‘Flying blind’: Trump strips government of expertise at a high-stakes moment

WASHINGTON – For decades, American presidents have relied on the expertise of foreign policy professionals to help guide them through tricky negotiations in high-stakes conflicts around the globe.

President Donald Trump has taken a different approach towards such experts: He has fired them.

Now, as Mr Trump tries to navigate perhaps the trickiest negotiation of his presidency – ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine – he is doing so after having stripped away much of the infrastructure designed to inform him about Russian President Vladimir Putin and to keep the US from being outmanoeuvred or even duped.

“They’re flying blind without the expertise,” said Dr Evelyn N. Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University.

She said the kinds of people who had been fired “have seen all the intelligence relating to Vladimir Putin’s intentions. They have spies on the ground. They know all kinds of information that’s gained through technical means”.

Mr Trump has gutted the National Security Council (NSC)

, the collection of foreign policy analysts who have helped guide US foreign policy for decades, cutting the staff by more than half.

He has purged experts from the intelligence agencies because of tangential connections to a nearly decade-old investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mr Trump has made it clear he believes that his personal connection with Mr Putin can help him get a peace deal on Ukraine, not being surrounded by a coterie of experts whom he sees as part of a “deep state” out to thwart his agenda.

“I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand, as crazy as it sounds,” Mr Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron on Aug 18, in a moment caught on a hot mic.

As Russia continues to pound Ukraine with missiles and drones, Mr Trump has chosen to rely mostly on himself and a handful of close allies, including friends from the business world.

His actions are part of a broader pattern in which he has reshaped the administration to carry out his wishes, not to debate policy or offer him independent advice.

And while Mr Trump has characterised his recent flurry of diplomacy as extremely productive, neither a ceasefire nor a peace settlement looks any closer, at least publicly.

A White House official argued that Mr Trump was producing results through direct leader-to-leader negotiations, rather than embracing the approach of previous presidents who relied on hundreds of researchers and advisers.

The official, who was not authorised to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr Steve Witkoff, the real estate investor whom Mr Trump tapped to be special envoy, had spent hours speaking to Mr Putin.

Mr Trump has held a deep distrust for the NSC since the earliest days of his first term, in 2017, because he believed that its members were undermining him.

The Trump administration’s gutting of the NSC was recommended by Mr Robert O’Brien, who led the council as national security adviser during Mr Trump’s first term and argued that its mission needed to be revamped to better carry out the President’s policy objectives.

“When we cut the NSC policy staff that had become needlessly bloated under Obama by half in Trump 1.0, the NSC became more efficient, stopped leaking and achieved big policy wins for President Trump,” Mr O’Brien said.

The “rightsizing” efforts in the second term “have yielded similar results”, he said, citing Mr Trump’s summits in Alaska and Washington.

The purge of expertise ramped up this week when Ms Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced she was

stripping 37 current and former officials of their security clearances

.

At least three of the current officials had worked on Russian influence issues, though none were directly responsible for the conclusions Ms Gabbard has derided as flawed.

Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said expert intelligence professionals were being forced out and those who remained were “sent a clear message” on what they should say.

“Vladimir Putin is sneering with satisfaction as Donald Trump, aided and abetted by his director of national intelligence, guts the intelligence community in pursuit of his political vendettas,” he said.

He added the intelligence community’s ability to perform “objective collection and analysis” was being systematically dismantled, a process that he said would “inevitably make our country less safe and less free”.

Mr Joel Willett, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and NSC staff member, was among the 37 people who lost their security clearances this week.

That means he will no longer be able to work on classified government contracts.

In a social media post, Ms Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, said she had flagged Mr Willett for signing a letter calling for Mr Trump to be impeached in 2019 and noted that he was considering a run for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate seat being vacated by Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader.

Mr Willett said Ms Loomer’s social media post contained falsehoods. But he said the bigger issue was that the purge of expertise on Russia and other national security matters would make it harder for the US government to advise the President.

Mr Willett served on the NSC during the Obama administration, and has looked on with dismay as Mr Marco Rubio, the acting national security adviser and secretary of state, has reduced the size of the organisation.

“We live in an age of interconnectedness and rapidly evolving global threats,” Mr Willett said. “I, for one, appreciate knowing that my government has deep experts, highly engaged, and that the President has access to those experts to help recommend policy. But I think what we’ve seen is an administration that truly doesn’t value expertise because the President feels that he knows best about everything.”

Senator Mark Warner, who is vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed concern that the administration was losing the very experts it needed at a precarious time.

“Russia remains one of our most dangerous adversaries – interfering in elections, unleashing relentless cyber attacks and carrying out a brutal war in Ukraine,” Mr Warner said. “At the very moment we need our best experts on the front lines, this administration is purging them for political reasons, stripping their clearances and making Americans less safe.”

Mr Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who once led the agency’s clandestine operations in Europe and Russia, said that beyond the exodus of people, the administration’s actions carry other problems.

“What is worrisome to me is the chill in analytic objectivity,” Mr Polymeropoulos said.

He said Mr Trump did not want to hear intelligence reports about Russia’s bad acts and Ms Loomer was seizing any excuse to try to get national security officials who worked on Russia ousted from the government.

“The whole idea of the intelligence community speaking truth to power is lost when it becomes so wildly politicised,” he said. “There are going to be real repercussions to all of this.” NYTIMES