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Revenge of the Intelligence Nerds
Trump has long worried that America’s intelligence professionals would try to undermine him from the shadows. All they had to do was play by the rules.On his first day in office, in January 2017, Donald Trump paid a visit to the CIA. He stood before its Memorial Wall, which then had 117 stars commemorating those who lost their lives in the line of duty. “I want to just let you know, I am so behind you,” Trump told the crowd of intelligence officials who’d gathered to hear him speak. “And I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted, and you’re going to get so much backing,” he said, just days after comparing U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis.
...The relationship became even more strained after Trump’s CIA visit. He repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win. The Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was a “witch hunt.” FBI members who looked into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia were partisan and possibly part of a conspiracy. Besides Russia, Trump also disagreed with U.S. intelligence assessments on North Korea and Iran. He faced a constant threat of sabotage from leakers. In Trump’s narrative, members of the intelligence community worked to undermine Trump from the shadows, the cloak-and-dagger henchmen of the “deep state.”
...In the end, though, it was someone playing by the rules who triggered perhaps the greatest reckoning of Trump’s presidency. The intelligence official who brought Trump’s misconduct in the Ukraine scandal to light—a CIA member who was detailed to the White House, according to a report in The New York Times—didn’t do it via press leaks, or by passing it to a sympathetic lawmaker. The whistle-blower went instead through the relatively straightforward and unexciting bureaucratic process of filing a complaint with the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general. Filing the complaint ensured that classified information would be protected, national-security concerns would be evaluated, and ultimately, the information would reach the proper authorities. This candid and somewhat mundane process, while flawed, was surprisingly effective at holding Trump to account.
...The key was its simplicity: By channeling the details of Trump’s misconduct into a formal complaint and then feeding it into the intelligence community’s system, the whistle-blower has thrown a wrench into Trump’s heretofore insurmountable deflect-by-chaos machine. As the scandal escalates, Trump and his White House seem to be in increasing disarray. He released a damaging reconstructed transcript of his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, which left even some of his Republican allies scratching their heads. He threatened the whistle-blower’s sources in front of a room full of U.S. diplomatic staff. His communications team mistakenly emailed a strategy memo to Democratic lawmakers, then tried to recall the message. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who is also implicated in the scandal, has tried to drag the State Department down with him, while also embarking on confusing rants in conversations with reporters.
Despite the White House’s best efforts, the fact that the whistle-blower filed a complaint through proper government channels has made it harder for the usual attacks about traitors and dirty tricks to stick. Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who handled the complaint, and Joseph Maguire, Trump’s recent appointment as acting director of national intelligence, have already come to the whistle-blower’s defense.
More at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/how-whistle-blower-complaint-undermined-trump/598972/?utm_term=2019-09-27T17%3A11%3A00&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_source=twitter
...The relationship became even more strained after Trump’s CIA visit. He repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win. The Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was a “witch hunt.” FBI members who looked into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia were partisan and possibly part of a conspiracy. Besides Russia, Trump also disagreed with U.S. intelligence assessments on North Korea and Iran. He faced a constant threat of sabotage from leakers. In Trump’s narrative, members of the intelligence community worked to undermine Trump from the shadows, the cloak-and-dagger henchmen of the “deep state.”
...In the end, though, it was someone playing by the rules who triggered perhaps the greatest reckoning of Trump’s presidency. The intelligence official who brought Trump’s misconduct in the Ukraine scandal to light—a CIA member who was detailed to the White House, according to a report in The New York Times—didn’t do it via press leaks, or by passing it to a sympathetic lawmaker. The whistle-blower went instead through the relatively straightforward and unexciting bureaucratic process of filing a complaint with the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general. Filing the complaint ensured that classified information would be protected, national-security concerns would be evaluated, and ultimately, the information would reach the proper authorities. This candid and somewhat mundane process, while flawed, was surprisingly effective at holding Trump to account.
...The key was its simplicity: By channeling the details of Trump’s misconduct into a formal complaint and then feeding it into the intelligence community’s system, the whistle-blower has thrown a wrench into Trump’s heretofore insurmountable deflect-by-chaos machine. As the scandal escalates, Trump and his White House seem to be in increasing disarray. He released a damaging reconstructed transcript of his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, which left even some of his Republican allies scratching their heads. He threatened the whistle-blower’s sources in front of a room full of U.S. diplomatic staff. His communications team mistakenly emailed a strategy memo to Democratic lawmakers, then tried to recall the message. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who is also implicated in the scandal, has tried to drag the State Department down with him, while also embarking on confusing rants in conversations with reporters.
Despite the White House’s best efforts, the fact that the whistle-blower filed a complaint through proper government channels has made it harder for the usual attacks about traitors and dirty tricks to stick. Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who handled the complaint, and Joseph Maguire, Trump’s recent appointment as acting director of national intelligence, have already come to the whistle-blower’s defense.
More at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/how-whistle-blower-complaint-undermined-trump/598972/?utm_term=2019-09-27T17%3A11%3A00&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_source=twitter
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