As Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson shut down the department’s cryptanalytic office saying, “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently in much the same vein, did Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and innumerable others a solid by not maintaining American secrets, choosing instead to use an unsecured privately administered personal email server in her private residence.

Now we get Barack Obama’s CIA Director.  John Brennan now says that the CIA shouldn’t be viewed as an espionage agency; indeed,

I don’t support government spying….  We don’t steal secrets….   We uncover, we discover, we reveal, we obtain, we elicit, we solicit.  All of that.

This is yet another episode in Obama’s American Retreat.