Salon's Glenn Greenwald Defends the Chas Freeman Nomination at NIC

by Hugh Hewitt

HH: Over the last three or four days, I have been telling you about the controversy surrounding the nomination of Ambassador Charles Freeman to be the head of the NIC. And one of the people I’ve had on to criticize the nomination, Mark Steyn earlier in the day, I now want to balance out with Glenn Greenwald, columnist for Salon.com. He was a supporter of the Freeman nomination, and a critic of the critics of Freeman. Glenn, welcome back to the program, good to have you.

GG: Great to be back, Hugh, thanks.

HH: Can you summarize your argument in support of Freeman?

GG: Sure, I would begin with the fact that Freeman was chosen not by Barack Obama, but by Admiral Dennis Blair, who is a four star admiral who has one of the most impressive military records in the United States, formerly commander of the Pacific Fleet. And what he said, both publicly and privately, is that Freeman is a great patriot who has an ability to analyze intelligence in a very unique way that would be of great assistance to Admiral Blair in carrying out his primary function, which is to protect the people of the United States and preserve American national security. And when an admiral like Dennis Blair says something like that about Charles Freeman, and the way that he would help Blair carry out his duties, that creates a very significant presumption, at least in my mind, that Freeman ought to be in that position. It’s a rebuttable presumption, but it’s certainly a very positive thing. And when you add on to that the fact that virtually everybody who has worked with Freeman over his long service to his country have all said that essentially the same thing, that he’s a great patriot with a great analytical mind, the ability to spark exactly the kind of debate within our intelligence community that a director of national intelligence would need. I also consider that highly credible, the people who know him saying very praiseworthy things about him. And then finally, I would say that the objections that have been raised by his critics are uniquely unpersuasive to me. I think we need more debate over our policy toward Israel, not less. I think the orthodoxies need to be shattered. Obviously, Admiral Blair thinks that, too. And I think the attempts to tie him to China and to Saudi Arabia, when you look at how much more powerful people inside the United States are tied to the Saudi regime without any kind of controversy like this arising, I think those are clearly pretexts.

Read the rest of the article

March 16, 2009

Copyright © 2009 Hugh Hewitt