Former CIA chief: Trump’s travel ban hurts American spies — and America

President Trump’s executive order on immigration was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained. To be fair, it would have been hard to explain since it was not the product of intelligence and security professionals demanding change, but rather policy, political and ideological personalities close to the president fulfilling a campaign promise to deal with a threat they had overhyped.

.. Paradoxically, they pointed out how the executive order breached faith with those very sources, many of whom they had promised to always protect with the full might of our government and our people. Sources who had risked much, if not all, to keep Americans safe.

..But as a former station chief told me, in the places where intelligence officers operate, rumor, whisper and conspiratorial chatter rule people’s lives. It doesn’t take paranoia to connect the action of the executive order with the hateful, anti-Islamic language of the campaign. In the Middle East, with its honor-based cultures, it’s easier to recruit someone we have been shooting at than it is to recruit someone whose society has been insulted. 
.. the fundamental posture of an intelligence service looking for sources is that “We welcome you, you have value. Our society respects you. More than your own.” He feared that would no longer be the powerful American message it once was.
.. The simple idea of America didn’t hurt either. The station chief said that one of the fundamentals of his business was selling the dream. The Soviets “had a hard time with that. We had it easy. A lot of intelligence targets — officials, military figures, African revolutionaries, tribal leaders — railed against our policies, our interventions, many things . . . but they loved America. It was the idea of the country as a special place. They didn’t necessarily want to go there, but it was a place they kept in their minds where they would be welcome.”
.. These effects will not pass quickly. These are not short-term, transactional societies. Insults rarely just fade away. Honor patiently waits to be satisfied. In the meantime, we will be left with the weak and the merely avaricious, agents who will cut a deal just for the money, the worst kind of sources.