Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence and U.S. Senator Dan Coats (left) participates in a fireside chat with Anderson University President John Pistole in the York Performance Hall on campus Tuesday. Richard Sitler | The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON — A United States government with a diminished standing in the world could mean a perilous state of affairs that no one should want to pass along to the next generation, a native Hoosier with nearly five decades of experience in politics and government said.
During an appearance Tuesday at Anderson University, former U.S. Senator Dan Coats said rancor in the halls of Congress and dysfunction elsewhere in the government is being noticed by the rest of the world, and it’s painting an unflattering portrait of the country’s values.
“The picture going out to the world right now about where America is or what America is, it’s not a nice picture,” Coats said during a wide-ranging conversation with AU President John Pistole. “We’re not going to solve the threats that may come from China, North Korea, Syria, Iraq and other places unless we join together with other free nations to oppose these dangerous regimes.”
Coats served as the director of national intelligence during the Trump administration. He also represented Indiana in Congress as a Republican for more than 25 years, first as a member of the House of Representatives, then in two separate terms as a senator. He also served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany under President George W. Bush.
“He has made a difference for good in this country and around the world,” Pistole told the audience while introducing him. Upon leaving his ambassadorship, Coats co-founded the Sagamore Institute, an Indianapolis- based, conservative-leaning think tank, in part to continue advocating for policy innovations and improvements in government.
“A lot of people say the person who goes to Washington doesn’t come back the same, but I’ve been around him for a long time,” said Jay Hein, CEO and co-founder of the Sagamore Institute. “The people who have been on the journey with him have said, the same person that went to Washington came back. He’s stayed true to his values, and that inspires a lot of people.”
Pistole invited Coats to meet with national security and cybersecurity students at AU before participating in a fireside chat at York Performance Hall. Coats later spoke at a private dinner with community leaders.
A prominent topic during their discussions was how the U.S. intelligence gathering apparatus has evolved to meet increasingly sophisticated threats at home and abroad. Ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip — as well as less publicized conflicts in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa — have increased the volume of information for intelligence analysts and other experts to sort through, Coats said.
“Just keeping up with the explosion of innovation and so forth is a real challenge,” he said. “The more conflicts that are taking place, the more we need intelligence to deal with all this.”
While serving as national intelligence director, Coats said he approached the CEOs of several leading technology companies to invite their input on modernizing the tools used by multiple federal agencies in their intelligencegathering efforts.
“I had to keep reminding people, we still need humans, but nevertheless we need the technology,” Coats said, “because it’s running away on us, and we’re too slow.”
Another key topic was what Coats referred to as a glaring absence of bipartisanship at all levels of government. The lack of civility and willingness to compromise in both major political parties, he said, has threatened “the precious gifts of tradition and faith which must be continued in our country.”
Coats recalled Sept. 11 — his second day on the job as the U.S. ambassador to Germany — when, hours after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, he looked out his office window at the U.S. embassy in Berlin. Hundreds of German citizens had begun laying flowers, stuffed animals and other tokens near the gate of the embassy. He decided to greet some of the well-wishers at the embassy gate and recalled meeting a Jewish woman whose ancestors had survived the Holocaust.
“I told her, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing,’” Coats said. “She said, ‘You were with us in our darkest hour, and we want to be with you in your darkest hour.’” Coats said he often shares that story to remind people that unity is commonly found in times of crisis — even though those times are undesirable.
“I’m very unhappy and uncertain about where we are right now,” he said. “I keep trying to think of a possible solution which would unite us, and what comes up in my dreams and thoughts is, it has to be crisis, and I don’t want it to be a crisis. I don’t want that to pull us together, but right now nothing is pulling us together.”
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