Since 2016, Democrats have talked nonstop about the threat to our democracy posed by foreign espionage . At least, that is, when it comes to Republicans and Russia. For the first time since the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, counterintelligence features prominently in our politics. But while Democrats have grown infatuated with using counterintelligence as a political cudgel to beat Republicans, they are much less interested in the hard work of catching and deterring foreign spies.

Take the case of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. While an obscure counterspy outfit that’s little known to the public, the NCSC plays an important role in the Intelligence Community as the clearinghouse for big-picture counterintelligence concerns. The NCSC rarely makes the news as its work is secret. However, if you take catching foreign spies seriously, the NCSC is something you care about.

Alas, the Biden administration has given the game away by ignoring NCSC pretty much entirely. Its former director, Bill Evanina (who was appointed by Obama yet stayed through the Trump presidency: it’s a nonpartisan position), stepped down with the new administration in January 2021. It was expected that Team Biden would quickly appoint a respected intelligence bureaucrat to head NCSC, given how much Democrats talked about counterintelligence — foreign spies, disinformation, election interference, and whatnot.

They did not. One year went by. Then a second, without NCSC having a director (the office functioned with a placeholder acting director). Finally, this week, after two and a half years, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced the center’s new director, Mike Casey, whom Haines hailed as "an excellent choice to lead ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, with years of critical national security experience in a variety of roles."

That statement, like so many utterances from this administration, is true only in a legalistic sense. Casey does have ample experience with what former President Donald Trump called "the swamp," since he’s worked on Capitol Hill for over a quarter-century, his only job. He spent a decade employed as a staffer for a Democratic House member, then another decade as a staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. Since 2016, Casey has served as staff director of the Senate’s intelligence oversight committee.

That last surely has educated Casey in big-picture Intelligence Community programs. However, what’s entirely lacking in his resume is any actual experience in real-world intelligence, much less counterintelligence. Casey may be a fine fellow, but he’s a Democratic operative and he’s never worked at catching foreign spies in any capacity.

In its 22-year history, NCSC (going under a few names) has had six directors, all of whom possessed intelligence experience, usually in counterintelligence. Several directors were counterspy lifers, appropriately. The center’s new, seventh director will be something different, a partisan appointment lacking any experience with catching spies. That won’t be helpful in improving the nation’s counterintelligence capabilities, but it will boost the Biden administration’s efforts at employing counterintelligence as a weapon against their political enemies at home.

John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.