美国国家公共电台 NPR 4 Months And Counting, An Acting Intelligence Chief In The Hot Seat

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Yovanovitch, Vindman, Sondland - a few of the people who've become household names as the impeachment² drama has played out. With the House vote now behind us, we wanted to catch up with another central character from the very beginning, a man who occupies, at least for the moment, one of the most critical perches³ in the U.S. government.

Our story begins late on Friday, the 13th of September, which is when Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released a cryptic⁴ letter. And we're going to let our co-host, Mary Louise Kelly, pick it up from here.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, BYLINE⁵: The letter runs four pages on official stationery⁶ - the big seal of the Intelligence Committee on top. It is signed sincerely, Adam B. Schiff. It is addressed to this guy.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOSEPH MAGUIRE: Now, here I am, sitting before you as the acting⁷ director of national intelligence.

KELLY: Joseph Maguire. That's him testifying before Congress, end of September. He had received Schiff's letter, which contained very few details, but which marked the first public mention of the whistleblower complaint. The letter accused Maguire of improperly⁸ withholding⁹ that complaint from Congress and subpoenaed¹⁰ him to testify.

Now, we heard Maguire say there he's the acting director of national intelligence. And talk about timing¹¹.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY: Director Maguire, what was your first day on the job?

MAGUIRE: My first day on the job was Friday, the 16th of August. And I think I set a new record in the administration for being subpoenaed before any...

MALONEY: Yeah, yeah. You had a heck of a first week, didn't you, sir?

MAGUIRE: I've got that much going for me, sir.

KELLY: The questions there from New York Democrat¹² Sean Patrick Maloney driving home the point that Maguire took over the job of running U.S. intelligence just four days after the whistleblower, a U.S. intelligence official, filed the complaint. Maguire suggested this was not the way he'd envisioned the job going.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MAGUIRE: Now I also want to say, sir, if I may, my life would have been a heck of a lot simpler without becoming the most famous man in the United States.

MALONEY: Don't doubt that it all, sir.

KELLY: Debatable whether Joseph Maguire was then, or now, the most famous man in the United States. But if it felt that way, it speaks to the extraordinarily¹³ awkward position the acting DNI found himself in, caught between a White House looking for loyalty¹⁴ and lawmakers looking for answers. Since his appearance before the House Intelligence Committee, Maguire has kept an exceedingly low profile, no interviews - we asked for one.

We're going to spend these next minutes looking closely at the DNI job, whether it matters that we are now past four months and counting with an acting director at the helm, the longest period without a Senate-confirmed permanent leader of U.S. intelligence since the job was created 15 years ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH: Today, I'm asking Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director.

KELLY: George W. Bush in the White House Rose Garden, 2004. Over in Congress, they were listening.

SUSAN COLLINS: We were breaking for the August recess¹⁵. And I decided¹⁶ to call our committee back into session, and we began the hearings.

KELLY: Republican Susan Collins of Maine - she chaired the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

COLLINS: I felt a sense of urgency because this was already 2004. The terrorist attacks had happened on 9/11/2001.

KELLY: And the 9/11 Commission had just released its final report. It zoomed¹⁷ in on a failure to connect the dots, that the CIA, the FBI and others weren't sharing what they knew. The report had ideas for how to prevent anything like 9/11 from ever happening again. The central, crowning recommendation - a new position, someone who could force intelligence agencies to talk to each other. So Collins and Joe Lieberman, then the committee's top Democrat, got to work.

I remember you couldn't figure out what you were going to call this position to start with. It was the NID for a little while.

COLLINS: I was going to say it. For a while, it was the NID. And I remember Joe Lieberman saying, we can't call it the NID. That sounds too much like the NET. And it has to be the DNI.

KELLY: Doesn't sound empowered, even...

COLLINS: Exactly.

KELLY: What to call it was the least of their problems. Senator Collins told me the turf battles were endless.

COLLINS: It was vehemently¹⁸ opposed by not only the CIA, but particularly the secretary of defense¹⁹, Donald Rumsfeld, because his department was going to lose considerable power over the intelligence community's budget, which was funneled²⁰ through the Department of Defense.

KELLY: But as you heard, his boss, President Bush, was on board. And in December 2004, Congress passed the most sweeping²¹ intelligence overhaul²² in nearly 60 years. By the following February, Bush was announcing his pick for the nation's first director of national intelligence.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BUSH: Vesting these authorities in a single official who reports directly to me will make our intelligence efforts better coordinated²³, more efficient and more effective. The director of the CIA will report to John.

KELLY: John was John Negroponte. At the time, he was U.S. ambassador to Iraq. I tracked him down here in Washington this week and asked about that last bit of the president's remarks, that the head of the CIA would report to him.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: That's correct.

KELLY: Did it work out that way?

NEGROPONTE: It did. No, it did. But, you know, it took some socializing and some...

KELLY: Explain. Explain socializing. That feels like a diplomatic term.

NEGROPONTE: Some water had to go under the bridge (laughter).

KELLY: In the 15 years that that water has been flowing under the bridge, the office of the DNI has expanded to a staff of thousands - the exact number is classified - a sleek²⁴ headquarters building has gone up in northern Virginia. So has all this worked? Has having a DNI made us safer? Again, the sponsor of the original legislation, Senator Collins.

COLLINS: I do believe that it has been successful, but it's not perfect. I do hear a criticism that the DNI's office has grown too big, too bureaucratic²⁵. So I'm not saying that we got it perfectly²⁶ right. But compared to where we were, we have come an enormous way.

KELLY: I heard a similar view from Mike Morell, who was among those who required some socializing, to use Negroponte's word. Morell served more than 30 years at the CIA. He was President Bush's briefer on 9/11 and ended up the agency's deputy director. Morell opposed creating the DNI, thought the more obvious solution was to bulk up the authorities of the head of the CIA.

MIKE MORELL: But I evolved over time significantly. So by the time I left government in 2013, the last week that I was deputy director, I actually got in my car and drove to Capitol Hill and met with Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman to actually thank them. So I was - I started out in one place, and I ended up in a completely different place.

KELLY: Pressed as to why, Morell, who now hosts the "Intelligence Matters" podcast, pointed²⁷ to his former gig, delivering the president's daily brief. In the old days, he says it was pretty much only CIA material that made the cut. Whereas now, with a DNI overseeing everything, the president's likely to hear from, sure, the CIA, but also the State Department's intelligence branch or the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA.

MORELL: So when CIA wrote a piece, say, on a China issue, and DIA had a different view, it would actually say at the bottom of the page, DIA has a different view. Here it is. Here's why they have a different view. And here, Mr. President, is why this matters to you, this difference matters to you. So - and I think that makes for better intelligence support for the president.

KELLY: John Negroponte, the original DNI, has mixed feelings about the job he once held.

Here we are 15 years later. As an experiment, has it worked?

NEGROPONTE: I would say it hasn't failed. I'm not sure it's worked fully²⁸. I think it's still work in progress.

KELLY: On the positive side, Ambassador Negroponte points to changes he helped put in motion, such as integrating the FBI more closely into the broader intelligence community. Then he pauses and adds, mistakes still get made.

NEGROPONTE: Obviously, we see that from the inspector²⁹ general's report just now with respect to Carter Page and all that. That was an egregious³⁰ - seems to have been an egregious mistake of some kind, which shows that those problems of coordination³¹ don't just go away because you say they should.

KELLY: The reference there to the DOJ inspector general who just last week delivered a report documenting all kinds of errors in the FBI's application to surveil one-time Trump³² campaign aide Carter Page.

Now, can we draw a direct line between the DNI role and the FBI cock-ups? No. What is fact is last week saw President Trump tweeting the FBI is, quote, "badly broken," which brings us back up to this moment - the president attacking what he has come to call the deep state, the House voting to impeach¹ the president following an inquiry³³ originally put in motion by a U.S. intelligence community whistleblower, the usual array of national security threats on the radar³⁴ from Iran to China to North Korea, and no sign of a nomination³⁵ for the top job in U.S. intelligence.

COLLINS: It is definitely a problem that the president has not nominated a permanent, Senate-confirmed DNI.

KELLY: Republican Senator Susan Collins.

COLLINS: If the people in the intelligence community do not know whether the acting DNI is going to be there next week, they are going to be less responsive to his concerns, to his directives. And that is a problem. So I would urge the president to make a choice.

KELLY: I put her argument to someone with firsthand experience, Michael Morell.

MORELL: You know, I was acting director of CIA twice, so I know what I'm talking about here. You don't feel as empowered as you would if you are Senate-confirmed because you know you're not going to be there that long.

KELLY: Just how awkward a position, then, does Joseph Maguire find himself in four months and four days after being named acting director of national intelligence? Morrell points out that Maguire's a Navy vice³⁶ admiral, 36 years in uniform.

MORELL: This is a guy who's actually been shot at - right? - in combat. This is a guy who's endured a lot. But I think what he is learning is that the political fire is often more challenging than actual weapons fire.

KELLY: Navigating³⁷ impeachment era, Donald Trump-dominated Washington, in other words, is a different game, Morrell adds, I hope he's learning fast.

(SOUNDBITE OF JINSANG'S "LEARNING")

1 impeach   

v.弹劾；检举

参考例句：

• We must impeach the judge for taking bribes.我们一定要检举法官收受贿赂。
• The committee decided to impeach the President.委员会决定弹劾总统。

2 impeachment   

n.弹劾；控告；怀疑

参考例句：

• Impeachment is considered a drastic measure in the United States.在美国，弹劾被视为一种非常激烈的措施。
• The verdict resulting from his impeachment destroyed his political career.他遭弹劾后得到的判决毁了他的政治生涯。

3 perches   

栖息处( perch的名词复数 )； 栖枝； 高处； 鲈鱼

参考例句：

• Other protection can be obtained by providing wooden perches througout the orchards. 其它保护措施是可在种子园中到处设置木制的栖木。
• The birds were hopping about on their perches and twittering. 鸟儿在栖木上跳来跳去，吱吱地叫着。

4 cryptic   

adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的

参考例句：

• She made a cryptic comment about how the film mirrored her life.她隐晦地表示说这部电影是她人生的写照。
• The new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms.新的保险单在编写时没有隐秘条款或秘密条款。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 stationery   

n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封

参考例句：

• She works in the stationery department of a big store.她在一家大商店的文具部工作。
• There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.文具一多，心里自会觉得踏实。

7 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

8 improperly   

不正确地，不适当地

参考例句：

• Of course it was acting improperly. 这样做就是不对嘛！
• He is trying to improperly influence a witness. 他在试图误导证人。

9 withholding   

扣缴税款

参考例句：

• She was accused of withholding information from the police. 她被指控对警方知情不报。
• The judge suspected the witness was withholding information. 法官怀疑见证人在隐瞒情况。

10 subpoenaed   

v.（用传票）传唤（某人）( subpoena的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The court subpoenaed her to appear as a witness. 法庭传唤她出庭作证。
• The finance director is subpoenaed by prosecution. 财务经理被检查机关传讯。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 timing   

n.时间安排，时间选择

参考例句：

• The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
• The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。

12 democrat   

n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员

参考例句：

• The Democrat and the Public criticized each other.民主党人和共和党人互相攻击。
• About two years later,he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.大约两年后，他被民主党人杰米卡特击败。

13 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

14 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

15 recess   

n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处）

参考例句：

• The chairman of the meeting announced a ten-minute recess.会议主席宣布休会10分钟。
• Parliament was hastily recalled from recess.休会的议员被匆匆召回开会。

16 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

17 zoomed   

v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去式 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨

参考例句：

• Traffic zoomed past us. 车辆从我们身边疾驰而过。
• Cars zoomed helter-skelter, honking belligerently. 大街上来往车辆穿梭不停，喇叭声刺耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 vehemently   

adv. 热烈地

参考例句：

• He argued with his wife so vehemently that he talked himself hoarse. 他和妻子争论得很激烈，以致讲话的声音都嘶哑了。
• Both women vehemently deny the charges against them. 两名妇女都激烈地否认了对她们的指控。

19 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

20 funneled   

漏斗状的

参考例句：

• The crowd funneled through the hall. 群众从走廊中鱼贯而过。
• The large crowd funneled out of the gates after the football match. 足球赛后大群人从各个门中涌出。

21 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

22 overhaul   

v./n.大修，仔细检查

参考例句：

• Master Worker Wang is responsible for the overhaul of this grinder.王师傅主修这台磨床。
• It is generally appreciated that the rail network needs a complete overhaul.众所周知，铁路系统需要大检修。

23 coordinated   

adj.协调的

参考例句：

• The sound has to be coordinated with the picture. 声音必须和画面协调一致。
• The numerous existing statutes are complicated and poorly coordinated. 目前繁多的法令既十分复杂又缺乏快调。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

24 sleek   

adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢

参考例句：

• Women preferred sleek,shiny hair with little decoration.女士们更喜欢略加修饰的光滑闪亮型秀发。
• The horse's coat was sleek and glossy.这匹马全身润泽有光。

25 bureaucratic   

adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的

参考例句：

• The sweat of labour washed away his bureaucratic airs.劳动的汗水冲掉了他身上的官气。
• In this company you have to go through complex bureaucratic procedures just to get a new pencil.在这个公司里即使是领一支新铅笔，也必须通过繁琐的手续。

26 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

27 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

28 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

29 inspector   

n.检查员，监察员，视察员

参考例句：

• The inspector was interested in everything pertaining to the school.视察员对有关学校的一切都感兴趣。
• The inspector was shining a flashlight onto the tickets.查票员打着手电筒查看车票。

30 egregious   

adj.非常的，过分的

参考例句：

• When it comes to blatant lies,there are none more egregious than budget figures.谈到公众谎言，没有比预算数字更令人震惊的。
• What an egregious example was here!现摆着一个多么触目惊心的例子啊。

31 coordination   

n.协调，协作

参考例句：

• Gymnastics is a sport that requires a considerable level of coordination.体操是一项需要高协调性的运动。
• The perfect coordination of the dancers and singers added a rhythmic charm to the performance.舞蹈演员和歌手们配合得很好，使演出更具魅力。

32 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

33 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

34 radar   

n.雷达，无线电探测器

参考例句：

• They are following the flight of an aircraft by radar.他们正在用雷达追踪一架飞机的飞行。
• Enemy ships were detected on the radar.敌舰的影像已显现在雷达上。

35 nomination   

n.提名，任命，提名权

参考例句：

• John is favourite to get the nomination for club president.约翰最有希望被提名为俱乐部主席。
• Few people pronounced for his nomination.很少人表示赞成他的提名。

36 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

37 navigating   

v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的现在分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃

参考例句：

• These can also be very useful when navigating time-based documents, such as video and audio. 它对于和时间有关的文档非常有用，比如视频和音频文档。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• Vehicles slowed to a crawl on city roads, navigating slushy snow. 汽车在市区路上行驶缓慢，穿越泥泞的雪地。 来自互联网