Vanities / Inside Man
Tucker Carlson were susceptible to
“Zionist propaganda,” which Gebert
appeared to agree with, but then
Gebert said, “The service that Tucker is
doing on Fox News is unquestionably
of value to the boomers sitting in
their La-ZBoys and watching it every
night and dropping those bombs.”
At one point in the conversation,
Gebert turned somber. He was
discussing his double life. “I take these
risks because I have a grave sense of
foreboding that this country and all
of the white countries on earth are on
a collision course with perdition, with
disaster,” he said. “The only reason I’m
taking this risk is so that my kids can
grow up in a whiter country.”
In 2018 , Gebert’s security clearance—
a Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented
Information clearance, which gave
him access to an array of highly
sensitive intelligence across the U.S.
government—was renewed. “None
of these interviewers ever, I would say,
was an impressive human being,
but this was truly unbelievable,” one
of Gebert’s former colleagues said.
Another former colleague added,
“How could you not connect the dots?”
I attempted many times to reach
out to Gebert for comment, rst through
email, then through a phone number
I believed to be his, then through his
family members, none of whom replied.
I tried knocking on his door and
leaving my contact information with a
neighbor, all to no avail.
FOR YEARS GEBERT took a combination
of trains and buses into D.C., went
to work, came home, logged on.
He and his wife were model neighbors.
They could be relied on, in a pinch,
for sugar or milk. (“I’ve had Nazi
milk,” one neighbor said. “Jesus, to
think of that.”) They adhered to the
homeowners’ association bylaws and
painted their house one of the colors
in the Duron Curb Appeal–approved
exterior accent palette—in this
case, wheat, or maybe amber white,
with forest green trim. None of
the neighbors I spoke to disliked him.
Then, on the morning of August 7 ,
2019 , Hatewatch reported that Gebert
that goes on the top secret system.
He would have been watching the
whole strategy discussion. Remember,
our goal was reducing Iranian crude
oil exports—removing those barrels
from the market but maintaining
market stability. Matt was privy to all
these discussions.”
“We engaged the buyers of Iranian
crude oil and worked with them to
reduce demand,” Kahl said. “So Matt
would have understood, for example,
Indian purchases of Iranian crude oil.
We look at this as a whole ecosystem,
so we make sure that everybody
knows what everybody else is doing—
connecting dots.... He had access to all
that information.” That, Kahl said, is
concerning. “Anyone who’s a white
nationalist is not an American patriot.”
Amos Hochstein, who was
appointed deputy assistant secretary
of state by Barack Obama in 2011
and oversaw the Bureau of Energy
Resources for part of the time
Gebert was there, could recall being
in many meetings with Gebert.
“I think that Gebert is a symptom,
and he’s a warning sign because
he got careless,” said Hochstein, who
is an Orthodox Jew. “The idea
that there’s only one white nationalist
neo-Nazi rising in the ranks of the
national-security establishment
is di¢cult to imagine.” He said that
Gebert had been polite, capable.
He said he had tried to help him
professionally, because that was good
for Gebert and for America. “I shook
his hand on—I have no idea how
many times. His shoulder rubbed up
against mine, when we were in
meetings, you know, when you’re next
to someone. I think about that a lot.”
About an hour after the Hatewatch
story went live, Gebert emailed
two of his superiors about what he
characterized as a hit piece, according
to a source, and said he was leaving
for the day. Soon after, his name was
scrubbed from State’s phone directory.
Investigations—at State, at the FBI,
and on Capitol Hill—were launched.
He is believed to be on unpaid leave.
According to a source, he has not been
on payroll since at least October.was the leader of an alt-right cell
in Northern Virginia, and that he had
posted anti-Semitic comments on
white nationalist forums and been a
guest on a now defunct podcast called
The Fatherland, which addressed
issues like white demographic decline
and “the subversiveness of girl power.”
Within minutes, “the story was being
read on most of the screens in the
building,” a State Department employee
said. It didn’t take long for the story
to start ping-ponging around the globe,
from one U.S. embassy to another.
As far as the higher-ups at State wereconcerned, there were two big problems
with Gebert being a civil service
o¢cer. The rst was that his unmasking
had made him repugnant and toxic.
The second was Russia. Multiple State
Department sources suggested that
Gebert’s apparent a¢nity for Slavic
culture, particularly as related to
his white nationalist leanings, would
be considered problematic.
He was—no surprise—against the
Iran sanctions, in large part, former
colleagues speculated, because Russia
was too. “He worked with people
involved in the Iran sanctions,” said
Alex Kahl, who worked with Gebert
at the Bureau of Energy Resources.
“When you do these negotiations and
you have large teams, you have to
use the same email LISTSERV, andMatthew Gebert wore sunglasses to the
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.46 VANITY FAIR
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