December 2, 2024 • 19 mins
Former Deputy Director, and twice Acting Director, of the CIA, Michael Morell, may join me in studio to talk about what's involved running the world's most famous spy agency. He may or may not comment on Trump's nominees for CIA Director (John Ratcliffe) or Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard).Yes, Mr Morell is known by many for his signing the letter from former intelligence officials stating that the Hunter Biden laptop might have been Russian disinformation. (They didn't say it WAS, just that it could have been, but politically there was basically no difference.) Still, I know Morell as a guy who loves his country, who spent years protecting the nation, and who is politically centrist and unaffiliated.Michael Morell - Beacon Global Strategies
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And please do this.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Go to Koacolorado dot com slash contests. Okay, koa, Colorado
dot com slash contests, and what you do there is
you nominate the Colorado family of a veteran or active
duty member of the military or first responder, where that
family is maybe having a little bit of financial difficulty
right now and could really use twenty five hundred bucks.
(00:24):
And some other folks here at KOA are going to
choose among the nominations, choose five winners, and we are
going to hand deliver twenty five hundred dollars checks to
each of the winners.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And again that's a heroes.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, and please enter your nomination at Koacolorado dot
com slash contests.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
All right, this is a rare treat.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I am so pleased to be joined in studio by
a man who does not eat fish because of his
trauma as a child, which we will discuss in a moment.
He is somewhat better known or having been deputy director
of CIA twice, the acting director of CIA, and his
(01:08):
name is Michael Morrell or we'll call him Mike. And
you should also know that Mike and I are going
to handle the Broncos parabolic microphones on the sidelines tonight.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Very exciting And are you a Broncos fan? Are you
here to cheer on the Broncos in tonight's game?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So I am a Cleveland Browns fan, so I like
the Broncos though, And because I've never done this parabolic
microphone before, I'm a little nervous, So there'll be no
cheering at all going them.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You won't have time to cheer during the game anyway,
but this is super exciting. Before before we go further,
can you please tell me why you don't eat fish?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Because I grew up Catholic in Northeast Ohio and my
mom was pretty religious, which meant that we did not
eat meat on Fridays. So I'd say, from you know,
age three or four, when I really started knowing what
I was eating, you know, till a time I left home,
every Friday was Campbell's Tomato soup and Missus Paul's fish sticks.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And because of that, I came to hate fish.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
When you say every Friday, every Friday, because you know,
she she grew up in the don't eat meat on
any Friday right right by the time that I was
ten or something, you could eat.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Meat on most Fridays, but you know, not for.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Her, right, Okay, I here's hardcore shere's hard corese So
I get that it was never meat on Fridays, but
was what is it?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Was?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
It always missus Paul's fish sticks, always like fifty.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Two Fridays a year.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Now you know why I don't eat fish.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This was tough right when I was, you know, hosting
people at the agency or going overseas and people would.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Put fish in front of me.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, especially like Japan, They're going to be very proud
of that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So what I learned to do was cut the pieces
so that you could swallow them, and I would put
a piece in my mouth and then wash it down
with beer or wine or whiskey or whatever.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You're taking a pill. Yeah, Oh my gosh, that's funny.
All right.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
One other thing before we talk about leadership, you said
something when we were off the air that I had
thought of and should have said before, about what you
might have done if you were Joe Biden and were
thinking about your kid facing a prison sentence and you
had the right answer, and what was your answer?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I thought about this right as a.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Father, not about being president, right, It's I think I
agree with you, Ross. I think it'd be really tough
to have your kid in that situation and not put
being a father ahead of the country. I get why
you want to put the country first, but man, if
somebody put me in that position, my heart would be
(03:56):
with my kids. Right. So I think what I would
have done was not hardened him. He did something wrong
and did a bunch of things wrong, right, and he
should live with that.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That should be on his record forever. Right.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I would have commuted his sentence once that sentence was
imposed later this month.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think that's the right answer, and I agree.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I mean, he did that stuff, and his lawyers screwed
up the negotiations with the Justice Department. They could have
had a plead deal, and they demanded too much because
they thought the Justice.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Department under the Biden administration would go along with it.
But then a judge blew it all up. I think
that's exactly the right answer. Commute, commute the sentence.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So he's got the conviction on his record, it doesn't
serve time in prison. Okay, all right, So what I
want to talk with you about now is Donald Trump
is filling out cabinet and other senior positions with nominations
that we.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Are hearing about.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I want to have both a micro and macro
conversation with you about that kind of leadership. Is the
macro and then micro is specific leadership of intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And you are welcome to comment or not as you.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Please on Trump's specific names. You know who he's put
up for DNI and for CIA, and I understand you
might not want to comment. I don't know if you
do or not on the specific names. Let's start with
the macro. You ran CIA twice, So what do you
(05:30):
think are the key characteristics that if you were advising
the president you would say, this is what to look
for in a person that you're going to have a
CIA director.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It's a great question, and.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I think there's a handful of things. One is that
person needs to have a relationship with the president. The
president needs to be comfortable with that person, and that
person needs to be comfortable with the president because the
president has to be able to say, you know, I
need you to do these things. The president has to
(06:03):
hold you accountable. This is so important to keep in
the country safe that the president has to be willing
to say, you know, you just growing up. You fix
it up, you know, fix it And you have to
be able to tell the president bad news. You have
to be able to tell the president here's how we
see the world. And oftentimes you're putting a new problem
on his desk or you're walking in there with your
(06:25):
analysis of what's happening in the world, and that's suggesting
that his policy's not working.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
That's uncomfortable. I've done it with two different presidents. It's uncomfortable,
but you have to be willing to do it, and
it really matters that there's a comfort level there.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So that's the first thing. It's got to be a relationship.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And because of that, I give a president a lot
of room to choose the person that he wants. I
think that's important. Number two is they have to be substantive, right.
They have to be interested in the world. They have
to be interested in intelligence. They have to think about
(07:01):
the mission all the time. They have to be able
to talk about, you know, what's going on in Ukraine,
what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on
with China. They have to just just be interested in that,
because if you're not, you can't lead the men and
women who that's all they think about all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
They don't care about anything else.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
They care about their job and the mission of keeping
the country safe through acquiring and analyzing the best intelligence around.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right. So that's number two.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Focus on the mission, focus on the substance of what
the agency's doing. Number three, you want somebody who can
manage and.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Lead other people.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
And I think this gets us to the bigger point
you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know what does that mean.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
It means being able to make it one hundred percent
clear to somebody what your expectations are of them. So
as I moved on in my career and I got
a new job or I got somebody new coming to
work from me, we would sit down and have a
conversation about what do I expect of you? Very specifically,
(08:07):
And some things are general expectations and some things are
you know, specific to a moment in time, like we
don't have enough collection on Iran. You know, we're gonna
focus on that, and you're gonna focus.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
On that, and you're gonna get that done.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
So make the expectations clear and then hold them accountable,
hold them accountable, and the best way to hold somebody
accountable is to have a relationship with them that is
based on more than just the job. So I think
(08:41):
it's really important to find something in common with somebody
who works for you. It might be sports, it might
be your kids, it might be movies. Your responsibility is
the boss to find that thing and talk about it
with them, you know, come in on Monday morning and say,
you know, how about that game, about that game yesterday
you know? Or if it's movies, hey, I just saw
(09:03):
this movie.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Did you see it yet?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Or if it's your kids, how'd your kids do in
soccer over the weekend. You find something in common so
that when you have to give them negative feedback, they
take it much better. So I would actually I would
actually walk in a subordinate's office, including when I was
deputy director, right, and my subordinates were the four or
five most senior people of the agency. I would walk
(09:26):
in their office and say I love you. You know
I love you, but what were you thinking when you
said X, Y or Z? Or what were you thinking
when you did X, Y or Z?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And they would take it much better.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right, So set expectations, make it absolutely clear, and then
hold old people accountable, and I think one of the
special ways you do that at the agency. You know,
I talked about this iron collection. Let's say it's you know,
it's wanting and you need to do better. The way
to drive change at the agency is to say, I
(09:59):
want you to come brief me once a week on
how we're doing on iron collection or how we're doing
on China collection.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Hold their feet to the fire.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You know, people have asked me what difference did Leon
Panetta make to the hunt for Bin Laden?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Because we never stopped looking for him?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Right, the story that we stopped looking and it took
President Obama, you know, to pull lean aside and say Leon,
we got to get in Louden, Right, that's nonsense. We
never stopped looking. So what difference did it make? And
the answer to that question is is he made a
ton of difference because that first month he was there
as director, he asked for a briefing on the hunt
(10:35):
for Bin Laden and all these people pile into the room.
They give him a briefing. The briefings always last an hour.
You know, it's kind of amazing everything fits into an hour,
but they it lasted for an hour, and at the
end he said thanks, guys, and I want you now
to come back and brief me once a week on
how we're doing. You don't want to come to that
meeting every week and say, mister director, I have nothing
(10:57):
new to report. That meeting people to get things done.
And I think Leon in doing that had a huge impact,
and I've seen other directors do the same thing. I
tried to do that both as acting director and deputy director,
and I think that really makes the difference. So it's
(11:18):
it's relationship with the president focused on substance and lead.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
People the right way.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, there's a lot there, all right, We got about
eight minutes, so let's try to get that's that's just fascinating.
By the way, I first met Michael Morale when I
interviewed him on my show about his book and also
did a book review for National Review magazine for The
Great War of Our Time.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's right, right, the Great War of our.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Time and in that which is about Islamo fascist terrorism
and our ongoing battle trying to trying to defeat Islamo
fascist terrorism, and you were you were pretty involved, more
than pretty You were in the middle of everything surrounding
getting bin Laden.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Right, You're in a situation room.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yes all that, Yes, did you ever yourself have to
have either on that topic.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Actually, let me change the story, Let me change the question.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Give me a story of a time that you interacted
with the president.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It doesn't have to be about bin Laden.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It could have been a PDB, it could have been
anything else where you had to give the president some
uncomfortable news. Tell us a little bit about how that went.
CIA does three things right.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
It collects, it collects intelligence, It analyzes that intelligence. Both
of those things are about understanding the world. And then
we also conduct, at the President's direction something called COVID
action right, which the President says, for this policy objective,
I want CIA to do ABC and D right. And
(12:52):
that mission for CIA is about changing the world. So
two missions for understanding the world, one mission for actually
changing it.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I remember one cloverd action.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Which I can't talk about, of course, where something went
really bad, something went really bad, something that surprised Victor Panetta,
surprised me.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Didn't even know it was possible for this bad thing to.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Happen, and it happened, and it put at risk not
only that operation, a lot of a lot of other stuff,
a lot of other stuff that people do for good,
literally for good. And Panetta said, you go explain this
to the president. So I had to walk in the
situation room, you know, and I took these technical people
(13:37):
with me who understood the details, but I was the
one that had to simplify it for him.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Can you tell me which president? It was? Obama? Obama?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And look, he wasn't the kind of guy to get mad,
but he was not happy.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
But he was not happy.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You could just tell because it's screwed up his day,
screwed up his week. You know, this kind of stuff's
not supposed to happen, and so you got to walk
in there and you just got to lay it out.
And you can't you can't try to hide stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes officers at CIA, you know, don't tell you the
full truth when they're explaining something bad that happened, and
you have to kind of peel the onion one step
into the time. You don't want to ever make somebody
have to do that. So I had to lay it
all out.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
For the present.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And that's definitely not unique to CIA, right, It's just no,
there's a lot of lessons here for business and life.
We're talking with Michael Morrell, former Deputy director and twice
acting director of CIA.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
We got about four minutes left.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Can you please explain to us the difference not just entitled,
but truly in function of CIA director versus Director of
National Intelligence.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
If you give.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Anybody the choice between being the Director of National Intelligence
and being the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, every
single person will take the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The DNI job is a morphous You tend not to
be doing the issues of the day. You're not managing
(15:14):
collection of human intelligence. You're not managing collection of technical intelligence.
This is what the National Security Agency does. You're not
managing COVID action. You're not managing the production of analysis,
which is, you know, the kind of pointing into the spear.
Here's what CIA thinks, Here's what the intelligence community thinks.
(15:34):
You're not managing any of that stuff. You're doing nuts
and bolts, bureaucratic stuff. John Ratcliffe was the DNI and
now he's going to be DCIA.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Right, So, on.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Paper, the director of the CIA works for the DNI,
but now he's going to take a demotion because the
director of the CIA job is so much more interesting
and so much more.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Impactful, interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Okay, so you know, Ratcliffe is a reasonably well known quantity.
He had the job before. I think he's qualified. I
don't really have much to say about him.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Do you know him? Do you so? I've only met
him once.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I've only met him once at a hearing in the
House Intelligence Committee. I found him to be interested, to
be smart, ask good questions. But that that's all I
know him. You know, I watched him when he was
the Director of National Intelligence at the very end of
President Trump's first term. I thought he did Okay, I
(16:35):
think he will do well. I think he will come
in and he will fall in love with what CIA does.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So this is this is the thing we got two
minutes here.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
This is the thing I've been wondering about it, and
especially with the pick of Tulsea.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Gabbard to be to be D and I. And in a.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Way, the fact that the job is, as you describe it,
sort of boring might also make it slightly less influential
than she thinks, more than the than the title would
would suggest. But you know what, I've wondered about her
and I look, I think she's a little odd, but
I also think she's a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserves.
(17:13):
And I don't know that she's the kind of security
risk that a lot of people are saying. I just
think she's a little odd. What I wonder is whether
she will start learning things. It's easy to piss inside
the tent from the outside.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Once you get in the tent.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And you learn what's really going on in there, then
maybe she and some of these others who want to
burn the house down, like the new FBI nominee as well,
maybe they'll say, you know what, Okay, there have been
some problems, but this is a really important organization with
an important mission.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So we got about a minute left. Why don't you
just react to that? Hell, I know, I think that's
one hundred percent. That's what usually happens. That's what usually happens.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
It happens to presidents, you know who who as a
candidate are incredibly critical of the incumbents for in policy,
but then when they come in they almost always follow
that foreign policy pretty closely. A great example was Obama
was very critical of Bush's counter terrorism policy. He picked
(18:13):
up almost all the pieces and actually intensified some of them.
So that's what usually happens. I think and I'm hoping
it happens. Now, all three of those, all those organizations
need changes, right. The CIA needs changes, the whole intelligence
community needs changes, and the FBI needs changes. So I'm
not saying that nothing should be changed, right, They should
(18:35):
be made better, and I'm hoping that happens. I think
on Gabbert, on Tulsa Gabbert, I think she does have
some explaining to do about coming to Russia's side of
the fence, coming to Pushar al Assad's side of the
fence in Syria. She's got some explaining to do on
those issues.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, And she'll have the chance. She'll have the chance
to do it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And what I hope, I'm not optimistic about this, but
what I hope is that if she gives really good, thoughtful,
credible explanations, I hope that there are some Democrats who will.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Vote for her.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And if she gives bad, incredible, literally explanations that cast
tremendous doubt on her ability to do the job or
serve the Constitution, I hope that there are a lot
of Republicans who will vote against her.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, And I just hope we can get politics out
of all of this, All this yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
We got to get politics out of intelligence and out
of law enforcement. We absolutely do. Mike Morrell, thanks so
much for your years of service to our country.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Welcome and thank you. I'm looking forward to handling the
Broncos microphones.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Me too, tonight, Me too, Me too? All right, I
think Mandy's traveling. I have no idea who's in for Mandy.
So I'm going to call it a day and I'll
talk with you tomorrow
And please do this.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Go to Koacolorado dot com slash contests. Okay, koa, Colorado
dot com slash contests, and what you do there is
you nominate the Colorado family of a veteran or active
duty member of the military or first responder, where that
family is maybe having a little bit of financial difficulty
right now and could really use twenty five hundred bucks.
(00:24):
And some other folks here at KOA are going to
choose among the nominations, choose five winners, and we are
going to hand deliver twenty five hundred dollars checks to
each of the winners.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And again that's a heroes.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thank you, and please enter your nomination at Koacolorado dot
com slash contests.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
All right, this is a rare treat.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I am so pleased to be joined in studio by
a man who does not eat fish because of his
trauma as a child, which we will discuss in a moment.
He is somewhat better known or having been deputy director
of CIA twice, the acting director of CIA, and his
(01:08):
name is Michael Morrell or we'll call him Mike. And
you should also know that Mike and I are going
to handle the Broncos parabolic microphones on the sidelines tonight.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Very exciting And are you a Broncos fan? Are you
here to cheer on the Broncos in tonight's game?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So I am a Cleveland Browns fan, so I like
the Broncos though, And because I've never done this parabolic
microphone before, I'm a little nervous, So there'll be no
cheering at all going them.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You won't have time to cheer during the game anyway,
but this is super exciting. Before before we go further,
can you please tell me why you don't eat fish?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Because I grew up Catholic in Northeast Ohio and my
mom was pretty religious, which meant that we did not
eat meat on Fridays. So I'd say, from you know,
age three or four, when I really started knowing what
I was eating, you know, till a time I left home,
every Friday was Campbell's Tomato soup and Missus Paul's fish sticks.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And because of that, I came to hate fish.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
When you say every Friday, every Friday, because you know,
she she grew up in the don't eat meat on
any Friday right right by the time that I was
ten or something, you could eat.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Meat on most Fridays, but you know, not for.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Her, right, Okay, I here's hardcore shere's hard corese So
I get that it was never meat on Fridays, but
was what is it?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Was?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
It always missus Paul's fish sticks, always like fifty.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Two Fridays a year.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Now you know why I don't eat fish.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
This was tough right when I was, you know, hosting
people at the agency or going overseas and people would.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Put fish in front of me.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, especially like Japan, They're going to be very proud
of that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So what I learned to do was cut the pieces
so that you could swallow them, and I would put
a piece in my mouth and then wash it down
with beer or wine or whiskey or whatever.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You're taking a pill. Yeah, Oh my gosh, that's funny.
All right.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
One other thing before we talk about leadership, you said
something when we were off the air that I had
thought of and should have said before, about what you
might have done if you were Joe Biden and were
thinking about your kid facing a prison sentence and you
had the right answer, and what was your answer?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I thought about this right as a.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Father, not about being president, right, It's I think I
agree with you, Ross. I think it'd be really tough
to have your kid in that situation and not put
being a father ahead of the country. I get why
you want to put the country first, but man, if
somebody put me in that position, my heart would be
(03:56):
with my kids. Right. So I think what I would
have done was not hardened him. He did something wrong
and did a bunch of things wrong, right, and he
should live with that.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That should be on his record forever. Right.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I would have commuted his sentence once that sentence was
imposed later this month.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think that's the right answer, and I agree.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I mean, he did that stuff, and his lawyers screwed
up the negotiations with the Justice Department. They could have
had a plead deal, and they demanded too much because
they thought the Justice.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Department under the Biden administration would go along with it.
But then a judge blew it all up. I think
that's exactly the right answer. Commute, commute the sentence.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So he's got the conviction on his record, it doesn't
serve time in prison. Okay, all right, So what I
want to talk with you about now is Donald Trump
is filling out cabinet and other senior positions with nominations
that we.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Are hearing about.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I want to have both a micro and macro
conversation with you about that kind of leadership. Is the
macro and then micro is specific leadership of intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And you are welcome to comment or not as you.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Please on Trump's specific names. You know who he's put
up for DNI and for CIA, and I understand you
might not want to comment. I don't know if you
do or not on the specific names. Let's start with
the macro. You ran CIA twice, So what do you
(05:30):
think are the key characteristics that if you were advising
the president you would say, this is what to look
for in a person that you're going to have a
CIA director.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It's a great question, and.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I think there's a handful of things. One is that
person needs to have a relationship with the president. The
president needs to be comfortable with that person, and that
person needs to be comfortable with the president because the
president has to be able to say, you know, I
need you to do these things. The president has to
(06:03):
hold you accountable. This is so important to keep in
the country safe that the president has to be willing
to say, you know, you just growing up. You fix
it up, you know, fix it And you have to
be able to tell the president bad news. You have
to be able to tell the president here's how we
see the world. And oftentimes you're putting a new problem
on his desk or you're walking in there with your
(06:25):
analysis of what's happening in the world, and that's suggesting
that his policy's not working.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
That's uncomfortable. I've done it with two different presidents. It's uncomfortable,
but you have to be willing to do it, and
it really matters that there's a comfort level there.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So that's the first thing. It's got to be a relationship.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
And because of that, I give a president a lot
of room to choose the person that he wants. I
think that's important. Number two is they have to be substantive, right.
They have to be interested in the world. They have
to be interested in intelligence. They have to think about
(07:01):
the mission all the time. They have to be able
to talk about, you know, what's going on in Ukraine,
what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on
with China. They have to just just be interested in that,
because if you're not, you can't lead the men and
women who that's all they think about all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
They don't care about anything else.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
They care about their job and the mission of keeping
the country safe through acquiring and analyzing the best intelligence around.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right. So that's number two.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Focus on the mission, focus on the substance of what
the agency's doing. Number three, you want somebody who can
manage and.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Lead other people.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
And I think this gets us to the bigger point
you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know what does that mean.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
It means being able to make it one hundred percent
clear to somebody what your expectations are of them. So
as I moved on in my career and I got
a new job or I got somebody new coming to
work from me, we would sit down and have a
conversation about what do I expect of you? Very specifically,
(08:07):
And some things are general expectations and some things are
you know, specific to a moment in time, like we
don't have enough collection on Iran. You know, we're gonna
focus on that, and you're gonna focus.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
On that, and you're gonna get that done.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
So make the expectations clear and then hold them accountable,
hold them accountable, and the best way to hold somebody
accountable is to have a relationship with them that is
based on more than just the job. So I think
(08:41):
it's really important to find something in common with somebody
who works for you. It might be sports, it might
be your kids, it might be movies. Your responsibility is
the boss to find that thing and talk about it
with them, you know, come in on Monday morning and say,
you know, how about that game, about that game yesterday
you know? Or if it's movies, hey, I just saw
(09:03):
this movie.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Did you see it yet?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Or if it's your kids, how'd your kids do in
soccer over the weekend. You find something in common so
that when you have to give them negative feedback, they
take it much better. So I would actually I would
actually walk in a subordinate's office, including when I was
deputy director, right, and my subordinates were the four or
five most senior people of the agency. I would walk
(09:26):
in their office and say I love you. You know
I love you, but what were you thinking when you
said X, Y or Z? Or what were you thinking
when you did X, Y or Z?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And they would take it much better.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right, So set expectations, make it absolutely clear, and then
hold old people accountable, and I think one of the
special ways you do that at the agency. You know,
I talked about this iron collection. Let's say it's you know,
it's wanting and you need to do better. The way
to drive change at the agency is to say, I
(09:59):
want you to come brief me once a week on
how we're doing on iron collection or how we're doing
on China collection.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Hold their feet to the fire.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You know, people have asked me what difference did Leon
Panetta make to the hunt for Bin Laden?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Because we never stopped looking for him?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Right, the story that we stopped looking and it took
President Obama, you know, to pull lean aside and say Leon,
we got to get in Louden, Right, that's nonsense. We
never stopped looking. So what difference did it make? And
the answer to that question is is he made a
ton of difference because that first month he was there
as director, he asked for a briefing on the hunt
(10:35):
for Bin Laden and all these people pile into the room.
They give him a briefing. The briefings always last an hour.
You know, it's kind of amazing everything fits into an hour,
but they it lasted for an hour, and at the
end he said thanks, guys, and I want you now
to come back and brief me once a week on
how we're doing. You don't want to come to that
meeting every week and say, mister director, I have nothing
(10:57):
new to report. That meeting people to get things done.
And I think Leon in doing that had a huge impact,
and I've seen other directors do the same thing. I
tried to do that both as acting director and deputy director,
and I think that really makes the difference. So it's
(11:18):
it's relationship with the president focused on substance and lead.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
People the right way.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, there's a lot there, all right, We got about
eight minutes, so let's try to get that's that's just fascinating.
By the way, I first met Michael Morale when I
interviewed him on my show about his book and also
did a book review for National Review magazine for The
Great War of Our Time.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's right, right, the Great War of our.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Time and in that which is about Islamo fascist terrorism
and our ongoing battle trying to trying to defeat Islamo
fascist terrorism, and you were you were pretty involved, more
than pretty You were in the middle of everything surrounding
getting bin Laden.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Right, You're in a situation room.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yes all that, Yes, did you ever yourself have to
have either on that topic.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Actually, let me change the story, Let me change the question.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Give me a story of a time that you interacted
with the president.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It doesn't have to be about bin Laden.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It could have been a PDB, it could have been
anything else where you had to give the president some
uncomfortable news. Tell us a little bit about how that went.
CIA does three things right.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
It collects, it collects intelligence, It analyzes that intelligence. Both
of those things are about understanding the world. And then
we also conduct, at the President's direction something called COVID
action right, which the President says, for this policy objective,
I want CIA to do ABC and D right. And
(12:52):
that mission for CIA is about changing the world. So
two missions for understanding the world, one mission for actually
changing it.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I remember one cloverd action.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Which I can't talk about, of course, where something went
really bad, something went really bad, something that surprised Victor Panetta,
surprised me.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Didn't even know it was possible for this bad thing to.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Happen, and it happened, and it put at risk not
only that operation, a lot of a lot of other stuff,
a lot of other stuff that people do for good,
literally for good. And Panetta said, you go explain this
to the president. So I had to walk in the
situation room, you know, and I took these technical people
(13:37):
with me who understood the details, but I was the
one that had to simplify it for him.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Can you tell me which president? It was? Obama? Obama?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And look, he wasn't the kind of guy to get mad,
but he was not happy.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
But he was not happy.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You could just tell because it's screwed up his day,
screwed up his week. You know, this kind of stuff's
not supposed to happen, and so you got to walk
in there and you just got to lay it out.
And you can't you can't try to hide stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes officers at CIA, you know, don't tell you the
full truth when they're explaining something bad that happened, and
you have to kind of peel the onion one step
into the time. You don't want to ever make somebody
have to do that. So I had to lay it
all out.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
For the present.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And that's definitely not unique to CIA, right, It's just no,
there's a lot of lessons here for business and life.
We're talking with Michael Morrell, former Deputy director and twice
acting director of CIA.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
We got about four minutes left.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Can you please explain to us the difference not just entitled,
but truly in function of CIA director versus Director of
National Intelligence.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
If you give.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Anybody the choice between being the Director of National Intelligence
and being the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, every
single person will take the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The DNI job is a morphous You tend not to
be doing the issues of the day. You're not managing
(15:14):
collection of human intelligence. You're not managing collection of technical intelligence.
This is what the National Security Agency does. You're not
managing COVID action. You're not managing the production of analysis,
which is, you know, the kind of pointing into the spear.
Here's what CIA thinks, Here's what the intelligence community thinks.
(15:34):
You're not managing any of that stuff. You're doing nuts
and bolts, bureaucratic stuff. John Ratcliffe was the DNI and
now he's going to be DCIA.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Right, So, on.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Paper, the director of the CIA works for the DNI,
but now he's going to take a demotion because the
director of the CIA job is so much more interesting
and so much more.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Impactful, interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Okay, so you know, Ratcliffe is a reasonably well known quantity.
He had the job before. I think he's qualified. I
don't really have much to say about him.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Do you know him? Do you so? I've only met
him once.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I've only met him once at a hearing in the
House Intelligence Committee. I found him to be interested, to
be smart, ask good questions. But that that's all I
know him. You know, I watched him when he was
the Director of National Intelligence at the very end of
President Trump's first term. I thought he did Okay, I
(16:35):
think he will do well. I think he will come
in and he will fall in love with what CIA does.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So this is this is the thing we got two
minutes here.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
This is the thing I've been wondering about it, and
especially with the pick of Tulsea.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Gabbard to be to be D and I. And in a.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Way, the fact that the job is, as you describe it,
sort of boring might also make it slightly less influential
than she thinks, more than the than the title would
would suggest. But you know what, I've wondered about her
and I look, I think she's a little odd, but
I also think she's a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserves.
(17:13):
And I don't know that she's the kind of security
risk that a lot of people are saying. I just
think she's a little odd. What I wonder is whether
she will start learning things. It's easy to piss inside
the tent from the outside.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Once you get in the tent.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And you learn what's really going on in there, then
maybe she and some of these others who want to
burn the house down, like the new FBI nominee as well,
maybe they'll say, you know what, Okay, there have been
some problems, but this is a really important organization with
an important mission.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So we got about a minute left. Why don't you
just react to that? Hell, I know, I think that's
one hundred percent. That's what usually happens. That's what usually happens.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
It happens to presidents, you know who who as a
candidate are incredibly critical of the incumbents for in policy,
but then when they come in they almost always follow
that foreign policy pretty closely. A great example was Obama
was very critical of Bush's counter terrorism policy. He picked
(18:13):
up almost all the pieces and actually intensified some of them.
So that's what usually happens. I think and I'm hoping
it happens. Now, all three of those, all those organizations
need changes, right. The CIA needs changes, the whole intelligence
community needs changes, and the FBI needs changes. So I'm
not saying that nothing should be changed, right, They should
(18:35):
be made better, and I'm hoping that happens. I think
on Gabbert, on Tulsa Gabbert, I think she does have
some explaining to do about coming to Russia's side of
the fence, coming to Pushar al Assad's side of the
fence in Syria. She's got some explaining to do on
those issues.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, And she'll have the chance. She'll have the chance
to do it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
And what I hope, I'm not optimistic about this, but
what I hope is that if she gives really good, thoughtful,
credible explanations, I hope that there are some Democrats who will.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Vote for her.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And if she gives bad, incredible, literally explanations that cast
tremendous doubt on her ability to do the job or
serve the Constitution, I hope that there are a lot
of Republicans who will vote against her.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, And I just hope we can get politics out
of all of this, All this yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
We got to get politics out of intelligence and out
of law enforcement. We absolutely do. Mike Morrell, thanks so
much for your years of service to our country.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Welcome and thank you. I'm looking forward to handling the
Broncos microphones.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Me too, tonight, Me too, Me too? All right, I
think Mandy's traveling. I have no idea who's in for Mandy.
So I'm going to call it a day and I'll
talk with you tomorrow
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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