Rep. Nunes Hammers Military General Over Politicized Purge Of Career Intelligence Official

The details exposed during Rep. Devin Nunes’s questioning of Gen. Paul Nakasone establish the U.S. military complex places politics over all else.

Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee held a hearing on “Diversity in the Intelligence Community.” The virtue-signaling session alone raises grave concerns over the seriousness with which our nation’s leaders view their job of protecting America’s national security. But equally concerning are the details exposed during Rep. Devin Nunes’s questioning of Gen. Paul Nakasone—details that establish the U.S. military complex places politics over all else.

Shortly after leaders from the intelligence community concluded their opening platitudes praising the importance of diversity and inclusion, Nunes confronted Nakasone with evidence that the current director of the National Security Agency engaged in “political discrimination in the workplace.” Referencing the recently released inspector general’s report on the selection of Naval officer Michael Ellis for the civil service position of general counsel for the National Security Agency, Nunes walked Nakasone through his disgraceful thwarting of Ellis’s career.

As the IG report from the Department of Defense Office detailed, in January 2020, the NSA announced the vacancy of the general counsel position. That opening qualifies as a civil service position, meaning political considerations are off-limits. After a first level of review discarded the unqualified candidates, Ellis and two other applicants were rated by a three-member committee as the top candidates for the position.

After interviewing the three candidates, Paul Ney, the general counsel for the Defense Department, assessed Ellis as the best candidate for the job. Under Department of Defense rules, Ney held sole authority to select the individual to fill the NSA general counsel position. Yet almost immediately Nakasone began interfering in the appointment.

First, in August 2020, Nakasone requested that Ney defer announcing Ellis’s selection until after the presidential election. The staffing process to onboard Ellis began on November 9, 2020, but was not yet public when the next day the Washington Post reported — falsely, as the IG’s report established last week — that “the appointment was made under pressure from the White House.” The same Post article reported that “NSA Director Paul Nakasone was not in favor of Ellis’s selection, according to...

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