The CIA, Really?
If Trump cuts government too deeply or too recklessly, we're all going to pay a price.
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“The firings have devastated morale, and cut productivity this week.” You might find a quote like that one in the dozens of stories online today about Trump’s haphazard staffing cuts to federal agencies supporting science, education, health care, foreign aid, veterans’ benefits, and the U.S. social safety net for the poor and working poor. That’s bad enough.
But this New York Times story is a whole-other level horrific:
“Some officers hired in the last two years have been summoned to a location away from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and asked to surrender their credentials to security personnel, according to three people briefed on the firings.”
Fired not because they’re extraneous personnel or they’re not great intelligence officers. Fired simply because they’re the last ones hired.
“In fact, some young agency officers working inside Langley have been hesitant to answer their phones, worried that it will be a call from security asking them to report to an off-site location. The firings have devastated morale, and cut productivity this week, according to some of the people briefed on the situation.”
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be cut as the CIA. I’m saying there shouldn’t be cuts this way: without deliberation; without merit; without understanding the life-or-death consequences of cutting too deeply or cutting the wrong people.
While Trump has set a trap for Democrats whose objections to the Elon Musk-run DOGE initiative could be perceived as defending a bloated status quo, the president runs a risk of creating a cuts-related catastrophe. One of the best pollsters in politics, Republican Witt Ayers, told The Washington Post that Trump needed to be careful how he downsizes government. “Something is going to blow up in a way that affects normal people outside the Beltway,” he said.
When I lived in Washington covering the White House and national politics, several of my friends and neighbors worked in U.S. intelligence. They worked 24/7. They worked around the world. They often worked at immense risk to their own lives and they saw things they’ll never unsee.
Late one Saturday night, I was sitting with a married couple in a neighborhood bar. The husband was in marketing. The wife was in the CIA. While we drank beers, she sipped a diet Coke and kept looking at her pager, which vibrated on the worn wooden table like a lady bug on a hot tin roof. Finally, she rose from her chair and calmy excused herself.
“Need to go to work,” she said. “Honey, can you take tomorrow off with the kids? I’m not going to be home tonight.”
“Of course,” he said with a practice nonchalance. Clearly, this happened all the time. “Love you, Babe.”
That night, after stumbling into my home, I turned on CNN and learned why her weekend was cut short. The United States had just assassinated a terrorist whose movements had been tracked by the CIA and its intelligence partners for months.
That’s just one story, one example of what these men and women do for our country. And this is how we repay them? If Trump is not careful, we’re all going to pay an unfathomably steep price for his performative policymaking.
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