People are scared: Paranoia seizes Trumps White House
A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies inside their own government.
In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a deep state of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.
Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. Theyre turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. Theyre staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.
Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once theyve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.
Its an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trumps ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.
One senior administration aide, who like most others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the degree of suspicion had created a toxicity that is unsustainable.
A White House official rejected the notion that theres a culture of paranoia.
Spicer on Tuesday emphasized that cellphone checks are not White House policy and said that neither he nor others are still conducting them. The only incident in which that occurred was limited to the one involving myself, he said.
Trump has a history of overseeing pressure-cooker organizations rife with suspicion, setting up sophisticated surveillance in part to monitor employees at his properties, including at his campaign headquarters, where some campaign aides suspected their offices were bugged.
One widespread concern in the Trump White House: that career intelligence operatives are working to undermine the new president through a series of leaks of classified information.
Much of the suspicion is directed at the Central Intelligence Agency, which many Trump loyalists believe is targeting CIA skeptics who sit on the National Security Council. Some of them allege that the CIA was behind the damaging leaks to the press that culminated in the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in February and that the agency has pushed for the removal of other staffers.
