John A. Gentry

And we were told in no uncertain terms, gee, we understand you're reasonably bright people, everybody here, you're educated, you've got political views, but you will leave them at home.

And so in my 12 years, I knew the personal political views of a grand total of one of my colleagues.

And this was a fellow who I got to be very good friends with, and we talked politics on the weekend, not at work.

And that is just utterly gone now.

Okay, that's an important point and an unusual one.

So, you know, historically the press has done what the press is supposed to do, you know, take a look at intelligence issues, ask questions, and the press, generally speaking, has been critical of U.S.

U.S.

intelligence operations.

But in the Trump years, there was a highly unusual three-part, actually, alliance between the activist formers, in particular, along with the leakers, with the press, and then also to the House Intelligence Committee, which also had oversight responsibilities, of course.

So the nature of the issue with the press was

that the press saw a, this is the mainstream press.

So here we're talking New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, plenty of other newspapers, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, that group.

So that part of the mainstream left of center press.

So we're not talking Fox here, we're not talking

Wall Street Journal, although the Wall Street Journal used leakers here too.

But the mainstream liberal press saw allies in the formers, and they amplified the messages that the formers were giving

to them, and they helped create a situation in which the formers had credibility to talk about all kinds of things, domestic politics, things that were really outside of their normal bailiwick.

Why?

Because these people were seen as being credible, were seen as being reasonable and objective critics of Donald Trump.

So in essence, you had an alliance formed