Spies only work when nobody knows they exist.
Somebody inside Washington decided that rule didn’t apply to President Trump’s newest project against Communist China.
But the people running their mouths to a liberal newspaper may have just put American lives on the line.
The Washington Post Just Printed a Spy Program’s Org Chart
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is building a deep-cover intelligence operation that would slip American operatives into private businesses. According to the paper, the targets are Communist China and other foreign adversaries.
Intelligence professionals call these people “non-official cover” officers. They carry no diplomatic passport and no embassy badge. If a hostile government catches one, Washington can’t spring them with a phone call.
And six people familiar with the effort reportedly walked the Post through who leads it, what it can do, and how the Pentagon plans to run it.
Six. On a program the Pentagon says doesn’t even exist.
The Post named the man in charge as Tom Rakusan. He spent 39 years at the CIA, held a leadership post during President Trump’s first term, and retired in 2021. After that, the paper reported, he went to work at a private equity firm Steve Feinberg co-founded. Feinberg now serves as Deputy Defense Secretary, and Rakusan’s LinkedIn page lists him as Senior Adviser to Feinberg.
But the Pentagon wasn’t buying any of it.
“This query appears to be built on information that is simply not true,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss said in a statement to the Post. Bliss didn’t stop there. “Whoever is feeding you these claims are either badly misinformed or deliberately leading you astray to peddle their fantasies.”
Grudges, Turf Wars, and One Nasty Nickname
Read the Post’s sourcing closely and a pattern jumps off the page. These folks don’t sound like whistleblowers losing sleep over the Constitution.
One anonymous former CIA official sniped, “Rakusan just wants to build his own CIA down in the Pentagon.”
A former White House official from Trump’s first term reportedly tagged Rakusan a “pipe swinger.” People usually save that kind of insult for the coworker who landed the job they wanted.
And the turf fight explains even more. According to the Post, the CIA’s own non-official cover program keeps shrinking. Veteran officers keep retiring, and nobody keeps signing up to replace them. The paper also reported that Langley has long resisted letting other agencies run human intelligence operations.
So a rival shop at the Pentagon threatens the CIA’s turf. Funny how the leaks showed up right on schedule.
Another former senior CIA official told the Post the Pentagon “has a lot of money and a lot of authorities and a lot of capabilities,” then added, “And God bless ’em.” Hard to tell whether that line carried a compliment or a sneer. Probably a little of both.
Bill Bishop spotted the danger right away. “This should not be in the news, puts some Americans there now at risk given how paranoid the MSS is,” Bishop wrote on X, referring to Communist China’s Ministry of State Security.
He has a point worth sitting with. Beijing doesn’t need proof the program exists. Its spy service only needs a suspicion, and every American businessman in Shanghai suddenly looks like a target.
This Looks a Lot Like a Slow-Motion Coup Against the Commander in Chief
This leak doesn’t stand alone. The Pentagon has spent the better part of two years chasing people who feed its secrets to reporters.
Back in 2025, ABC News confirmed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confronted top military officers over leaks about a planned briefing for Elon Musk on Communist China. In July 2026, Hegseth announced a joint task force with the Justice Department to identify and prosecute leakers. And over the summer of 2026, according to the New York Times, investigators put roughly 50 members of the Joint Staff through polygraph tests after reporters got their hands on details about shrinking US munitions stockpiles during the Iran war.
The leakers kept leaking anyway.
At some point a string of accidents stops looking like accidents. Unelected career officials keep deciding which of the President’s national security moves the public, and America’s enemies, get to see. That looks an awful lot like a slow-motion coup against an elected Commander in Chief’s control of his own government.
Now, nobody outside the building can read these people’s minds. The Post’s sources hide behind anonymity, and the Pentagon flatly denies the program. Maybe a few of them honestly believe they’re protecting the craft.
But good intentions don’t patch a blown cover. A petty grudge can burn a spy just as surely as a foreign mole can.
And this crowd has history. In October 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop story carried the fingerprints of a Russian disinformation operation. Big Tech and the corporate press used that letter to bury the story weeks before the election. The laptop turned out to be real. Not one of those signers paid a price.
Same playbook, different target. The intelligence old guard decides what Americans should know, and a friendly newspaper prints it.
Why Trump’s Leak Hunt Is About to Get a Lot Bigger
Communist China runs one of the most aggressive espionage machines on the planet. US officials have spent years tying Beijing to hacks of federal records, stolen technology, and spies planted inside American companies.
Any serious President would want more eyes inside Beijing’s orbit, not fewer. If the CIA can’t fill its own deep-cover ranks, building a second shop at the Pentagon makes plenty of sense.
But that only works if the people in the know keep their mouths shut.
Expect Hegseth’s leak hunt to widen. Expect the usual voices in the press to start wailing about press freedom the moment investigators come knocking.
And expect the next anonymous former official to pop up in the Post with another juicy detail, because nobody in that world ever seems to face consequences.
Voters sent Trump back to Washington to take charge of a government that answers to them. The deep state still answers to itself.
Sources:
The Daily Caller, “The Deep State Is Leaking Trump’s Most Sensitive Undercover Operations To The Washington Post”
The Washington Post, reporting on the Pentagon’s reported deep-cover spy program targeting China
ABC News, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to polygraph top military officers, ABC News confirms”
WSET, “Senior US military leaders faced polygraphs in leak probe of weapons stockpiles”
International Business Times, “Pentagon Hooks 50 Military and Civilian Staff Members to a Polygraph in Hunt for Iran War Munitions Leaks”
Bill Bishop (@niubi) on X