[D66] In Just 10 Days, President Trump Has Split the Government Into Warring Factions

[A.O.]

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/in-just-10-days-president-trump-has-split-the-government-into-warring-factions/

In Just 10 Days, President Trump Has Split the Government Into Warring 
Factions

     By Peter Maass, theintercept.com
     View Original
     January 31st, 2017

War has broken out, not on foreign territory or on our streets, but in 
the offices and hallways of the departments and agencies that create and 
execute the laws, policies, and regulations of the United States. Its 
sights and sounds are those of a bureaucracy in crisis: drafts of a 
dissent cable that are circulated, letters of resignation that are drawn 
up, whispered complaints to journalists, and even tears.

The immediate trigger was an executive order signed last week by 
President Trump that banned entry visas for refugees from seven 
Muslim-dominated countries. The order, which did not go through a normal 
review process, caused chaos and heartbreak at airports in the United 
States and around the world, where refugees with valid visas were turned 
back without warning, and even holders of green cards were detained.

The ensuing protests by thousands of people were the first signs of 
something going terribly wrong in America, like a body jerking when a 
foreign substance is injected into its veins. More symptoms of rejection 
soon emerged. Hundreds of diplomats at the State Department are signing 
an unusual dissent cable that gravely warns of political blowback, 
saying the ban will “alienate entire societies” and serve as a “tipping 
point towards radicalization.” And on Monday night, Acting Attorney 
General Sally Yates announced that the Department of Justice would not 
defend the ban in court because “I am not convinced … that the executive 
order is lawful.” Within hours, Yates was fired, accused in a venomous 
White House statement of betrayal and weakness.

As the now-familiar saying goes, this is not normal. On their own, none 
of these events would have been unprecedented. Just last year, 51 
diplomats at the State Department filed a dissent memo over the Obama 
administration’s Syria policy. The replacement of agency heads, 
sometimes in unhappy circumstances, is a feature of every democracy. But 
these events have occurred in such a short period of time that the 
script of the first 10 days of the Trump Administration reads like the 
work of Le Carré come to America.
Protesters gather in front of the Supreme Court to voice opposition to 
President Donald Trump’s executive order barring immigrants from certain 
countries entry into the U.S., Jan. 30, 2017.

Perhaps most strikingly, bureaucracies appear to be taking sides and 
feuding with a sharpness that is characteristic of fractured and 
dysfunctional governments.

Before the election, the FBI publicly released far more information that 
was damaging to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump, and as a result 
many people concluded that the FBI and its director, James Comey, were 
pro-Trump. It was the opposite with the CIA, which appeared to be 
intentionally leaking information that was damaging to Trump’s campaign 
— and Trump himself lashed out at the CIA for doing so.

In another major schism – this one spanning two branches of the 
government — several federal judges issued stays against the immigration 
ban, finding it likely illegal, but some border agents refused to let 
their detainees speak to lawyers despite being presented with court 
orders instructing them to. Meanwhile, the bans were celebrated by 
unions representing more than 21,000 immigration officers. The unions, 
in a joint statement, congratulated the president for his “swift and 
decisive action” to keep America safe.

Over at the EPA, scientists say they are afraid to talk to journalists 
after the Trump administration demanded to know the names of officials 
who participated in climate-change negotiations. The newly installed 
head of the Department of Homeland Security clashed with the White House 
over its desire to appoint an anti-immigration extremist as his deputy. 
Congressional aides disclosed that they had secretly helped the White 
House draft the immigration ban and signed non-disclosure agreements 
that prevented them from telling their own bosses about it. And Trump’s 
senior political adviser, Steve Bannon, a white nationalist whose 
ex-wife accused him of domestic violence and anti-semitism, is 
orchestrating the White House’s executive orders in secretive ways that 
cut out most of the National Security Council staff and leave no paper 
trail that shows what happened.

Although this is all new to Americans, there is ample precedent 
overseas. I spent most of my life reporting on the breakdown of process 
and laws in foreign countries. The origin of the chaos is the assumption 
to power of a vastly inexperienced leader who is fantastically rich, 
psychologically unstable, unusually bombastic and trusts only a few 
people, mostly family members. This profile has elements of former and 
current rulers of Italy (Silvio Berlusconi), Uzbekistan (Islam Karimov), 
Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbayev), the Democratic Republic of Congo 
(Mobutu Sese Seko), Venezuela (Hugo Chavez), Iraq (Saddam Hussein) and 
Equatorial Guinea (Teodoro Obiang), to name just a few.

One of the things I learned while reporting from some of these countries 
is that when a war of bureaucracies breaks out, some bureaucracies are 
far more equal than others — in the sense of truly mattering in 
determining a nation’s fate. The dissent from within the State 
Department is significant, but when the normal inter-agency process of 
modern states breaks down, foreign ministries tend to be left in the 
cold, carrying out whatever policies are determined by the places where 
the real power resides: the security ministries and the presidential palace.

The rebellion at the Justice Department by Sally Yates is a type that 
will likely be short-lived; she was a short-timer holdover from the 
Obama administration, and Trump has already replaced her with a 
compliant prosecutor. Political positions of that sort, which fill the 
top tiers of most agencies, will soon be filled by Trump vassals. The 
fight within bureaucracies will soon shift to being between those 
loyalists and the career civil servants who compose the bulk of the 
federal workforce, which totals about 2.1 million people, plus 3.7 
million who work as contractors.

An unusual appeal went out to federal workers on Monday from a former 
National Security Council staffer, Laura Rosenberger, who wrote to her 
former colleagues, “In many ways, you are the last line of defense 
against illegal, unethical, or reckless actions — which the first week 
of this administration confirm will abound.” Rosenberger added, “History 
has shown us that implementation of such policies depends on a compliant 
bureaucracy of obedient individuals who look the other way do as they 
are told. Do what bureaucracy does well: slow-roll, obstruct, and 
constrain. Resist. Refuse to implement anything illegal, unethical, or 
unconstitutional.

It is a stirring plea but there are many reasons why it might not ignite 
a rebellion among the legions of bureaucrats who make the government run 
from day to day. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked to 
respond to the dissent from the State Department officials on Monday, 
made it clear what the administration thinks of disloyalty. “These 
career bureaucrats have a problem with it?” he said. “I think they 
should get with the program or go.” I have heard these sorts of threats 
before, though not on American soil.

Where this goes from here is impossible to say. It’s as if we were 
caught in a rogue wave that has crashed down upon us, turning us head 
over heels, crushing our heads under pressure, filling our lungs with 
water, breaking our bones with its power. And somehow we still expect to 
fully understand what is happening to us, where the wave will take us, 
and what condition we will be in when the waters recede.