The Cold War ended.

The revolving door between the national-security establishment and the media did not.

Carpenter points to former Obama-era intelligence officials such as James Clapper, John Brennan and Michael Hayden.

After leaving government, all three became regular television commentators, with Brennan and Clapper becoming especially prominent fixtures on MSNBC and Hayden also appearing frequently in the media.

Carpenter’s objection is not simply that former officials went into television.

It is that audiences were often presented with people who had spent their careers inside the national-security apparatus as if they were detached analysts capable of independently judging the institutions they had previously led.

Jack Shafer of POLITICO described this as a new career path for former intelligence officials: leave government, become a television commentator, and turn years inside the national-security establishment into a lucrative second career.

The problem, as Carpenter presents it, is institutional loyalty.

A former intelligence official may leave the payroll without leaving behind the worldview, relationships or institutional loyalties developed during decades inside the security bureaucracy.

Yet viewers may simply see a familiar face introduced as a “former CIA director” or “former intelligence official” and assume that the person is providing neutral expertise.

That distinction matters enormously when the subject is war, intelligence, terrorism or national security.

The messenger may have changed jobs.

The institution’s perspective may not have changed with him.

@americanmajority