Does All This Amount to Treason?
Chapter 18

The war in Syria began in 2011, and since then the toll has been staggering: over 500,000 killed, more than 6 million people displaced, and nearly 5 million refugees seeking sanctuary abroad. In addition, more than 100,000 Syrian citizens have been detained by the Syrian regime, and many of them have been tortured.
One of the key goals of the Obama administration was to seek regime change in Syria by forcing the government of President Bashar al-Assad to resign. To support this effort, the Pentagon supplied weapons and training to forces opposing the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which had established operations in Iraq. At the same time, the CIA launched a covert effort to support forces opposing Assad that included money, weapons, and training.
For Russia, bolstering Assad has become a key foreign-policy goal, and they have supported him with weapons and aircraft, with which Russia has launched an extensive bombing campaign aimed at opposition forces and civilians in Syria. This has become a confrontation of superpowers similar to what we saw in the 1980s in Afghanistan, during the Cold War. At stake is the balance of power in the Middle East, and the future of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other nations. It’s a big deal.
A slow, crippling war with horrendous casualties, a ruthless dictator clinging to power — there are no easy answers, and success will be able to be seen only years, not months from now. There must also be a determination to show strength, publicly and privately — strength that can be matched by diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution.
My President has never shown any real understanding or interest in Syria, or even the Middle East. Instead, he has consistently listened to Steve Bannon (aka Jeremiah), who tells him over and over that America has no business interfering in the world.
Then there is the antipathy of TFC (That Fucking Child = Trump) toward anything said or done by the intelligence community.
“Those fuckers!” he shouted at us in the Oval Office last week, in yet another epic rant. “They are doing everything they can to destroy me! Russia, leaks, endless fucking leaks on absolutely everything. If I could shut down the CIA, I would do it right now.”
In response to this drivel, the Amen Chorus — Bannon, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller — nodded wisely. The tirade was provoked by information revealed by an NSA intercept that showed former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions talking extensively to the Russian ambassador in New York about Trump’s plans for US relations with Russia after the election. Sessions, whom Trump later appointed Attorney General, has denied having those conversations, and last week repeated those denials.

The problem with those denials is that the intelligence community has a wealth of evidence that those conversations took place, including intercepts and reports from Kremlin sources that document a broad campaign launched by Trump during the election to gain Russian support in exchange for a post-election reset in relations. This reset would include the ending of sanctions imposed after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, a joint strategic alliance against China, a new trade deal, and an exchange of counter-terrorist intelligence.
None of these initiatives was created in consultation with any part of the US government, and Vladimir Putin couldn’t believe his good fortune. That’s why he orchestrated such an extensive hacking campaign against Hillary Clinton and her team, and why he employed 1,000 hackers to plant fake news in the American media to successfully get Trump elected.
The intelligence community knows all of this. Every time Trump or anyone on his team dismisses their evidence as “fake news,” the lies and who is lying are clear and unequivocal.

When Trump met with Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month, one thing Putin asked for was the end of the CIA’s covert operation against Assad. To the dismay of the intelligence community and the professionals in the State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council, Trump readily agreed.
“It was appeasement, pure and simple,” one member of the national security team told me last week. “Leaving aside that Russia is an enemy of the United States, the decision to shut down the covert operation means that Assad will likely stay in power and feel free to kill tens of thousands more of his own people. He now knows that he has a free hand. Of all the decisions that have happened in the last six months, this was the most disgusting.”
Trump has a very long business history of taking revenge against those who cross him, and his actions against the intelligence community reflect that experience. In meetings I’ve attended or heard about, he has said again and again that he will punish the intelligence community for everything it has done to damage him.
But this struggle is not going to be as easy for TFC as in the past, when money or lies have won the day.
This is beginning to register in the White House. First we have the order to preserve any and all e-mails touching on Russia and the investigation. Then TFC fires his own lawyer and hires a replacement. Then Sean Spicer resigns as White House Press Secretary, having lost the fight to stop Trump from hiring financier Anthony Scaramucci — a man Spicey despises as an unqualified blowhard — to run the communications shop. It’s worth noting that while Spicey may have been inept and a liar, he served the President faithfully, and has been rewarded with a ruined career and a tattered reputation.

Apparently more blood will be soon be shed (among them Reince Priebus the White House Chief of Staff), as Trump does his usual act of firing as many people as possible, to deflect any responsibility from himself and his own actions.
As Trump tries to keep the enemies at bay, the drawbridge is slowly rising. But he appears to have forgotten about the mines he himself has planted — when detonated, they will blow the castle to pieces.
I’m not a conspiracy person, but I couldn’t help noticing that the same week Trump shuts down the operation in Syria, a leak appears that shows that the Attorney General has not only lied to Congress and the American people, but has also broken the law by discussing a Trump administration policy toward Russia before the election, while the Russians were orchestrating a massive covert operation against our country.
Many of us Republicans who stepped up to serve in this administration find all of this very hard to accept. As a friend of mine in the Justice Department put it the other day:
“To me, this is treason, pure and simple. We have always been the party that believes in a strong America. Now we have a President and his friends who are crawling to our enemy in the Kremlin, offering him all that he wants in exchange for him trying to destroy our democracy. It’s insane.”
I haven’t been around the national security world long enough to have much perspective on all of this. But others tell me that the routine disparagement of our President by the professionals who’ve worked in the intelligence and national security arena for decades is unprecedented. Trump is routinely described as a “traitor” who lacks the intellect or the experience to lead the country. What the professionals find especially discouraging is that he seems to prefer and trust Russia and Putin over his fellow Americans.
What Trump and his team don’t fully understand is that many of us worker bees in the White House and elsewhere are so disgusted by the lies, and the consistent undermining of our country at home and abroad, that we are turning into the Enemy Within. As I talk to my colleagues, I find that fewer and fewer of us still drink the Kool-Aid.
Amid the despair and cynicism, we are all looking to Robert Mueller, the special counsel, as our last hope of truth being spoken to power. The GOP leadership have shown themselves to be craven cowards, and so Congress will continue to dither as America burns. But Mueller is a very different guy, with an unimpeachable record for probity.
Trump knows this and is expecting the worst. This is why his team has launched a preemptive campaign to undermine Mueller’s work by claiming that he and his team of lawyers are biased and compromised. This may work with TFC’s diminishing base, but it will have no influence on Mueller himself.
It’s my understanding that the investigation has now gathered a wealth of evidence against a cast of characters who are all members of Trump’s inner circle. Charges currently under consideration are money laundering going back decades, obstruction of justice, and collusion. Some of the lawyers on the team want to see a charge of treason brought against a number of people, but no one quite knows what that means in the 21st century.

This all leaves Trump very exposed, which is why he’s already been thinking about pardoning himself and anyone else implicated. But Congress remains supine — it’s hard to know what will provoke them to take action.
Evidence of lying? Not likely, given the hundreds of lies in the past six months. Evidence of collusion with Russia? Neither the Attorney General nor Congress seems to care about that. Money laundering? Well, everyone seems to accept that Trump is a crook who built his business by cutting unsavory deals with Russian oligarchs and the mafia, so what’s new?
But treason? That just might be a tipping point.
