What Is Happening To The First Amendment

28 March 2025

When I applied in 1975 to become a Central Intelligence Agency analyst, I feared that I would not obtain a security clearance because I had been active – marching, signing petitions and the like – in the anti-Vietnam War movement. To my surprise, I was told: “The legitimate expression of your own point of view is none of our business.” This was the First Amendment in action: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, of abridging the freedom of speech, of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assembly, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I got my security clearance, and for the next 50 years nothing in my professional experience or what I knew of my colleagues’ experience, contradicted what I was told in 1975. As a civil servant and member of the Senior Executive Service, I held increasingly senior positions in a range of agencies, including the White House National Security Council Staff, the State Department, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. As a registered Democrat, I worked on the NSC Staff under both Presidents Bush, and I even held a Senate-confirmed Presidential appointment under President George H.W. Bush. I served every Administration for which I worked faithfully and well; that was all that counted.

Federal civil servants and commissioned officers all take the same oath of office: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” The Presidential oath differs in words, but not in substance.

There is no federal oath to defend the President or his polices. Nor is such a requirement included in the Presidential commissions given to Senate-confirmed civilians, foreign service and military officers. I was never asked for whom I voted. I was asked about my party affiliation only once – as part of the interview process for my eventual Presidential appointment; and the fact that I was a Democrat did not matter in that Republican Administration.

My experience of the past 50 years is completely alien to the leaders of the current Administration. Despite the words of the oath, federal employees are expected to “support and defend” the President and his policies, even those that may be of doubtful legality. With an Executive Order signed on March 27, 2025, President Trump extended that expectation to the Smithsonian Institution. Since the Institution’s founding in 1846, its sole purpose has been the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The President apparently opposes that goal if it interferes with his agenda.

In a further assault on the First Amendment, university students and researchers in the United States on legitimate visas have been arrested and detained, apparently for no reason other than their exercise of their First Amendment rights. None has been charged with a crime. Instead, they appear to have engaged in the “legitimate expression of their own point of view,” which I had been told – truthfully — was none of the government’s business. I am not a lawyer, but I do not see anything in the First Amendment limiting its freedoms to U.S. citizens. Instead it applies to all those subject to U.S. law, citizen or not.

The First Amendment has been subject to assault previously in its 233-plus year history. But it has prevailed, and must continue to do so. It is at the core of who and what we are.

Dr. Susan Koch’s federal government service included work in the White House National Security Council Staff, State Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, specializing in weapons of mass destruction arms control and nonproliferation. She is a member of The Steady State, an organization of former national security officials.