The End of the Dan Coats Era

President Donald Trump’s feud with his intelligence agencies has flared ever since he took office already chafing about their conclusion on Russian electoral interference. The latest casualty: Dan Coats, who today leaves his post as director of national intelligence, with his deputy, Sue Gordon, reluctantly following him out the door. Joe Maguire now steps in as acting director, and whoever takes over the spot permanently could be, for good or ill, an unusually consequential figure—precisely because of the president’s hostility.

Coats’s departure followed what’s by now a familiar pattern: First came the rumors about his fraying relationship with Trump, then reports about various names being floated for his position, all interspersed with direct attacks by the president on the intelligence community—including, after Trump announced Coats’s retirement, his assertion that intelligence