Editor’s Note: The controversies in the morning stream of news are mildly interesting on this day, nearly four decades after living in, around or under the direction of the Emerald City on the other side of the Potomac River. There was a mild argument in the Writer’s Section about exactly when things started to come off the tracks. We accepted it at the time, and have continued to accept it over the last few decades. Part of today’s stream of information is some speculation about what the FBI relationship with Twitter actually means. An interesting aspect is the way the story about it is disseminated.
So, part of it is ‘new,’ and other parts have been known for quite a while. We have followed the “laptop scandal” since it was first circulated, so it is just the timing of our current turmoil that is unexpected.
A third? Fourth? dump of compromising information was released yesterday. We don’t view this as a partisan issue on its face. It is, of course, but as old information warriors we like to examine the streams of information being presented and what they mean. Not in partisan terms, but in an attempt to understand exactly what is being contested. From here on the flanks of DC, it has been most interesting over time. This morning we delved down into the digital bowels of a system that now works in a much different way than it used to.
Twenty years ago we served with some FBI folks in the maelstrom of interests between the agencies. They are now lumped together as a new political force all their own. The institutional interests of the elements within the Executive Branch don’t appear to be directly associated with the general public good, but something else. Twenty years ago, we talked about things like the assassination of a sitting President, and some aspects of that event that remain unclear to this day. So, let’s go back and see some of the things that were changing without much public discussion:
16 November 2000
In 2000, the year of Gore v. Bush, some of us were working in the Pentagon, and later up the Parkway in Langley. A decision on who would be President was resolved after 38 days of controversy and we had to make up for lost time. It is comforting to know that the system will at least attempt to function in times of uncertainty.
– Vic
Nov 16. First snow back home in Michigan, first frost in Baghdad-on-the-Potomac. The steady rhythms of the Government continue in this one-industry town, but there is a disconcerting vacuum at the top. The parts all move, the paper shuffles, but all ears are alert for the footsteps of the new leaders.
We had a long chat with one of the bureaucrats from the Secretary’s office this morning. We were down in the Bat Cave, a service ally in the midst of the vast federal building. Amid the crumbling concrete is the designated smoking area. The low November sun improbably reflected in a fifth story window and flooded the dingy blacktop under the pedestrian walkway between the sprawling corridors. The illumination brought out the years of rust stains on the structural columns and highlighted the broken overhead tiles.
We should note that the sorry state of the Building is being remedied after years of neglect, at vast expense to the taxpayer. We have been designated a historic structure, and although it would be more efficient to simply rip it down and start over, we will work through the construction and pretend the noise and the dust are just part of the process. Maybe they are.
We talked, of course, about the election. In the Building, we have talked about little else during the long campaign. It matters to us. The new administration brings us new leaders, strong-willed individuals who must be trained in the ways of the system. The old troupe of political appointees began extended travel, or golf, or just left the Building to get on the Executive Department bus to take them on the roundabout to the private sector. Strobe Talbot leaves State for Yale; does anyone want to be Deputy Secretary of Defense for three months? It’s a great resume bullet!
All through the roller-coaster of the campaign we had smoked and contemplated who the winner would bring to us in the department. Firebrand? Ideologues? Most of us with sincere views on either side of the discussion are cranky. That includes the career folks for whom these changes are long-standing facts of life. We are used to having to wait out the eagerness of the political transients and let the system grind them down to something smooth we could work with.
So here was how those of us in the system felt on this day twenty years ago, watching the streams of information fly across the ether: “No resolution today. Gore looked fairly Presidential last night in his television appearance. He disavowed the battalions of his lawyers who are busy at contesting the broken chads of the election. Bush is nowhere to be seen. The two local DC rags tell the same story differently: The Post trumpets: “Bush Spurns Gore Recount Plan.” The feisty Times proclaims: “Florida certifies the Bush Lead.” Whoever wins will come to this town with a taint of illegitimacy on them, and that will cling to their appointees. With the narrowness of the Senate divide, it will be tougher than ever to get the confirmable appointees through the mill. That will slow the critical first few months of the Administration and will cause chaos in the budget we submit to the Congress in February.”
The outlook from the Bat Cave then was one now familiar. “Our opinion is that we will have a weakened President, a weakened Executive Branch, and a Congress with margins so razor thin that little will be achieved in the 107th. We noted that the split in the vote finalized the polarization of the electorate. The countryside went overwhelmingly for Bush, and hence the values of the Greatest Generation: Self reliance, Church, Family. The suburbs- represented in the wildly successful and disturbing film “American Beauty,” split down the middle. And the cities went almost without exception to Mr. Gore, and the values of his Baby Boom: diversity, situational ethics, weaponization of our institutions, laws and in fact the truth itself.”
The messaging of the time reflects the change. Back then, we noted “Our urban centers have endorsed the Balkanization of our population, celebrating the unique victimhood of dozens of special categories of citizens, and the special need for the Government to take an active stance on their behalf. The two sides seem implacable and resolute in their views, and there appears little room for compromise. At the end of the campaign, at least one candidate was demonizing the opposition from the pulpit. The level of civility plunged from discussion of the actual issues to one of the forces of “good” and “evil”. Dubya was portrayed simultaneously as an amiable dunce and agent of the Antichrist.”
We are at that point again, but with an interesting aspect about the information wars and the change in the digital age. There was a minor string in the media yesterday about Alexander Vindman, Lt. Col., US Army.
(Lieutenant Alexander Vindman appears before Congress. Photo Wiki commons).
He is retired now, apparently to avoid some future questions about his understanding of the chain-of-command. But he is an interesting figure in our current information streams. He felt that the President he served was inappropriately exercising the power of his office by making a phone call to Ukraine. It struck us as curious at the time, since we had all been of at least the same rank in some of the same offices. None of us considered our personal views of Presidential phone calls to be of paramount importance in the performance of our duties.
Lt. Col. Vindman did. His views contributed to an impeachment hearing. It was part of something even more interesting at the time, which was what appeared to be the active participation of Executive Branch Agencies in an effort to undermine their elected leader.
It was public knowledge then that Director Hoover at FBI had a long history of collecting information on members of the government he served for purposes known best to himself. It was just part of the Washington landscape of his time. But the concept that other agencies like the IRS could be used against citizens was something new, as was the request to add 87,000 new personnel to the Revenue Service rolls. As taxpayers no longer in the government we found the idea a little extraordinary, since at least some of these new government employees would be armed. An armed Internal Revenue Service with a mission of pouring through our finances.
We have no problems with that, although there are still some questions. One of the most prominent of them in terms of chains-of-command issues is Lt. Col. Vindman. He knew the President he was attempting to have dismissed from office. For all the rest of us, we now wonder who it is that drafts the script that appears on the teleprompter in front of our elected leader. We don’t know. That is something new to go along with what is “right” or “wrong.”
Now, we don’t even know “who.” That is some remarkable progress, isn’t it?
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com