In 1953, when James Clapper was twelve, he discovered that his grandparents’ black-and-white TV could pick up audio dispatches from the Philadelphia Police Department. He used this data to discern district boundaries, identify call codes, and build a database on index cards. His father, an Army intelligence officer, was delighted: “My God, I’ve raised my own replacement!”
Rainer Hosch
James Clapper.
Clapper went on to a career in intelligence, both in the military and as a civilian. He began as a Marine Corps reservist and ended up as an Air Force lieutenant general with three stars on his shoulder. He served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under George H. W. Bush and as Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama.
In his new book, written together with Trey Brown, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, Clapper, now seventy-seven, explains how his belief in the importance of facts compelled him to speak out against President Donald Trump, “whose first instincts are to twist and distort truth to his advantage.”
In May 2017, Clapper told Jake Tapper on CNN that he believed the nation’s institutions were “under assault,” both externally and internally. “Internally from the President?” Tapper asked. “Exactly,” Clapper replied.
Now a CNN analyst, Clapper writes in his book that he believes Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “swung the election to a Trump win”—an astonishing claim to come from one of the nation’s top intelligence officials.
Clapper has been branded “a bumbling idiot” by Laura Ingraham of Fox News and a “lying machine” in a tweet from Trump himself—setting off seismic rumblings of the “Look Who’s Talking” meter. He spoke to The Progressive by phone in late June from his home in suburban Virginia.
Q: You write in your book about the devaluation of truth and rise of “alternative facts.” Explain why you feel this is dangerous for our democracy.
James Clapper: The Russians played to that narrative in the course of meddling in our campaign for the elections of 2016. This is a very insidious thing. Doubt is cast in people’s minds about whether the truth is even knowable. “Well, it could be this way, it could be that way, and you can never know”—that is one of the techniques that the Russians have long used to sow disinformation.
Q: The President has lied about you personally, like when he tweeted that you found “no evidence” of collusion between his campaign and Russians or that you confirmed Obama had planted a spy in his campaign. How do you process him saying things that are demonstrably untrue?
Clapper: Unfortunately, like many others, I have gotten jaded or calloused to this sort of behavior on the part of the President. I mean, when you first encounter it, you think: How can this be? How can this person so distort the truth? It reminds me of George Orwell, the Ministry of Truth [in Nineteen Eighty-Four], where up is down, black is white, and hot is cold. It’s the same sort of thing, where you’re conveying “alternative facts” that are diametrical opposites to what the real facts are. It’s not good for a democracy.
“. . . you’re conveying “alternative facts” that are diametrical opposites to what the real facts are. It’s not good for a democracy.”
Q: You write that while the intelligence community made “no attempt to assess” whether Russia’s interference affected the outcome of the election, as a private citizen you have “no doubt” that this occurred. What are the implications of this conclusion? Wouldn’t that make Trump an illegitimate President?
Clapper: That’s a good question. I don’t know, to be honest. What is disturbing is the tremendous, massive effort the Russians made to influence individual voter decisions. In our intelligence community assessment issued on January 6, 2017, we didn’t make a call on [whether this swayed the election] because the intelligence community didn’t have the authority or the charter or resources or capability to do that.
Now, as a private citizen, knowing what I know about what the Russians did, knowing how few votes, really, the election was turned on—80,000 or so votes in three states—and understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did, it defies credulity to think that they didn’t profoundly influence it and, in fact, turn it.
Q: A year ago, you said in regard to indications that Russia interfered with the election, “Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we’re confronting now.” Do you still feel that way?
Clapper: Yeah I do. I lived through Watergate. I was a young Air Force intelligence officer. I never felt like the institutions of the country were in jeopardy. I do now. That’s the difference for me.
Q: Do you think the Mueller probe will show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials?
Clapper: I don’t know. But I do hope that that point is addressed. This is a huge cloud hanging over the country and the presidency, and at some point in time that issue’s got to be resolved. But I don’t know how that’s going to come out.
Q: What about obstruction? Do you think there is evidence of that?
Clapper: Well, as a layman, yes, but again, I’m not a lawyer here and I don’t know perhaps enough about [it] to argue the nuances or the legalities.
Q: As one of the few U.S. diplomats who has gone to North Korea, you’ve said that President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un could be “a courageous step forward” but also that the North Korean dictator “is in it for the long game” while Trump “is more in it for the immediate self-gratification.” What are the implications of that?
Clapper: It’s going to be a long, long time before we see the North Koreans denuclearize, whatever that means. One of the major takeaways from my visit to North Korea in November 2014 is that the North Koreans are clearly stuck on their narrative and have been for a long time, [as are] we in the United States. So I supported [Trump’s decision to meet with Kim]. But I think the President squandered the leverage he had and didn’t get the specific commitments out of the North Koreans that he should have. And there was no reason whatsoever to volunteer to give up the so-called war games. Big mistake.
Q: How does it feel for you to hear Donald Trump praise Kim Jong-un, a murderous dictator who has had members of his own family killed, as “very honorable”?
Clapper: Yeah, well, no better than it makes me feel to hear his deference to the likes of Vladimir Putin, or Duterte [of the Philippines] or now Erdoğan of Turkey. He seems to have a special affinity for autocrats. It’s not good, but it doesn’t surprise me. It’s very consistent on his part.
Q: Dan Rather has said he feels as though we are moving toward authoritarianism. Do you agree with that?
Clapper: Yes, I do, and I think the Supreme Court decision [affirming Trump’s travel ban] is going to amplify that. He’s going to construe it as a victory, and he will use this for autocratic rulings, regulations, executive orders, whatnot, that would not normally comport with our standards and values.
Q: You write about the expected global displacement of people due to climate change. What do you make of Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord?
Clapper: It was a huge mistake. We are now isolated in the world. We’re the only nonsignatory of all the nation-states in the world. Whenever we drop out of these international compacts, Trump [frames] these decisions as stances opposed to globalism and multilateralism. Trump is saying, “Now everybody respects us,” but I think it’s actually just the opposite. Like dropping out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—all that did was create a huge void that’s now being filled by China. You know, his disparagement of the G7, our closest allies; he disparages them and he disparages NATO, and I just don’t see how that strengthens the hand of America or makes us “Great.”
Q: A report you released in January 2017 found that up to 117 civilians died due to drone strikes during the Obama Administration, along with about 3,000 combatants. How do you process having been part of an administration and an intelligence apparatus that killed innocent people through drone strikes?
Clapper: Most military warfare is characterized by killing innocent people. Many, many millions and millions of innocent people were killed in World War II. Many, many innocent Koreans were killed in the Korean War. And many, many innocent Vietnamese were killed during that war, which I participated in. I think the difference here, at least certainly in the last administration, is the extraordinary lengths that we went to not to do that.
Q: You’re quite candid in assessing intelligence community failures, like the false conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Is there a lesson that experts and policy makers can draw from things like this?
Clapper: Policy makers should always have a degree of what I’ll call “respectable skepticism” about any intelligence they’re given. They should always question it—which is different than disparaging it or insulting it. I [signed off on] the national intelligence estimate of October 2002, which addressed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I think it was just a case of groupthink, of not encouraging dissent, as we do now, and also ignorance about certain key collection sources. So all those things have been addressed and hopefully fixed since that episode.
Q: Do you really think this kind of intelligence failure is less likely now?
Clapper: It’s less likely. It’s certainly not impossible. That’s always a pitfall when you’re dealing with incomplete information. And intelligence is always dealing with incomplete information. What you try to do is reduce uncertainty, and rarely can you eliminate it.
Watch the clips of Putin’s speech, where he laid out and described weapons of varying degrees of maturity. He has only one adversary in mind . . . and that’s the United States.
Q: What country, in your view, presents the greatest threat to the United States?
Clapper: In the short term, it’s Russia. By short term, I mean at least the next six years or however long Putin is around. Russia represents an existential threat to this country. Not only for this very aggressive information operations campaign that they have waged and are continuing to wage against us, but something that doesn’t get a lot of attention is the impressive and disturbing modernization of their strategic nuclear arsenal. Watch the clips of Putin’s speech on March 1, where he laid out and described weapons of varying degrees of maturity. He has only one adversary in mind when he designs and fields all those weapons systems, and that’s the United States.
Q: What danger does Trump’s reluctance to criticize Putin or Russia create for the United States?
Clapper: We need the President’s voice and his leadership to galvanize the country, not just on an intergovernmental basis but on an intersociety basis . . .
Q: God help us.
Clapper: . . . to provoke awareness, to stimulate awareness among the public about the real threat that Russia poses. And as long as he [doesn’t do that], we’re not going to have that galvanizing leadership that we need.
Q: You say your realizations about the danger to democracy posed by Donald Trump compelled you to write this book. What can, what should, the rest of us be doing in response to this threat?
Clapper: Well, one thing is to not accept everything that you see, hear, or read. There has to be a greater degree of inquisitiveness, of questioning, and seeking empirical evidence. And I think too many people today get caught up in wild conspiracy theories because they read, see, and hear things which, I guess, they want to believe, instead of questioning their veracity. That’s a bad thing. w