What the record shows is this: during one of the most serious challenges to CIA accountability in a generation, the agency under John Brennan spied on Congress, referred Senate staffers for prosecution based on what turned out to be false information, orchestrated a series of press leaks to discredit the Senate’s findings, and ultimately refused to acknowledge the full scope of what it had done.

The White House Counsel’s office managed the crisis without holding the CIA to account. The man who ran the CIA through it all got the job and kept it, with help, it appears, from Kathy Ruemmler.

And on a January morning in 2015, he gave her a medal.

And she couldn’t wait to tell Jeffrey Epstein.