Copied: CFR you say? ’d had lunch with Flynn some years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He was a one-star general working for then–Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, his most important mentor in the Army. He fit in comfortably at the Council, a pinstriped bastion of the foreign-policy establishment, which these days is a bugaboo of his dark suspicions about global elites. We spoke of then–Vice President Dick Cheney, the subject of a biography I had recently written, and he later sent word that he had enjoyed listening to the audiobook while running. His affect was thoughtful, buttoned-down, and appropriate to the setting.

I recalled that lunch to Flynn’s brother Joe, who serves as his gatekeeper with the press, when I asked for an interview for this story. (Another brother, Charles, is the commanding general of the U.S. Army in the Pacific.) Joe Flynn said those were very different times.