James Carden: The Carnegie Endowment for the Permanent State: Why should taxpayers subsidize this think tank?
By James Carden, Substack, 7/28/25
Despite the myriad of disasters the permanent state—with the assistance of its allies in the media and its enablers on Capitol Hill—have brought about, it remains as entrenched as ever, Trump’s claims to the contrary.
How is that?
One answer is that, of course, the permanent state is lavishly well funded; it essentially functions as a public-private enterprise, in which Washington think tanks play a critical role. Perhaps it has escaped the administration’s notice, but tax-exempt organizations like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (which has assets of over half a billion dollars) are, as we speak, providing an institutional home for a number of men and women who sought to overthrow Trump’s first administration.
Now that DNI Gabbard has revealed the extent to which the Obama administration, acting in concert with former CIA director John Brennan, had to do with fomenting the Russia ‘collusion’ scandal, the administration might do well to turn its attention to a number of Washington tax-exempts that have long protected discredited members of the national security apparatus.
The Brookings Institution’s links to Russiagate, via Fiona Hill, are by now well known. It was Hill who made the connection between Igor Danchenko and Christopher Steele, the mendacious ex-British spy who authored the Steele Dossier. And it was Danchenko whose fantasies fueled the most salacious parts of that report, which went on to serve as a foundational report for Brennan’s fictitious Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of January 6, 2017.
As it happens, one of the proud authors (they were all handpicked by Brennan) of the Intelligence Community Assessment, Gavin Wilde, served as a former NSC director for Russia during the first Trump administration and is now nonresident fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The ICA claimed, without evidence (or logic), that Putin interfered in the US election to benefit Trump and kicked off what was to be a years-long McCarthyite witch hunt culminating in his first impeachment. The impeachment drive, as readers will recall, was set off by an Ukrainian-American dual national on the staff of the National Security Council who decided that he, not the president, was responsible for the conduct of US foreign policy.
The Ukrainian national, a publicity-hungry Army foreign affairs officer named Alexander Vindman worked with a CIA operative detailed to the Trump NSC, Eric Ciaramella, who, reports indicate, leaked the contents of a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian president Zelensky to the staff of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Adam Schiff. As it happens, Ciaramella now works side by side with Wilde at the Carnegie Endowment where he serves as senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program.
In addition to these two, Carnegie boasts a slew of former high ranking intelligence and diplomatic officials, including Biden and Obama era national intelligence officers; former CIA operatives; and even a Clinton-era national security council staffer with a sideline in writing comic books.
Trump may think he is hitting the permanent state where it lives with indiscriminate firings across the federal workforce, but until such time as the IRS and Department of Justice turn their sights on the tax exempt status of institutions like Carnegie, the permanent state will not only survive, it will thrive.
