Putting self above national heroes

Douglas Mackiernan.

Between the Lines / By Peter McDermott

[This appeared in the Feb. 1, 2017, print/digital edition of the Irish Echo.]

Mary Mackiernan of Kalaheo, Hawaii, wasn’t happy. She wrote to the New York Times of her “indignation and disgust” at the Page 1 story (Jan. 22) entitled “Slamming Media, Trump Advances Two Falsehoods.”

She said that standing in front of the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, the newly inaugurated president of the country “used the occasion to denigrate the free press, one of the pillars of our democracy.”

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The Hawaiian then revealed: “The first star carved on that marble wall commemorates my father, Douglas S. Mackiernan, who gave his life in service to our country in Tibet in 1950. His mission involved monitoring the Soviet Union’s initial nuclear explosion from a remote listening post in China.”

Mackiernan went on: “It is ironic that the new president seems to feel that Russia and its ex-K.G.B. president should be shown great respect, and perhaps even emulated. I take some solace that my father does not have to witness this situation.”

I noted here last week the cheering section that Trump brought to Langley and also that it was reported the CIA’s leadership was “uncomfortable” with how things went, but that apparently was quite the understatement.

Terry Southern, one of the leading “new journalists” of the 1960s, said that when it came to writing “the capacity to astonish” was vital, which was what Robin Wright showed in her elegant 2,000-word essay for the New Yorker about that meeting. Of course, she had good material to work with – Trump’s behavior and the on-the-record responses to it by several serving or former officers as well as a former top diplomat to the Middle East.

Now, America has done great things in the world since World War II, and some bad stuff also, and the CIA has been part of both stories, mostly at the direction and discretion of the sitting president. People join it for the most patriotic reasons and they likely don’t like leaks from intelligence agencies being compared to Nazi-style tactics, just as people who work in media resent being called “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”

People ask, he told the CIA crowd, “Is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart persona.”

He further revealed that he held the “all-time record” in Time magazine cover stories. (Politico checked Time, which said it has published 11 Trump covers, whereas for instance it did 55 with Richard Nixon.) And on he went.

The outgoing CIA Director John Brennan called it a “despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.”

Ryan Crocker, who was the political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut when it was bombed in 1983 and went on to be ambassador in six countries, was “appalled” by Trump’s comments.

“Whatever his intentions, it was horrible,” Ambassador Crocker said to Wright. “As he stood there talking about how great Trump is, I kept looking at the wall behind him—as I’m sure everyone in the room was, too. He has no understanding of the world and what is going on. It was really ugly.”

Former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin told her: “It’s simply inappropriate to engage in self obsession on a spot that memorializes those who obsessed about others, and about mission, more than themselves.

“Also, people there spent their lives trying to figure out what’s true,” he said, “so it’s hard to make the case that the media created a feud with Trump. It just ain’t so.”

“What self-centered, irrational decision process got him to this travesty?” said John MacGaffin, who was once No. 2 in the CIA directorate for clandestine espionage. “Most importantly, how will that process serve us when the issues he must address are dangerous and incredibly complex? This is scary stuff!”

 

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