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The Federal Bureau of Paranoia (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
Gift link from his Bluesky post:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/patel-gabbard-internal-fbi-spying/683511/?gift=_IXYI0Wrwnxuvm7JZ0fMfKGcnzaGgRY_F62C6JpDFps&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The Federal Bureau of Paranoia
America turns on its own spies and cops.
By Tom Nichols
July 11, 2025, 2:42 PM ET
Working in government, especially in national defense or the intelligence community, can be an unsettling business. You must give up a few of your rights and a lot of your privacy in order to remain a trustworthy public servant. The higher your level of clearance to access sensitive information, the more privacy you cede—and sometimes, as those of us who have been through the process can affirm, you find yourself with an investigator from your agency’s security office, explaining the embarrassing details of your finances or your emotional stability, and even answering some squirm-inducing questions about your love life.
That’s part of the job, and federal employees submit to it in order to keep America safe. What isn’t part of the job is a McCarthyist political-loyalty requirement, enforced with polygraphs and internal snooping. But FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have apparently decided that hunting down politically unreliable members of America’s intelligence and law-enforcement communities is more important than catching enemy spies, terrorists, or bank robbers.
Indeed, to call what Patel and Gabbard are doing “McCarthyism” is to make too grandiose a comparison. Tail Gunner Joe, a thoroughly reprehensible opportunist, claimed that he was rooting out Communists loyal to Moscow who were hidden in the U.S. government. Patel and Gabbard, meanwhile, don’t seem very worried about foreign influences, especially now that President Donald Trump treats the Kremlin like an ally, and they’re not looking for enemy agents. They just want to know who’s talking smack behind their back.
-snip-
Gabbard, Patel, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were always the unholy trinity of utterly unqualified nominees, people put up for their jobs primarily because Trump and his advisers knew that they would be completely pliant and obsequious, that nominating them would horrify official Washington, and that Senate Republicans would have to bend their collective knee by confirming them. But while Gabbard is thumbing through emails and posts, and Patel is examining heart rhythms to see who’s been rolling their eyes at him, America is in peril. Real spies are out there trying to steal America’s secrets; real terrorists, foreign and domestic, are plotting the deaths of American citizens. Kidnappers, gang members, organized-crime rings—they’re all out there waiting to be caught.
-snip-
America turns on its own spies and cops.
By Tom Nichols
July 11, 2025, 2:42 PM ET
Working in government, especially in national defense or the intelligence community, can be an unsettling business. You must give up a few of your rights and a lot of your privacy in order to remain a trustworthy public servant. The higher your level of clearance to access sensitive information, the more privacy you cede—and sometimes, as those of us who have been through the process can affirm, you find yourself with an investigator from your agency’s security office, explaining the embarrassing details of your finances or your emotional stability, and even answering some squirm-inducing questions about your love life.
That’s part of the job, and federal employees submit to it in order to keep America safe. What isn’t part of the job is a McCarthyist political-loyalty requirement, enforced with polygraphs and internal snooping. But FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have apparently decided that hunting down politically unreliable members of America’s intelligence and law-enforcement communities is more important than catching enemy spies, terrorists, or bank robbers.
Indeed, to call what Patel and Gabbard are doing “McCarthyism” is to make too grandiose a comparison. Tail Gunner Joe, a thoroughly reprehensible opportunist, claimed that he was rooting out Communists loyal to Moscow who were hidden in the U.S. government. Patel and Gabbard, meanwhile, don’t seem very worried about foreign influences, especially now that President Donald Trump treats the Kremlin like an ally, and they’re not looking for enemy agents. They just want to know who’s talking smack behind their back.
-snip-
Gabbard, Patel, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were always the unholy trinity of utterly unqualified nominees, people put up for their jobs primarily because Trump and his advisers knew that they would be completely pliant and obsequious, that nominating them would horrify official Washington, and that Senate Republicans would have to bend their collective knee by confirming them. But while Gabbard is thumbing through emails and posts, and Patel is examining heart rhythms to see who’s been rolling their eyes at him, America is in peril. Real spies are out there trying to steal America’s secrets; real terrorists, foreign and domestic, are plotting the deaths of American citizens. Kidnappers, gang members, organized-crime rings—they’re all out there waiting to be caught.
-snip-
Coming up at 3pm ET on MSNBC to talk about spies spying on spies:
— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T18:53:04.944Z
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
