Frank has a simple test for anyone seeking a position of public trust. Can you answer a direct question with a direct answer? That is the whole test. Frank did not make it complicated. Frank believes that a person who cannot answer a straightforward question under oath in a public confirmation hearing probably should not be running anything more consequential than a lemonade stand, let alone the entire United States intelligence apparatus.
Jay Clayton was nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI oversees all seventeen agencies in the American intelligence community. The CIA. The NSA. The DIA. Every organization in this country that collects, analyzes, and acts on information about threats to national security reports up through this office. It is one of the most consequential positions in the federal government.
Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia asked Mr. Clayton a direct question during his confirmation hearing. He asked whether the 2020 presidential election results were legitimate.
Mr. Clayton declined to answer.
Frank would like to sit with that for a moment.
What Frank thinks about people who will not answer direct questions.
Frank grew up around people who answered questions. His father answered questions. The men Frank worked with answered questions. When you asked them something directly they told you what they thought, whether you were going to like it or not, because that is what adults do and that is what honesty requires.
Frank has noticed over the course of his life that the people most reluctant to answer direct questions are almost always the people with the most to lose from giving an honest answer. Frank is not saying this is always the case. Frank is saying he has never been wrong about it.
The Director of National Intelligence is supposed to be the person who tells the President and the country the truth about threats, about intelligence assessments, about what is actually happening in the world as opposed to what anyone wants to believe is happening. The entire value of the position depends on the person in it being willing to say true things even when true things are inconvenient.
A man who will not answer a yes or no question about a five year old election result under oath in a public hearing is not demonstrating the qualities Frank associates with someone committed to telling difficult truths to powerful people.
Frank finds this relevant to the job description.
What the Constitution says about this.
Article II of the Constitution gives the Senate the power of advice and consent over presidential appointments. The confirmation hearing is where the Senate exercises that power. It is the mechanism the Founders designed specifically so the legislative branch could evaluate whether the people the executive branch wants to put in positions of power are actually qualified and trustworthy enough to hold them.
The confirmation hearing only works if nominees answer questions. A nominee who refuses to answer a direct question is not participating in the constitutional process in good faith. They are using the process as a formality to get through rather than as the accountability mechanism it was designed to be.
Frank is not making a political argument here. Frank does not care which party the nominee belongs to or which president nominated him. Frank cares that the constitutional process of advice and consent is being treated as a procedural obstacle rather than a genuine check on executive power.
The Founders were very specific about checks and balances. They were specific about them because they had watched what happened when those checks did not exist. They did not design the confirmation process so nominees could sit in a chair and decline to engage with questions they found inconvenient.
The specific question Frank keeps coming back to.
Frank is not particularly interested in the 2020 election at this point. Frank has opinions about it the way Frank has opinions about most things, but that is not the point of this post.
The point of this post is that the man being considered to lead the nation's intelligence community demonstrated in his confirmation hearing that he is willing to withhold a direct answer to a direct question when giving that answer might be politically inconvenient.
Frank wants you to think about what that means for the job.
The DNI's job is to present accurate intelligence assessments even when those assessments are politically inconvenient. Even when the President does not want to hear them. Even when the truth conflicts with what the administration believes or wants to believe. The entire history of American intelligence failures, and there have been significant ones, involves moments when accurate information was filtered, softened, or withheld because someone decided the truth was too inconvenient to deliver clearly.
The man nominated to prevent that from happening just demonstrated in public that he is willing to withhold a clear answer when a clear answer is inconvenient.
Frank is not saying he will definitely do that in the job. Frank is saying he demonstrated that he is capable of it and willing to do it when the stakes are relatively low.
Frank wonders what he will do when the stakes are high.
Frank's actual position.
Frank does not know whether Jay Clayton is a good person. Frank does not know whether he is qualified in other respects. Frank is not in a position to evaluate his intelligence background or his management capabilities or his relationships within the intelligence community.
What Frank knows is what he saw in that hearing room. A man asked a direct question who gave an indirect answer because giving a direct answer would have been uncomfortable.
Frank has been in rooms like that. Frank has watched people do exactly that. Frank has never once seen it end well for the people who needed the truth and did not get it.
The Director of National Intelligence should be the last person in Washington who hedges when someone asks him a direct question. That is not a partisan position. That is a job requirement.
Frank hopes the Senate is paying attention.
Frank suspects some of them are not.
Read the document. Then watch what the people responsible for upholding it actually do when someone asks them a simple question about it.
Frank timed the Constitution at 22 minutes. Answering a yes or no question takes considerably less time than that.
— Frank