Turnover as Just Desserts

Welcome to another long blog, but the subject matter goes to the core of whether the American democracy can survive the Trump White House. Even Republicans in Congress are beginning to worry that the easiest spot for an enemy agent to penetrate our most secret institutions – either directly or through some well-placed blackmail threat or offer of a massive business deal – is the White House itself. Rep. South Carolina Republican, Trey Gowdy, as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced an investigation (with full subpoena power) into the Rob Porter hiring/firing, and more importantly, the number of White House appointees who cannot get full security clearance and are not only continuing to operate with temporary and limited clearance but apparently are being provided with full access to our nation’s most classified information, a flagrant violation of our long-standing security practices.

Porter, until recently White House Staff Secretary for Donald Trump and on the verge of a promotion, was hired despite the FBI’s informing the White House (in July) that there was credible proof that Mr. Porter had beaten his two prior wives, making him most susceptible to blackmail. Porter never qualified for full security clearance. Where sexual abuse is at issue, as with the perpetrator-in-chief caught on an open mike admitting his proclivity for sexual abuse, Donald Trump is almost forced to side with the accused… since accepting an accuser’s word would make Mr. Trump most culpable as well. But after days of prodding, Trump finally focused on domestic abuse as the issue he could easily voice a strong negative opinion… in the abstract without referencing Porter. Yet the biggest political risks, state secrets given to untrustworthy people, continues unabated and without a direct response from Trump himself.

For example, Trump-son-in-law Jared Kushner, openly provided with the most sensitive “daily presidential briefing,” was never accorded more than temporary clearance because of his pages and pages of omissions and updates to his security application that mostly dealt with his dealings with foreign (including Russian) contacts. In the world of government clearances – and I am a government brat where clearance was a big deal – Kushner should never be accorded full security clearance. He may have been embarrassed by the length and breadth of his and his/his family’s affiliated companies’ contacts in Russia. Ouch!

Several realities make this litany of high-level White House appointments unable to secure full clearance even worse: the President’s unwavering denial of Russian interference in our election process despite overwhelming evidence from all of our intelligence agencies to the contrary and an unprecedented 34% turnover rate in the White House, barely a year into Trump’s term of office. Lots of people walking around with tons of ultra-classified information ringing in their brains… who never passed FBI muster for the necessary security clearance. Many of whom left the White House in disgrace or who faced the ire of a president obsessed with absolute fealty to him over anything else.

The incredible turnover is one aspect of the instability and confusion that define a rather unprofessional White House: “Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus suggests that reports regarding the high level of chaos in the Trump administration are woefully understated…  The Associated Press notes that according to Chris Whipple’s upcoming book, 'The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency,' Priebus says of the Trump administration mayhem, ‘Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50.’… He also comments on the numerous failed attempts to rein in President Trump’s Twitter habit.” Geobeats, February 15th.

Sarah Kendzior, writing for the February 15th FastCompany.com, puts it all into proper and much more sobering perspective: “Porter should have never been hired; his history of abuse is not only repugnant in itself, but made him susceptible to blackmail. Now he will leave the White House armed with state secrets that he should have never been given—one of many ethically questionable former staffers to do so. Porter is a symptom of the disease of Trumpism, a toxic plague of misogyny, disloyalty, and deceit that not only shatters ethical norms but leaves U.S. national security in chronic jeopardy.

“Trump’s White House has long been a revolving door… While departures of incompetent or immoral staffers have often inspired public relief, they are actually cause for alarm. That revolving door leads into a bustling marketplace of state secrets, one whose temptations should not be shrugged off given that basic standards of loyalty to country have been put into question by this administration’s actions.

“Among the departed White House staffers are former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has admitted guilt in the Kremlin interference probe; white nationalist (and fellow domestic abuser) Steve Bannon, who has vowed to destroy the United States; and extremist Seb Gorka, who has ties to neo-Nazi organizations and is being investigated by police in Hungary. (Gorka, like Porter, worked as a Trump advisor despite being denied clearance as a result of his 2016 arrest in the U.S. for bringing a weapon through an airport.)

“Men who have already colluded with a foreign power, committed acts of violence, or threatened to destroy the U.S. now know some of the country’s secrets, and it’s easy to imagine the damage they could do in the era of WikiLeaks and illicit foreign deals. Fellow federal indictee Paul Manafort, for example, used his access as Trump’s campaign manager to offer ‘private briefings’ to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is a close friend of Vladimir Putin and to whom Manafort is alleged to owe a great deal of money.

“The reason the U.S. has traditionally had a rigorous security clearance process is to prevent bad actors like Manafort (or Flynn, or Gorka, or Bannon) from accessing classified information and jeopardizing public safety. Notwithstanding what some have called serious problems with the clearance process—some 700,000 people are waiting to have clearances processed, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Comptroller’s office—the process has been virtually abandoned in Trump’s White House, leaving us with what appears to be a wandering coterie of rapacious rejects who consider U.S. sovereignty a salable good.

“The Trump administration’s disregard for standard security protocol is exemplified not only by Porter and the other interim clearance staffers, but by Trump himself. In May, Trump casually gave state secrets to Russian officials in the Oval Office, a destructive move which in any other administration would have probably led to serious repercussions, but with Trump, was treated merely as a piece of a broader, terrible puzzle. Trump has not only refused to investigate Russian hacking of U.S. elections and infrastructure, but proposed a cyber-partnership with Russia. He has refused to enact Russian sanctions, despite a Senate ruling of 98-2 to enforce them, and over the past month, his Secretary of State and four heads of the intelligence community all confirmed he has no plan to stop Russian election interference in the 2018 midterms.”

Dozens of discharged White House staffers, all given access to top secret information well beyond their clearances, are still “out there.” And then there are those who remain. “White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, under pressure to act, strengthened the process for security clearances for President Donald Trump's aides on Friday [2/16]...

“Saying that recent events had exposed some ‘shortcomings,’ Kelly decreed that any interim security clearances for staffers whose background investigations have been pending since June 1 or before will be discontinued in a week.” Reuters, February 16th. Will the President follow this mandate, forcing many in his inner circle to leave? Bye Jared Kushner? We’ll just have to wait and see. But Donald Trump needs those people around him to continue to buffer all those accusations of Russian election meddling.

Indeed, there is a tsunami of evidence of Russian interference as most recently highlighted by Robert Mueller’s investigation: On February 16th, with the full support of Trump-appointed Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, the office of the special prosecutor issued indictments against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian organizations for criminally interfering with the US election process: “A Russian Internet agency and more than a dozen Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election campaign in a multi-pronged effort to support Donald Trump and disparage rival Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Special Counsel said in an indictment on Friday [2/16].

“The charges by the office of Robert Mueller described a conspiracy that started in 2014 to disrupt the U.S. election by people who adopted false online personas to push divisive messages; traveled to the United States to collect intelligence; and staged political rallies while posing as Americans.

“Russia's Internet Research Agency ‘had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election,’ the indictment states.” Thomson-Reuters, February 16th. Trump’s dramatic and illogical response to the indictments? “[Glad] to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates - that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.” Huh? Exactly how did the indictments show that again? Oh, and Rosenstein made it clear that the Russian investigation was continuing beyond these indictments.

Nobody is hungrier for our most vital state secrets or more anxious to destabilize our nation than Russia, followed closely by China and North Korea. Many players in the Middle East glean information from those powers, where they do not have their own US operations in place. Even under threat of an indictment for corruption, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu leads a US-friendly government that has long maintained its own clandestine operations to monitor sensitive information within US federal agencies. But with a staunch US-ally dedicated to doing his bidding on the international stage, Netanyahu may well have a direct and rather full pipeline of top secret US intelligence directly from US Ambassador David Friedman, Jared Kushner and perhaps even the President himself.

In a world filled with malevolent forces seeking to destroy the United States, undermine its credibility, destabilize its most cherished institutions, denigrate our influence, enhance our enemies’ ability to attack us and our people wherever they may be and unseat us as the dominant world power, it is terrifying to me that an ego-fragile, deeply insecure president is willing to place the entire nation in harm’s way to surround himself with unqualified officials who are unable to qualify for full security clearance… in exchange for a loyalty commitment to himself above any other consideration. If there is one clear vulnerability for the Trump administration with its own party, this may be that Achilles Heel. Otherwise, the GOP does not seem willing to rein in their leader for fear of alienating the base, now considered an essential and determinative constituency for the entire Republican Party.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is very hard to accept a president, who has wrapped himself with a flag of patriotism, to be willing to place our most vital secrets in the hands of some of the least trustworthy people imaginable.