everyone understood what we were doing. So there was friction, but it was more in the how are we going to get things done rather than us and them, I don’t trust it, not going to do it, going to do anyway. So he was certainly a different president, but in a weird sort of way, every president has been different. And I think those first couple of years we were trying to figure out how we serve them. and then over time, his impatience with just getting what he wanted, how he wanted it, and our thinking that we were supposed to be the keepers of the rule of law and kind of president just kind of begat what we have now. And don’t take this to mean that I think that the bureaucracy was perfect in how it responded to a very different kind of president. I think there were things that we could have done better. And I think our mistake was in thinking that he understood and his mistake was thinking that we weren’t trying to help.

Tom Temin: Too bad you weren’t at the State Department for all those years instead of the CIA, you’re very diplomatic.

Sue Gordon: I think there are lots of reasons why people are glad I wasn’t at the State Department.

Tom Temin: Well, you mentioned the economy, and I wanted to ask you too what do you imagine might be going on in the intelligence community now topically because the tariffs and the realignment of everything we’ve understood to be the economic and trading system, this toppling that’s going on. There’s been many reports and analyzes saying, ‘Well, look at Japan is looking at China in a different light. U unthinkable.

Sue Gordon: I think this is one of the greatest negative consequences of this kind of, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’m just going to do it.’ What the intelligence community I’m quite sure is doing is trying to use their wisdom to bring what they know forward about what the considerations are with each of our partners, trying to bring forward what the other benefits we get from those relationships and trying to find their way into the conversation, into the decision-making conversation. In the first administration, we had a little bit of this where decisions were being made in the National Economic Council. That was not typically where the intelligence community played. It was more in the National Security Council. And so we tried to get in. But I would think right now that they are trying to put things forward that allow understanding of other considerations and second- and third-order effects of these actions. And my guess is if my experience is anything with those, it’s hard because they’re probably not in the decision-making meetings.

Tom Temin: Yes.

Sue Gordon: But they’re doing it. I mean, I know they’re turning out and Tom, you asked me a question when we first started this about how we went. I think during my tenure when Dan Coats was the director of national intelligence, I thought our community and that extends to the whole national security community did a really good job keeping its eyes in the boat, right, of not being too distracted by the froth above it. I think that’s harder now. I think it wasn’t just the former first Trump administration, but it’s been kind of 20 years of kind of undermining the integrity of the bureaucracy. And I think it’s pretty hard for people who were used to not being praised publicly to now being excoriated publicly. And I just think the deleterious effect of that is pretty tough. But this is amazing. I hope all of America were listening to this and they would hear me say it. If you knew the people that work in their community, they’re your neighbors, these are people that are so much like you. I can’t think of a single person over my 40 years with whom I worked that didn’t think every day that their job was to keep America safe for democracy. They are you and your aspirations. And so just know that they really are trying to do that every day.

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