As I am nursing a hot cup of coffee this morning I am very dismayed about a low profile news item that probably slipped under the radar of most news followers yesterday. It involved the resignation of Kyle Murphy, a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Kyle resigned after a decade in the agency including assignments at the White House on the staff of the National Security Agency during the transition of the Presidency from President Obama to Trump. Murphy also experienced the fiasco at Lafayette Square first-hand when he was tear gassed during peaceful assemblies in the city.
What is disturbing are his observations in his letter of resignation from his post. He said, "I lost faith in the courage of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse unlawful orders from the President. They effectively labeled me and other Americans expressing our views in a peaceful assembly as enemies." He further observed that, "I have seen up close the president’s disdain for democratic values, and recent events should be put in the context of a continuous slide toward authoritarianism."
In his role as a senior analyst he observed political and military senior policymakers around the globe. As he stated, "part of my job was to observe whether foreign governments protected their national security services from politicization and whether they committed abuses against their own populations. These are critical measures of the health of a democracy, and failures not only disqualify countries from U.S. partnership but also can be a warning sign that a country may play a destabilizing role in the world. In the context of today's events he sees see grave similarities between events in our country and the processes by which autocratic leaders have brought their countries to the brink of civil conflict and beyond.
We could easily dismiss Mr. Murphy's resignation as another of a thousand disgruntled employees having one more "shot at the boss' on the way out the door' which, in fact, may be, in part, his motivation. However, he was in a unique position to compare and contrast our government's behavior against other governments from an objective fact gathering perspective in his role as an intelligence gathering analyst. His observations are very scary and should be food for thought in assessing the downward slide of Cheeto's regime as well as a warning about the escalation of actions he may take to retain power as the election nears and he tries to avoid the consequences of defeat. We are at a turning point in history and need to confront the reality of parallels between what is happening here and what has happened many times throughout the world.
On this unnerving warning from Mr. Murphy, I am continuing to re energize myself with more caffeine this morning.