Are you saying that he clearly aimed it at an existing administration by naming names with political intent?
No, not an existing administration. But yes, there was political intent. Clancy had a strong political viewpoint in his writing. I enjoyed his major novels, especially the earlier ones where an editor could control his impulse to be overly verbose.
If so, then, yes, his writing in that case would fall into the same category. If not, then your response is a non sequitur.
The New York Times asked fiction writers to write fiction about the resolution of the Mueller investigation. If the suspicions that Trump is being manipulated by Putin are correct, then the President's life might well be in danger from the Russian government. The recent poisonings of former spies are a signal to the enemies of Putin not to cross him.
For the record, I think it is an extremely poor idea to run a piece like this, although these works were likely commissioned months ago. But in the charged environment we are in today, the New York Times should have killed this piece.
By the same token, it wasn't that long ago when I alerted the moderators to a post by one of our regulars where he suggested that a number of Democratic icons should "be shot." A number of the regulars here contributed to the thread without publicly raising objections.