Who is Anonymous?

Who is the author of “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” published by The New York Times on September 5? This is as good as it gets in the genre of real life political who-done-its. And it is not the first time I take a wild leap in the context of a highly politicized who-done it. 

The objective is to develop the most credible hypothesis based on limited facts. It’s a risky exercise, and there is a good chance of falling down on your face. Still, the last time it turned out well.

It took place in the 1990s, when bombs were exploding in hotels and restaurants in Cuba. Miami’s exile community, or El Exillio, attributed them to disaffected or disgraced members of Cuban intelligence. Convenient for the real perpetrators. Unlikely. Tourist facilities in Cuba are closely watched by…Cuban intelligence. They would recognize a former colleague. And what’s to be gained in exchange for the risk of being shot?

No motive then for intelligence officers on the island but motive was the place to look. Who benefits? It seemed clear that the terrorism was intended to scare away tourists that by then had become one of the major lifelines of the Cuban economy. Exile hardliners, mainly the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), had been waging an economic war against Cuba for decades by using their political clout in Washington to drive U.S. policy toward an ever-harder line. In this they had succeeded but it didn’t topple the government. Now, after passage of the draconian Helms-Burton Act, there was nowhere to go on that front.

The bombing of tourist venues was, then, a continuation of the economic war against Cuba. Who could be behind economic war through terror? The same people who been carrying it out through the lobbies of D.C.: CANF.

As it turned out, excellent reporting by The New York Times and the Miami Herald followed the money trail that made the terror possible to people associated with CANF. They later connected the dots when the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, on the lam from the U.S. justice system and holed up in Central America, gave an interview to the New York Times revealing how the plot was organized and confirming that members of CANF had financed it.

All that is to say that it’s possible to make a pretty good guess about the identity of ‘Anonymous’ lacking a smoking gun or an admission. Unlike most thrillers, this essay will not give a definitive answer to the riddle. This is not a detective novel where the author has to come up with a solution to satisfy the reader. The objective here is, instead, to develop a credible hypothesis by looking at the text and by asking who has the best motive.

The first clue to the identity is that the New York Times took what it said was the “rare step to publish an anonymous OP-ED.” Why? The decision suggests the writer is not just a senior administration official as The Times describes him or her, but a very, very senior official indeed. Why set a dicey precedent otherwise?

What sort of political actor is Anonymous? The text leaves no doubt the writer is no ideological opponent of the Trump agenda:

“To be clear, ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.”

So what’s the problem? For Anonymous it is “the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”

So the author is troubled because Trump is so messed up that he is not good at advancing the despicable agenda the president and Anonymous both support.

And what accounts for the president’s incoherence and ineffectiveness?

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”

This is a very harsh judgment about character, about the value system or the lack of one, of Donald Trump the person. It says that Anonymous sees the president as a person of low moral standing and that he/she has some personal animus toward Trump. The writer’s judgment is accurate, but it begs the question of what kind of person chooses to continue to work for an amoral leader lacking an ethical compass and why.

My guess is that it is the kind of person for whom the issues that Trump champions most vehemently are as important (or even more important) to Anonymous than even to Trump. But only if Trump remains standing and gets his act together can their shared goals be accomplished.

At same time, the writer could have criticized Trump’s chaotic leadership style without damning the president as someone “not moored to any discernible first principles.” The person who wrote this has been aggrieved by Trump and has been unable to fight back—until now.

I think the most likely suspect is Attorney-General Jeff Sessions. In the Senate, Sessions was a crusader against immigration long before Trump zeroed in on it as the theme that would win him the election. Sessions, as certifiably racist as Trump, is happy to be the point man for the president’s undisguised racist immigration and “law and order” policies. It’s not accidental that Sessions was the first Senator to endorse Trump when other Republicans were calling Trump a lunatic unsuitable to become president. The marriage between the worst xenophobe to run for president in ages and the biggest xenophobe in Congress should have been one made in heaven.

But Sessions, a former prosecutor, would not obstruct justice despite Trump’s intense pressure on Sessions to scuttle the Russia investigation. That triggered a characteristic reaction from the president, a torrent of vile insults and public humiliations of Sessions. The cruelest cut of all? The sword of Damocles Trump has been holding over Sessions head almost from the outset.

The irony is that Sessions is under threat of losing his head for the one decent thing he has done in his sorry political career: refusing to treat President Trump as above the law.

If Jeff Sessions is Anonymous, then the Op-Ed serves him in two ways, giving him the satisfaction to strike back at his tormentor from ambush and making it more difficult for Trump to fire him for that would bolster the argument in the piece that this administration is capricious and chaotic.