Asha Rangappa on Recognizing Threats and Keeping our Spirits Up

I am pleased to bring you this interview with Asha Rangappa, who is a Senior Lecturer at the Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School. Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. Her work involved assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work. Asha has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among others. She is an editor for Just Security and a legal and national security analyst for CNN. Our conversation took place on September 7, 2021 and has been edited for clarity and flow.

Asha Rangappa. Courtesy of Asha Rangappa.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (RBG): How do you see the American government's response to the 9/11 terror attacks after twenty years?  Do you see some of the illiberal policies that came out of that period, from the detention of Muslims to the justification of torture, as background factors in the erosion of American democracy and the rule of law?

Asha Rangappa (AR): That's a great question. 9/11 had the capacity to bring us together as Americans around a common external threat. I think we did have that for a brief moment; there was a feeling of connectedness with your neighbor or with your fellow citizen. A sense that "we're all in this together." But that quickly morphed into an us-versus-them mentality that specifically targeted particular racial and religious groups, internally as well as externally. And this fragmentation has harmed our democratic social fabric.

RBG: In terms of foreign policy, beyond the imperialist mandates of the Iraq War, we also collaborated with Muammar Gaddafi, agreeing to return Libyan prisoners held abroad in exchange for intelligence on terrorists, knowing Gaddafi would torture those prisoners when they arrived back in Libya.

AR: We saw that during the Cold War too. In the interest of fighting Communism we were willing to get in bed with a lot of illiberal leaders, or even put them in power. In many ways, the war on terror was an extension of that, although its ideological battle was less clear than the Cold War’s.

RBG: And that mentality can cause damage to democracy as a political culture, and degrade its institutions and civil service.  

AR: We also saw that happen with the rule of law, through the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. I think one of the areas where we really got off track during the war on terror was never having a sense of accountability for things like torture. Never actually confronting the fact that the pendulum swung too far. Congress largely just acquiesced, because nobody wanted to be the one to say no. I do think that that has led us to where we are now.

Think about officials like Gina Haspel, who was involved in enhanced interrogation techniques and then became Director of the CIA. Government officials who were part of the extremes in the war on terror ended up being rewarded or promoted, or at least nothing really happened to them. And this is the fault not just of Republican administrations but Democratic ones too. This was a decision of both parties.

RBG: It's interesting in this regard that Trump said what others would not say. At the start of his presidency he came out in favor of torture, saying it works, it's effective. He made himself the voice of those extremes, of the things America had been doing but didn't boast about - it wasn't seemly to do that--and this was part of his appeal.

AR: Yes. And even there, he was saying things that are not true. Torture doesn't work, it's not effective, but he was playing on the popular imagination. When you watch shows like 24 or movies like Zero Dark Thirty, you may believe it does. So [Trump] gave them what they wanted to hear.

RBG: What do you see as the consequences of the Trump years for national security? We know that Trump, like most autocratic-minded leaders, sought to privatize foreign policy, with his deals with Dubai and other places. And there was fear that Jared Kushner would sell or barter intelligence secrets.

AR: Trump effectively cognitively scrambled a large segment of the American population's ability to understand what is a threat and what is not. You write about this in your book, Strongmen, that for the autocratic leader, their personal agenda becomes the nation's agenda. I remember the shock I had when I saw that photo of two men at a Trump rally, both wearing a shirt that said "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat." And I thought, wow, he's really managed to make his base believe that the enemy is internal, that the enemy is their fellow citizen, not this hostile nation state, Russia, which of course was helping him.

James T. Alicie and Richard M. Birchfield, Trump rally in Ohio, 2018. Credit: Jeremy Pelzer/Cleveland.com.

RBG: I am concerned about the rise of violent rhetoric and direct action by extremists, like the Proud Boys, and also by private citizens who feel empowered to bully and threaten people at school boards, town councils, and other settings. Where do you see this going?

AR: It's now being enshrined into law. This new abortion ban law in Texas essentially displaces state enforcement of the law onto private citizens, creating this bounty system. That's just another example of saying the ends justify the means and we can burn everything down in the process. We can burn down our electoral system. We can burn down our judicial system.

The Texas law is very interesting because it's also trying to evade the fundamental democratic principle of accountability. The state is saying we're passing this law, but we're not going to put our name on it in terms of accountability, of being able to go defend it in court. We're actually creating a workaround so that we don't have to answer for it. We're just going to put it in the hands of private citizens. It's the legal equivalent of torches and pitchforks. So, I think that it is only going to get worse.

RBG: It seems as though exchanges and alliances among government, paramilitary formations, and armed bands of private citizens, like militias, are increasing. As in US Border Patrol agents and sovereign sheriffs that work with private militias. The range of people who can commit violence and feel they are immune from punishment is broader now. I see this as part of a breakdown of the social order and a breakdown of the rule of law.

AR: Jan. 6 was largely born out of the message that you need to take matters into your own hands, because if you don't, this whole system is going to run you down. The GOP preaches this to its base, that they [Democrats] are trying to make you powerless, the system is rigged against you, and you have to take action.

RBG: What do you do to keep serene and keep perspective?

AR: I have found that I need to check out every now and then, and make sure that I'm doing things that feed my soul. I like watching theater. I like playing golf. I like watching mind candy shows like Cobra Kai, so I have to do that. Otherwise, the information overload just starts to lead me down a very dark path.

I also like to think about all the people who do the right thing: the people who came together for Black Lives Matter, the people who went out and voted, the election officials who did the right thing [after Trump's defeat], the lawyers fighting voter suppression in court.

I know from having worked in the government that there are good and honest civil servants who are there to do their jobs. Some of them in the public eye, like Alexander Vindman, really put themselves at risk to do the right thing. There's a [Percy Bysshe] Shelley poem, "The Mask of Anarchy," and I think it ends with the line, "Ye are many - they are few." I think about that and how at some point that that has to matter and will ultimately prevail.