Success Quote by Stephen Cambone

Bureaucratic language has a tell: when someone says a reason is "fairly evident", theyre not clarifying so much as closing the conversation. Cambones sentence performs that move twice, first by naming "counterintelligence and security" as a self-justifying category, then by implying that anyone who questions the emphasis must be naive about "vulnerabilities" and "harm". The intent is defensive in both senses of the word: it argues for hardened internal controls while also insulating the speaker from the demand to specify what went wrong and who is responsible.

The subtext is that damage has already occurred, or is strongly suspected, and that the department has been embarrassed by not seeing it sooner. Notice the passive construction: "when we have, in fact, been harmed". Harm happens; agents and decisions disappear. That grammatical fog is useful. It acknowledges stakes without naming adversaries, incidents, or internal failures, which are precisely the things that would trigger oversight, headlines, or political blowback.

Context matters here because Cambone is a Pentagon-era operator, associated with the post-9/11 security state and its appetite for compartmentalization. In that world, "counterintelligence" isnt just about catching spies; its about controlling information flows inside the institution, deciding who gets access, and building a rationale for secrecy. The phrase "failing to detect" quietly shifts the standard: the scandal isnt that harm occurs, its that the bureaucracy might not be aware of it. Awareness becomes the metric of competence, and security becomes a managerial alibi: if you need fewer questions, you can always cite "vulnerabilities."