THE SPY WHO CAME DOWN WITH A COLD 283the CIA, the “American empire” may be very short-lived. American presi-
dents from both political parties ignore sound intelligence and thus make
disastrous foreign policy decisions. Disasters that adversely affect millions
of people around the world.
The current president has pushed matters to dangerous extremes never
before experienced with leaders of either party. It’s one thing to ignore
solid intelligence and forge ahead with risky policies; presidents have every
right to do so. It’s another thing entirely to take the word of Vladimir
Putin over your own intelligence services on the issue of the risk of North
Korean missiles to the United States. Or to publicly and personally deni-
grate the leadership of the American intelligence community, as Trump
did in January 2019,^3 because their objective intelligence assessments
happen to contradict almost every false belief he spouted, from Syria to
Russia to North Korea. Trump is apparently personally offended if the
intelligence community fails to modify the truth to conform with his own
twisted views of reality. Publicly referring to apolitical intelligence profes-
sionals (whom Trump handpicked for their jobs) as “naïve,” “wrong,” and
saying they should “go back to school” is spectacularly reckless and dan-
gerous behavior by a willfully ignorant American president.
Even more troubling is Trump’s penchant for tribalism. In Yugoslavia
I witnessed firsthand how a shameless demagogue’s incitement of fear and
hatred in otherwise “normal people” led to a bloody civil war and the
literal destruction and breakup of an entire country. I was not surprised by
the savagery later committed in Iraq, also in the name of tribalism. What
I never expected to experience was the threat from tribalism in my own
country, much less at the direction of the president of the United States.
If there’s a merciful God, the expression President Trump will be pre-
ceded by the word former by the time this book is published. By then, there’s
a good chance he will have resigned, been impeached, or been forcibly
removed from office as unfit to lead pursuant to a Twenty-Fifth Amend-
ment “Constitutional mutiny” (my personal favorite). Because Trump’s
malignant upside-down reality is completely antithetical to the sacred
American notions of truth and freedom, many more of America’s spies
will likely decide it is time for them as well to come in from the cold. His
destructive, narcissistic, and juvenile approach to foreign policy makes it
more difficult today for our spies and diplomats to represent America and