The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.
In
interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S.
intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events
at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to
detect in other nations.
“I’ve
seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible
for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats
do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve
me.”
Helt,
now a professor at King University in Tennessee, said the images of unrest in
U.S. cities, combined with President Trump’s incendiary statements, echo
clashes she covered over a dozen years at the CIA tracking developments in
China, Malaysia and elsewhere.
Other
former CIA and national security officials rendered similarly troubled
verdicts.
Marc
Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among
several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a
Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities
fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.
“It
reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos
said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he
said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”
The
impression Trump created was only reinforced by others in the administration.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper urged governors to “dominate the battlespace”
surrounding protesters, as if describing U.S. cities as a foreign war zone.
Later, as military helicopters hovered menacingly over protesters, Gen. Mark A.
Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured the streets of the
nation’s capital in his battle fatigue uniform.
“As a
former CIA officer, I know this playbook,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) said
in a tweet. Before her election to Congress last year, she worked at the agency
on issues including terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
One U.S.
intelligence official even ventured into downtown Washington on Monday evening,
as if taking measure of the street-level mood in a foreign country.
“Things
escalated quickly,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
citing the sensitive nature of his job. He emphasized that he went as a
concerned citizen, not in any official capacity. After seeing tear gas
canisters underfoot, he said, he “knew it was time to go” and departed.
Former
intelligence officials said the unrest and the administration’s militaristic
response are among many measures of decay they would flag if writing
assessments about the United States for another country’s intelligence service.
They
cited the country’s struggle to contain the novel coronavirus, the president’s
attempt to pressure Ukraine for political favors, his attacks on the news media
and the increasingly polarized political climate as other signs of dysfunction.
Trump
supporters have defended his handling of the unrest, and his trip across
Lafayette Square as a display of the strength needed to restore order in dozens
of cities where protests have led to looting, fires and violence.
Former
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (R) said it was “hard to imagine” any other
president “having the guts to walk out of the White House like this.”
But
there were also indications that senior members of the administration were
uncomfortable with the president’s outing and eager to minimize their role in
it.
A senior
Pentagon official said Tuesday that neither Esper nor Milley knew when they set
out to accompany Trump that police were about to charge through seemingly
peaceful protesters or that they would play supporting roles in a photo op.
Even
away from the cameras, Trump has assiduously cultivated the aura of a
strongman. Earlier Monday, he had chided governors as “weak” for failing to
employ adequate force in the face of mounting protests.
“If you
don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” Trump said. He offered no words on
how to ease tensions in crowds that have massed largely in anger over the death
of George Floyd, an African American man who was killed while being pinned to
the ground, a knee against his neck, by police in Minneapolis.
Brett
McGurk, a former top U.S. envoy to the Middle East who spent two years in the
Trump administration, said the president’s words — recorded by participants and
shared with news organizations — would only embolden the world’s autocrats and
undermine U.S. authority.
“The
imagery of a head of state in a call with other governing officials saying,
‘Dominate the streets, dominate the battlespace’ — these are iconic images that
will define America for some time,” said McGurk, who led U.S. diplomatic
efforts to counter the Islamic State terrorist group. “It makes it much more
difficult for us to distinguish ourselves from other countries we are trying to
contest” or influence, he said.
In
recent years, U.S. officials have urged restraint or denounced crackdowns
against protesters or vulnerable groups in Russia, Iran, Turkey, Malaysia,
Syria and other countries.
Even
this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lectured China about its efforts to
prevent citizens of Hong Kong from holding a vigil to mark the anniversary of
the Tiananmen Square protests.
“If
there is any doubt about Beijing’s intent, it is to deny Hong Kongers a voice
and a choice,” Pompeo said in a statement that was met with derision on Twitter
because it coincided with crackdowns urged by Trump in the United States.
The
seeming hypocrisy in the U.S. position has not been lost on foreign targets of
American pressure or criticism.
Ramzan
Kadyrov, a Chechen leader who has faced U.S. sanctions for alleged human rights
abuses, said Tuesday that he was “watching with horror the situation in the
United States, where the authorities are maliciously violating ordinary
citizens’ rights,” according to reports from Moscow.
***Julie
Tate contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cia-veterans-who-monitored-crackdowns-abroad-see-troubling-parallels-in-trump-handling-of-protests/2020/06/02/7ab210b8-a4f6-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html