newyorker | On March 14, 2017,
Conservative Review, a Web site that opposed the Iran deal, published an
article portraying Nowrouzzadeh as a traitorous stooge. The story,
titled “Iran Deal Architect Is Running Tehran Policy at the State Dept.,”
derided her as a “trusted Obama aide,” whose work “resulted in an
agreement that has done enormous damage to the security interests of the
United States.” David Wurmser, who had been an adviser to
Vice-President Dick Cheney, e-mailed the article to Newt Gingrich, the
former Speaker of the House. “I think a cleaning is in order here,”
Wurmser wrote. Gingrich forwarded the message to an aide to Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson, with the subject line “i thought you should be
aware of this.”
As the article circulated inside the
Administration, Sean Doocey, a White House aide overseeing personnel,
e-mailed colleagues to ask for details of Nowrouzzadeh’s “appointment
authority”—the rules by which a federal worker can be hired, moved, or
fired. He received a reply from Julia Haller, a former Trump campaign
worker, newly appointed to the State Department. Haller wrote that it
would be “easy” to remove Nowrouzzadeh from the policy-planning staff.
She had “worked on the Iran Deal,” Haller noted, “was born in Iran, and
upon my understanding cried when the President won.” Nowrouzzadeh was
unaware of these discussions. All she knew was that her experience at
work started to change.
Every
new President disturbs the disposition of power in Washington. Stars
fade. Political appointees arrive, assuming control of a bureaucracy
that encompasses 2.8 million civilian employees, across two hundred and
fifty agencies—from Forest Service smoke jumpers in Alaska to C.I.A.
code-breakers in Virginia. “It’s like taking over two hundred and fifty
private corporations at one time,” David Lewis, the chair of the
political-science department at Vanderbilt University, told me.
Typically,
an incoming President seeks to charm, co-opt, and, when necessary,
coerce the federal workforce into executing his vision. But Trump got to
Washington by promising to unmake the political ecosystem, eradicating
the existing species and populating it anew. This project has gone by
various names: Stephen Bannon, the campaign chief, called it the
“deconstruction of the administrative state”—the undoing of regulations,
pacts, and taxes that he believed constrain American power. In
Presidential tweets and on Fox News, the mission is described as a war
on the “deep state,” the permanent power élite. Nancy McEldowney, who
retired last July after thirty years in the Foreign Service, told me,
“In the anatomy of a hostile takeover and occupation, there are textbook
elements—you decapitate the leadership, you compartmentalize the power
centers, you engender fear and suspicion. They did all those things.”
This
idea, more than any other, has defined the Administration, which has
greeted the federal government not as a machine that could implement its
vision but as a vanquished foe. To control it, Trump would need the
right help. “I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most
serious people,” he said, during the campaign. “We want top-of-the-line
professionals.”
Every President expects devotion. Lyndon Johnson
wished for an aide who would “kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon
and tell me it smells like roses. I want
his pecker in my pocket.” But Trump has elevated loyalty to the primary
consideration. Since he has no fixed ideology, the White House cannot
screen for ideas, so it seeks a more personal form of devotion.
Kellyanne Conway, one of his most dedicated attendants, refers
reverently to the “October 8th coalition,” the campaign stalwarts who
remained at Trump’s side while the world listened to a recording of him
boasting about grabbing women by the genitals.
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