Thing is, taking this OpEd's author's (whoever they chance to be is not even that important) word as given. they'd have to be a complete moron:
Outing your own little circle and riling up Trump, motivating him to act, in the process? Real productive. While this is technically within the realm of possibility, if actually true, that kind of idiocy is barely worth discussing.
Now the two more likely scenarios:

• It was penned for Trump to give him a good excuse to accelerate purges of the old hanger-ons in his circle. Quite Machiavellian!
• It was penned with the purpose of creating general chaos in the White House. Not that clever, that's just looking at the Woodward and going "oh hang on".

But the fact that the staff are messing about with Trump I certainly don't see as doubtable -- everybody fired so far was doing it in one capacity or another.