Before these controversies, however, Flynn was the consummate military man. He distinguished himself during the war in Afghanistan where he was General Stanley McChrystal’s intelligence chief. In the early phases of the war on terrorism, Flynn, as director of intelligence for Joint Task Force 180, was in charge of intelligence-gathering and collection for most of the forces leading the battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As Marc Ambinder noted in The Atlantic in May 2011, McChrystal and Flynn “introduced hardened commandos to basic criminal forensic techniques and then used highly advanced and still-classified technology to transform bits of information into actionable intelligence. … Such analysis helped the CIA to establish, with a high degree of probability, that Osama bin Laden and his family were hiding” in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It’s in that position Flynn also angered the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment, writing a report in which he called many intelligence analysts “ignorant,” “incurious,” and “disengaged”—assessments he stood by even when he was criticized for them.

President Obama named him head of the DIA in 2012, but he was forced out two years later, effectively over his management style. He viewed his firing as unfair and as payback for unpleasant truths he spoke about Islamist terrorism in general and the threats posed by ISIS in particular. While at the DIA, Flynn advocated an immediate overhaul of the agency—an initiative that received pushback from the intelligence community. Reuters spoke to unnamed critics of Flynn who expressed concerns “about a management style that alienated some of his subordinates at DIA.” Still, his supporters say his experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as his candor, make him the right man for the position of national security adviser to Trump.

“I am, like, Mr. Change,” Flynn said in November 2010. “People that work for me know that we’re going to be innovative and, to a degree, we’re going to be uncomfortable in terms of how far we’re going to go to innovate. Because in war, if you stick with the norm, you’re going to lose.”

Flynn’s controversial views notwithstanding, he has said he is in favor of strengthening some old alliances—as well as building some new ones. He favors a hard line toward Iran, with which the U.S. and others Western nations recently signed an agreement that would freeze the Islamic republic’s nuclear program for 15 years; he supports closer ties with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president who took power after a military-backed coup toppled an Islamist-led, democratically elected government; and he backs closer ties with Israel. Additionally, in a recent op-ed in The Hill, Flynn argued the U.S. should extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric who that country’s government views as a terrorist leader. Flynn did not disclose at the time that he was a paid lobbyist for the Turkish government.