Also a revealing assessment of his time heading up DIA, which I had heard about from friends who worked at DIA, who were hopeful that Flynn would bring much needed reforms. ...so much for the value of speaking truth to power. Vindmann, of course, was a hero.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... sr.01.html
SCIUTTO: Now a three-star general, Flynn would lead the Defense Department's intelligence branch, with a mission to provide Intel directly to troops and commanders on the battlefield, and to policymakers.
CLAPPER: There was no doubt in my mind that Mike would exceed all expectations, and he did.
SCIUTTO: James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence at the time, hired Flynn despite perhaps even because of Flynn's past criticism of U.S. intelligence.
CLAPPER: I brought Mike to ODNI to fix all the intelligence issues that he had been complaining about.
SCIUTTO: Did you have any reservations tapping him for the DIA?
CLAPPER: Mike had a reputation for being an innovator, somebody who questioned the system, perhaps resort to unconventional ways of getting things done.
SCIUTTO: Flynn moved immediately to shake up a sprawling agency with more than 16,000 employees.
Tell me about your experience with him there.
HOWK: He came in, ready to make changes.
SCIUTTO: Jason Howk who served with Flynn and General McChrystal in Afghanistan, was now working at the DIA as well.
HOWK: He got active. He had 15 or 20 things that he wanted to change.
SCIUTTO: But not everyone in the agency welcomed Flynn's changes.
KITFIELD: He tried to instill a much more of a wartime footing, sending analysis out into the field. He had gotten a lot of pushback from that. And a lot of those people, the bureaucrats in Washington didn't want to go overseas and serve in war zones.
SCIUTTO: Flynn came into immediate contact with the White House. Sounding the alarm on the war on terror, as the Obama administration was trying to wind it down.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. Al Qaeda has been decimated.
SCIUTTO: Flynn vehemently disagreed with that assessment and grew concerned that U.S. intelligence on the terror group was being watered down.
KITFIELD: And he was very, very upset about that. He called that the big lie.
FLYNN: That is a shortcoming, a major shortcoming.
SCIUTTO: Once again, Flynn did not hesitate to share his criticisms in public, outside the chain of command.
JIM INHOFE, (R) UNITED STATES SENATOR: Is Al Qaeda on the run and on the path to defeat?
CLAPPER: They are not.
KITFIELD: The White House would black out whole passages of his testimony and he would go up there and give it any way.
SCIUTTO: Inside the intelligence agencies, some grew concerned that Flynn's position sometimes contradicted the facts and the intelligence. Flynn facts, they called them.
People talked about Flynn facts. You heard this expression.
CLAPPER: I was hearing from more than one source in DIA about what became Flynn facts. That concerned me.
SCIUTTO: Can you give me an example?
CLAPPER: I think he was convinced the Iranians were behind the Benghazi attack, which they weren't. At least we had no evidence of that. But he insisted that we would find evidence to back up that proposition.
SCIUTTO: The increasingly infamous Flynn facts became one symptom of broader concerns about Flynn's leadership at DIA.
DOUGLAS WISE, RETIRED SENIOR CIA OFFICER: Flynn started to manifest some of the more controversial behaviors that ultimately played out on the national stage.
SCIUTTO: Doug Wise came to work at the DIA in 2014 as the agency's deputy director. Inside the DIA, Flynn was becoming a divisive figure.
WISE: It was a polarized agency. There was a loyal and hard core cadre of officers that were aligned behind Mike Flynn. And there was a larger and equally passionate group of leaders and followers who were not aligned behind Flynn.
SCIUTTO: When did you first begin to believe it wasn't working?
CLAPPER: I think it was a gradual thing. I began to hear things from people in DIA and people whose judgment I trusted and valued, that there were problems.
SCIUTTO: What kind of problems?
CLAPPER: Well, it had to do with Mike's management style. And I was concerned about the impact on the workforce.
SCIUTTO: Just two years into a three-year term, Flynn was out, forced into an early retirement.
CLAPPER: We had a wonderful retirement ceremony for Mike.
FLYNN: Many know that I like to surf, and so the way I kind of would like to put it is that, you know, life is -- life is like surfing a wave. You can't change the way the wave breaks, but you can certainly change the way you ride it.
SCIUTTO: For the soldier's soldier and self-proclaimed maverick, his 33-year military career was over.