When Andrea Mitchell of NBC News asked Coats what he tells intelligence personnel risking their lives in the field when the president disavows their work, as he did in Helsinki, Coats said he tells them, “We are professionals. We are here to provide professional service to our government. We need to keep our heads down. We need to go forward with the wonderful technological capabilities that we have to produce intelligence. There’s a lot of swirl, political swirl, going around. Just do your jobs.”
Coats’s candor was remarkable, considering some colleagues in national security circles gave him the nickname “Marcel Marceau,” after the French mime, because he was typically so tight-lipped and rarely opined freely. Before opening the floor for audience questions, Mitchell made an announcement: “We have some breaking news. The White House has announced on Twitter that Vladimir Putin is coming to the White House in the fall.”
“Say that again?” Coats said, leaning forward in his chair.
“Vladimir Putin coming to—” Mitchell replied.
“I hear you,” Coats said, cupping his hand to his ear playfully. They both laughed uncomfortably. It was obvious that this was the first Coats had heard of the Putin invitation. He took a deep breath.
“Okaaaaay,” Coats said, chuckling. With a wry smile, he added, “That’s going to be special.”
Eighteen
THE RESISTANCE WITHIN
On the sidelines of the NATO meetings on July 11, 2018, Trump believed he had struck a bargain with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. News cameras captured Trump and the Turkish president bumping fists and smiling. What the public did not know at the time was Trump thought he had a deal for a straightforward prisoner trade. The United States would win the freedom and return of Andrew Brunson, an evangelical American pastor imprisoned in Turkey for the previous two years on what U.S. officials considered bogus terrorism charges. Brunson was a cause célèbre for Trump’s conservative base. Trump would then leverage his close relationship with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate the release of a Turkish prisoner jailed in Israel on exaggerated claims of terrorist activity. In Trump’s mind, he had brokered the deal during a man-to-man meeting with Erdogan. Erdogan had mentioned the Turkish prisoner Ebru Özkan, a twenty-seven-year-old woman accused of acting as a smuggler for Hamas. Trump was intrigued. He, too, had a prisoner in Turkey he wanted released.
On July 27 the deal fell apart. Erdogan had tried to flatter Trump by telling him that surely he could get Özkan released. The American president said he could and then mentioned Brunson. But U.S. officials would later learn that Erdogan never thought this was a tit for tat. “Trump left the meeting believing he had personally negotiated it. He had not,” said one person familiar with the talks. On top of that, something went wrong in the conversation. “Somehow, Trump left Erdogan with the impression he could get more for his dollar.”
The exchange was complicated for many reasons. First and foremost, delicate negotiations about Brunson’s release had been going on for weeks between lower-level deputies in both the U.S. and the Turkish governments. Turkish officials originally said Erdogan would be willing to give up Brunson in exchange for the United States’ deporting or extraditing Fethullah Gulen, a reviled political opponent of Erdogan’s who had been living in exile in Pennsylvania. U.S. officials shot down that idea. No way. That would be a decision for the Justice Department, and attorneys there had already made clear that an extradition of that nature would break U.S. legal norms. It was obvious to anyone following the situation that Erdogan’s unstated goal almost certainly was to have Gulen killed as soon as he left the United States and landed in another country. So the Americans came up with a three-step approach that the Turks liked. The first step, agreed to in June and conveyed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was that the Justice Department and the FBI would more closely investigate whether Gulenist groups in the United States were engaged in illegal activities, such as tax violations. The second step would be helping secure the release of Özkan from Israel. The third step had the feel of a prisoner exchange: After Turkey released Brunson back to the United States, the U.S. government would extradite a Turkish banker and Erdogan ally who was being detained in the United States in a federal case. The banker, who had incriminating information about Erdogan’s role in a bribery and money-laundering scheme to avoid U.S. sanctions against Iran, would then be allowed to serve the rest of his short sentence in his home country. Trump had little familiarity with the details of those talks. There was no official transcript of his discussion with Erdogan, no direct proof of his apparent “deal” for U.S. intelligence or diplomatic officials to hold the Turkish government to account.
On July 14, while Trump spent the weekend at his golf resort in Scotland, he decided in the middle of playing a round to call Netanyahu. His aides brought a secure phone out to the front nine. Trump leaned into the Israeli prime minister and asked him to release Özkan. Netanyahu confessed that he knew nothing about the woman. Her name did not register with him. But he agreed to look into it and to help speed her release, barring some other issue.
The next day, July 15, Özkan was released. She flew from Israel to Istanbul, where she was met by reporters and professed gratitude for Erdogan, who she said “was kind enough to be very interested in my case.” Over the next several days, Trump asked his aides for updates on Brunson. The first sign was not encouraging. On July 18, a Turkish court rejected appeals to release Brunson and set another court date for October. At the White House, where the president had just returned from his European trip, officials were taken aback. Trump tweeted that the Turkish court’s decision was a “total disgrace.”
On July 25, the court convened again and ordered that Brunson be released. Top advisers to Trump, as well as outside Christian advocates who had long been pushing for the pastor’s release, prepared that Wednesday night to celebrate Brunson’s homecoming. But what happened next surprised Americans familiar with the negotiations: Brunson was released from prison but on the morning of July 26 was taken by national police to his Turkish home and placed under house arrest. Through back channels, the United States learned Brunson would be detained in Turkey. Pompeo wrote on Twitter that the court’s decision was “welcome” but “it is not enough. We have seen no credible evidence against Mr. Brunson, and call on Turkish authorities to resolve his case immediately in a transparent and fair manner.”
On July 26, Trump called Erdogan and was livid. The call was short, with Trump doing most of the talking and not getting the answers he wanted. Trump then took to Twitter to announce his displeasure. The United States “will impose large sanctions” on Turkey, he wrote. “This innocent man of faith should be released immediately.” Hours later, a senior Turkish official issued a statement calling reports of Trump’s making a deal with Erdogan at NATO for a prisoner exchange between the United States and Turkey “completely baseless.” According to the Turks, whatever deal Trump believed he had miraculously sealed with Erdogan was one of his own imagination. Trump took this as a personal affront. He had long admired Erdogan, attracted to him because of his ruthless rule in Turkey and the ease with which he dispatched political rivals. Ever preoccupied with optics, Trump told advisers he admired the deep and commanding sound of Erdogan’s voice.