DNI

In addition to today's longish piece on incompetence over at the Department of Justice, I want to flag another piece of news that surprised and disappointed me today.

Tulsi Gabbard was the least-qualified US Director of National Intelligence in the history of the country. She's announced that she'll step down from that job at the end of this month, to spend more time with her husband. There's plenty of speculation that her departure is at Trump's behest, but that she's being given a less-painful-than-usual path out of the Trump administration.

Yesterday, Trump announced he would appoint Bill Pulte to that role in an acting capacity. Pulte runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where his main job has been to levy claims of mortgage fraud against Trump critics.

Statute requires that the Director have experience in national intelligence. Pulte doesn't, but can avoid rejection on that basis because he's "acting," and so need not be confirmed by the Senate.

But the DNI oversees all of the US intelligence agencies, ensuring collaboration, coordination and information sharing among them. It's an incredibly sensitive job, and requires a top secret, sensitive compartmentalized information (TS/SCI) security clearance.

Pulte has no such clearance, and will have to get one. That's an invasive process designed to turn up problems, relationships, history that put a person at risk of blackmail or subversion by foreign powers. It's a very tough bar to clear. Drug use, alcoholism, extra-marital affairs, financial trouble could all put you at risk for blackmail, and would be disqualifying.

I don't know Bill Pulte, but I know how demanding the clearance process is. I think it possible, even likely, that he won't be cleared. If that happens, it'll be a terrible own-goal by Trump. It's one reason why appointing someone from the intelligence community makes sense. They've been through the wringer already, and won't surprise.