The Atlantic

The Abbreviated Career of Michael Flynn

Former military colleagues of the fallen national-security adviser ponder a government in turmoil.
Source: Andrew Harrer / Getty

When Michael Flynn resigned as Donald Trump’s national security advisor after serving in the post for 24 days—the briefest such tenure in history—he left an already chaotic national-security bureaucracy stunned. His resignation also left Washington’s largest special-operations conference without one of its headliners.

Flynn had been slated to speak on Monday evening at the kickoff banquet for the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual special-ops conference in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference and a parallel tradeshow bring together defense contractors and senior special-operations officials for three days of speeches, panel discussions, and networking. But that morning, the association sent word that Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who spent three years as intelligence director of Joint Special

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