RUTHFULLY YOURS

Removing a few blinders from the Washington Post’s “Outlook.”

On March 18, 2018, the Washington Post Outlook section categorized KGB influence operations and my book, American Betrayal, both as “myth.” In response, I sent in the following essay, which Outlook has turned down.

I am the author of that unnamed “book written in 2013” whose research and argumentation, anchored in nearly 1,000 endnotes, were labeled a “myth” by Mark Kramer (“Five Myths about Espionage,” Outlook, March 18, 2018).

Here’s how Kramer made his case in “Myth No. 5”:

A surprisingly common misconception about spies is that they set out to change policy in the countries where they operate. A book published in 2013, for example, alleged that Stalin’s spies in the 1940s had effectively “occupied” the United States and guided the policies of the Roosevelt administration.

Since Kramer forgot to mention it, the title of that “book published in 2013” is: American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press). On page 68, I set out to describe the impact of the secret honeycombing of the halls of power and influence in New Deal/wartime Washington, D.C. by an intelligence army of covert agents and communists under Kremlin discipline — more than 500 have now been identified — and came up with “for all intents and purposes occupied.”

A goodly number of these secret agents, of whom Alger Hiss is only the most famous, reached senior policy-making positions in the FDR administration. In Kramer’s telling, however, all they really did as they inched closer and closer to the Secretary of the Treasury or State or the President was filch classified documents. Questions concerning whether/how these secret agents and ideological communists influenced the direction of U.S. policy- and even war-making to the Kremlin’s advantage — questions my book explores — are to be dismissed as what Kramer describes as a “surprisingly common misperception.”

Given that Kramer wrote an op-ed last year about the long history of “Moscow’s active measures to influence U.S. politics and undermine U.S. foreign policy,” perhaps it is his own recent Outlook statement that is surprising; however, it is no myth.

That there exist “spies” — better known as agents of influence, for example — who seek to “change,” or, more realistically, influence policy-making and other activities of rival nations is a fact. It is an especially salient fact in the case of the fronts, networks and sophisticated campaigns of deception directed by the KGB, and overseen, at least in the post-Stalin era, as renowned Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky reminds us, by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow. Lest there be any confusion, this has been going on for one hundred years — not only in “the 1940s.” My own book aside, I am afraid that when Mark Kramer, as director of Cold War Studies at Harvard, dismisses all of this and more as “myth,” it is akin to the Army Corps of Engineers dismissing as “myth” the presence of water in the Mississippi River.

The Beltway’s sober and judicious foreign-policy establishment laments Donald Trump’s purported dismantling of the postwar order. They apparently take the president’s words as deeds and their own innate dislike of him as disinterested analysis.

But is the world really imploding after 70 years of supposed “calm”? (Disregarding the Korean and Vietnam wars; Chinese, Cambodian, Rwandan, and Balkan genocides; at least six Middle East conflicts; 9/11; a dozen U.S. interventions; a nuclear Pakistan and North Korea; the Cuban and Berlin nuclear standoffs; 20 years of Palestinian terrorism followed by 20 years of radical Islamic successors; a European Union financial and border meltdown; the Russian absorption of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, to name just a few “hot spots.”)

In other words, Trump did not inherit an especially stable world. So has any elite expert over the past two years attempted to make sense of how some positive and much-needed change abroad was guided by Trump, someone without political and military experience and with a flawed character—and how and why that sometimes happens in history?

Correction, Not Chaos
In truth, after 2016, the United States is increasing its financial commitments to NATO. Several European members of the alliances may finally be addressing their prior unmet obligations and increasing defense spending.

The United Nations at least understands from Ambassador Nikki Haley that the United States will call out, rather than aid and abet, its occasional anti-Semitic lunacy. The president did not arbitrarily cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement. Instead, the agreement is up for renegotiation on terms other than the expectation that the United States will always accept asymmetrical deals as part of its required role as the continent’s superpower.

The world itself is not in chaos as alleged. It seems a far safer place than it was between 2009 and 2016. ISIS is no longer a viable threat, promising to establish a new caliphate, in between beheading, burning alive, and drowning the innocent on video.

Plenty of Republicans remain bitter that their party passed that bloated $1.3 trillion omnibus—almost as bitter as President Trump, who felt pressured to sign it. But this fight doesn’t have to be over.

Across Washington, principled conservatives are noodling with an idea that—if done right—could be a political winner. It’s a chance for Republicans to honor their promises of spending restraint and redeem themselves with a base turned off by the omnibus blowout. It’s an opening for the GOP to highlight the degree to which Democrats used the bill to hold the military hostage to their own domestic boondoggles. And it’s a chance for Mr. Trump to present himself again as an outsider, willing to use unconventional means to change Washington’s spending culture.

It’s called the 1974 Impoundment Act, which allows the president to order the rescission of specific funds, so long as Congress approves those cuts within 45 days. The act hasn’t seen a lot of use in recent decades. Barack Obama never saw a spending bill he didn’t like, and George W. Bush never sent any formal rescission proposals to Congress—likely because he took the position that presidents ought to have a fuller line-item veto power. Many conservatives agree, though Ronald Reagan used rescission where he could and holds the title for most proposals. Even so, the total amount all presidents since 1974 have put forward for rescission ($76 billion) and the amount Congress ultimately approved ($25 billion) remains pathetic.

Republicans could change that. Their control of the White House and both chambers gives them an unusual opportunity to cut big. Under the Impoundment Act, a simple majority is enough to approve presidential rescissions—no filibuster. It’s a chance to take a hacksaw to the $128 billion by which the omnibus exceeded the 2011 domestic-spending caps—everything from carbon-capture technology to pecan producers to the Gateway Tunnel Project to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The political danger here rests in Mr. Trump moving unilaterally, with a rescission package that shames his fellow Republicans in Congress and puts them at greater risk in the midterms. The trick is instead for House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to request Mr. Trump go the impoundment route, or for the White House and congressional leaders to make a joint announcement.

Which gets to the other trick—getting congressional Republicans to come on board and take credit for spending cuts. The GOP is correct that most of the spending hikes were at Democratic demand, but many Republicans used that as an excuse to stuff in their own pork. Messrs. Ryan’s and McConnell’s job is to explain that, with midterms at stake, the party needs to prove it can do a better job with the federal fisc. CONTINUE AT SITE

It wouldn’t be a normal week in Washington without a Trump Administration personnel melodrama. But this week’s removal of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is important on the policy merits, and let’s hope his successor is more amenable to allowing retired service members to make their own health-care choices.

On Thursday Mr. Shulkin took to the New York Times to warn of “political appointees choosing to promote their agendas instead of what’s best for veterans” by supporting “privatization leading to the dismantling of the department’s extensive health care system.” This self-justification exercise will not be remembered as the most graceful exit.

Mr. Shulkin has been on the way out for several weeks, and his euphemisms are about his months of infighting with White House and other Administration officials. The unsubtle innuendo in the press is that Mr. Shulkin was run out by the nefarious Charles and David Koch through a policy group called Concerned Veterans for America.

Yet no one except Mr. Shulkin is talking about “privatization.” Concerned Veterans for America in a white paper has sketched out a plan to restructure the VA and allow it to focus more on the expertise its doctors have developed in, say, post-traumatic stress and prosthetics. The plan includes a premium-support payment so vets could buy discounted private coverage from a menu, much like federal employees do. A current vet who preferred to be treated for diabetes elsewhere would be free to make that choice.