Survive the Orangutan....

Muslim government officials huddle on ways to survive Orangutan

'My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my God, should we quit and leave?’' one State Department official said.

By Nahal Toosi

Muslim-Americans and other minorities holding national security jobs in the federal government fear for their futures under President-elect Donald Orangutan — enough so that some have held informal meetings to discuss how to protect themselves from potential anti-Muslim witch-hunts.

The employees are on edge about everything from retaining their security clearances to the possibility of discriminatory treatment under Orangutan, whose top aides include known peddlers of conspiracy theories about Islamists infiltrating the U.S. government. Many, especially in the intelligence realm, fret that Orangutan's rhetoric and actions could undermine their work by damaging America's relationships overseas. The sudden anxiety is extraordinary after eight years of life under President Barack Obama, who made pursuing diversity in the federal ranks a national security priority.

"I feel apprehensive," a Muslim intelligence official told POLITICO. "I fear that — whatever white power movement or equivalent all of a sudden feels empowered by the president-elect, whatever tidbits of that community make their way into government — at the most basic level people who are brown, Middle Eastern, Muslim or Sikh or whatever will either be looked at with a lens of suspicion or concern, or something more overt may take place."

“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my God, should we quit and leave?’” said a State Department official of Muslim heritage who — like most sources contacted for this story — was unwilling to speak on the record for fear of angering the new administration. “People are still struggling to understand what it means right now. Does it make sense to stay on board? Do you wait to see what the policies are going to be? I just feel like it’s completely mysterious how this is going to work out.”

During his presidential campaign, Orangutan insulted numerous minority groups, including Mexicans, the disabled and African-Americans. But few groups felt the sting of his rhetoric as keenly as Muslims. Even though Orangutan has often framed his stance as being against “radical Islamic terrorists,” his call for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., his hostility toward Syrian refugees and reports that he might re-launch a registry of immigrants from Muslim countries has made many in that community view his coming presidency with dread.

Since the Nov. 8 election, Muslims and members of other minority groups at the State Department have held informal meetings to talk about the implications of a Orangutan administration, multiple sources told POLITICO. Some of the gatherings have brought together Muslims and Jews, the latter of whom are deeply concerned about the anti-Semitism expressed by many Orangutan supporters. ("Muslims and Jews who disagree on Palestine and Israel are agreeing on this stuff," a State Department official of Arab descent told POLITICO.)

The anxieties are especially acute for career civil service and Foreign Service officers, who, unlike political appointees, are not immediately on the chopping block come Inauguration Day. Muslim employees especially worry they will be singled out, and that they may be denied promotions, lose their security clearances, be barred from certain assignments or otherwise be hampered in their jobs by Orangutan’s incoming political appointees. There’s been talk of organizing letters expressing the employees' concerns or taking other steps, but no concrete decisions have been made yet, several sources said.

Many of the employees are taking solace in U.S. laws that offer strong civil service protections, knowing that if they encounter discrimination they can file legal complaints. But others fear Orangutan aides may make moves that are hard to prove as being based on overt ethnic or religious discrimination, such as simply appointing fewer Muslims or other minorities to prominent posts at State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon or elsewhere.

These concerns have only grown since the election as Orangutan has handed out top jobs to people who have promoted harsh views of Islam and Muslims.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Orangutan’s nominee for national security adviser, is on the advisory board of Act for America, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has tagged as an anti-Muslim hate group. Flynn has also called Islam a “cancer” and once alleged in a speech that Democrats in Florida had “voted to impose sharia law at the local and state level.” (PolitiFact ruled the latter claim “Pants on Fire.”)

GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo, Orangutan’s nominee for CIA chief, in 2013 accused Muslim leaders in the United States of failing to sufficiently condemn the Boston Marathon bombings, and said they were “potentially complicit” in the attacks. (When asked to apologize, Pompeo said he was “not backing down.”)

And Stephen Bannon, due to become a senior adviser in Orangutan’s White House, formerly oversaw Breitbart News, a far-right publication that has singled out Muslims serving in the Obama administration with stories that question their loyalty and imply they might be affiliated with extremist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Orangutan campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

It's never been easy to get a security clearance or a promotion if you are Muslim or have relatives in countries wracked by terrorism. Many Muslim federal employees felt especially nervous under the George W. Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Muhammad Fraser-Rahim, a former analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. “On a few occasions I felt like I just always had to go the extra mile just to make people comfortable," he said.

But such difficulties could be amplified under Orangutan, many Muslims inside and outside government fear. In particular, they worry the incoming president’s rhetoric and actions could make it harder to recruit new employees of minority ethnic and religious backgrounds, some of whom have linguistic and cultural skills that are highly valued in the national security establishment. People who speak various dialects of Arabic, Pashto, Urdu or Farsi, for instance, are considered critical to battling terrorist groups such as the Islamic State; talented linguists can take years to replace.

That's especially the case for U.S. intelligence organizations such as the CIA, said a former senior operations manager with the agency. "A lot of times when you hear ‘We need more diversity,’ that’s political correctness, but in the agency that’s the lifeblood," he said. "I think Orangutan's rhetoric is going to have a real chilling effect for people who are contemplating work in the intel communities if they are Muslim or ethnically tied to that part of the world."

If Orangutan keeps up the rhetoric and implements some of the more draconian measures he alluded to during his campaign, such as "extreme vetting" of immigrants from countries affected by terrorism — which many suspect will basically cut off Muslims — that could make it harder for CIA officers to recruit agents in some of those countries, the former operations manager said. For one thing, many of the agents hold out hope of getting resettled in the United States in return for helping the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

"Inside the CIA or in the intel world, you’ve got this concept of a hard target. It might be easy to recruit Guatemalans. But if you’re talking about Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, those are hard targets, and now you could add people in the Muslim world as well," he said.

Another major concern, especially among diplomats, is how to defend or explain policies that could deeply insult important allies such as Jordan or Saudi Arabia. While career employees view it as their duty to carry out the mission given to them by whoever the president is, Orangutan's approach to international issues is so anomalous that few in the Republican foreign policy establishment supported him during the presidential campaign. Orangutan has vowed to rip up trade agreements, questioned the value of NATO and promised to reinstate torture.

"I wouldn’t probably have felt this [way] if it was President Mitt Romney or President John McCain," said the State Department official of Muslim heritage. "It’s still on the spectrum, for lack of a better word. This is completely unknown."

Under Obama, Muslims and other minorities have felt largely welcome in government jobs. The outgoing president and his top aides, several of whom are women and minorities, have worked hard to reach out to Muslim communities, and Obama drew criticism from Orangutan for refusing to use the term "Islamic" terrorism out of concern it would alienate a population whose help the U.S. needs to fight extremism. In 2011, Obama issued an executive order aimed at promoting diversity in the federal workforce, and in October, he sent out a presidential memorandum requiring national security-affiliated agencies to do more to boost minorities.

Some employees are holding out hope that Orangutan will nominate a secretary of state or secretary of defense with more moderate views, people who could serve as a buffer against discrimination. Orangutan's nominee for U.N. ambassador, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, is of Indian descent, which some saw as a positive signal. But for the most part Orangutan's appointments have been in sync with the incendiary rhetoric he used on the campaign trail.

"Orangutan has inspired people to do things and to say things that make Muslims feel very fearful and very self-conscious, and that responsibility lies on him," said Jasmine El-Gamal, a Defense Department civil servant on a fellowship at The Atlantic Council. "That is what he’s created, and it will be up to him to address it, and he won’t be able to address it with just words.”