Michael Morell
Michael Joseph Morell is an American former career intelligence analyst. He served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013 and twice as its acting director, first in 2011 and then from 2012 to 2013. He is now Senior Counselor and the Global Chairman of the Geo-Political Risk Practice at Beacon Global Strategies LLC, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
Early life and education
The son of an autoworker and homemaker, Morell is a native of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He went to Saint Joseph's School and Cuyahoga Falls High School there. He is a first generation college student. He has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Akron and a Master of Arts from Georgetown University, both in economics. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1980 and served there for 33 years.Career
Most of Morell's early work in the Agency was devoted to energy and to East Asian projects. During his mid-career, Morell managed the staff that produced the President's Daily Brief, and he served as the Executive Assistant to DCI George Tenet. Morell was President George W. Bush's daily intelligence briefer during 2001, including on September 11th. Morell spent the entire day with the President. When asked by Bush who was responsible for the attacks that day, Morell said "… I have no doubt that the trail will lead to the doorstep of Bin Laden and al-Qa’ida."Morell also served as Director for Intelligence, the Agency's top analyst, from 2008 to 2010. He served as the CIA's Associate Deputy Director, the Agency's top administrator, from 2006 to 2008.
, Hillary Clinton and other members of Obama's national security team in May 2011
In May 2010, Morell was sworn in as the deputy director of the CIA, succeeding Stephen Kappes. Morell was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Agency's second highest honor, for his role in the bin Laden operation. Obama, knowing that Morell was with Bush on 9/11, sent Morell to Dallas to brief Bush on the raid two weeks after bin Laden was killed.
From July 1, 2011 to September 6, 2011, Morell served his first stint as acting director of the CIA, replacing Leon Panetta when he was confirmed as Secretary of Defense. On November 9, 2012, Morell once again became acting director after the resignation of David Petraeus, following a sex scandal. President Obama considered Morell as the permanent replacement to Petraeus but chose John Brennan instead; Brennan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by 63 to 34 vote on March 5, 2013. Morell announced his retirement from the CIA on June 12, 2013 and left the Agency in early September 2013.
Post retirement
In November 2013, Morell joined Beacon Global Strategies as a Senior Counselor. In 2018, Beacon named Morell as the head of its geo-political risk practice. In this role, Morell advises firms on global developments and what they mean for the companies.In the wake of Edward Snowden's 2013 leak of documents on international espionage conducted by the National Security Agency, Morell was appointed as a member of President Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. By the end of 2013, the group presented a report to the White House. Nearly all the Review Group's recommendations were accepted. Morell has been a regular critic of Snowden, saying that the damage done by Snowden was profound and that he should come home to face a jury of his peers. Morell has noted that he, Morell, would be willing to live by the verdict of a jury as to whether Snowden was a patriot or a traitor.
In January 2014, Morell joined CBS News as an on-air contributor on intelligence and national security. In 2018, CBS began producing Morell's weekly podcast on national security, titled Intelligence Matters. In each episode, Morell speaks with current and former members of the intelligence community as well as policymakers about their careers and about national security issues. Each episode is distributed as a podcast and an hour-long program on CBS News Radio. Morell also contributes to the media in other ways, as a contributing columnist to the Washington Post and as an expert voice on Axios.
In May 2015, Morell's book entitled The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism—From al Qa'ida to ISIS was released. A New York Times bestseller, the book traces his three-decade-long career at the CIA, with a focus on the Agency's counterterrorism missions both before and after the September 11th attacks. The book deals with the public controversies related to the country's post-9/11 counterterrorism activities. In the book, Morell defends targeted killings by drones. He also criticizes the Senate Intelligence Committee’s analysis of CIA torture. In a separate book written by a group of former CIA senior officials, Morell critiques the media's coverage of the Senate report. Also, in his book, Morell apologized to former Secretary of State Colin Powell for the CIA's erroneous assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. Morell noted that Powell had said repeatedly that no one from the Agency had ever apologized for sending him to speak to the United Nations with incorrect intelligence and that Morell thought it time that someone did so.
In an August 2016 op-ed for The New York Times, Morell endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Stating that he was registered with neither the Democratic nor Republican parties and that he had always been silent about his political preferences, Morell stated that Donald Trump was "not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security." Morell left his job as a CBS News analyst before making the endorsement. In a subsequent Q&A article with the NY Times, Morell responded to allegations that his current employer, Beacon Global Strategies, "was co-founded by former associates of Mrs. Clinton", by saying it was a non-partisan firm and that he had spoken out "entirely on own, with no other consideration given any thought."
In September 2017, Morell resigned from his senior fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government as a result of Chelsea Manning's appointment as a senior fellow there. Morell noted that he was fine with Harvard inviting Manning to speak on campus but that he was not okay with her being given the honor of a senior fellowship at one of America's most prestigious institutions. After Morell and others complained, Harvard rescinded its offer to Manning.
In 2017, Morell was appointed to serve on National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally created body designed to give Congress an independent view of America's defense needs. The group's final report was sobering, painting a picture of US defense capabilities eroding relative to those of China and Russia.
In early 2019, Morell, along with the also former Acting and Deputy Director of the CIA John McLaughlin, brought together a group of former CIA, NSA, and FBI officers to produce a briefing book on a dozen or so key national security issues facing the nation. Morell and McLaughlin provided the book to all candidates running for President, whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent, to include President Trump's reelection campaign. The two told the press that the aim of the book was to provide a basis of fact and analysis as campaigns developed their foreign policy positions and as they debated the issues. The book did not advocate particular policies.
In April 2019, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Morell, who had been consulting for a U.S. firm that did work with Saudi Arabia, stepped down from that role following the killing of Saudi national, U.S. resident, and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Ignatius wrote that Morell withdrew "over concern about the direction that Saudi Arabia was heading."
In 2019, the International Spy Museum unveiled a new interactive exhibit hosted by Morell. In the exhibit, Morell leads participants through a red-teaming exercise of the intelligence that pointed to Usama bin Ladin hiding at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The exhibit is one the museum's most popular.
Views
Morell has written dozens of Op-Eds and given hundreds of media interviews since leaving government. His writings and interviews suggest the world is a dangerous place and that to keep the country safe, the United States must take a leadership role in the world, it must have strong allies with whom it works together on tough issues, and it must have a strong military, intelligence service, and diplomatic service in order to deter adversaries. Second, for the United States to be strong abroad, it must be strong at home. Morell says that "the most important determinant of a country's national security is the health of its economy and society" and that the thing that most keeps him up at night is the failure of our politicians to come together, to compromise, and to make decisions that move our economy and our society forward.On May 19, 2015, during his book tour, Morell stated on MSNBC that what Vice President Dick Cheney said publicly about Iraq's nuclear weapons program before the war in 2003 was inconsistent with the views of the intelligence community. MSNBC host Chris Matthews said: "... here on last night, the top CIA official, the man who briefed President Bush on a daily basis, said that what Cheney said was not true.... I've been doing this business for a long time, rarely do you get that Perry Mason moment. When the guy comes and just says, You know what? I'm the top briefer from the CIA for the president. I'm deputy DCI. I'm right there telling them all we knew, and we never knew and never said he had a nuclear weapon. And yet we went into war with that argument."
In an interview with Charlie Rose in August 2016, Morell blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia, and Iran for the extremely high civilian death toll in Syria. He called on the opposition in Syria to deter Russia and Iran by making them "pay a price" for their involvement in Syria, in part by targeting their military personnel in the country. He also called on the United States to conduct limited, precision bombings of Syrian government targets in order to bring Assad to the negotiating table. Regarding President Assad, Morell argued "I want to go after those things, such as his personal helicopter and aircraft, that Assad sees as his personal power base. I want to scare Assad."
In October 2016, Morell told Rose that the United States should confront Iran's behavior in the Middle East, and he voiced support for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against Yemen's Houthis, pointing out that the Iranians were supporting the Houthis as a proxy force against the Saudis. Morell said "Ships leave Iran on a regular basis carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen." Morell also said that Iran wants "to be the hegemonic power in the region" and Arab states of the Persian Gulf are "pushing back against that".
In December 2016, Morell suggested that the interference of Russia in the 2016 United States presidential election was "the political equivalent of 9/11". He added that President Obama should retaliate imminently with harsh sanctions, in spite of president-elect Donald Trump's doubts about the allegations of Russian influence. In March 2017, Morell said: "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all. There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it."
In April 2019, Morell, along with Stanford professor Amy Zegart, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs titled "Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: Why the Intelligence Community Must Adapt or Fail". In the article, Morell and Zegart argue that the intelligence community is falling further behind in the technology race, a development that poses a significant risk to the country. The authors say that this lag has already caused a significant intelligence breakdown, the failure of the community to see in a timely manner Russia's weaponization of social media during the 2016 presidential election.