John O. Brennan: preference

Transcript context

…But that and loyalty — it would seem to select against disagreeability. There’s loyalty to the Constitution. There’s loyalty to the oath of office. To me, there shouldn’t be loyalty to any individuals, including inside the CIA. I would like to think that CIA recruiters would be looking for individuals who are intellectually curious, have critical thinking skills, and mainly have also, I think, some degree of contrariness because you don’t want people just to accept as gospel what it is that they are being told, especially if they’re going to be interacting with spies overseas. You don’t want someone who’s going to argue with everything just for the sake of argumentation. But I know that, certainly, when I was at the agency and director of CIA, I wanted people to challenge what I was saying. I had no monopoly on wisdom or knowledge or insights, so you want people to be willing to speak up. In my book, I talk about how I was reluctant to do that earlier on. I learned the importance of doing that as I went through my career. It costs more than ever before to live in or near McLean. Many jobs, including presumably CIA jobs, require a greater knowledge of tech, which means there’s a higher forgone wage outside of the agency. What’s the CIA going to do to meet the next generation of recruiting challenges? If talent is your real asset, aren’t you in a somewhat unfavorable position looking forward?…

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