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[Rainy]

This article from Politico yesterday is pretty interesting and sheds more light on the atmosphere inside the White House.

A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government.

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a ”deep state" of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they've been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

It's an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trump's ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

One widespread concern in the Trump White House: that career intelligence operatives are working to undermine the new president through a series of leaks of classified information.

Much of the suspicion is directed at the Central Intelligence Agency, which many Trump loyalists believe is targeting CIA skeptics who sit on the National Security Council. Some of them allege that the CIA was behind the damaging leaks to the press that culminated in the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in February and that the agency has pushed for the removal of other staffers.

They also believe the CIA exaggerated security clearance concerns that led to the removal of a top Flynn deputy, Robin Townley, from the NSC. Last week, another top NSC staffer who had drawn opposition from some within the CIA, intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was told he was being removed, only to have Trump overrule the decision after Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner intervened, two people familiar with the episode said.

Some rank-and-file White House aides, meanwhile, have become convinced that intelligence agents may be monitoring their phone calls, emails, and text messages. Those fears intensified last week when WikiLeaks released a trove of CIA documents outlining how the agency can break into phones and computers.

In an interview, one White House aide described the elaborate steps he was taking to shield himself. Once he gets home in the evening, he turns off his work phone and stores it in a drawer because, he said, he believes it could be used to listen to him even when it's off. If he makes a call during off-hours, he uses a separate, personal phone in an adjoining room, where the stowed work device wouldn't be able to pick up his voice as clearly.

Some staffers have even expressed concern about messages that appear on digital faces of White House landline phones, indicating that calls might be monitored. The White House official, however, said those messages have been a feature of the building's phone system for years.

Yet the perception among some staff that monitoring is widespread has engendered even greater suspicion and anxiety. ”We've got strict instructions not to talk to talk to the press," said one White House aide. ”I assume I would get fired immediately."

Fears grew on Friday, when Sid Bowdidge, a Trump appointee to the Department of Energy who had worked on the campaign, was ousted amid reports that he'd expressed anti-Muslim views and argued that Obama had relatives who were terrorists in Twitter posts from over a year ago.

In an interview, Bowdidge blamed the disclosure on an anti-Trump department staffer who had picked through his background. He called the incident ”character assassination" and said Obama allies were sending a warning shot to Trump loyalists in agencies.

”A lot of these career folks were put in there over the last eight years, they're Obama supporters," he said. ”By and large, they hate Trump."

In recent days, the administration has given credence to the idea that Obama loyalists are working against them. When Spicer was asked during a briefing last week about the idea that a deep state is working to undermine the president, he did not reject the premise.

”I don't think it should come as any surprise that there are people that burrowed into government during eight years of the last administration, and may have believed in that agenda and that to continue to seek it," he said.

Obama White House veterans are skeptical.

Tommy Vietor, who was an NSC spokesman during the Obama years, rejected the current administration's deep state concerns as ”overstated and ridiculous."

”The idea that there are career officials who are holdovers who may not agree with Trump is neither new nor remarkable," he said. ”That's not the deep state."

Source

 

[Mr Swine]

Didn't we have a similar thread a few days ago? I remember the thread title somewhere

 

[RPGamer92]

I wonder how many will be gone by the end of the year.

 

[Rebel Leader]

Didn't we have a similar thread a few days ago? I remember the thread title somewhere

we did

 

[hobozero]

Didn't we have a similar thread a few days ago? I remember the thread title somewhere

Maybe you just think we did...

 

[Glix]

In an interview, Bowdidge blamed the disclosure on an anti-Trump department staffer who had picked through his background. He called the incident “character assassination” and said Obama allies were sending a warning shot to Trump loyalists in agencies

You fuckers went back to his damn birth certificate, the gloves are fucking off and you have no legs to stand on.

 

[gcubed]

I don't remember Obama having trouble after 8 years of Bush.

Maybe it's just incompetent people who fashion themselves after fascists that have a problem with people.

 

[Bsigg12]

If you're not doing anything illegal you shouldn't be scared. Oh wait.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Authoritarian leaders and their environment are often very paranoid about everything, so no surprises here.

 

[Feep]

Been there

 

[Rainy]

Been there

Apologies, don't know how I missed it. Mods can lock this.

 

[Fancyarcher]

Didn't we have a similar thread a few days ago? I remember the thread title somewhere

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1352717

 

[Mr Swine]

we did

Maybe you just think we did...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1352717

Phew thought I was getting crazy