Trump's State Department Witch Hunt: The Evidence
Donald Trump's mentor as a young man was Roy Cohn. Cohn was Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hatchet man in his bogus communist witch hunts in the 1950s. What he lacked in morals he more than made up in sheer viciousness. Roy Cohn died of AIDS in 1986. His boss died of alcoholism in 1957 at age 47. The world is a better place without them. Their names are synonymous in U.S. history with unchecked persecution of innocents and evil ambition. They succeeded in wrecking the careers of thousands of career civil servants and many in the entertainment industry.
I recently wrote about how this president is at war with his own government, having brazenly attacked the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI and Department of Justice. His selfish motives center on deflecting attention from the boost he received from Vladimir Putin in being elected president, but even more importantly, seeking to derail the Mueller investigation, the outcome of which could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Trump's Roy Cohn is Congressman Devin Nunes, himself a shameless hatchet man who unquestioningly does his president's bidding, the higher interests of the nation be damned. After skewering the FBI with false charges of political bias, triggering dismissals and resignations of senior officials, Nunes announced next on his hit list was the Department of State - coincidentally the chief target of McCarthy and Cohn.
The hapless Rex Tillerson softened this prime target of the radical right by gutting State's senior ranks and otherwise dithering over spread sheets as his agency went adrift.
Now comes hard evidence of key Trump aides and their outside allies of actually laying plans and taking actions to carry out a political purge at State. Congressmen Elijah Cummings and Elliot Engel have released a letter they have sent to Trump's chief of staff John Kelly and Acting Secretary of State John Sullivan with leaked information describing actions by top administration political aides to go after career State Department officials whom they believe lack loyalty to the president.
"We have obtained extremely disturbing new documents from a whistleblower indicating that high-level officials at the White House and State Department worked with a network of conservative activists to conduct a 'cleaning' of employees they believed were not sufficiently 'supportive' of President Trump's agenda. They appear to have targeted these staffers despite being fully aware that they were career civil service employees and despite the career employees expressing willingness to support the policy priorities of the Trump Administration."
Leaked emails of these Trump aides refer to "turncoats", State officers "associated with previous policy", and "Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump's foreign policy agenda."
These people have also been colluding with conservative outside players — including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, conservative activist Barbara Ledeen, and former Dick Cheney and John Bolton advisor David Wurmser. The latter wrote, "Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here."
Topping their hit list is Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant in the policy planning office. After she was targeted by conservative media, Tillerson aide Brian Hook wrote, "I've emailed friends who tracked the Iran deal for intel on her and waiting to hear back." Ms. Nowrouzzadeh was removed from her detail to the Policy Planning Staff three months early. An Iranian-American, the 12-year civil service employee committed the sin, in the Trumpistas' eyes, of having worked on the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump peremptorily fired Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein, a political appointee, for contradicting the White House's false account of Tillerson's firing.
Trump's war against his own government follows in the deplorable tradition of his mentor Roy Cohn and chief inquisitor Joe McCarthy. It also feeds into a peculiarly American political tradition of right-wing attacks against government as an institution, a nihilism that has been gaining strength over the years and is now being stoked by the incumbent administration. These people peddle risible fantasies of a "Deep State" and a "secret society" of career government employees who are scheming to bring down the president.
Cummings and Engel are requesting a slew of documents from the administration. How much cooperation they get awaits to be seen. The administration cannot be let off the hook. These congressmen need an assist from more whistleblowers as well as from those of us who write and report the news.