In military circles, the talk all week has been about how and why the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan wound up publishing a scathing critique through a small-but-influential think tank. Now, we've got the answers.
When Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn published his tough assessment of the military's spy agencies in Afghanistan, it caught Pentagon officials by surprise -- not least because Flynn distributed it through Center for a New American Security. While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said through his press secretary that he thought Flynn's findings were "spot on," he made it clear he was a bit uncomfortable with the conduit Flynn used to distribute the report. Reuters, quoting Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, said Gates had "real reservations about the general's choice of venue for publication."
So how, exactly, did the think tank get picked to publish the report? According to Nathaniel Fick, the chief executive officer of CNAS, the whole thing was a "bolt from the blue."
In a conversation yesterday with Danger Room, Fick and CNAS President John Nagl acknowledged that the move was unusual, but said the decision to go through CNAS was based on Flynn's desire to get the report out rapidly, reach the widest possible audience and provoke much-needed debate.
"I think you quickly saw his chain of command say we support the forceful expression of new ideas," Fick said. "He knows he’s on a timeline. He’s got twelve months to demonstrate progress and to shake the bureaucracy into action. He had to go public, and an internal memo wasn’t enough."
"That was his judgment," Nagl added. "He reached out to us. We did not reach out to him."
According to Fick and Nagl, the think tank's investment in this report was minimal: Little more than formatting it and putting it in a .pdf document. They said CNAS was not paid by anyone to do it. "We did so from general funds," Nagl said. "We did not pay him or his team for it, we were not paid by his team, or any other entity to publish that."
Fick, however, did say that he was initially wary about taking this information through a public channel. "My initial concerns with it, right off the bat, were classification issues -- and whether this was more proper as an internal memo," he said. "And we waited until Gen. Flynn sent it over NIPRNet, over unsecure email, as a memo to a long list of people inside the command, in Afghanistan and beyond. And only then [after it was] unclassified, on the unclass net, distributed through the chain of command, and only then, the next day, did we go ahead with it."
Both Fick and Nagl are former military men; Fick was a Marine Corps infantry officer, and Nagl was an Army armor officer. And they both said they recognized Flynn was taking an unconventional step.
"Obviously, it was an irregular way to disseminate an idea for a serving officer," Nagl said. "Gen. Flynn decided for his own reasons -- you should ask him what they were -- to take this step. We were honored that he chose to do it through us. And we believe – I believe – that the issues he raised were of significance to national interest, and of immediate importance to our nation’s success in Afghanistan, so I was happy to publish it."
Nagl also dismissed speculation that Flynn's report originated in part from a "voices from the field" talk (the think tank hosts discussions by returning officers and civilians). Flynn, Fick said, has "never been here, to my knowledge." And they said they didn't get any angry phone calls after the report landed on the SecDef’s desk.
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
See Also:
- How the Afghan Surge Was Sold
- Afghanistan Intel Chief's Critique = Pentagon Pique
- Spies Like Us: Top U.S. Intel Officer Says Spooks Could Learn From ...
- How the Afghan Surge Was Sold
- Why Does Lockheed Spend Money on Think Tanks?
- Think-Tanks and the Reporters Who Heart Them
- Nathan to Defense Reporters: Smoooch!
