Finally, this week, after two and a half years, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced the center’s new director, Mike Casey, whom Haines hailed as “an excellent choice to lead ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, with years of critical national security experience in a variety of roles.”

That statement, like so many utterances from this administration, is true only in a legalistic sense. …

In its 22-year history, NCSC (going under a few names) has had six directors, all of whom possessed intelligence experience, usually in counterintelligence. Several directors were counterspy lifers, appropriately. The center’s new, seventh director will be something different, a partisan appointment lacking any experience with catching spies.

[One wonders what kind of counterintel operations will get priority under a partisan player like Casey. Maybe he’ll try to refloat the Hunter Biden laptop story into a Russian intel op again. — Ed]