{"id":336,"date":"2026-07-01T23:08:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T23:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=336"},"modified":"2026-07-01T23:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T23:08:06","slug":"a-new-trump-order-would-be-a-disaster-for-u-s-intelligence-his-motives-are-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=336","title":{"rendered":"A New Trump Order Would Be a Disaster for U.S. Intelligence. His Motives Are a Mystery."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just in time for the nation\u2019s semiquincentennial, President Donald Trump has issued what might be the most bizarre order of his presidency\u2014a high bar to cross. In fact, if we were on the eve of April Fools\u2019 Day, not the Fourth of July, I\u2019d guess that the few news stories about the order were pranks.<\/p>\n

Read more All The President\u2019s Money<\/a><\/p>\n

But the story was first revealed by the New York Times (a paper not known for high jinks), and other outlets have since confirmed it, so we must assume that Trump has indeed ordered his acting director of national intelligence to assemble a \u201cmaster spy list.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Times describes the order, he wants the intelligence agencies to \u201cturn over the names\u201d of all foreign spies, \u201cincluding suspected spies and potential recruits\u201d on a single all-in-one-place list.<\/p>\n

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The dangers of such a list existing should be obvious. Foreign intelligence agencies, notably Russia and China, would likely pay billions of dollars for such a list. They would certainly hunt valiantly for some American official who has access to the list and enough need or greed to sell it to them for mere millions.<\/p>\n

It brings to mind the story of Aldrich Ames, the CIA counterintelligence officer who in the 1980s gave his Soviet handlers the names of over 30 spies working undercover for Western agencies, leading to their executions and the shutdown of 100 clandestine operations. If he hadn\u2019t died in prison earlier this year, one could imagine him sighing that his acts of treason, which involved a lot of time and trouble, would have been a lot easier if there had been a single master list.<\/p>\n

The Times quotes officials justifying the order by saying it would reduce duplication of effort; our own spies wouldn\u2019t bother recruiting someone if they knew he or she was already an agent. This is ridiculous. Maybe this would save the agencies a few hundred thousand dollars\u2014hardly worth the risk. Another official said Trump has promised the American people \u201ctransparency.\u201d This makes even less sense. The business of recruiting and safeguarding spies is among the government\u2019s most secretive activities. The information is kept highly classified and intricately compartmentalized. Nobody expects otherwise.<\/p>\n

I should say, this order is probably dead on arrival. The CIA is the agency chiefly involved in spies and counterspies. According to one insider, CIA Director John Ratcliffe deliberately avoided sharing some sensitive secrets with Tulsi Gabbard when she was director of national intelligence, mainly because he didn\u2019t trust her. He would almost certainly resist sharing the names of spies and possible recruits\u2014among the \u201ccrown jewels\u201d of intelligence secrets\u2014especially with the likes of Bill Pulte, the recently appointed acting DNI, who as director of a federal housing authority (which he still heads) spent much of his time targeting Trump\u2019s political enemies with mortgage fraud investigations.<\/p>\n

Read more A Clarence Thomas Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Defied a Landmark Supreme Court Ruling. His Mentor Would Be Proud.<\/a><\/p>\n

The 2005 law creating the DNI\u2019s office required that the director have \u201cextensive national-security expertise.\u201d Pulte has none. Does he even have a security clearance? There hasn\u2019t been enough time for him to go through the normal process for someone whose job involves exposure to the highest levels of classified information. By law, the president has the right to declassify whatever he wants. He can also give anyone a security clearance with the stroke or a pen\u2014though Congress can object. Is anyone objecting about Pulte getting the sort of clearance that lets him review the names of foreign spies?<\/p>\n

Back to the mystery: Why did <\/em>Trump issue this order? What\u2019s his motive? Why would he want such a list? I asked one former senior CIA official. He replied, \u201cI\u2019ve been asking myself the same question.\u201d A longtime intelligence consultant said explicitly what the former official was only hinting at: \u201cThere is<\/em> no reason. I can\u2019t imagine it would serve any useful purpose.\u201d Another former intelligence director replied, simply, \u201cIt\u2019s nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Tim Weiner\u2014the author of acclaimed books on intelligence (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA<\/em>, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st<\/sup> Century<\/em>, and Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy<\/em>)\u2014has a theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cA list of recruited foreign agents from Russia and Ukraine would be catnip for Trump,\u201d Weiner told me in an email. Trump has been on \u201ca long crusade\u201d to discredit the charge that the Kremlin helped him win the 2016 election; he calls it \u201cthe Russia hoax.\u201d He has tried to get the DNI to help him root out who\u2014among U.S. and Russian agents\u2014spread the story. The list would help root his enemies out. Weiner added, \u201cAny list of this nature in Trump\u2019s hands is a counterintelligence nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, this doesn\u2019t explain why Trump feels a need to lay out the networks of spies and potential recruits worldwide. Does he just want to destroy the intelligence apparatus of the United States?<\/p>\n

Twice in the past year-and-a-half, I\u2019ve written Slate columns that begin, \u201cDonald Trump probably isn\u2019t a Russian agent, but he wouldn\u2019t be behaving much differently if he were.\u201d Consider this the third column.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court Gave Us All One Big Win This Term<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why would the president want to do this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[37,176,10,40],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-stories","tag-china","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-russia"],"yoast_head":"\nA New Trump Order Would Be a Disaster for U.S. Intelligence. His Motives Are a Mystery. - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=336\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A New Trump Order Would Be a Disaster for U.S. Intelligence. 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