NPR’s Leila Fadel speaks with former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta about President Trump’s controversial appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump surprised a lot of people when he chose someone with no intelligence or national security experience to replace Tulsi Gabbard. That man is Bill Pulte, and he’s Trump’s pick to serve as the acting director of national intelligence. Right now, he’s the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency that oversees the U.S. mortgage market. He’s a loyal Trump ally who’s gone after Trump’s political opponents. And, oh, by the way, he’s not leaving his old job for this one. He’s taking on both.
The appointment is getting a lot of blowback from both Democrats and Republicans. So how unusual is a pick like this? To understand that, we’re joined by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who also served as CIA director during the Obama administration. Welcome back to the program. Thanks for being here.
LEON PANETTA: Good to be with you.
FADEL: So is Bill Pulte qualified for this job?
PANETTA: Absolutely not. I think all of us that worked in intelligence understood that when the DNI was created after 9/11 that the fundamental purpose was to have somebody with intelligence experience who could coordinate 18 intelligence agencies and make sure that they were sharing critical intelligence. The best way to cripple the DNI is to appoint somebody who has absolutely no intelligence experience. That’s a death knell for the DNI and what it was designed to do.
FADEL: Why do you think the president chose a person with no experience for this job?
PANETTA: Well, I think it relates more to kind of the role that he’s played not only in the housing area, but the role of basically going after the president’s enemies. He’s somebody who has largely targeted people that the president did not get along with and was part of kind of the president’s retribution system. And so what you have to assume – I think one of the senators said this – that the last thing you need is to weaponize the DNI in going after other people. And so the worst result would be to have somebody who is able to dig into intelligence files and then use that information to basically go after people. That would truly undermine the credibility of the DNI. You might as well end it because nobody is going to pay attention to a weaponized DNI.
FADEL: But what would the point of that be at a time where there is a active war that the U.S. started in Iran, when there are threats domestically? I mean, wouldn’t this position be incredibly important right now?
PANETTA: Absolutely. This is a dangerous world we live in with a lot of flashpoints in the world of today, threats from Russia, threats from China, threats from North Korea. A war in Iran, concerns about terrorism and the threats that they represent. So this is a dangerous world in which we need intelligence to understand what those threats are.
FADEL: The president has disputed intelligence reports. We’ve seen the intelligence community push back in the past. Will that be different now?
PANETTA: You know, the DNI – you know, looking beyond whoever directs the DNI to the people that make up the DNI – are all professional intelligence people. They have backgrounds in intelligence. They know what the role is. And if they find that they have a head person whose sole purpose is to misuse intelligence and to go after political enemies, what’s going to happen is that the intelligence community is not going to work with somebody like that. So you are basically crippling the DNI by virtue of this appointment. That’s going to be the end result.
FADEL: What are the biggest dangers as you look at this appointment?
PANETTA: I think the biggest danger is that you’re getting somebody who’s basically a political hack, who’s going to go into this area without any experience, understanding about the value of intelligence and is simply going to look at intelligence as a weapon to go after political enemies. That’s what’s going to happen here. This guy has absolutely no business working in the intelligence area, but that’s what the president has decided he’s going to do.
FADEL: That’s former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Thank you again for your time.
PANETTA: Good to be with you.
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