The following is a transcript of an interview with Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of National Intelligence in the first Trump administration, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Nov. 17, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by Sue Gordon. She served as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. Good to see you here again.
SUE GORDON: Great to see you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you personally briefed Donald Trump as President in the Oval Office. If this nominee to be Tulsi Gabbard becomes the Director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe becomes the CIA director, are you confident that Mr. Trump will be told the information he needs to know, and not just what he wants to know?
SUE GORDON: Well, I think that’s the- I think that’s the question of the day. Intelligence is weird
because it’s always uncertain, and you are always making an assessment so that a decision-maker can figure out what they’re going to do with it. And so it’s particular. And you- your only job is to ruthlessly report what you see, not what you prefer. So that’s the primary job of the DNI, is to go in there and to be his principal advisor on intelligence. You’re the first in, you’re the last out. You cannot afford to, I’ll say pander to preference. Loyalty doesn’t serve you well in that job. You have to be so committed that you will say inconvenient things. I will say the former president would tell you that I would talk to him about Russian interference. I know he hated it, but Russia was in fact interfering, and he needed to hear that information. So do I believe that Tulsi and John can be that person? If they believe they must be, they can learn. If they lean on the women and men of the intelligence community, they will produce an assessment. But that’s a hard day, and you better be good at it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You had to undergo an FBI background check to obtain a security clearance and to maintain it. You were a career official, 25 years at the CIA, then, as we said, moved on to national intelligence. The New York Times is reporting the Trump team may bypass the FBI process and just use a private firm to vet candidates. Then, when the president is sworn in, he can grant access to the nation’s secrets rather than go through that screening. What risk is there in bypassing the FBI?
SUE GORDON: Well, the first risk is that you will get an incomplete picture of the human that is carrying both the trust of the American people and the trust of our allies and partners and the trust of the women and men that are putting their lives on the line for that judgment, right? Everyone hates vetting. It’s intrusive. It- you don’t know why anyone should have to do it, because you know who you are. But the truth is, we know adversaries and competitors will exploit humans to be able to advance their interests, and you want to make sure that the people that hold the American people’s trust and the most precious pieces of information we have of advantage, have no cracks in who they are. And so it seems expedient, but I think it will ultimately harm the institution. And by that I mean the institution of America, if you have people who we discover later that they should not have had access, or we discover later that they were vulnerable to the actions of our allies and of our adversaries and competitors–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –Because of leverage on them–
SUE GORDON: — It is, I mean, that’s, I mean, the craft of human intelligence is actually finding someone who has a weakness and getting them to be able to advance your interests, and it just- and what a really good day is when you find someone whose interests align with yours, and then you really push that. So a private firm isn’t going to have the standards that we’ve had. I know it’s inconvenient, but I think it’s a bad strategy and risky for America.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So CBS has also learned that, to date, the Trump team hasn’t signed the paperwork that would start the process of the national security briefings, so that someone’s not walking in cold they’re briefed and up to speed, along with these background checks. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that helps with the transitions, confirmed that to CBS. Is there any good reason not to sign those papers, and what does it do for the officials who arrive without being read in on what’s happening now?
SUE GORDON: Yeah, I can’t think of a- I can’t think of a good reason. I think one of the great falsehoods that’s been perpetrated on America is that our institutions are malfeasant. They need to be better, they need to be slimmer, they need to be more transparent, but they’re not bummed. So you’re not protecting anybody by not signing those papers, and especially with some of the nominees we have that don’t have the really deep experience base, these are big jobs. I mean, intelligence is not just advising the president, it’s also running a huge enterprise in a manner that allows our allies and partners to trust us with their most precious thing. So I can’t think of a reason why that’s not signed- signed, and to start your gig without any foundation at all, especially when the institutions are begging to give you that foundation just seems wrong-headed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re diplomatically referring to Tulsi Gabbard there, who doesn’t have a background in intelligence. She also has a history of statements, of saying things that mirror the rhetoric of us adversaries, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. There were at least two chemical weapons attacks in Syria that killed thousands of people, and the US intelligence community came to public assessments of high confidence. I imagine you saw all of that intelligence and you briefed on it.
SUE GORDON: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So when she comes out and says that she doubts it. She’s skeptical. How is that going to be received by the career professionals who work for her?
SUE GORDON: Yeah I mentioned one of her jobs would be to be the senior advisor. The second is to be responsible for all intelligence sharing agreements so our allies and partners upon whom we rely, that Syria assessment, that was joint with our allies and partners. The one we had on Skripal was joint. Our assessment of Ukraine was joint–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –That was sorry, just to explain for our viewers, Skripal, you’re talking about the killing on British soil of a former Russian by Russian intelligence.
SUE GORDON: But all those were jointly done with our allies and partners. We need them. It’s one of the greatest strengths of America, but they will make their own assessment over whether we can be trusted with their nation’s interests, and whether she meant it or not, whether she was just ill-informed of that, she comes in with strikes against her in the trust perspective, can we trust her with our most sacred intelligence to represent that in a fair way. So I think it’s a problem, whether it’s judgment or any other thing that she has represented there.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Another nerve in the intelligence community, of course, is Edward Snowden. Tulsi Gabbard, and the selection for the attorney general, Matt Gaetz, put forward resolutions to call for the charges to be dropped against him because he leaked classified national intelligence material. He’s living in Russia these days. That kind of a position, how’s that going to be received?
SUE GORDON: It reflects a lack of understanding of who we are, and it reflects a lack of respect for what we do. Unauthorized disclosures of intelligence are always bad. Don’t go with the good or bad, any good outcome or whether he was right or wrong. He had no authority, and he had different paths, and he harmed America. He not only harmed intelligence, he harmed our allies and partners, and he harmed our businesses by what it allowed China to assume about that. there is nothing justifiable about what he’s done. None. And so if they vacate it, what they’re basically saying is all those rules you follow in order to be able to serve America, they don’t matter anymore.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Sue Gordon, thank you for explaining this very opaque world of intelligence to us and for your analysis today. We’ll be back in a moment.
