'Terrorizing the workforce': Intelligence community 'panicked' by Trump's new moves

The FBI raid on President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton appears primarily to be payback against him for years of criticism — but there might be some even more sinister motives at play here, wrote Shane Harris for The Atlantic on Friday.

Specifically, he argued, it could also be a ploy to scare the broader intelligence community out of ever defying him — and if so, it might already be working.

"If this was revenge, it wasn’t an isolated act,' wrote Harris. For instance, "as agents were still packing up boxes of Bolton’s effects, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had pushed out yet another senior military officer, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency" — the same agency that in June contradicted Trump's public boasts that bombing strikes on Iran had "obliterated" nuclear sites. Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has wiped security clearances for dozens of intelligence officers who fought Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Trump has falsely called a "hoax."

The net effect of all this, Harris wrote, is that this could be remembered as "the week Trump’s campaign against the 'deep state' kicked into high gear" — and it has left the intelligence community "panicked" about whether they'll be punished for just doing their jobs.

"Purge doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here," he wrote. "Chilling effect is too mild, though revoking the security clearances of two senior intelligence officers, as Gabbard did, effectively ending their government careers, will indeed send a message. Terrorizing the workforce is a phrase I heard a lot this week. And that may indeed be the point."

And there are many more people left in government Trump could punish as part of his yearslong vendetta, Harris concluded.

"There are still officials working in the government who took part in the 2016 efforts to counter Russia," he wrote. "Has the White House overlooked them? Are they next on the list to be purged? Everyone is left to wonder. But no one thinks that the president’s retribution campaign is anywhere near its end."