A Personal, Privatized Intelligence Service For The President
Throughout the brief Presidency of Donald Trump we have seen a slow but steady and increasing drift toward authoritarianism both from Trump himself and his administration. And the latest stories out of Buzzfeed and the Intercept should frighten anyone who cherishes our democracy.
Both stories report serious discussions within the Trump administration about essentially creating a privatized intelligence service that would be duplicating, if not replacing, important functions of the CIA and the FBI. According to the Intercept report, the administration is considering proposal to create “a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies”. According to one former senior intelligence official, “[CIA Director] Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him. It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books. The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”
None of the information collected would be shared with other US intelligence agencies, basically freezing out those agencies which are viewed as not sufficiently supportive of the Trump administration and agenda. Instead, it would be stovepiped directly to senior administration officials in a similar manner to the exact process that led us into the disastrous Iraq War. As the Intercept notes, “The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda”.
In addition, Pompeo is also lobbying the White House to create “a new global rendition unit meant to capture terrorist suspects around the world, as well as a propaganda campaign in the Middle East and Europe to combat Islamic extremism and Iran.”
This report follows on a similar story from Buzzfeed that ran last week. According to Buzzfeed, “The White House and CIA have been considering a package of secret proposals to allow former US intelligence officers to run privatized covert actions, intelligence gathering, and propaganda missions…One of the proposals would involve hiring a private company, Amyntor Group, for millions of dollars to set up a large intelligence network and run counterterrorist propaganda efforts…Another proposal presented to US officials would allow individuals affiliated with the company to help capture wanted terrorists on behalf of the United States.” Once again, the rationale for privatizing these activities is the belief that the intelligence services are out to destroy the Trump Presidency. Says one unnamed source, “The system does not work. The people leaking this to you just want to destroy the president.”
Both stories rely exclusively on unnamed sources. In addition, both stories mention some infamous characters from the counter-intelligence world. It appears that Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the private security outfit that disgraced itself in Iraq, is the driving force behind these proposals. In addition, both mention John Maguire, a previous partner of Prince’s and a veteran of both the Central American wars under Reagan and the wars in the Mideast under both Bushes. Maguire seems to be a true nutcase, believing that currently National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “used a burner phone to send information gathered through the surveillance to a facility in Cyprus owned by George Soros” and was certain that the “deep state” would somehow remove the President within his first year.
The aforementioned Amyntor Group is the remnants of the global network created by another old CIA hand and veteran of the Central and South American wars of the 1970s and 1980s, Duane “Dewey” Clarridge. Clarridge was accused of multiple accounts of perjury by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during his investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. The group pitching these plans is also aided by another disgraced Iran-Contra veteran, Oliver North. Apparently, North’s actions in that fiasco make him a hero to Prince and his Fox News profile also gives him credibility with the President.
In any other administration, this would just be laughed off as the ravings of lunatics. But this is the Trump administration, which is populated by a bunch of raving lunatics. Despite denials from virtually all sources, including Sarah Sanders’ useless “I haven’t discussed this with the President” denial today, there are plenty of indications that Prince is well-connected with the Trump administration and has been a proponent of this type of activity in the past. Prince’s sister is Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary. Prince has already made a proposal to essentially privatize the war in Afghanistan. That effort was quashed by McMaster and Mattis who instead convinced the President to increase our troop level there. Prince also flew to the Seychelles and met with a close associate of Putin’s in early January in an attempt to set up yet another back-channel to Russia for the Trump team. Prince also donated hundreds of thousands to not only Trump but the Republican party and a super PAC run by the Mercers.
In addition, Michael Flynn himself proposed a private extraordinary rendition of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania, back to Turkey. Gulen is accused by the current, corrupt Turkish government of fomenting a nearly successful coup in that country last year. Flynn was reportedly offered $15 million dollars for Gulen’s return. According to former CIA Director James Woolsey who attended one of the meetings where the kidnapping was discussed, Flynn proposed using a private force to seize Gulen and then fly him on a private plan to a jail just off the Turkish coast. If that sounds like a dry run for a private rendition force to you, you wouldn’t be the only one.
Moreover, both Buzzfeed and the Intercept make it seem that CIA Director Pompeo is supportive of these efforts. And we know that a private intelligence force answerable directly and only to Trump would certainly appeal to the President. So I think we can assume that there is an actual proposal like the ones described above and that the President is at least taking it seriously. After all, he took Prince’s earlier attempt to privatize the Afghan war seriously enough that the generals had to forcefully speak out against it.
If our history has shown us anything, it is that a secret intelligence force answerable directly and only to the President is a recipe for disaster. In addition, when that private intelligence force somehow gets in trouble, and it most assuredly will, the pressure on the American military to come in and bail them out, potentially involving us in an open military conflict with no planning or forethought. Even worse, as we see with both Nixon and Flynn, the temptation to use that private intelligence force within the United States and against the domestic enemies of the President will be overwhelming.
While I still have real doubts that these proposals will become a reality, we are, as I say, dealing with the Trump administration. And the fact that they are even being considered, along with Trump’s prior attacks on the press and the judiciary, shows just how swiftly we are drifting toward authoritarian rule.
