White House insiders are worried that 'unhinged conspiracy theorists' are being given more and more powerful roles at the Pentagon

In May 2017, a staffer in the National Security Council’s strategic planning office called Rich Higgins began showing round a strategy memo he’d written to his colleagues.

Not long after that, the seven-page document landed on a certain 140-year-old desk made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, behind which sits the President of the United States.

Such an occurrence is not in itself unusual. As a sort of internal think tank meant to synthesize vast amounts of intelligence and national defence information into policy options for protecting the country, the National Security Council’s output often takes the form of memoranda, position papers, reports, and studies.

But Higgins, a former Defence Department official who had been brought to the NSC by Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Lt Gen Michael Flynn, had authored a document unlike any other produced under the auspices of the NSC.

Instead of advocating tactics or strategies for defending the country from its enemies abroad, his seven-page memo — entitled “POTUS and Political Warfare” — was a xenophobic screed alleging that opposition to the Trump administration and its policies was part of a plan to implement “cultural Marxism” by a cabal of “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, lslamists, and establishment Republicans” using “attack narratives” which “operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media, and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies and within the foreign policy establishment”.

According to The Atlantic, then-national security adviser H R McMaster — Flynn’s replacement — ordered Higgins’ dismissal in late July 2017, after it became known that he’d circulated the memo alleging that the “hard left” had aligned against Trump with “Islamic organizations” such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the American Civil Liberties Union and Black Lives Matter, as well as the United Nations, to people inside and outside the White House.

One year after Higgins’ defenestration, Lt Col Alexander Vindman arrived at the NSC for a two-year detail. A Purple Heart recipient who still carried shrapnel in his body from an Iraqi IED, Vindman — an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who speaks fluent Russian and Ukrainian — was assigned to work on Ukraine policy, and in late 2019 became both a household name and a Trumpist bête noire when he testified during the hearings that led to Trump’s impeachment.

Like Higgins, Vindman — along with his twin brother Evgeny — would be escorted out of the National Security Council’s office suite after being summarily dismissed by another of Flynn’s successors, Robert O’Brien. Both Alexander Vindman and his brother — also a Lieutenant Colonel in the army — were fired on the orders of President Trump as part of a concerted effort to rid the government of anyone who’d crossed him during the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Vindman, who was slated to attend the storied Army War College and receive a promotion to full Colonel, instead announced on Wednesday that he’d officially asked to retire from the Army after a 21-year career. According to his attorney, he chose to retire rather than risk delaying promotion of his fellow soldiers due to the White House’s desire to block his advancement.

But even as Vindman is being forced out of government service for following the law by testifying to Congress, Higgins — who was forced out of government for his authorship of a racist memo which cast the president’s critics as domestic enemies — is on his way back in.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, the White House has pushed Pentagon officials to return Higgins to the Defense Department in one of the department’s most powerful roles, Chief of Staff to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

First reported by Foreign Policy, the decision to bring Higgins back into the administration is part of an effort to ensure that the Pentagon is staffed by those whose loyalty to Trump is assured, including many with connections to Michael Flynn.

The push to install loyal Trumpists and Flynn acolytes in top Pentagon roles at the same time that officers like Vindman are being drummed out of the military has alarmed current and former NSC and Defence Department officials, who say the situation is emblematic of an administration that encourages unhinged conspiracy theorists at the expense of those loyal to the Constitution.

“This president has created an alternate universe in which speaking truth to power is an occupational hazard, and I think no one better illustrates that than Alex Vindman and what happens to him,” said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and Obama-era NSC spokesperson.

Price, who quit the CIA rather than serve under Trump, said Vindman, who “did nothing more than follow the law… and fulfill his obligation to the American people and honor his oath to the Constitution,” is “the polar opposite” of Higgins, the latter of whom is “loyal not to the Constitution, not to the American people, but to a president”.

“You see that loyalty [to Trump] come out in that absolutely bonkers memo,” he continued. “It has essentially escaped public consciousness that a senior NSC staffer in the Trump administration wrote a memo that outlines the president's domestic political opposition in terms of Islamists, globalists, the deep state and the press.”

Another former NSC official who served under the Trump administration said Higgins’ memo was “consistent with the ideology” of the administration and the composition of NSC leadership under Flynn, but added that it was still surprising how “straight-up appalling and bizarre” it was when they actually read it.

“It's like these individuals are living in a complete alternate reality,” they said, adding that the idea of such people still serving in government was “terrifying” and the fact that Higgins’ ideas made it into a formal memo that reached Trump’s desk “shows how dangerous somebody like that can be”.

Price posited that the harm from having someone like Higgins — who he called a “wackadoodle” — embedded within Pentagon leadership would come from his “corroding the institution from the inside” and eroding the Defence Department’s good order, discipline, and respect for the Constitution.

“It sends a signal throughout the ranks… that this kind of behavior, that these values, this craven loyalty to a president over the American people, is rewarded In this administration,” he said.

But the former NSC official — who overlapped with Higgins at the NSC — said the threat posed by people like Higgins could turn into a physical threat to the nation’s security.

“His racist views, delusions, and conspiracies, coupled with the fact that he could have the country’s defence forces and military capabilities at his fingertips, is a serious national security threat,” they said. “In my perspective, it's the same cocktail that results in violent, racist groups like the KKK, and it’s really worrisome that Trump is trying to push someone like him.”

Another national security expert within the Pentagon’s top ranks as a consultant to Defence Department leadership slammed the administration for bringing in a slew of unqualified appointees such as Higgins and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy nominee Anthony Tata, at the same time a decorated veteran like Vindman is being forced into retirement.

“The army is dealing with a catastrophic sexual assault problem that we have been fighting, which is all about rank and authority and abuse of young women and grooming, and here's a guy who's a general who's literally busted for that, cashiered and retired… and now we're going to ask this guy to come back to be the number-three guy in the Pentagon? And on top of it, then we're going to give this other nutjob [Higgins] the Chief of Staff job as his gatekeeper?” he asked, incredulously.

“I know it's six months before the election and we always kind of just fill the seats with the C team because that's what we do, but we're really scraping the bottom here,” he said.

“It's bringing in these hacks, who on any other planet, in any other universe would never have careers at this high a level, while guys who should have naturally matriculated and been promoted and had successful careers in national security are getting pushed out. It’s glaringly obvious that anyone who is professional but not 100 percent personally loyal [to Trump] are getting crushed.”

The veteran defence expert, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Higgins’ infamous memorandum was “lunacy” that showed “complete disrespect for professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to this country” and a total lack of understanding about the professionalization of the US civil service.

“It's just remarkable how these guys who've done nothing in their lives want to come in and do loyalty checks on the professionals. I read his memo, and it's nothing but a screed of ‘enemies here and enemies there and Islamism and Marxists,’ and you're going to put this guy as the Chief of Staff to the number three at the Pentagon, the gatekeeper to the undersecretary for policy in the Department of Defense? It’s just lunacy. I don’t know how else to put it,” he said.

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