Trump vs. the Deep State

As President-elect Donald Trump fights off fierce assaults by the massed national security apparatus, Democrats, the neocon Praetorian Guard, and a host of other political foes, I am feeling a sharp sense of déjà vu.

Trump claimed that these attacks were like ‘living in Nazi Germany.’ Not so. The president-elect could have found a much better analogy: Moscow in August 1991.

I was in Moscow, Central Asia and the Caucasus covering the Soviet Union’s last days and meeting with senior KGB leaders. What a dramatic and exciting time it was. In fact, on my first night in Moscow a Russian friend and I, fired from drinking potent Georgian moonshine, managed to wake up the then director of KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, at two am by playing very loud music under his apartment. He kept stamping on the floor. My Russian-Georgian friend said, ‘just ignore the old fool.’

Two years later, another old Soviet fool, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, tried to overthrow the reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A so-called ‘gang of eight’ of senior Communist Party officials, intelligence bigwigs, and military men secretly formed to overthrow party leader Gorbachev.

Reformist Gorbachev was trying to remake the Communist Party, end its brutal policies, stop the stalemated war in Afghanistan, and allow restive nationalities, like the Baltic peoples, to edge away from the USSR. Gorby also wanted to cut way back on military spending – then almost 40% of GDP – that was bankrupting the Soviet Union. He sought good, peaceful relations with the West.

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