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The assault on intelligence: American national security in an age of lies, by Michael V. Hayden, New York, Penguin Books, 2018, 303 pp., $28 (hardcover), ISBN 9780525558583
The open conflict between the Trump administration and the United States intelligence community did not end with the former president leaving the White House. An independent counsel, John Durham, is examining the sources of the Steele Dossier and bringing indictments against Democratic party operatives. Durham’s work marks the final act in a conflict that saw Trump compare US intelligence agencies with those of National Socialist Germany. Given the raw emotions that the Trump administration elicited from its supporters and opponents alike, the relationship between the Trump team and the intelligence community is a very difficult subject to study and to write about. Those seeking the perspective of the intelligence services would be wise to look at The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies. The author, General Michael Hayden USAF (retired), is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Speaking from a standpoint deeply critical of the Trump administration, the author documents the conflict. Properly understood, this book is an anti-Trump tract. The author notes that under Trump and for the first time in its history, the United States was ranked as a ‘flawed democracy’ by the Economist with such states as South Korea, Mongolia and Estonia (11). The book begins with some theoretical questions related to intelligence, statehood, and national security. It then repeats some of the Enlightenment-derived United States national myths about the founders. ‘Will we emerge from this tested and stronger? Or will we be weaker and wounded – or even permanently altered? The founders of the Republic were disciples of the Enlightenment. The document they left us is infused with Enlightenment values. Jefferson writes of an informed citizenry being the heart of the democracy and that when well informed the people can be trusted with their own governance’ (12).