A Lawless President Confronts an Untrustworthy Intelligence
Community
by JEFFERSON MORLEY
MAY 4, 2020
"“There is no ‘deep state’—not in the conspiratorial way that Donald Trump uses the term,” writes David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent, in his new book, In Deep: The FBI, the CIA and the Truth about America’s “Deep State.”
“In dozens of interviews, no current or former government officials told me they had seen evidence of a conspiracy by FBI and CIA officials to force an American president from power,” he writes.
Rohde, now an executive editor at newyorker.com, depicts the faction that Trump calls “the deep state” as a cadre of civil servants dedicated to nothing more controversial than expertise and orderly functioning of the federal government. When some 80 former national security officials came together in March to endorse Joe Biden’s presidential bid, they dubbed themselves “the steady state.” Confronted with an erratic, lawless president, these functionaries want to be reassuring, and so does Rohde. Reality, however, is less comforting.
Rohde combines a lucid history of the abuses of America’s secret government agencies with a generous assessment of the congressional oversight process designed to keep the CIA and NSA under control. But Rohde’s account fails to explain why Trump’s “deep state” rhetoric, supposedly disconnected from political reality, succeeded in consolidating his support and winning an acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial."
moar:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/04/a-lawless-president-confronts-an-untrustworthy-intelligence-community/
come on at least the DS stooge got the title half right