Former acting DNI Ric Grenell tells Fox that too much government experience means “you're indoctrinated”
Published
Citation From the June 8, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
RIC GRENELL (FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTEL): What we have is a system in Washington, and you know this Tucker, where people get jobs if you're there, if you know someone, and you work your way up and it's like musical chairs from one agency to another. There is no outside thought, there's no outside perspective when someone like Donald Trump comes in and says why are we doing it this way. They attack him because he's breaking the system, he doesn't play by their rules.
I saw that at ODNI, I saw that by entering the intelligence world, I had senators from the Democratic Party saying, 'You have no experience, what are you doing? Why shouldn't you -- why should you be there and trying to lead this Office of Director of National Intelligence?' And the fact of the matter is, Tucker, nobody said that my first intelligence briefing was in 2001 before Mark Warner, Senator Mark Warner got his intelligence briefing. The same guy who said that I wasn't qualified. I actually am a receiver of intelligence, an expert on the consumer part of the intelligence and how to utilize it, but that perspective is never brought to Washington. You've got to grow up, you've got to be the deputy assistant secretary and then the assistant secretary and then you get something else and before you know it, you're indoctrinated.
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GRENELL: Intelligence is an estimate. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. It's utilized by policymakers to say here is the current information we know, and by the way, here's the current information that we don't know, use it to make good policies.
And instead, what we've had is policymakers that manipulate it. I had intelligence officers who didn't want to brief the Hill any more because their words would be manipulated.