Officials in the US military and intelligence services contemplate internal resistance or a career change ahead of Donald Trump taking office

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A US intelligence officer operating in a dangerous part of the world prepared this week for Donald Trump’s presidency by making a pact with a colleague: they resolved to disobey any order to commit torture.

The two officers’ pledge reflects a wider debate within the national security bureaucracy, as some officials – concerned by Trump’s authoritarian inclinations – debate whether to quit in protest at his electoral victory or to remain at their post in the hope of checking impulses they consider dangerous.

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During his election campaign, the president-elect mooted a string of controversial measures, any one of which would signify a major shift in US policy: reviving the use of torture, targeting the families of terrorism suspects, mass deportations, a ban on Muslims entering the US, expanding domestic surveillance, the indefinite detention of American terror suspects, bombing “the shit” out of the Islamic State.

Officials in the US military, intelligence services, diplomatic corps and federal law enforcement have told the Guardian that Trump’s suggestions represent such a departure from the norms of American governance that they are contemplating internal resistance or a career change.

One source said he was “fearful” of Trump in a way he has never been of an American national security figure, out of concern that Trump does not understand the “tertiary consequences” of decision-making on a global stage.



Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, all the officials interviewed by the Guardian cautioned that they spoke only for themselves.

Some said their anxiety over Trump was not shared by co-workers, particularly younger ones, who appreciate what one called Trump’s “bluntness”.

Surveys of the US military show substantial support for Trump, which also exists within the FBI. The federal immigration agents’ union endorsed Trump.

Other officials said they believed that the realities of office would force Trump to moderate his positions, or expressed confidence that the national security bureaucracy was sufficiently resilient to check presidential overreach.

While Congress passed a law in 2015 designed to prevent a return to CIA torture, human rights activists have long observed that torture was illegal before 9/11.

But several wondered if they would be able to serve in a Trump administration –particularly if instructed to transgress moral or legal boundaries meant to protect civil rights and liberties.



The public faces of national policy are the cabinet secretaries, agency chiefs and their immediate deputies. Below them are the political appointees who comprise the senior ranks of government.

Their choices are made for them during inauguration and the transition of power: they leave to make room for the picks made by the election’s victor.



But those tasked with implementing policy are in no such position.



Critical to the functions of the government’s most life-or-death enterprises, they are formally apolitical and provide expertise and continuity across administrations.

Several of those who spoke to the Guardian described themselves as reeling from an electoral outcome they did not anticipate and the imminent arrival of a president they considered manifestly unqualified.

“For those who expected Hillary to win, it’s shock and awe, so to speak,” one US official said.



Career security officials said that they were considering entrenching themselves in positions where they can serve as a check on Trump – either through direct advice to superiors or through the bureaucratic obstruction that features in every administration.

There, they would be able to rally allies in other agencies and on Capitol Hill. Some drew encouragement from the bipartisan opposition to Trump over national security that featured in the campaign.



In the course of the campaign, dozens of national security and foreign policy officials from former Republican administrations pledged in open letters or public statements that they would not serve under Trump.



In August, 50 Republican foreign policy and national security officials signed an open letter warning that Trump “would be the most reckless president in American history”.

However, one of them, Philip Zelikow, who served in both Bush administrations, said he did not believe the Trump team would ultimately have difficulty filling administration posts in foreign policy and national security.

“I don’t think they will have any trouble at all. I can personally identify a great deal of people who will be available – some of whom I respect professionally,” Zelikow said, but he added: “I hope [the Trump team] don’t make some of the unfortunate choices that will be offered to them.”

As counselor to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2007, Zelikow was an internal critic of the conduct of the Iraq war and the treatment of suspected terrorist captives in an increasingly divided Bush administration.

“There are a large number of officials from Bush 43 [George W Bush’s administration] who will have no problem serving,” he said. “They will choose people from one side of that divide – the side of the administration that tended to align with the more nationalist, more unilateralist figures in that administration.”

Attitudes on such bureaucratic slow-walking vary by the observer’s politics. Rightwingers seethed at the state department’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq under Bush. Leftwingers did the same when the Pentagon obstructed the closure of Guantánamo Bay under Barack Obama.

Yet outreach to career security officials is a key component of civil libertarian groups’ plan to constrain Trump.



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Human rights activists spent Obama’s presidency warning the White House that it was institutionalizing mass surveillance, drone strikes, indefinite detention and expanded executive power – all tools that risked disaster in the hands of a reckless successor. Almost as soon as Trump was elected, they began planning their response.



Trump and his senior aides “may not care about human rights, but there are people at OSD who do”, said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, referring to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “The pilots don’t want to blow up children.”



Human Rights Watch and its allies are planning to press Obama to take steps in the twilight of his presidency designed to constrain his successor.



They seek to urge Obama to issue security-related memoranda defining acts that constitute torture or sharply stipulating what secret programs require congressional notification. While Trump is free to repeal a predecessor’s executive action, the memo would create encumbrances or embarrassments for his administration’s legal staff should it emerge that he abrogated their bounds.



Such constraints, however imperfect, could add to what experts believe is a coming “power struggle” between traditionalist and Trumpian camps on foreign policy.



“There is going to be a power struggle within the Republican party between his camp and many of the mainstream foreign policy experts and officials. They will try to make the case that he should have a more mainstream foreign policy, and they may offer to come in to help run it,” said Thomas Wright, the director of the project on international order and strategy at the Brookings Institution.



“The big early test in Trump’s transition will be whether or not he compromises and goes with those people or whether he sticks with people who have been with him to date and try to implement his worldview.”

