In an electric exchange with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Petraeus explained his strongly held view on when a commander (or perhaps a past or future CIA director) should or would resign when he disagrees with a presidential decision. Levin raised a hypothetical question based on a president ordering him to do something “you couldn’t do . . . consistent with that [constitutional] oath. You would resign?”
“I’m not a quitter,” Petraeus responded. “I don’t think that it is the place for a commander to actually consider that kind of step unless you are in a very, very dire situation.” He added this important view: “Our troopers don’t get to quit, and I don’t think that commanders should contemplate that as any kind of idle action.”
He said for commanders this should not be done just in protest because “this is not about me, it’s not about an individual commander, it’s not about a reputation. This is about our country, and the best step for our country, with the commander in chief having made a decision, is to execute that decision to the very best of our ability.”
Reading those words I remembered listening fairly recently to a former senior CIA official involved in the waterboarding episodes explain to a group about the mood of fear in the country post-Sept. 11. The CIA was given a direct presidential order for the activity, and more than one legal opinion demanded by agency leaders from the attorney general each time said that the orders were within the law.
Petraeus himself recognized last week that this is still a major morale issue at CIA, because it is not the first time that CIA officers were being investigated for what they did under orders from a previous president of a different political party. He made reference to the criminal investigations still underway into those Bush era events and said today, 10 years later, people don’t “appreciate the context of the post-Sept. 11 period and some actions that were taking place under direction.”
“As the potential leader of the agency,” he added, “I would like to see us focus forward and indeed put some of these actions behind us once and for all and put our workforce at rest with respect to that.”
That is the man who will step out of a car, alone and in civilian clothes, at Langley in September.
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