When General Mattis took his position as Secretary of Defense, he released the following public statement, highlighting the crucial importance of our nation’s talented national intelligence, law enforcement, and uniformed military professionals:
“Together with the Intelligence Community we are the sentinels and guardians of our nation. We need only look to you, the uniformed and civilian members of the Department and your families, to see the fundamental unity of our country. You represent an America committed to the common good; an America that is never complacent about defending its freedoms; and an America that remains a steady beacon of hope for all mankind.”
“Every action we take will be designed to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future. Recognizing that no nation is secure without friends, we will work with the State Department to strengthen our alliances. Further, we are devoted to gaining full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on our defense, thereby earning the trust of Congress and the American people.”[1]
Yesterday, I was perusing an antique store, and saw a quote, attributed to an American pastor, Chuck Swindoll, and made even more popular by a similar sentiment re-stated by Steven R. Covey, which reads: “I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions.”[2]
The small, framed quote in the antique store said simply: “Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react.” I was surprised by my 90% reaction to this unthinking quote. I was, admittedly piqued, or to quote a great Navy Chief I used to work with every day, “it vexes me!” Why – well let’s just say, since my article was released earlier this week, I have been rather disappointed in the “concern” of some former, status-quo supporting colleagues. “Well, Carson – if you name the names of people who broke the law to attack you, doesn’t it make you vulnerable?” Incredulous, I reminded them of something we learned in law school about the crucial First Amendment to our Constitution, guaranteeing the right to free speech, and the Supeme Court cases which have held that truth is an absolute defense against “victims” of the truth.[3] So, I concede that like most humans, I do care about toxic positivity. It is, perhaps, only fair to be truthful about the circumstances that made this particular meme/quote stand out to me.
So, turning to the sentiment, I hear often “life is what you make of it,” or “life is 90 percent how your respond to it,” lets take this and sentiment and see how it holds up in the real world through the lens of some crucial American history. On December 7th, 1941, the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, 2,403 Americans died. The majority being American troops, and 68 civilians were murdered, by a deceptive, Nazi-allied nation whose Ambassador in Washington, DC had been espousing the benefits of peace. How would the American families who lost their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers feel about hearing this “stoic insight?” One can easily imagine a therapist or counselor repeating this trite observation: “you losing your spouse (son/daughter) is only 10% what happened to you, and it’s on you – 90% how you perceive it.”
This toxic ignorance is not simply callous, not just victim-blaming, not just unthoughtful – no, it’s not that simple. It embodies a Judeo-Christian culture which has come to embody the worst parts of normative culture. Sentiments that seek to transfer the blame of illegal behavior to the victims of said behavior, is generally supported by people whose “deepest life experience is finding the bottom of their purse.”[4] In short, for those who have never been the target of those who have no respect for civility, professionalism or the rule of law, it is perhaps easy to adopt the sentiment mentioned above.
Yet, it is sentiments such as these that cheapen and discount the victims of lawbreakers lived experience. When our cultural unthought – which is, after all what culture is – embraces memes, and short-hand tropes, they are all too often emblematic of what Carl Jung would have called our collective unconscious. Something that “feels/seems” correct, though we cannot always explain why.
And the quote does, after all, have some “truthiness” to it. We all know on some level, that our minds are quite capable of re-interpreting past events in new ways – ways that may open new possibilities. And – I would like to ruthlessly interrogate this meme. Let us return to Pearl Harbor, and the Muslim terrorist attacks of 9/11, where Saudi Arabian terrorists based out of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia attacked our nation in 2001. Would Pastor Swindoll (mentioned above) like to call the firefighters and law enforcement officers in the NYPD (living in NYC with less than 60k a year salaries by the way) and tell them that their lung disease and other disorders caused by the attacks and its aftermath, is “10% what happened to you, and 90% how you perceive it…”
This victim blaming – yes there are things called victims – victims of criminals, of foreign terrorist states, of authoritarian communists in China, and autocratic Russia – is cruel, and banal. It not so subtly moves our attention away from the original violation of law and asks us to look to the victims and ask them to “just look at this differently – please.” The message beneath and behind this is simply:
“Shut up. Get heard and move on. Just ‘let it go.’” One can quite easily imagine a President Al Gore in 2001 advocating that our nation “look at what we have done wrong in the Middle East…” implying, not so subtly that over 3,000 American non-combatants and citizens of other nations who were guests of our nation on 9/11 should “put ourselves in the terrorist shoes…perhaps these evil doers were wronged…” This so-called modern wisdom is the height of ignorance. It represents the worst instinct of modern culture, where no wrong is sufficient to allow a victim of law-breaking criminals to acknowledge something that is, and once was quite intuitive: if a criminal – from any nation – walks up behind you in the street and smashes your head in with a steel pipe – you not only SHOULD be outraged, assuming your survive, but we as a collective society SHOULD be equally outraged. As it has been said: “you see life differently after you have been punched in the face.” And, trust me, you do.
It is not the physical punch that we need worry about. No, bullies and criminals have gotten wiser – more sophisticated, cheaper, and more fearless. Unregulated industries, such as “private investigators” have gone from small mom and pop shops of retired federal and local police officers, to multi-billion-dollar industries, not just here in the United States, but around the globe. These firms, which also employ actively serving United States civilian and intelligence officers in the United States hire our own people – that we as taxpayers have trained in cutting art analytic, research and data technology capabilities, and put them on the market – available for purchase to the highest bidder. This “private police force,” was first (to the best of my knowledge) deeply researched by the apolitical, non-partisan RAND group in the 1970’s.[5]
Imagine for a moment this scenario: you are a woman, or man who has been bludgeoned, raped in a dark alley, and crippled for life. While your therapist reminds you, that 90% of what happened to you “just needs to be reframed,” – the guilty parties who brazenly violated your constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – not only get away with the attack – they also (in this scenario) happen to be connected to billionaires – they not only physically assault you or your loved one – they preemptively hire “private investigators” and law firms who have conveniently hired Naval intelligence civilians and United States Army reservists, who while taking an oath to protect and defend our nations constitution, moon-light as “private investigators” and law firms to tarnish the names, reputations, and digital lives of those they have an incentive to destroy. Not just professionally, but physically.
What recourse do we think is available to the average American – who still – in 2026 makes less than six figures a year has, to take on this known but unresolved state corruption in the United States?
Let me save you some time. They have zero effective options to restore their careers, their physical well-being, privacy, and professional advancement.
Our nation does not over-regulate its uniformed troops, police, and former federal law enforcement officers and former intelligence community officers: no, Congress and the White House (in both parties) feels too culturally obligated to “respect” our nation’s troops, police and intelligence officers – to ever pass legislation that could truly reign in this malicious, illegal activity.
To put a finer point on it, let us consider this situation: Jane Doe or John Doe is hired to work in our nation's intelligence community. He/She is trained on whatever the state-of-the-art capabilities we have, to find, analyze and assess data. But Jane Doe/John Doe, has a problem: he/she has three children from a former marriage, and it turns out GS-9 (often the first rank given to federal intelligence officers), is not sufficient to pay her bills, her mortgage and feed and clothe their three children, let alone pay for childcare while shes at work in the office. Let’s also give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she is a deeply patriotic American who chose to serve for all of the correct, noble, reasons.
After several months in their new position, they realizes they are gong to have to find a part-time job to supplement her federal income. They look online and runs numbers: the civil servant could wait tables, they could work retail, but with the minimum wage in the U.S. being below the poverty line, this employee quickly realizes that even if they could work 80 hours a week, with their civil servant salary and 40 hours in retail – their daughters will still not be able to afford a decent education. So the civil servant asks one of her mentors at work, “how can I make a few extra dollars.” Her mentor points them in the direction of “XYZ partners,” a law firm who works with a private investigator firm, politely named a “researchers ABC.” This (made up) firm will pay the civil servant over two hundred dollars an hour to do online research with their proprietary technology on “questionable Americans.” The civil servant does not like the idea, but the employee is a first-generation college graduate - and his/her parents (the grandparents of the children) cannot afford to pay for their grandchildren to go to college, and neither can the civil servant, on the low salaries we pay them. And, after all, it was the civil servants mentor who is a senior reservist in the military, and full-time intel division chief, who referred the civil servant to this company, so it must be okay, right? (See GAO Code of Conduct/Ethics, publicly available below.)[6]
Well, let’s pause here. There are structural problems and gaps in the federal code and intelligence community policy system that do – when properly enforced – allow Jane Doe to work for this ABC PI firm, while staying in the intelligence community, and even, while being in the national guard. Why? Well, because as a nation, we do support our civil servants and citizens working long hours and multiple jobs to make ends meet. If this civil servant and parent went to their ethics office and general counsel, they could get permission - if there were no conflict of interests. This is how it is supposed to work,
But, it is not what currently happens.
Because, simply put, our nations federal law enforcement and intelligence community agencies do not enforce existing policy, unless they choose to get rid of someone.
And trust me, the employees who they want to get rid of, are not this John or Jane Doe, who is turning the tools of the nation against you as an average day American, up for sale to the highest private investigator or law firm.
No, the “system” – meaning the deeply entrenched good old boy network - deeply burrowed and entrenched by special interests has such a tremendous degree of power, that those targeted are precisely those American patriots in and out of uniform who are willing to ensure our nation insists on accountability and the rule of law. The system has a predictable interest in targeting and eliminating anyone in the system who does not play by the unspoken cultural idioms and predominant accepted norms within the federal system. The Congressional Government Accountability Office found (in 1992) that some federal agencies who reviewed their employees outside work activities – approved employees who worked for private firms that presented “conflict of interests,” for those employees.[7]
Let me use another, notional example. Let’s say that Air Force reservist Bob Doe, lives and works in DC. He’s a good Christian man, a “guys guy” who graduated at the top of his Air Force training. He does cross-fit for exercise, and is married with no kids, yet, but he and his wife hope to adopt in the years ahead, after building a firm financial foundation. Bob Doe is a military reservist who “drills” (for nonmilitary types, this is the military term for “works on active duty”) at (insert federal agency) one weekend a month, and occasionally accepts ADT (active duty for training) orders to the same agency, while his full time “civilian employment” is working at (pick one of the five largest defense contractors), and his part time job is working for a beltway bandit consulting firm, for only 3-5 hours a week. Let’s say that his consulting firm, advises a major defense contracor on “the future of warfare,” as one of dozens of its clients. And, by some “chance” Bob Doe’s chosen drill location, and division is OSD/OSW-CAPE who conducts some budget analysis.[8]
In September of 2021, just five years ago, the Congressional Government Accountability Office recommended the Pentagon modernize its conflict-of-interest rules for former service-members and civilian employees.[9] In addition, in 2024 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the Pentagon needs to do more to look for conflicts of interest for those defense contractors who work both for Communist China, and the Department of Defense.[10]
For clarity, there is an existing intelligence community directive, available on ODNI’s website (ICD 712) which requires all civilian, military and contractor personnel in the intelligence community to report any “outside employment.”[11]
Yet common practice within our nations national security community and military does not investigate or look into military reservists or national guard members potential conflicts of interest between their civilian employees and where they drill in uniform.
Of course, we would all like to assume that those who serve in uniform are beyond leaking information from official federal agencies where they drill to their other source of employment. Yet as we all know, once you “know” something it is virtually impossible to not allow it to impact your work.
If enforced this policy would require all IC members to report to their ethics office and general counsel all outside employment. This policy and any new regulations Congress choose to pass, can strengthen and build the trust between American citizens and our nations police and intelligence services.[12]
By enforcing existing law, and doubling down on accountability for our nation's sentinels, we will help the Armed Forces and police keep their own integrity clean making them even more worthy of the fair societal credit we grant them.
[1] See war.gov, or: https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1055908/defense-secretary-issues-message-to-nations-sentinels-and-guardians/
[2] See: SupremeCourt.gov
[4] To quote the great Eminem.
[5] See: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P5422.pdf, in addition, the author recommends reading a recent RAND report on insufficient, out of date, and contradictory training being given to local and state police, when they share data on American citizens with the Defense Security and Counter-intelligence Agency, see: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA800/RRA846-1/RAND_RRA846-1.pdf
[7] See GAO report, here: https://www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-92-34.pdf
[8] See Congressional Research Service, website via Congress.gov, or the full report here: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12254, see also: OSW website here: https://www.cape.osd.mil/
[9] See Congress.gov, or the full, public GAO report, found here: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-104311.pdf
[10] See: Congress.gov, or: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106932
[11] See, Office of the Director of National Intelligence Accountability website, here: https://www.odni.gov/accountability/