“Red Lights Flashing”
IT IS THE CIA DIRECTOR’S JOB TO IDENTIFY AND sound the alarm about risks to national security and “to serve as the president’s honest broker of intelligence,” according to Chris Whipple, bestselling author of The Gatekeepers. At a time when concerns over foreign interference in American elections is at an all-time high, this part of the job is particularly significant, yet the position inherently lacks transparency. In his new book, The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future (Scribner, September), Whipple sheds light on the relationships between the directors and the presidents they served. Whipple’s extensive interviews of the heads of the American intelligence community from the ’60s to today provide insight into critical decisions around developments like 9/11, drone warfare and the leadup to the coronavirus pandemic. In this excerpt, Whipple explores the initial discovery of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and the calculations that went into moderating the American response to the Russian threat of attack. The fear: that a strong response would open the floodgates to even more cyberattacks against America—wreaking even greater chaos.
In his seventh-floor office overlooking the wooded campus of Langley, Virginia, John Brennan sat at a conference table, hunched over his laptop. It was midnight, August 2, 2016, and the CIA director was surrounded by debris—black binders, white
