Department of Homeland Security Reassignment Seems Oddly Convenient
The more I read about the situation that took place over the weekend at the Department of Homeland Security, the more I get the feeling that there’s more here than meets the eye.
On Friday, acting Under Secretary for the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Brian Murphy was “reassigned” to a new role, presumably during the meeting called by acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf. This reassignment came about a day after it was reported that the DHS summarized tweets from The New York Times’ Mike Baker and Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes in Open Source Intelligence Reports sent to other federal law enforcement agencies. Both of these journalists published unclassified leaked documents with information about the situation in Portland.
Obviously, the American government collecting intel on American citizens, let alone American journalists, is a big no-no and blatant violation of the First Amendment; that’s the sort of thing you hear about happening in Russia and other authoritarian and quasi-authoritarian countries. Even though this was supposedly carried out by lower level officials, mostly without Murphy’s knowledge, ignorance is not necessarily a defense. As a result, someone up the chain of command had to go.
If it really is that simple, then Murphy probably got off easy by just being reassigned and not fired. However, the thing about the Trump presidency is that it’s made even the best of us see conspiracies around every corner, and this is what’s happening for me in this story.
If ignorance wasn’t an acceptable defense for Murphy, why is it for the acting Secretary? Though the offending officials were more directly under Murphy’s oversight, shouldn’t the acting Secretary also be responsible for what happens in his department?
Since Murphy is a long-time official at the DHS, I would hazard a guess that he’s not a Trump stooge. Wolf, on the other hand, is a full-on Trump believer, so the cynical part of me thinks this was a convenient situation that protected Wolf and let the Trump Administration clear the playing field of another career official who may not have been on board with the “sending unmarked agents to kidnap protesters” idea.
Thankfully, the Inspector General at the DHS and the Adam Schiff-led House Intelligence Committee are both looking into the matter, as well as Murphy’s role in it. Barring the usual, extreme lack of cooperation on the Trump Administration’s part (which is a big “if”), we should eventually get something resembling an answer.
Again, if this happened and Murphy had a larger part in it than originally thought, then he and whoever else participated should be punished accordingly, but we should keep a close eye on this in case it turns out there’s more to the story than is being said now.
Originally published at https://www.quicknewsdaily.com on August 1, 2020.
