Some people go to work for the federal government to represent their country with the idea they are going to help their government provide the services that citizens are paying to obtain. Mark Moyar was one of those people. He is a highly qualified individual brought in during the first Trump Administration. He soon found out there is a deep state, and it attempted to destroy his career and livelihood. He chronicles that in a riveting book, Masters of Corruption.
I received his book right before election day and started to read it, thinking it would be meaningful. His book became an important guide with Trump’s victory for making sure career bureaucrats do not crush the efforts of the political appointees in the second Trump Administration.
Moyar is someone you would think would be on the road to a roaringly successful life based on his resume. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard with a degree in history. By the age of 26 he had published his first history book which was on Viet Nam. He then headed to obtain his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge with his young wife and first child by his side. He returned to the U.S after receiving his degree in 2003. He had quite a pedigree except for one major “flaw” – he was a political conservative.
He started a postdoctoral fellowship at the Bush (George H.W.) School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. He thought he would be welcomed there, but soon found out the professors chafed at the idea the school was named after the 41st president. When it came to getting on the tenure track, he was vetoed due to his political beliefs. He was likewise blackballed at 200 universities because of his politics despite having written another history book and having published numerous articles. He saw that the Duke University history department had a 32-0 Democrat to Republican ratio. The University of Iowa had a 27-0 ratio. He ended up at the U.S. Marine Corps University which few people knew existed.
Moyar decided to jump from the frying pan into the fire and take a job in the Trump Administration. He knew that the Obamas had stacked the professional bureaucracy with idealogues, but he had no clue how bad it would get.
He went to the USAID (United States Agency for International Development), an operation that most Americans would not recognize. “The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent federal government agency that receives overall policy guidance from the Secretary of State.” Moyar describes the agency as an “operational organization.” Moyar states, “Its main purpose is to design and fund development and humanitarian operations for implementation by for-profit and non-profit contractors. Otherwise, they hand out our money to foreign countries with a hands-on approach.” The current budget of the Agency is $32 billion. If you go to their website, the first thing they post in “about us’ is their DEI policy. That wasn’t in place when Moyar was there, but the elements existed.
On July 30, 2018, Moyar was officially promoted to be the Director of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation. He had the goal of “fixing personnel and ethical problems and filling the void of strategic direction.” He had devised “a vision, a mission, and objectives for the office in line with the National Security Strategy based on White House and USAID leadership priorities.” Seems like the responsible thing to do. Except that was not the goal of the career staff.
Moyar told me, “Bureaucrats had mastered the art of bureaucratic sabotage quite well.” He had no preparation for the onslaught. He began to be confronted by a particular person who had been in the department for over 20 years. He was a member of the SES.
Experienced readers of my columns have become acquainted with the Senior Executive Service. There are about 8,000 of these people sprinkled throughout the government. They are basically untouchable. They cannot be fired. If you want to get rid of one of these people the only thing you can do is transfer them to Nome, Alaska, or Butte, Montana. And Moyar found out this SES thought he was in charge and there was nothing Moyar could do. On a typical workday, this person left work at 4 P.M. and went to a bar across the street from the Reagan Building where he held court with people throughout the national bureaucracy.
When this person found out that Moyar was eyeing another supervisory position the SES had in mind for himself, the sabotage went full throttle.
Moyar came to work one day to find his computer in the process of being taken. He had official charges lodged against him. The charges centered on the fact that he had included classified material in one of his books. Moyar is absolutely positive that all the material he had included in his books is in the public domain and he has been meticulous about that. No classified material. It did not matter, as an unnamed two-star general from a different part of the government (supposedly the Pentagon) had made the charges.
For the next couple of years Moyar was thrown into a battle for his survival. He had his security clearance yanked, effectively making him unemployable by the federal government. Moyar told me that during the last year of the Obama Administration not one person had their security clearance suspended throughout the government. In the four years of the Trump Administration, 34 people had theirs yanked — in USAID alone.
He found out there was no protection for whistleblowers if they were political appointees. The PPO (Presidential Personnel Office) or White House Counsel cannot do anything to help political appointees. Political appointees can be fired without due process. (My information tells me Trump is looking to remedy this on day one through an executive order).
He was faced with either resigning or being fired and with legal advice decided to resign. The problem was he was now in a Catch-22 where he could not really apply to get his security clearance back. He was out of work with a wife and three children. To say the least, Moyar stated, “This caused a lot of turmoil and financial stress.”
Moyar finally landed on his feet, getting a professorship at Hillsdale College. He fought back the best way he could think of — by writing his book to tell the story of how the deep state can destroy anyone or anything in their path.
On the eve of a new Trump Administration, Moyar’s book is essential reading to understand how career bureaucrats think they run our government and not our duly elected officials. They believe we are just bystanders, and they are actually in charge. Trump and his team must break the back of this system, or they will be stalled on all fronts where the bureaucrats wish to stop them.
Read the book.