Greg Miller - The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy

T he warren of cubicles was secured behind a metal door. The name on the hallway placard had changed often over the years, most recently designating the space as part of the Mission Center for Europe and Eurasia. But internally, the office was known by its unofficial title: Russia House.

The unit had for decades been the center of gravity at the CIA, an agency within the agency, locked in battle with the KGB for the duration of the Cold War. The departments prestige had waned after the September 11 attacks, and it was forced at one point to surrender space to counterterrorism operatives. But Russia House later reclaimed that real estate and began rebuilding, vaulting back to relevance as Moscow reasserted itself. Here, among a maze of desks, dozens of reports officers fielded encrypted cables from abroad, and targeters meticulously scoured data on Russian officials, agencies, businesses, and communications networks the CIA might exploit for intelligence.

Deeper inside was a conference room adorned with Stalin-era posters of heroically depicted Soviets, muscled soldiers and workers striding across fields or factories under the hammer and sickle. The room, swept routinely for listening devices, was the scene of increasingly tense meetings in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, as senior agency officials sought to make sense of a series of disconcerting reports. In late July, the agency had gained access to an extraordinary stream of information showing that Russian president Vladimir Putin was himself directing the active measures operation aimed at disrupting the U.S. presidential race. U.S. intelligence partners were also warning Russia House about worrisome contacts between Russian figures and campaign associates of the Republican nominee.

Donald Trumps vigorous displays of admiration for the Russian leader only made things more bewildering. He routinely praised Putin and even seemed to enlist Moscow in an effort to hack his opponents email account. The question was, why? Taking a hard line against Russia was the politically winning move, and yet Trump seemed subservient.

Unlike any presidential candidate in memory, Trump had shielded his finances from public scrutiny. He refused to release his personal tax returns. His business empire was a labyrinth of separate companies registered under different names. Many of those he had done business with hid their identities behind corporate shells. Some of his most prominent developments were deep in debt, though how deep and to whom was nearly impossible to discern.

During the campaign, there was consolation in the idea that Trumps unsettling behavior toward Moscow was a product of inexperiencea problem that would be contained when he was surrounded by smarter advisers or wouldnt matter anymore once he lost. But those inside U.S. spy agencies were privy to alarming secrets that were not so easily shrugged off. Among them was that the Kremlin was actively seeking to help elect Trump.

Russia House was the point of origin for that assessment, which would later be embraced by the U.S. intelligence community and infuriate the 45th president. The Kremlins objectives began with sowing discord in American democracy, but broadened in mid-2016 to backing a specific candidatewho at this moment, his second day as leader of the free world, was making his way toward CIA headquarters.

President Trump had barely been in office twenty-four hours when his motorcade departed the White House grounds for the nine-mile trip to the CIAs Northern Virginia campus. The clouds and cold that had dampened Inauguration Day lingered over a city littered with the debris of Americas post-election dividepro-Trump memorabilia, inauguration programs and celebratory banners along the parade route; broken windows and burned vehicles on blocks where protesters had clashed with police in riot gear. Trumps arrival in the White House had been followed by a womens march that drew a crowd three times larger than the inaugural audience, and now throngs of pink-clad activists watched the caravan accelerate through the D.C. streets. Their gestures toward the motorcade, countered by some salutes from Trump supporters wandering Washington, reflected in the thick tinted glass of the presidents passing car.

The street-side crowds dissipated as the line of vehicles left downtown, crossed into Virginia, and followed the Potomac River north, turning onto the main route through the suburb of McLean and then past the zigzagging barricades that guard the entrance to the CIA. The agency occupies a sprawling, leafy campus in Northern Virginia enclosed by miles of electrified fence. At the center of the property is a seven-story building with a row of glass doors opening onto an iconic marble lobbywith the CIA seal inlaid in the terrazzo floorfrequently depicted in movies.

The CIA welcome for Trump would be cordial, even warm, but it was by now well known that the agency was responsible for a series of highly classified reports that had helped trigger an FBI investigation of Russias interference and ties to associates of the president. And Trump had made no secret of his growing belief that the CIA and FBI were engaged in a coordinated effort to damage his presidency before it had even begun. His blistering attacks on intelligence agencies had only intensified as he prepared to take office. He disparaged their conclusions about Russias involvement in the election and accused them of deliberately sabotaging him by leaking a document that had come to be known as the dossier. That collection of memos, compiled by a former British intelligence officer, contained dozens of unproven but explosive allegations about then-candidate Trumps ties with Russia. Among the most salacious was that he had consorted with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, paying women to defile a hotel room where President Barack Obama had once stayed.

The dossiers contents had been in circulation in Washington newsrooms for months, disseminated not by spy agencies but the private opposition research firm that had commissioned the reports. Their unsubstantiated assertions had gone mostly unreported in the press until U.S. intelligence officials told Trump about the dossier two weeks before he was sworn in. When its contents were published on BuzzFeed, Trump lashed out on Twitter. Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to leak into the public, he said. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?

The sting of that slur was acute. The CIAs lineage traced to World War II and the creation of a spy service whose mission was to help Allied forces defeat the same Nazis that Trump now invoked. The agencys precursor, the Office of Strategic Services, was disbanded after the war, but a statue of its founding director, General William Wild Bill Donovan, still stands in the agency lobby. Trump likely knew little of that historyor for that matter of the record of CIA abuses and corresponding reforms that had transpired during the intervening decadesand would never retract the insult. Many presidents had clashed with the CIA, but the relationship had never taken such an ugly turn before a commander in chief had even taken office.

No one knew what Trump would say when he addressed the crowd that awaited him, but one thing was certain: he would not be brought into Russia House.

The trip to Langley had been placed on the presidents calendar weeks earlier by Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff. Priebus, a political operative grounded in the Republican Party establishment, had mapped out the new presidents first days down to the hour, a detailed schedule that was to set a breathtaking pace and serve as an example of the urgency and ambition of the new administration. The CIA was the first government agency on Trumps itinerary, a decision designed in part to assure the GOP establishment that Trump would settle into office and be presidential, which for Republicans entailed being a staunch defender of the countrys national security institutions. More important, the Trump team hoped that the visit could avert an unnecessary rift with an agency whose unique aura and authority had proven seductive to previous presidents but was also capable of fierce bureaucratic combateven against occupants of the Oval Office.