Fourth Estate The Spies Who Came in to the TV Studio Former intelligence officials are enjoying second acts as television pundits. Here’s why that should bother us.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

In the old days, America’s top spies would complete their tenures at the CIA or one of the other Washington puzzle palaces and segue to more ordinary pursuits. Some wrote their memoirs. One ran for president. Another died a few months after surrendering his post. But today’s national-security establishment retiree has a different game plan. After so many years of brawling in the shadows, he yearns for a second, lucrative career in the public eye. He takes a crash course in speaking in soundbites, refreshes his wardrobe and signs a TV news contract. Then, several times a week, waits for a network limousine to shuttle him to the broadcast news studios where, after a light dusting of foundation and a spritz of hairspray, he takes a supporting role in the anchors’ nighttime shows.

Former CIA Director John Brennan (2013-17) is the latest superspook to be reborn as a TV newsie. He just cashed in at NBC News as a “senior national security and intelligence analyst” and served his first expert views on last Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press. The Brennan acquisition seeks to elevate NBC to spook parity with CNN, which employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden in a similar capacity. Other, lesser-known national security veterans thrive under TV’s grow lights. Almost too numerous to list, they include Chuck Rosenberg, former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James B. Comey, and counselor to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; Frank Figliuzzi, former chief of FBI counterintelligence; Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser under Bush, at NBC; and Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser under Bush, at CBS News. CNN’s bulging roster also includes former FBI agent Asha Rangappa; former FBI agent James Gagliano; Obama’s former deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken; former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers; senior adviser to the National Security Council during the Obama administration Samantha Vinograd; retired CIA operations officer Steven L. Hall; and Philip Mudd, also retired from the CIA.


And CNN is still adding to its bench. Last Saturday, former Comey aide Josh Campbell wrote a New York Times op-ed on why he was leaving the FBI on principle. By Monday, the network was announcing his new position as a “law enforcement analyst.”

Like the armchair TV generals who served as network co-anchors during the Iraq War, the spooks occupy a slippery taxonomical journalistic position. They’re news sources who go on TV, where they’re asked questions by official journalists. But because they draw pay from the networks, they can’t really be called sources—the standard U.S. journalistic code prohibits paying sources. Instead, they’re called contributors. But that’s not a perfect title, either. Standard journalistic contributors—reporters, anchors, editors, producers—pursue the news wherever it goes without fear or favor, as the famous motto puts it. But almost to a one, the TV spooks still identify with their former employers at the CIA, FBI, DEA, DHS, or other security agencies and remain protective of their institutions. This makes nearly every word that comes out of their mouths suspect. Are they telling God’s truth or are they shilling for their former bosses? Or worse yet, do they have other employers (some of the TV generals were also working for defense contractors), causing them to pull punches in yet another direction?

Generals and spooks aren’t the only expert talkers on TV news. Roving gangs of retired politicians drawing stipends crowd the green rooms at every network from Fox to MSNBC. Law professors and former prosecutors enjoy these gigs, too, as do campaign consultants and political activists. The reason TV front-loads so many of its broadcasts with “expert-talk” is because it’s cheaper to fill 24 hours of airtime with talk than with reporting, and it’s easier to book talking heads already on the team than dialing up new sources every day. (Also, there’s probably not enough news to fill a 24-hour schedule, but that’s another column.) TV spies have always been the soy-extender that cable producers can stir-fry talk into any national security news breaking during the day. The Trump scandals, touching as they do all of the national security bases—CIA, FBI, FISA applications, Russian affairs and counterinsurgency—make the hiring of TV spies cost effective.

It would be disingenuous to claim that the TV spooks add no value to broadcasts. They inform us on how FISA warrants work; they explain the methods by which the Russians recruit spies; they entertain us with their disdain for the current president, and more. Maintaining, as they do, relationships with people at their old agencies, they’re close to newsworthy material that they sometimes share. They excel at context, continuity and history.

But the downside of outsourcing national security coverage to the TV spies is obvious. They aren’t in the business of breaking news or uncovering secrets. Their first loyalty—and this is no slam—is to the agency from which they hail. Imagine a TV network covering the auto industry through the eyes of dozens of paid former auto executives and you begin to appreciate the current peculiarities.

In a perfect television world, the networks would retire the retired spooks from their payrolls and reallocate those sums to the hiring of independent reporters to cover the national security beat. Let the TV spies become unpaid anonymous sources because when you get down to it, TV spies don’t want to make news—they just want to talk about it.

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Remember the time Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) accused James Clapper of lying? Send lies to [email protected]. My email alerts can’t keep a secret. My Twitter feed doesn’t believe in the truth. My RSS feed is guilty of treason.



CORRECTION: John Brennan's first name and his years leading the CIA were incorrect in an earlier version of this article.