National Security Advisor Mike Flynn submitted his resignation this week, and it seems like much of what we know about the situation leading up to this is thanks to leaks from the U.S. intelligence community. Assuming much of the info is correct (and there’s no reason not to at this point), Flynn deserved to go.

That being said, I’ve been personally uncomfortable with where we are now in terms of the intelligence community, and with the way this is going down. A recent opinion piece in The Week raises this important question.

I’m still thinking through this one, just doing it in writing here. Whats the problem with a Trump cabinet member who probably “deserved it” going down? Embarrassments galore (!) for the Donald, right? What can be wrong with that?

The problem is, this is our intelligence community. The people responsible, with the military, for keeping us safe. In this case, they give our elected officials the information that allows them to act rationally and keep us safe. And we have a VERY STRONG tradition of control of these institutions by civilian, elected officials. Both the intel and military communities are there to follow the orders of and serve at the whim of the Executive. And this is a good thing. That’s standard practice and the article puts out the good reasons to not violate it. And there are procedures if you can’t personally do something, you can a) resign, b) refuse to follow an order for moral reasons (illegal, etc.) and potentially be fired/court-martialed, or c) do either of these in a very public way to make a point. Under W, a whole bunch of intel officers resigned/retired when it became clear the White House didn’t want to hear their information on Iraq and WMDs, but that was mostly behind the scenes.

And now the “but.” I’m assuming the intel community is still made up of professionals who pride themselves on their role, and this means that the most likely thing is that they are still following these rules. The election of someone like Trump shouldn’t directly change that, and the act of him sending out a few tweets dissing them seems very unlikely to penetrate their skins. And if one rogue was doing this, it is equally likely others would jump on that person to protect the institution.

Given that, what else is going on here? As an example without any proof at all, do they have information that we really do have a Manchurian Candidate situation, and they are acting? I have no reason to believe that is true, just throwing it out as something extreme enough to make intelligence professionals violate what is a VERY strong, professional code about this type of thing. Are enough people in the institution worried about whether our government can handle what’s coming?

What happens if you are in the intel community, and you are pretty sure the normal process is broken? It’s possible we have someone going rogue here and leaking info, but that is really very unlikely at this level. So what else is going on behind the scenes that we don’t (yet) know about. It’s the unknown unknowns that scare me here.