Trump National Security Adviser Pick Michael Flynn Has Medals — and Baggage

The man Donald Trump wants to be his top national security adviser is a decorated retired general with a history of shaking things up.

In 2010, Michael Flynn, then an Army major general, co-authored a scathing report arguing that military intelligence was failing in Afghanistan, and largely irrelevant to the counterinsurgency campaign being waged there.

The well-received expose propelled Flynn’s rise to become the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, serving as a senior figure in an intelligence apparatus ultimately reporting to President Barack Obama.

But two years later, Flynn was forced out — accused, by officials speaking not for attribution, of being a bad manager who left a chaos in his wake. Initially quiet but increasingly embittered, Flynn ultimately hitched his wagon to Donald Trump and began to appear at rallies complaining of Hillary Clinton’s “criminal activity” in stark language that stunned many of his former colleagues.

Now, Flynn, a 57-year-old decorated combat veteran who retired with three stars, has been asked by Trump to serve as his national security adviser, a senior transition official told NBC News. The news was first reported by the Associated Press.

One transition official told NBC News that Flynn has accepted Trump’s offer, but the Trump campaign has said no appointments are official until Trump himself announces them.

It’s the president-elect’s first offer for a national security position and, given his lack of experience in foreign affairs, perhaps his most important.

Stephen Hadley, who served as national security advisor for George W. Bush, described the job as follows in an April paper for the Scrowcroft Institute:

“You get to spend more time with the President than any other member of the President’s national security team. You are the first to see the President in the morning when the President shows up for work in the Oval Office and the last person to see the President before he or she makes any major foreign policy or national security decision … You run the interagency process that analyzes issues, develops options, and then presents them to the President. And then you oversee the process by which the President’s decisions are implemented by the various departments and agencies of the federal government.”

Flynn’s comments over the course of the campaign suggest a maverick temperament that tracks closely with that of his boss, which may thrill those who want to shake up Washington, but unnerve others who think the most important quality in making good foreign policy is a calm and steady hand.

“I would be worried about an impulsive president with an impulsive security adviser,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.