We shouldn’t cry over Trump weakening the CIA and FBI – but we must ask why

On the face of it, US president Donald Trump weakening agencies like the CIA, FBI, NSA, and USAID seems like a good thing. Because the US empire has long terrorised people around the world who dare to stand up to it. And it has brutally repressed dissent at home too.

But it’s also essential to ask why (and how) Trump’s movement wants to repurpose the empire’s intelligence and policing apparatus. Spoiler alert: it’s not out of the goodness of his heart.

Donald Trump: weakening the intelligence establishment

As journalist Glenn Greenwald has stressed, it would be a great thing for the US to limit the power of organisations like the CIA and conduct foreign policy in a different way. He’s pleased about the apparent mainstreaming of intellectual giant Noam Chomsky’s consistent critique of US imperialism and hypocrisy. He just laments that it has come from the populist right rather than their mainstream opponents.

New FBI director Kash Patel has promised “there will be accountability within the FBI and outside of the FBI, and we will do it through rigorous constitutional oversight”. This sounds sensible (until you dig deeper), and has reportedly pushed some in the FBI to destroy evidence.

CNN, meanwhile, cried that “Trump’s government-cutting moves risk exposing the CIA’s secrets”, including “highly classified CIA payments”. It added that:

some US embassy positions that are actually filled by CIA officers under cover may now be at risk of being revealed — potentially angering the host nation and exposing companies or endangering CIA assets who are known to have met with past occupants of the role.

In turn, other nations could:

build out their understanding of who is receiving funds, in what amounts, and for what purposes.

For people not in bed with the establishment, holding a key tool for US terror abroad more accountable rightly sounds like a positive thing.

Behind the bluster, however…

There are some ridiculous assertions from the US far right, like that the FBI is somehow “woke” and “Marxist“, or that the federal government has somehow experienced “decades of communist infiltration”. If we look closer at these absurdities, however, we can see the cultural and political agenda of those espousing them.

In reality, they’re talking about the establishment having no problem with racially minoritised communities and LGBTQ+ people as long as they don’t challenge the economic and political system. And they’re talking about the fact that the establishment monitors far-right movements as well as the left-wing groups it has targeted the most fervently. Basically, they’re angry about people who aren’t straight white males having rights, and about far-right groups not having the free rein they once had.

Repression is absolutely going to continue if you speak up against US-backed genocide in Palestine. Patel, meanwhile, has said he:

will increase the FBI’s role in countering illegal immigration and violent crime, top Trump priorities, by “letting good cops be cops.”

At the same time, he’ll reduce:

investigative work at the FBI’s Washington headquarters where many counterintelligence, national security and public corruption probes are housed.

Considering that the far right is the biggest terror threat in the US, Patel has claimed authorities tried to sink Trump’s movement, and Trump has a soft spot for corruption, it becomes clearer what the repurposing of the FBI is really about. One neo-Nazi group is already reportedly plotting to take advantage of Trump’s deprioritisation of efforts to monitor far-right activity. And Trump making conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino FBI deputy director has increased concern about the administration seeking to refocus the FBI’s attention against its own political foes.

Same empire, different clothes

No left-winger should shed a tear for the CIA, FBI, NSA, or USAID. They’re tools for a brutal empire to manipulate people at home and abroad. Trump is no anti-imperialist, though. His administration may seek a slightly different approach to Russia, but it remains incredibly hawkish on South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. So even if it repurposes traditional agencies, the push for US dominance around the world will continue.

Featured image via the Canary