"The Trump team’s moves appeared to Patel’s colleagues to be motivated partly by a desire to restrict the intelligence agencies’ power, and partly to deliver on Trump’s promise to end overseas wars. In mid-November, Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel who was serving as a senior adviser to Miller, obtained Trump’s signature on an order withdrawing, by year’s end, all 4,500 U.S. troops then in Afghanistan. Patel handed the order to Milley, a Pentagon official remembered. The sudden-withdrawal proposal hadn’t been discussed with the military, and after Pentagon protests, it was quickly reversed by the White House. (Asked about the incident when I first reported it in March, Macgregor said he couldn’t comment.)"

"Haspel balked. She said that she would resign rather than accept Patel as her deputy. She said she would like to deliver her resignation directly to the president. Meadows disappeared and returned a few minutes later to say that the president had changed his mind: Bishop wouldn’t be fired; Patel wouldn’t be sent to the agency; Haspel would remain as director.

Reviewing this long, tangled tale, three themes stand out. The first is that Patel was an important, if largely invisible, operative in Trump’s efforts to control the intelligence community, in an escalating series of moves from 2017 to 2020. The second is Trump’s campaign to redirect intelligence agencies, backed by Patel, was thwarted by a group of senior administration officials — a group that included, at various times, Milley, Esper, Haspel, Barr, Pompeo, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and, at the very end, Meadows.

The third takeaway is the most perplexing and, in an odd way, reassuring. The truth is that for all the roadblocks these aides put in Trump’s way, he had the authority as commander in chief to do what he wanted in national security: declassify and release documents, hire and fire people, direct agencies to take actions he wanted. Facing resistance from courageous officials who sought to protect the government, Trump in many cases simply backed down.

As bad as this story was, in other words, it could have been much worse."