The “Deep State”

The claptrap this administration is putting out about federal workers as “enemies within” is meant to weaken your faith in American democracy. Do not believe it. Also - hug a Canadian.

Servants of Uncle Sam

The above photo, taken years ago, is of four members of my Foreign Service “A-100” junior officer class — 37 of us, the first recruits following a long hiring freeze (I’m third from the left). The fellow to my left, Lee Schatz, was one of the six U.S. diplomats harbored by our Canadian colleagues and then exfiltrated out of Tehran with ginned up Canadian passports. It was called the “Canadian Caper.”

I had other Iran hostage friends who were not so lucky. FSO Mike Metrinko, held 444 days, was mistreated and twice nearly executed. Mike was awarded two State Department Medals of Valor. Other hostages were put before mock firing squads. Another friend, Richard Queen, developed multiple sclerosis during his 250-day captivity, of which he died years later at 51. Iran was Schatz’s and Queen’s first diplomatic assignments. Welcome to the Foreign Service, boys!

The senior FSO who recruited me to be senior Afghanistan country officer, Arnold Raphel, went on to be U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. He died in a still unresolved plane crash along with Pakistan’s president. I attended Arnie’s burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, replete with 17-gun salute, a memory that moves me to this day.

I myself was seized at gunpoint and incarcerated twice in my career — first by the Lao communist militia, second by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. I talked my way out of both situations, even displaying unfounded authority over my captors. They evidently were impressed. The State Department, however, was not. Displeased with my risk-taking and recovering from an on-the-job injury, I was grounded in Washington for five years before being allowed to serve overseas again. I was one of three Americans and the only diplomat (out of about a dozen foreign captives over time) whom the Khmer Rouge didn’t murder. I worked to free one of the other Americans, a young female aid worker, taken captive inside Cambodia.

Another Foreign Service colleague, Lorraine Takahashi, was on a an Air Lanka plane on the tarmac in Colombo in 1986 when an onboard terrorist bomb exploded, killing 21 passengers, but sparing Lorraine and another U.S. diplomat. Lorraine ran to the airport office, leaped over the counter, and grabbed an Air Lanka clerk by the lapels and shouted, “Give me the passenger manifest.” She saw that there were no other American citizens on the plane. She then phoned our embassy to call for assistance.

During my 23 years in the Foreign Service, 78 colleagues were killed in the line of duty. Their names are among the 321 etched on the Memorial Plaques in the State Department lobby. Similarly, 141 stars are etched on the CIA’s Memorial Wall, our colleagues in that agency also killed in the line of duty.

Listen to someone who knows our federal government well and served it faithfully: the claptrap this administration is putting out about federal workers as “enemies within” is meant to weaken your belief in American democracy. There is no “Deep State.” It’s a malicious myth they’ve fabricated to deceive you to go along with their plot to turn this country into an autocracy run by megalomaniacs and kleptocrats out to steal everything they can to enrich themselves further. Their cruel mass dismissals of federal workers also serve this purpose. Government ranks drained of talent makes for a more subservient tool with which to impose dictatorship.

Russell Vought’s admission that “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains” reveals a sadism and sickness that permeates the minds of fanatics hell-bent on bringing this nation down, and, with it, your freedoms and economic security only to gain more power and wealth for themselves.

For a realistic understanding of the amazing services federal workers deliver, read Michael Lewis’s book, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service. It will dissuade you of MAGA’s misrepresentations.

Finally, Canada deserves our eternal gratitude not only for saving our diplomats decades ago, but for being our most steadfast ally and good neighbor. The opprobrium our president is hurling at Canada and other allies emanates from a man suffering from multiple personality disorders and onsetting dementia. Do not believe a word he says. Whenever you encounter a Canuck give them a warm embrace and a word of thanks (and apology).

What I relate in this commentary and a previous one, “Killing USAID is a Criminal Act,” is not meant to brag about myself, but to give readers an appreciation of what government workers do for this nation and the world. I encourage my friends, colleagues and others who have served the flag to share their own insights and experiences, many of which movies could be made. Social media is a force multiplier in the battle we’re in to counter lies and save the country.

America’s foremost Revolutionary polemic rabble-rouser, Thomas Paine, knew this well when he said, “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”