Statecraft

The intelligence community serves the president's agenda — not the other way around

The removal of any intelligence community (IC) professional is never — repeat, never — a threat to our nation’s safety, as the headline of their article claims, and the American people should not be led to believe that it ever could be. It is an alarm that cannot be set.

Russ Travers possesses deep intelligence experience and institutional knowledge — and is a great guy to boot. But he is not irreplaceable; none of us is. Senior executives in an appointed role, in particular, serve at the “pleasure of the president.” Not a quaint phrase. It is the law.

And that is the wisdom of the governance infrastructure that has been created in this country.  Authority and expertise is diffused across many agencies and syndicated among many individuals. This is done on purpose. It can have its bureaucratic overlaps and frustrations, but it helps mitigate the risks of concentrated power and hoarded information found in totalitarian or autocratic governments.