As I discussed a couple days ago, the president’s authorization for Attorney General William Barr to declassify intelligence information behind the government investigation of the Trump-Russia nexus should be cause for foreboding and anger in us all. Not only is this a clear and dangerous case of the president seeking to exact revenge against his political enemies — a category of Americans identical with those who have sought to protect the United States against an attack by a foreign adversary and complicity in that attack by members of the Trump campaign and administration — but it has also opened up the prospect of the president doing real and lasting damage to America’s ability to protect its secrets and gather intelligence against others. Barr’s exercise threatens to expose intelligence sources, sabotage work with allies, and benefit malicious foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin by exposing U.S. assets and methods in their countries.
But even as opponents of this deranged president have strong and manifold reasons to denounce his latest effort to undermine the U.S. government in order to aggrandize his power, it feels particularly important to acknowledge the complexities and contradictions of defending the U.S. intelligence community against Trump’s latest machinations. There is ample history of the CIA using an alleged need for secrecy as a cover for corrupt practices. Moreover, in terms of its bureaucratic power, separate and apart from its mission, a recent New York Times article correctly notes that, “Traditionally, the C.I.A. has been effective at intramural governmental fights, in large measure because its power comes from its information and its closely guarded secrets.” So there is healthy reason to be clear-eyed about intelligence community motivations and agenda in its pushback against this move by Trump, without excusing the president’s corrupt motivations.
Not unrelatedly, and captured in the quote above, we are already seeing Barr’s mission being framed as a bureaucratic power struggle with the intelligence agencies. This is made all the easier because of the CIA, FBI, and other security agencies’ broad insulation from public scrutiny and accountability. It is not that the bureaucratic struggle angle is not useful or important, but that it threatens to obscure the larger assault Barr has embarked on: he isn’t just undermining particular agencies, but the security needs of the American people, as served by these agencies. This is not simply a battle between a corrupt president and a powerful intelligence establishment, but a struggle over the defense of the United States, both in terms of gathering intelligence around the world and protecting ourselves from other countries’ ability to do the same. Interestingly, it’s security professionals themselves who have been hammering this point the hardest in recent days; whether it’s a strategy to gain public sympathy, heartfelt, or a mix of both, they remind us that we’re talking about putting America’s ability to defend itself in danger so that the president can punish his enemies and build his power.
It remains remarkable to me that the Democratic Party has failed to push a line of attack against Trump and the GOP that calls into question the motivation of a party that seeks to demonize as treasonous security agencies that, however imperfect, perform functions vital to our collective safety. Trump’s aim is clear — to neuter and politicize entities like the FBI and CIA that need to remain nonpartisan both for the sake of our democracy, and so that they do their assigned jobs as free of political influence as possible. Trump’s nefarious ties to Russian attacks on the 2016 elections would not nearly be as well known to the U.S. had intelligence agencies failed to do their work and examine the suspicious ties and activities in the first place. This hardly puts the intelligence community beyond reproach, but it should remind Democrats and others that defense of American intelligence and counter-intelligence is patriotic, even as Trump’s attacks make future reform of these agencies necessary in order to preserve both their independence in conjunction with far greater public accountability. In a democracy, intelligence agencies and the world of spies must always be treated with healthy suspicion, as they stand in unresolvable tension with the openness and information flow of a free society. But what we’re seeing Trump do right now is abuse their cloistered status, and push them in a direction clearly not compatible with our democracy.