The Acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher C. Miller, said Monday that authorities have “no intelligence indicating an insider threat.” Miller is overseeing security for the inauguration but he is also a Trump loyalist through and through. Why would anybody trust him?! Even from my vantage point well outside the government, it is not difficult to recognize that it is HE who poses the greatest threat to Biden’s inauguration. To see why, we have to look at who he is, what he has said, and what he has done.
But first, let’s just make another obvious point that it seems quite a few people are nevertheless having trouble seeing. When a wannabe dictator tries to pull off a coup or an auto-coup they don’t do it alone. Trump is not acting alone. Nor is he acting with only the help of a few crackpot lawyers and a handful of right-wing paramilitaries with whom he communicates exclusively through dog whistles. The attack on the Capitol was far more organized than that, and Trump's impact on our institutions far more successful.
When someone who is in power attempts to stay in power through an auto-coup, they do so by putting their loyalists in control of the military and of other critical government functions. That is exactly what Trump has done.
In the two months he has been the acting Secretary of Defense, he has done quite a bit. On November 18th - a mere nine days after his appointment - he took Special Forces out of the military chain of command and put it directly under his command. Again, let me remind you that as a former Green Beret Miller was part of Special Forces himself.
Just Friday, Miller gave a “bizarre” interview in which he praised Russia for how well they are doing using “irregular warfare concepts”. “Good on them,” he said. Mind-bogglingly, most mainstream news outlets seemed to think the most interesting statement he made in this interview was that he “cannot wait to leave this job.” The Russia comment is vastly more important. We all should know by now that Russia has launched a multi-pronged attack against the United States. Russia had a huge social-media footprint in the 2016 election spreading disinformation to disrupt and cast doubt on our elections. Russian state-sponsored actors even went so far as to organize actual protests in the United States on both the left and the right in order to extremely polarize the country. Just prior to the 2020 election, we learned that Russia had pulled off an enormous cyber attack against the United States.
So to be clear, Russia is our enemy. The "irregular warfare concepts" that Miller praised Russia for were warfare concepts used against us. Russia has been, and is currently, trying to destroy our democracy. What was Miller's opinion of those efforts? "Good on them." That's what he said: "Good on them."
On Sunday, Miller ordered the NSA director to immediately install Michael Ellis, a Trump loyalist, as the agency's top lawyer. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted, Ellis is "a relative recent law school graduate with a limited resume". Ellis had worked for Republican Rep Devin Nunes before joining the National Security Council. As you might recall, it is alleged (with a great deal of evidence) that Nunes was in on the Ukraine scandal from the very beginning. Yes, that Ukraine scandal that let to Trump's first impeachment.
Miller has not shown that he wants to support the incoming Biden administration in the least. In December, he blocked the Biden administration from receiving security briefings.
Before Miller was tapped for Secretary of Defense, he was in a different role that would also be quite impactful. As you might recall, in March 2020, Trump gutted the leadership at the National Counterterrorism Center. This is the group that is supposed to "connect the dots." As nine former intelligence chiefs wrote in the linked Washington Post opinion piece, "we are deeply dismayed — and perplexed — as to why he would simultaneously gut the center’s leadership of critical institutional knowledge. The NCTC’s just-dismissed acting director, Russell Travers, began his career as an Army intelligence officer more than 40 years ago. He stood up the NCTC’s predecessor organization while the embers of Ground Zero still smoldered." Since March, the NCTC has had three directors. Miller was in that role from August to November. The disruptions certainly look like intentional disarray of our counter-terrorism efforts.
Last but not least, Miller displayed either utter incompetence or intentionally traitorous behavior in his actions/inactions during the the attack on the Capitol. First, the Capitol Police were woefully unprepared for the siege despite the threats being in plain sight all over the internet. Second, there was a four-hour delay in deploying the National Guard. Here’s the timeline surrounding the attack. The outermost barricade at the Capitol was breached at 12:53 pm. Capitol Police requested National Guard assistance at 1:49 pm. The first insurrectionists made it int the Capitol building at 2:11 p.m. The first National Guard troops did not arrive until 5:40 pm.
The storyline is that they were caught off guard and that it took them a while to get through all of the logistical hoops. That storyline is not credible. I can certainly see how I might have some logistical challenges in deploying the National Guard that quickly if I were in charge there and caught by surprise. And you might find the excuse credible because you also are not trained for this. But that’s not who was in charge.
Christopher Miller - acting Secretary of Defense and former Green Beret - was in charge of communicating the threats in advance of the protest (supposedly, there were no threats identified) and of the decision to deploy the National Guard while the Capitol was under attack (an action delayed almost to the point of complete failure). Special Ops are not known for their ineptitude when it comes to foreseeing an obvious threat nor when it comes to acting quickly in highly volatile situations. The idea that he and others at the top were caught off guard and somehow paralyzed for four hours has zero credibility here.
There are undoubtedly members of the military, including in Special Forces, who do not live up to the high moral standards expected of them. Trump has actively encouraged individuals in the military to disregard ethics and has backed them when they commit criminal acts. In the most high-profile case, Trump intervened after Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher was court-martialed for war crimes. More recently, Trump pardoned Blackwater contractors who had massacred Iraqi citizens in Nisour Square.
Current and former military and law enforcement were articipants in the insurrection at the Capitol, including a retired Navy SEAL, a retired Air Force Colonel seen carrying zip ties, and off-duty National Guard.
The threat we should be worried about right now is that someone in charge of security is going to facilitate a breach of the inauguration. I am very concerned that the acting Secretary of Defense is likely to do exactly that. Again, it appears that is what happened on January 6th. Miller is directly in charge of Special Forces (having moved it from military control to his direct control two months ago). As the name implies, they are trained for strategic and specialized missions. In other words, breaching a highly secure environment is right up their alley. That would be especially true if they have inside knowledge and help in creating an opening that could be breached. If there is a subset of Special Forces personnel who are convinced - as most of Trump’s supporters are - that Biden becoming president poses an existential threat to the United States, it is absolutely predictable that some of them would be willing to use their military expertise to save the United States by assassinating the “enemy.” Miller has easy access to recruit those individuals from within his wider command and he has the ability to put those individuals in place to execute a coup.
If you are still thinking that the idea of a violent coup to overthrow the United States government is unthinkable, get past that. Violent coups DO happen. One was attempted two weeks ago in the United States Capitol. This is a real threat. It will happen if it is not stopped. Putting a Trump loyalist who supports the coup in charge of stopping the coup is naive to the point of insanity.
This is not a time for optics. If appearances of a peaceful transition take precedence over the transition itself, there won't be a transition. Instead of an inauguration the world will watch as the United States is overthrown. It will be a bloodbath. Current and former officials from all three branches of government will be there. Trump and his allies have called for execution by firing squad of some of them. The majority of the officials who will be in attendance have been depicted by Trump and his allies as enemies of the state. The inauguration must take place but not as currently planned, and definitely not with the security overseen by Christopher C. Miller.
On another inauguration security note, please also pay attention to the threat of drone swarms. I wrote about it in my last post and it is a huge threat. Swarms of drones have been seen in the United States and we have learned recently that Russia has added that capability to their military.
Most of us in the United States and all of our allies around the world value the continued existence of the United States of America over the pomp and formality of a ceremony - even one celebrating one of our democracy's most basic tenets. Please make the smart choice here.
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