About The WH Sensitive Information Server

J. E. Dyer has a--to me--fascinating analysis of what she believes was really bugging the RumorBlower behind the Ukraine Hoax. In ‘Whistleblower’ complaint paints picture of frustrated Trump policy opponents in intel community Dyer focuses on the the frustration of those who would thwart Trump foreign policy with Trump's concern for security. What do you think might have led Trump to develop that concern? The Flynn case? All the leaked phone calls, early on in his administration? Yeah, maybe.

So, Dyer's arguement runs like this.

1) The RumorBlower and his sources are frustrated because Trump's concerns for security--like, putting call transcripts on a separate, limited access server--have frustrated those who wish to leak inside information to frustrate Trump's policies. They haven't been able to go trolling through sensitive materials to leak, because those materials are kept off the general access server. Orange Man bad! Must be impeached!

2) That this is the case is easily seen by the wide discrepancies between the RumorBlower version of the Trump call and the actual transcript. They had to make up a version of the call because they had no access to the actual transcript. There's also this:

Another feature of the “whistleblower” complaint bolsters this analysis, and that’s the heavy reliance on media reporting to adduce facts in it.  Examined closely, the complaint offers more points of “fact” drawn from media or other published reporting than from alleged inside information.

3) Trump's choice of security methods also tells us about the reasons for his concerns:

To put it in the bluntest way: the system storage choice for the transcript tells us Trump doesn’t want people outside a certain circle in the U.S. government having direct access to the transcript.  Believe what you choose about why that is.  But it fits perfectly with the thesis that Trump has to worry about being undermined by disloyalty from the career employees in his own executive branch. 

Phrasing that differently is based not on superior rationale for another thesis, but on subjective opinion about Trump, and the “why” of his wants.  Either you think it’s a good thing that bureaucrats are trying to undercut Trump, or you think it’s a bad thing.  Either way, you have an opinion; the obvious, logical reason for sequestering information from those bureaucrats is, in both cases, to prevent the undercutting.

4) Dyer concludes from this:

It’s not a complaint at all.  It’s a brief against a national security policy action of the Trump administration, entered into “record” by couching it as a “whistleblower” complaint.

I take it a bit differently. Obviously people like the RumorBlower and his sources always want maximum access. Yet we know from Susan Rice that the Obama administration used similar security methods--yet there was no attempt by the IC to leverage an impeachment of Obama. Which, of course, strongly suggests that the real bone of contention isn't security per se--the leakers might not like it, but they can live with it. What they have trouble living with is precisely Trump's foreign policy. That's why the security policy, when utilized by Trump, is intolerable.

But, in that case, doesn't the American public deserve to know who these faceless bureaucrats are, who think they should pass judgment on foreign policy that the American public voted for? What policies do they favor, and do they represent interests beyond their own intellectual preferences? Non-IC actors in politics and business? Or other fields?