Small Wars Journal

Michael Flynn’s Fall Tells a Much Bigger Story

Fri, 04/28/2017 - 1:15am

Michael Flynn’s Fall Tells a Much Bigger Story by David Ignatius, Washington Post

“I was one very lucky kid,” wrote retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in a 2016 memoir about his bumpy childhood in a working-class Rhode Island family. “I was one of those nasty tough kids, hell-bent on breaking rules for the adrenaline rush and hardwired just enough to not care about the consequences,” he wrote.

Flynn described how he was arrested but given probation after “some serious and unlawful activity.” But he added: “I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible.”

Flynn’s luck has run out in recent months. He was fired as national security adviser for misleading colleagues about his questionable discussions last December with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Now he’s under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general for failing to get approval for payments he received from Russian and Turkish sources, despite a clear warning in 2014 that such approval was required.

The puzzle is why Flynn, who had a reputation as a meticulous tactical intelligence officer during his Army career, was so careless when he left the military. The story is a personal tragedy for Flynn, but it illustrates a larger problem in the national-security community.

When intelligence officers such as Flynn move from compartmented boxes to a wider world, they often make mistakes. They’ve been living inside super-secret units that resemble a closed family circle. They don’t understand the rules of public behavior. They’re not good at being normal. And they often pay a severe price.

There are numerous examples of this transition problem. James J. Angleton, the CIA’s legendary counterintelligence chief, was secretive to the point of paranoia when he was at the agency. But when he left in the 1970s, he couldn’t stop talking to journalists and others about his conspiracy theories. Some other former CIA officers are similar: They work the press or lobbying clients the way they used to work their agency assets…

Read on.

Comments

RantCorp

Tue, 05/02/2017 - 11:25pm

In reply to by Outlaw 09

Outlaw,

What I don't understand is why anyone would wish to hang out with the Kremlin goon squad, leave alone a recently retired LG and former head of the DIA. Was Flynn on a strategic recon mission and just forgot to mention the money? I would have thought for someone with Flynn's duty record, hanging with these creeps would be illegal.

Governance in the former USSR is a kleptocracy and it has been for a very, very long time. The pursuit of self-enrichment by the elite at any price, was the major reason the USSR collapsed. It took decades but finally it broke the political will of the Soviet citizenry. If Flynn was a retired FBI organized-crime investigator or CEO banker I might understand the duty of getting inside the Russian Mob but not a General.

The lure of black money to some of our elites may explain a recent sea-change in attitude towards the Chinese government. Make no mistake the tentacles of the Chinese Mafia are much more insidious in China than anywhere else on the planet (including Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the usual culprits) and infinitely more profitable.

You can not buy a bus, train or plane ticket on the National Carrier without the Chinese Mob getting some,if not all of your cash. Protection rackets mean every cab driver, dumpling vendor, tea seller give a percentage to the charcoal suited goons loitering on every public street-corner or in the local speak-easy. Obviously the privately owned factories don't bother with any pretense of being a state-run enterprise,nor paying taxes.

The 'crack-down' by Xi is just a shifting of Mob leadership. The money flooding into our real-estate and driving normal working folks out of our inner-cities is the illicitly acquired wealth by the Mob families who have lost out in the power struggle and are making certain Xi's (or Putin's) faction can't get their hands on their ill-gotten money.

Needless to add once the Xi faction get their hands on the money it will be their turn to dump the ill-gotten billions into our real-estate and launder out any trace of the previous/legal/rightful owner.

Outlaw 09

Sat, 04/29/2017 - 4:16am

The open failures of Flynn were known for a long time inside the US IC but no one was willing to "talk truth to power" and really enabled what we are now seeing....

When Flynn committed a massive security violation which led to people being killed and wounded when he openly passed intel to a Pakistani...it only cost him a one year delay in his next General's rank.....

He should have been bounced out of the service and his clearance completely rescinded for good....a normal human being under the rank of General would have gone to jail...so did the "ole boy ring knocker network" protect him?

When he was "fired for cause/poor management of the agency" as Director of DIA after telling the world he was the best and brightest intel officer going ...that should have been the final nail in his career, but it was not.....

BUT more importantly this pattern was set into motion when he released his critique of the intel processes in Iraq...by going first to a DC think tank and not releasing it inside the chain of command....he was even critiqued by the then JCoS for this action but nothing happened....

So is the failure of Flynn not only his fault BUT the fault of the system that enabled him??

Both actually.

IMHO as a former intel type who held clearances at different levels and fully understands CI from being a long time in Berlin....Flynn's actions in his Russian connections and the payments he received reeks of treason not collusion...as a former Flag level intel officer he should have known what he was doing, but again he ignored "the system and did what he felt was good for Flynn"....

As the opposite take the career of a USA SF MAJ in AFG who went counter to what many "accepted" as SOP for the VSO program...cost him his career and he was forced to retire in shame and Flynn????? Even when he felt that he was doing what was necessary to "win"....

Falling onward and upward......Peter Principle hard at work...

BTW if one really takes the many recent Flag officer escapades being reported one does wonder what is going on....?

What is far worse is the Trump WH and Transition Team claiming their ran "background checks on Flynn"....

SO what did they knowingly overlook or was the chant ..."jail her, jail her, jail her" enough to overlook all previous incidents????

Speaks to the level of what we see as the current internal US politics and it is not getting any better..