President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to destroy what he calls the “deep state” predate his first term in the White House. The sentiment raises fears in the intelligence community that there will be purges of career professionals, and that intelligence designed to protect American lives will be twisted to fit Mr. Trump’s personal interests.
During his first term, Mr. Trump believed he was undermined by public servants in the national security apparatus and vowed to appoint officials in his next administration who would shatter any resistance to his will and carry out his plans without question. The Project 2025 blueprint for the intelligence community offers little clarity into what Mr. Trump might have in store for the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., as it is limited to cataloging a litany of misperceptions about the agencies and grievances against individuals, such as the former C.I.A. director John Brennan and the former director of national intelligence James Clapper, both of whom left public service at the close of the Obama administration.
It is still unclear if Mr. Trump’s attacks on intelligence institutions are part of a scheme to expand presidential power or are a more visceral and scattershot assault on agencies he believed were disloyal during his first term. Will Mr. Trump be satisfied with servile leadership managing a functioning bureaucracy? Or is he seeking to dismantle the system of checks and balances and make executive agencies directly responsive to his personal demands? At minimum we can predict chaos, incompetence and a move toward cronyism, wherein people like Elon Musk potentially misuse intelligence for personal or commercial benefit.
Mr. Trump’s nominees so far offer a mixed message. The selection of John Ratcliffe as C.I.A. director appears to be largely orthodox. However, the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kash Patel as director of the F.B.I. send a very different signal: that Mr. Trump may be interested in wrecking the operation of the intelligence community.
Ms. Gabbard is wholly unqualified for the job. She has never directed or managed anything, and has embraced conspiracy theories and championed Russian disinformation.
She has labeled intelligence agents “rogue,” a word Mr. Trump has used to describe employees across the federal government. For students of intelligence, the term has a familiar ring. During congressional investigations of the C.I.A. in the 1970s, the Democratic senator Frank Church christened the agency a “rogue elephant,” suggesting it was out of control and engaged in illegal activity. Following the ensuing investigations, Mr. Church changed his mind, instead believing that the problems uncovered stemmed from unchecked presidential power.
The unethical and illegal activities carried out by the C.I.A. for decades were largely at the behest of presidents who had little concern that their actions would ever see the light of day. A subsequent raft of reforms were aimed at reining in such executive overreach, ensuring greater accountability and establishing strong congressional oversight of the agency. As we approach Mr. Trump’s inauguration, we are concerned that he wants institutions to execute corrupt or illegal dictates without oversight or accountability.
Needless to say, the notion that the intelligence community is disloyal is false. The community is filled with skilled professionals committed to providing the president — any president — with the best possible intelligence, often at great personal sacrifice. And despite his public bluster, Mr. Trump may not wish to tamper too much with the premier source of information in an increasingly dangerous and complex world.
On top of an ambitious domestic agenda, he will face global challenges and threats. The American intelligence apparatus is a massive worldwide enterprise that is inarguably the most effective in the world. Submarines, aircraft, land, sea and space sensors, listening posts, satellites, a worldwide network of diplomats, law enforcement sources and spies, combined with the insight of allies, academics and experts, provide the president and his administration with facts and warnings.
But disparaging and disrespecting the culture of intelligence professionals suggests a rocky road ahead. For example, the incoming administration had proposed eliminating professional background checks for its nominees. Mr. Trump has now agreed to some checks for nominees and staff. But the damage is done: Even the suggestion of refusing to accede to background checks is an open failure of basic national leadership. The intelligence community is routinely compelled to accept polygraph tests, intrusive background checks and a loss of professional privacy; asking all of this while failing to live up to a similar standard in other branches of government is the fastest way for Mr. Trump to lose credibility among the intelligence agents he will lead.
Injecting partisan politics into the process is anathema to the work force. During his first term as director of national intelligence in 2020, Mr. Ratcliffe inappropriately used his perch to attack the Democratic Party. Nonpartisan, unbiased reporting and a culture of speaking truth to power is the central ethos of intelligence professionals.
While it is hard to imagine any benefit in wrecking intelligence agencies, reform — and even thoughtful disruption — would be welcome. The recent election shows that Americans hold public servants in low esteem. Decades of failed wars have eroded faith in government. Intelligence analysts have to do better than they have done regarding Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia. The apparatus is arguably too slow, and hampered by bureaucracy. Spies on the ground face a shortage of language skills and are challenged by a new era of ubiquitous surveillance. Quantum computing could threaten the encryption that helps protect our secrets, and the use of artificial intelligence as both a tool for our agencies and a weapon by foreign intelligence agencies presents another unique challenge.
Balance in the secret world is fragile. Relationships with sources and foreign partners are built on years of trust. Human spy networks and complex technical operations are vulnerable. Running foreign spies who steal secrets from the corridors of power in Moscow, Tehran or Beijing is not a game for amateurs. Foreign partners will hesitate to share their most precious secrets if they believe their American counterparts are not seasoned experts and professionals but tools of one political party or another. Indeed, the C.I.A. has recruited many spies who were disgusted by the corruption and cronyism in their own societies.
After Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was “post-truth” — a state where feelings and belief are more potent than facts and data. However, like law, serious journalism and science, intelligence relies on the pursuit of truth. Alternative facts and outright lies are deadly to the world of intelligence, which relies on money and resources, scientific and analytical expertise and global networks of sources.
A breakdown of public institutions may serve the short-term interests of the next occupants of the White House, but building a post-truth intelligence community will harm us all.
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