Michael Flynn’s Fall Tells a Much Bigger Story
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…
