John Sipher spent nearly three decades at the CIA focused on the Russians, a core part of the agency's mission. That changed dramatically after the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "Frankly, tracking and hunting terrorists, finding people, finding a needle in a haystack was not something that we trained for," said Sipher, who served in Moscow and later ran the agency's Russia operations at CIA headquarters.
The CIA and the larger intelligence community had to adapt quickly. "We did that by by learning, and actually even developing new technologies, computer power, data collection, drones, communications, means to defeat networks, terrorist networks." There were real successes, such as locating Osama bin Laden in 2011 and destroying his group, al-Qaida, and later, dismantling the Islamic State. More broadly, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and now has a quarter-million employees, making it the second-largest government agency, trailing only the Pentagon.
Military and intelligence budgets soared. By most all accounts, the U.S. is safer at home. The country has not been hit on U.S. soil with anything remotely comparable to the 9/11 attack, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Yet 25 years later, U.S. national security industry is undergoing another dramatic change. President Trump is waging an ongoing campaign against the so-called "deep state," which he describes largely as national security officials trying to undermine him. "We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them," Trump said in announcing his plans for his second term.
Critics say Trump is tearing down the national security infrastructure with no clear vision of what comes next, aside from protecting the president's personal interests. "Since the re-inauguration of Donald Trump, the architecture of American national security is being destroyed, just like the east wing of the White House," said author Tim Weiner, who's covered the U.S. intelligence community for decades. This includes a book last year, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century, that examines the CIA since 9/11.
"Trump has deliberately swung a wrecking ball through American national security and has in great part worked to dismantle the systems set up after World War II to protect the United States. Weiner said Trump consistently selects loyalists with limited experience to lead national security agencies. "The people he has put in charge, [Pete] Hegseth at the Pentagon, Kash Patel at the FBI, John Ratcliffe at CIA, are sycophants," said Weiner.
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