Outgoing National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who resigned Monday night, made one, possibly two, grave mistakes. First, he secretly discussed lifting sanctions during illicit phone calls with Russia’s ambassador. Second, he may have lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his activities.
That second charge, if true, alone was a firing offense. But the first charge is more alarming.
Those of us who hold conservative views on national security howled when President Obama got caught on a hot mic in 2012 promising Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev a strategic ice cream cone for Vladimir Putin. That was an act of betrayal, meant to be concealed from American voters.
Now some pundits on the right hypocritically dismiss Flynn’s back-channel valentines to Moscow as no big deal. But the allegations cut to the core of national security: A not-yet-in-office presidential adviser undermined the incumbent administration and evaded the will of Congress by acting surreptitiously to favor a hostile power.
There was one way for Flynn, who went quiet the last couple days, to clear his name. He didn’t take it. But first, some backstory on Mike, who long served our country well.
I met Mike in 1985, when we were captains in the Military Intelligence Officers Advanced Course (our end-of-course exercise targeted Iran . . . plus ça change). Anyone who sat in on a single session would have picked out Mike as a future star.
Mike earned his subsequent promotions the hard way: by excelling. He didn’t “make rank” because of equal-opportunity programs or masked quotas. He was just a damned good soldier. In the last decade of his career, he did terrific intelligence work in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was physically and morally courageous.
His reward was the directorship of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a huge bureaucracy that does essential work but that has always been less than the sum of its parts. Mike tried to impose reforms. The bureaucrats fought back.
Meanwhile, Mike ran afoul of the Obama administration, which rejected warnings about the impending rise of ISIS and other threats. Attacked on both flanks, Mike was forced into retirement.
On the day he took off his uniform, Mike was broadly admired.
Then matters took a mystifying turn. He developed an odd relationship with the Putin regime. He accepted Russian funding to attend a Moscow banquet sponsored by RT, a state-funded propaganda organ. At the dinner, Mike sat with Putin, whose hatred of America is immeasurable — and who knows how to entrap incautious Westerners.
No retired US military officer should ever accept funding or favors from a hostile power, but for a senior intelligence officer to do so was bewildering. Even if nothing untoward followed, Mike had — in my old-fashioned view — compromised his honor as an officer.
Mike’s Russian connection makes those phone calls with Putin’s top thug in DC, Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, alarming — worsened by the prospect that he lied about his discussions with Kislyak to Pence or other officials.
Still, Mike had earned the right to clear his name.
How could he have vindicated himself? Actually, it would’ve been easy. If you work for the CIA or are assigned to other sensitive billets, you take a polygraph test. Mike knows the drill from his days in uniform. He could have volunteered to take one more, during which he would’ve answered three straightforward questions:
If Mike could have answered “No!” to those three questions, he would have deserved his shot at heading the president’s national-security team.
Now, perhaps, we’ll never know.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.
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