Evan Vucci/AP Photo Law And Order How Not to Become Jared Kushner in 4 Easy Steps Skipping these rules is a recipe for compromising U.S. national security.

Samantha Vinograd is a CNN national security analyst. She served on the White House National Security Council for four years under President Barack Obama and in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush. Follow her on Twitter @sam_vinograd.

Freelancing is a valuable tool in a lot of professions—it allows for creativity and flexibility. But freelancing in the realm of national security is a different story. The reporting that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner had foreign contacts that he didn’t report to the White House National Security Council—and that foreign governments viewed him as a prime counterintelligence target—is a case study in why going rogue on national security is a bad idea. In the end, it benefits foreign countries more than our own.

I spent several years at the NSC making sure what Kushner did never happened. Our job was to serve as the president’s principal mechanism for coordinating national security policy, and that meant being the key focal point for organizing, planning and preparing all meetings for senior White House officials. The role was organizational—but it was also to guarantee that no one risked being turned into a foreign agent, wittingly or unwittingly. We worked with the intelligence community to brief officials on what to expect in meetings with foreign contacts, and made sure they were unlikely to be taken advantage of. If we had heard of any official going rogue, our counterintelligence antennae would have been raised immediately. Why did this official request a meeting out of official channels? Without adequate preparation, was the official manipulated by the foreign government?


We operated with a few basic principles—fundamental rules that all the best national security professionals understand. Skipping over them, as Kushner reportedly did, is a recipe for compromising U.S. national security and giving another country the upper hand. Following them is what makes good diplomacy.

Don’t wing it

The NSC often helps senior officials prepare for meetings with foreign counterparts. NSC staff, who are experts in their fields, work with U.S. government departments and agencies to get the most up-to-date intelligence so that each administration contact is used efficiently to advance U.S. policy. So, for example, if Kushner were preparing to meet with a Chinese official, U.S. national security would have been best served if he had scheduled the meeting through the NSC, prepared with national security adviser H. R. McMaster and the NSC China experts, and gone over his talking points to make sure he knew everything he needed to know before the meeting and what to watch out for from a counterintelligence perspective.

The full NSC staff isn’t always looped into meetings with foreign governments, depending on the sensitivity of the discussion. But McMaster, as head of the NSC, certainly should have known, along with any staff that had the appropriate clearance.

Kushner reportedly did none of these things before his meeting with officials such as Chinese Ambassador Cui and businessman Wu Xiaohui—which meant he went into the meeting with two handicaps. First, he was unprepared, giving the Chinese the upper hand. Second, he was walking into a counterintelligence booby trap. Counterintelligence is a tricky business. Without proper training by professionals, assets don’t know that they’re being manipulated and/or what to watch out for.

Bring a friend

The very act of meeting a foreign contact without experts present, or at least a government note taker, is one of the easiest ways to turn yourself into a tool for foreign intelligence. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made this error in Turkey recently, and Kushner reportedly met with Chinese contacts by himself. This means that there is no official U.S. record of any of these meetings. To know what happened, we have to rely on other countries’ “readouts,” which those countries can easily manipulate to serve their own purposes.

I can’t think of a single high-level meeting during my years at the White House where there was not a U.S. translator present and/or a U.S. government “plus 1” so that there was someone who could give another readout of the meeting. Disclosures and record of meetings with foreign contacts is another step in any basic national security work. After meetings with foreign contacts, proper protocol is to create a written record of the meeting so that there is no ambiguity about what was or was not discussed and so that appropriately cleared individuals know what occurred and can use that readout to continue their work to advance U.S. policy. If that doesn’t happen, then the meeting becomes a win for the foreign contact—his or her foreign government has information the U.S. government doesn’t. And it makes the person who held the meeting and who failed to disclose it an unknowing foreign asset.

Organization matters

Failing to keep records of meetings with foreign governments doesn’t make the U.S. look good in the long run. If, for example, the NSC director for Israel doesn’t know that Kushner is in contact with Israeli officials, or what he’s talking about with them, the NSC director could easily be caught off guard in a discussion with his Israeli counterparts. That lack of communication within the ranks of the U.S. government sends a clear message that the White House is disorganized. It could also lead foreign contacts to stop working through the NSC—if a foreign official knows Kushner isn’t letting the NSC know about engagements then why would they bother with the NSC? This kind of circumvention would undermine not only the NSC, but also the entire U.S. national security apparatus.

Don’t be an easy mark

Foreign regimes are always searching for potential intelligence targets. First, they want assets that have access to valuable information and influence over U.S. policy. Second, they look for assets that are vulnerable to manipulation. Any kind of secret—including everything from adultery and drug use to undisclosed foreign business deals—can be used against a potential intelligence recruit. (That’s why all U.S. government employees go through security clearance investigations. Investigators want to be certain that there is nothing that can be used against you to coerce or bribe you into action.) Third, foreign governments look for targets who are inexperienced—people who will easily fall into their traps, perhaps without ever knowing they have.

Kushner checks all of these boxes, which makes it especially worrisome he tried to conduct foreign policy alone. He might have set out to do good, but he’s more likely to end up undermining U.S. national security rather than advancing it.