How The Deep State Doesnt Work

“Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state,” vowed presidential candidate Donald Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. It’s a promise kept. Thousands of federal employees — including those in some of the most sensitive national security positions in U.S. intelligence, defense, and diplomacy — have recently been pushed out of government. They have been officially scorned for personifying a “deep state” that is “disloyal” to the elected president’s agenda.

Trump’s Department of State’s official website offers explanations of what this disloyalty looks like. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the deep state consists of disgruntled “left-wing activists” who are intent upon promoting “radical causes at taxpayer expense.”

For many Americans, the conversation ends with such generalizations.

But elsewhere on State’s website, a trove of 294 declassified, once highly sensitive official documents was released by the Office of the Historian last month that offers specifics that debunk “deep state” conspiracy myths.

The newest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States series makes public the inner workings of how President Ronald Reagan’s White House, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency handled life-or-death issues associated with ballistic missile defenses with the Soviet Union from 1985-88. If there were really a “deep state” with partisan bureaucrats dedicated to undermining U.S. presidents, such Top Secret documents would expose it.

The documents begin in the months leading up to President Reagan’s unsuccessful October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. The records conclude with the successful Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that Reagan and Gorbachev signed on Dec. 7, 1987.

The files involve presidential instructions, memoranda, notes of meetings and conversations involving officials from the White House, the CIA, Defense, the Joint Chiefs, and Congress. Many are technical, even dense — federal bureaucrats sometimes excel at writing single paragraphs as long as this article! But the essence boils down to five themes.

The very first of the 294 documents, written in the White House’s National Security Council, stressed President Reagan’s understanding of the importance of building “a bipartisan consensus on the Hill” to obtain political support for America’s strategic forces. Reagan understood the importance of sitting down amicably “with key Congressional leaders.” (As a former congressional aide who worked on nuclear weapons issues in the 1970s, I was struck by this nod to the constitutional prerogatives we had fought for.)

Second: Were there differences, even infighting, among federal agencies? Yes. Evidence of a “deep state?” No. The differences were between the president’s political appointees — especially Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger — not unelected civil servants.. Shultz and Weinberger agreed on the president’s goals, but not always on how best to achieve them.

Next: how good was the CIA in these years? Very. One revealing example: Clair George, who headed Langley’s clandestine services, sent an extraordinary memorandum to Reagan, Shultz, Weinberger and the National Security Council on Sept. 25, 1985. The spooks knew what Soviet officials were saying to each other, in private, during missile-defense talks held in Geneva. The CIA also knew what key Soviet officials thought of their American counterparts. Moreover, it wasn’t just the clandestine operatives’ accomplishments that stood out throughout the negotiations. CIA analysts kept their colleagues in other agencies and policymakers extremely well-informed on Soviet thinking, the now-declassified documents reveal. (American taxpayers, in my view, were well-served.)

Continuing: If there were a “ deep state,” it would have shown its fangs after November 1986. That’s when Reagan came up with the notion that the U.S. should negotiate with Gorbachev the total elimination of missile defense systems. The Joint Chiefs were shocked, as the president had clearly not thought through the implications.

And they got to work, not to undermine the president, but to bring their technical expertise to bear. On Dec. 19, 1986 the chiefs — led by Admiral William Crowe, their chair — briefed the president to explain the “genuine challenges” of a world without such defensive missiles. Soviet nuclear submarines would be freed to operate closer to American shores. US defense spending for more aircraft and other conventional forces would skyrocket by hundreds of billions of dollars. (CIA analysts subsequently explained how other powers including China and India could pose potential future risks.) Faced with such loyal expertise, Reagan decided to put the idea aside.

The history in these files is relevant today. Today, the same federal agencies are wrestling with some of the same nuclear weapons issues, notably including a current top presidential priority: President Trump’s so-called Golden Dome missile defense system is reminiscent of President Reagan’s late-1980s Strategic Defense Initiative.

Today, the unfortunate bottom line is that under Donald Trump, our national security system has been broken. Intelligence- and defense officials who speak truth to power have been fired. Congress is sidelined.

And nobody dares to explain to the president that federal officials owe their loyalty, not to any particular president — but to the U.S. Constitution.

Greg Rushford is a former congressional aide who conducted intelligence oversight, and a former Washington journalist. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 300 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.