A No Intelligence Chief
Another ridiculous Trump appointee.
Well...He’s No Tulsi Gabbard!
So, the head of the Federal Housing Finance agency, Bill Pulte, is going to be acting Director of National Intelligence. President Trump named him to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who quit to help her husband, who has cancer.
His background is in housing, which probably qualifies him to do something in housing. Trump can relate to that kind of thing.
But not intelligence, not at all in intelligence.
President Trump likes him because he has slapped away at all kinds of his enemies and does whatever he is told to do.
He’s on the Trump team!
This is going to be another Trump disaster.
I can’t wait to read about what actual spies, military, CIA, NSA, whatever, think of this choice.
“Mr. Director, we have a crisis developing on the Horn of Africa again!”
“Well, that’s nothing some good ranch houses can’t solve, you know?” People who live in ranch houses are content.”
Sweet Jesus!
Imagine, he can cobble up whatever Trump needs to justify his foreign adventures.
I have known some spies in my time, intelligence agents who worked on the streets in the old Soviet Union.
Out of the gate, I must report I was not a spy. But I behaved like one because that’s what reporters in foreign countries must do sometimes to collect information.
The Russians were suspicious enough to give me all kinds of shit. But then, they gave everyone all kinds of shit, so there was nothing special aboug me.
I went with a spy one night to the waiting area for one of those mammoth October Revolution parades, where the Kremlin rolled out all kinds of fierce looking equipment.
The Russians would line up all their heavy stuff just outside of Red Square the night before to make sure it worked and would roll past Lenin’s tomb without breaking down.
Call the guy Col. Bob, which was not his name.
He held a very high rank in American military intelligence. I knew him from the Embassy.
“Let’s go see what they got,” he said to me. I said yes without hesitation.
You know how scary all that stuff looked, the rockets on big green trucks, anti-aircraft missiles, the whole shebang in the parades?
“Nothing new here,” Bob said. The Russians weren’t trotting out anything new that year, 1978.
Then he asked me if I wanted to see something interesting. He took me to the back end of what appeared to be a huge missile. It had a big red plastic cap that had fallen off.
“Look in there,” he said, pointing down the missile shell with his flashlight.
“See, it’s empty.”
The whole collection was there for show, like a lot of things in the Soviet Union in those days. It was very comforting to know it was all bullshit. We would not have been able to get anywhere near it if it was real.
If I knew that, then all the intelligence agencies knew it, too.
It’s what they are supposed to do.
Do you think Bill Pulte has the background to handle that kind of challenge.
I would argue I have more of an intelligence background that he has. And Julia Child had waaaaay more.
This is going to be perilously interesting.
Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for United Press International and The Chicago Tribune for 40 years. He writes the blog “Lightningwriter” and lives in Evanston.