This moment in Washington
With intelligence agencies on the brink of change, a collection of moments to make sense of the day.
I've seen a lot of drama and trauma in Washington, D.C. I moved to the capital a few days after the 2011 earthquake, which shook the city literally and metaphorically. The cracked Washington monument, portending the divisiveness ahead. In one weekend in 2017, I saw skirmishes in the street during then-President Barack Obama’s sendoff, I overheard liberals make cruel remarks to visitors attending then-President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, and I stood in a sea of pink hats during the Women's March. From a balcony, as George Floyd protests broke out across the country, I watched a civilian SUV chase a police car. And I reported from the U.S. Capitol, caged after the Jan. 6. insurrection, as members of the National Guard marched the grounds with rifles. I did not know when I moved to this city for graduate school that I’d have a front row seat to the country's most fierce fights.
But today there is a quiet that I don’t recognize. I have friends who live by Ronald Reagan airport. They heard helicopters flying all night after the American Airlines jet collided with the Black Hawk helicopter. Days later, you could still see pieces of wreckage in the Potomac.
And then there are the changes happening inside buildings that most Americans will never see. I’ve been driving past the U.S. Agency for International Development, where the bronze signage was just taken down, letter by letter. On the other side of the same building, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is busy with raids. Supporters embrace the sweeping measures to balance the federal budget and eliminate what they see as wasteful (and liberal) programs. Critics fear the intended dismantling of USAID is meant to be a pilot test for a broad overhaul of federal agencies.
At the FBI, I know some who have printed out bureau policies and put them in binders. A new little library that they’ll turn to in the event Kash Patel is confirmed in a full Senate vote.
In intelligence corners of the Defense Department, some are silently mourning an NSA directive prohibiting them from using pronouns in their emails. They are questioning Trump’s stated desire for Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earth minerals in exchange for military support. (By the way, rare earths really aren’t that rare, the U.S. has its own.) At the State Department, people are working weekends, confused, and morose. I know one person at FEMA who is planning to take a buyout, knowing that it might not actually come, because she believes she could be fired anyway. She thinks this is a psychological campaign.
At the CIA, I know officers who are disheartened that a list of some employee names was sent to the White House. I’m also told that personnel are ratting each other out, sharing the names of people whose work included Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Among staff who dislike Trump (and there are absolutely Trump supporters at the agency), there are concerns about the selection of Michael Ellis, a former Heritage Foundation fellow, to be deputy director.
Backstory: Ellis allegedly came up with the idea of moving a memo of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (which led to Trump’s first impeachment) to a highly classified server, according to what then-Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman recalled under oath. Trump later installed Ellis as general counsel of the NSA. And then-director Paul Nakasone put him on administrative leave. An inspector general report concluded in 2021 that while there had been no pressure or “improper influence or failure to comply with DoD guidance” in selecting Ellis, two security incidents were “a sufficient reason” for Nakasone to put Ellis on leave. In the first incident, according to the report, Ellis allegedly “either created or directed the copying” of notebooks of documents with classified information “without NSA knowledge, consent, or control.” It is unclear why, but a State Department official who was not authorized to access the documents had obtained them. In a second incident, concerning a document with classified information on one of NSA’s most secret programs, Ellis allegedly “refused to return the document.” He kept it for the White House archives in a “container that did not meet the security storage requirements for such a sensitive program.” The document was returned a few days later.
On Thursday, a group of 200 former CIA officials delivered a letter to the Republican and Democratic heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, voicing their concerns about an email encouraging CIA staff to leave through “deferred retirement.” Calling it a “forced departure of experienced officers,” they believe the move will create “an intelligence vacuum that cannot be easily filled,” the letter states. “A mass exodus of experienced personnel will erode [international] relationships, weaken intelligence sharing, and reduce the CIA’s ability to effectively operate overseas.” They also warn that it will undermine the ability to counter U.S. adversaries.
I am also told that personnel from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) visited the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last week. This is another place to watch closely, no matter what the courts decide about DOGE. If Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed as its director, overseeing 18 intelligence agencies, she has vowed to eliminate “bloat.” And even lawmakers who have at times defied Trump embrace Gabbard’s promise. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) says the ODNI “has become far larger than it was designed to be, and Ms. Gabbard shares my vision of returning the agency to its intended size.”
On Friday, I attended a lunch with some former senior intelligence leaders, albeit under Chatham House rules. One described how the DNI was a job nobody wanted. Another said the ODNI didn’t have much clout when it started. A small sort of “military combatant command,” unique for its emphasis on analysis instead of operations and collection — that post-Sept. 11 and the invasion of Iraq, which was based on faulty intelligence, they didn’t want another “WMD fiasco.” How did they feel about the prospect of major cuts today? It’s hard to know, they said collectively. A lot was added to the office over time and taking a critical look back won’t hurt. But the cuts need to be the right ones.
Some days, I wonder what it would be like to live outside the bubble. In a place where people saw and cared a little less. If DC is “Hollywood for ugly people,” a city of wonks and lobbyists wielding laminated badges, then maybe leaving would be a luxury.
But the outside is also coming in. This week, during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, I saw Orthodox Jews outside of the White House holding signs that said things like, “Israel is worse than the Nazis.” I’ve been getting texts from journalists across the country who find the news cycle utterly surreal. Restaurants are shutting down in solidarity with immigrants. And I’m still getting alerts about Russian missile and drone attacks in Ukraine — 27,770 since I last checked.
And still, the many memories I have here. I can rewind and fast forward, finding meaning in different ways before other moments submerge them.
In 2017, I knew a small group of federal workers that met at night to resist Trump in a kind of 1930s Germany vibe. They printed out posters and stuck them around certain government buildings. That does sound a little “deep state-y,” doesn’t it? But they couldn’t agree on a logo, or a real mission, and they disbanded before anything much else happened.
One night in those years, Juleanna Glover told me at one of her “salons,” parties in her beautiful home with sushi, macaron, and book releases, that if Trump were colluding with the Russians, special counsel Robert Mueller would find it.
And years before that, at the State Department in 2015, working to counter Russian disinformation, I learned about something that humans sometimes do: We attribute big causes to big events. But sometimes big things happen for small reasons. Like Zachary Taylor, the 12th U.S. President, dying after eating a lot of cherries and iced milk during a July 4th celebration. He wasn’t poisoned or assassinated, as rumors and conspiracy theories would have it. “Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington,” says the National Constitution Center.
I wonder if this lesson applies during the early days of Trump’s venture at the White House. In his campaign, he echoed some classic Russian talking points in addition to his provocative TV soundbites: “Russia, if you're listening…” and his anti-NATO stance (which actually ended up strengthening NATO before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine). These remarks prompted genuine concern that he may be working with the Russians. A big result being his wildcard victory, due to a big cause being Russian collusion. But Mueller did not find that at all. Instead, picture Trump casually scrolling social media on his cell phone, consuming content with conspiracy theories and disinformation that aligned with Kremlin positions.
Why does that matter now? Why am I bringing up a memory of what I learned back in 2015, when I was sitting on a rolling chair in a State Department office which would likely be shut down today? Because some of the deep suspicion that Trump holds toward U.S. spy agencies stems from this time and this human fallacy. Yes, he was already campaigning in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” but those years deepened the desires that we’re seeing carried out behind close doors today in Washington.