As the David Petraeus scandal unfolded last week, we got a crash course on the Tampa social scene, General Allen's superhuman ability to write 20,000 to 30,000 pages of "potentially inappropriate" e-mails, and the romantic attraction of the six-minute mile. What we did not get was a serious discussion of whether it was a good idea to let a warrior-general run the CIA in the first place.
The real Petraeus story is a brief tenure at Langley and the militarization of intelligence it represents.
To the outside world, intelligence and defense don't seem so different — they're both vaguely national security-ish. But looks are deceiving. Military officers, as Samuel Huntington famously wrote, are professionals in the "management of violence." Intelligence, by contrast, is all about the management of information — how to get it, analyze it, hide it from the wrong people, and share it with the right ones. The Pentagon's primary mission is to fight. The CIA's primary mission is to learn. Fighting and learning are related, but distinct, producing different organizational cultures, activities, and leadership requirements in the Pentagon and the CIA.
Three concerns arise whenever a military leader runs the agency. The first is the risk of tactical tilt — that war-fighter directors will favor tactical military operations over long-term strategic assessments. Too much focus on today leaves us vulnerable to nasty surprises tomorrow.
Petraeus was never an intel guy. He was an infantryman who came to Langley from the battlefield and continued to wage war from within the CIA. Under Petraeus, the CIA's paramilitary activities have continued to escalate. The agency routinely conducts and oversees strikes in places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Many worry that old-fashioned intelligence collection and analysis are getting short shrift.
The second concern with a warrior-director is that military leaders can clash with the CIA's culture. The American military prides itself on having a hierarchical, can-do culture. When the boss gives an order, subordinates are expected to follow it.
The CIA has a different cherished value: speaking truth to power. Analysts and collectors are supposed to present information and assessments even if they know the boss won't like it. No one salutes inside Langley. Hierarchy exists, but the culture prizes rigorous debate to sharpen analysis.
The culture change was clearly hard on Petraeus. Determined to win over "the building," Petraeus arrived from Kabul last year without his large coterie of scholar-soldier acolytes. He decorated his CIA office with military mementos. The 60-year-old general faced his first-ever civilian job adrift and isolated from everything he had known in a glorious military career.
The third concern about putting generals at the helm of the CIA has to do with rules. Rules are the lifeblood of an organization, making clear what matters. In the military there are all sorts of rules about appearance and fitness. Why? Because unit discipline and individual fitness can spell the difference between life and death, success and failure.
CIA rules are fixated on guarding information, everywhere, all the time. Why? Because in intelligence, that's what can spell the difference between life and death, success and failure.
Nobody knows yet whether Petraeus played fast and loose with security rules. The CIA is concerned enough that it is conducting its own investigation. Last weekend's box haul from Paula Broadwell's house found classified documents on her home computer. Her clearance has been suspended. Whether Petraeus gave her access to information she had no business knowing remains to be seen.
But here's the thing: Petraeus did not have to give away the nuclear codes or other "vital national security secrets" to have done a serious wrong. In the intelligence universe, any security breach is serious because big secrets can eventually escape through small holes. Anyone who starts thinking the secrecy rules do not apply to them is a ticking security vulnerability, especially if his mistress has become a jilted lover.
Only time will tell whether Petraeus's indiscretion was marital or more. But it's high time we stopped thinking that generals can always run everything. David Petraeus was a soldier and a patriot. But the CIA was a bridge too far for him.
Zegart is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community."