Known for his loyalty to Trump and his colorful and sometimes offensive Twitter presence, Richard Grenell will leave the job he held for several whirlwind months with a mixed record.
WASHINGTON — Ambassador Richard Grenell’s brief tenure as acting intelligence chief came to a close Thursday with the Senate confirmation of a permanent successor, leaving behind an ongoing controversy over his decision to declassify documents on the unmasking of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, but also what some consider a laudable effort to reduce a bureaucracy that has grown substantially since 9/11.
Story continuesSources who spoke about those moves to Yahoo News mostly expressed cautious optimism about these changes, though several said they feared for their jobs and the overall stature of the post-9/11 coordinating intelligence agency as a result. Costa, a long-serving retired intelligence officer, said he believed the changes to the National Counterterrorism Center seemed “very reasonable.
So far, Grenell’s office has not published any statements or analytic assessments unsupported by intelligence or in defense of Trump’s arguments that China and the World Health Organization are wholly responsible for the outbreak.
But Polymeropoulos said Grenell had “injected partisan politics” into the intelligence community by helping Attorney General William Barr declassify names of Obama-era officials who “unmasked” Flynn. “It was unnecessary and clearly politically motivated,” he said of the declassification. If Grenell is an unlikely reformer of the intelligence community, so is his ascension up the ranks of the Republican Party at a time when being openly gay has been a liability.
Grenell’s tenure at the U.N. spanned the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ill-fated search for weapons of mass destruction following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the U.N., he had access to some sensitive information and intelligence briefings, though there were debates about whether his level of experience was sufficient to allow him to take the reins of the entire intelligence community.
Two weeks after being appointed he left the Romney campaign, later explaining that he felt he could not focus on the issues he cared about without the distraction of his personal life. “The right I’m very comfortable with, taking those hits and barbs, because I've had a 20-year career where I’ve worked for politicians, I've worked on elections, on campaigns, and I know exactly the trajectory of the assaults from the far right,” he told a journalist from the Desert Sun.
One former colleague noted that Grenell’s background, including his work with foreign clients, has yet to receive the full legal scrutiny it deserves. CNN reported that he previously touted his work for officials in Iran, China, Hungary and others, but later scrubbed that experience from his personal website before joining the Trump administration.
“There were few in the intelligence community at the time who thought that restructuring was a good idea,” Hayden wrote in his memoir, “Playing to the Edge.” “I certainly did not.”
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