Archive for August 3, 2017

Senate confirms 65 Trump nominees on last day before August break

August 3, 2017

Senate confirms 65 Trump nominees on last day before August break, Washington Examiner, Susan Ferrechio, August 3, 2017

The U.S. Senate confirmed more than five dozen Trump administration nominees Thursday, reflecting a deal between Republicans and Democrats that will let lawmakers in both parties return home for the summer.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved the nominations in a large package agreed to by voice vote, meaning no senators objected.

Among those confirmed were former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican of Texas, who will be Trump’s ambassador to NATO, and Robert Wood Johnson, who was confirmed as ambassador to Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Democrats agreed to move the nominees forward quickly, ending months of delays and obstructions to nearly every single Trump nominee. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had been dragging out the process of confirming the nominees to protest the GOP effort to repeal and replace Obamacare by using a procedural move that would have thwarted the ability of Democrats to filibuster.

With the effort to move that bill stalled indefinitely and bipartisan hearings on the embattled healthcare law underway, Schumer agreed to move what became known as “the package” of nominees.

“The Senate has confirmed more executive branch nominees this week than all of the executive branch nominees confirmed this year combined,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I hope this agreement represents a way forward on confirming nominees so our government can be fully staffed and working for the American people.”

Among others, the Senate confirmed Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr to two vacant positions on the Federal Communications Commission. “Looking forward to working with them to promote the public interest,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted after the voice vote.

The list also included top and lower tier positions in many different departments and agencies ranging from Health and Human Services to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, where Christopher Giancarlo was approved to serve as chairman and Brian Quintens was confirmed a its commissioner.

The longest list of nominees confirmed were under the State Department and included Mark Andrew Green to serve as administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and eight ambassadors.

In addition to Bailey Hutchinson and Johnson, Sharon Day was confirmed as the ambassador to Costa Rica, John P. Desrocher of New York was confirmed as ambassador to the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, and George Edward Glass of Oregon was confirmed as Ambassador to Portugal.

The list included U.S. attorneys and deputy attorneys general and assistant secretaries for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Commerce and Homeland Security.

The confirmations come after months of frustration for Republicans and President Trump. While Democrats and Republicans in the past have generally sped through many executive branch nominees under a new president, Democrats slowed Trump’s picks to a crawl, requiring the GOP to use all required debate time which meant single nominations took days rather than minutes or hours.

McConnell said earlier this week he has determined that under the hurdles set by Democrats, it would take 12 years to confirm all of Trump’s nominees.

Schumer told Republicans he was slowing the process because he was opposed to their effort to repeal Obamacare, which is now on hold after the Senate failed last week to move a bill.

Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas called the passage of the confirmation package “a big day,” and should have happened much sooner “but for the obstruction and foot-dragging of our colleagues across the aisle.”

Robert Mueller impanels grand jury in Russian meddling investigation: Report

August 3, 2017

Robert Mueller impanels grand jury in Russian meddling investigation: Report, Washington ExaminerMelissa Quinn, August 3, 2017

Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia probe, has impaneled a grand jury to look into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, according to a report.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the grand jury has begun its work in Washington in recent weeks.

News that Mueller has impaneled a grand jury signals that the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling and ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials is ramping up, and that Mueller could be close to subpoenaing witnesses for documents or testimony.

A letter from H.R. McMaster said Susan Rice will keep her top-secret security clearance

August 3, 2017

A letter from H.R. McMaster said Susan Rice will keep her top-secret security clearance, CircaSara A. Carter, August 3, 2017

Almost one month after it was disclosed that former President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice was unmasking members of President Trump’s team and other Americans, Trump’s own national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, sent an official letter giving her unfettered and continuing access to classified information and waiving her “need-to-know” requirement on anything she viewed or received during her tenure, Circa has confirmed.

The undated and unclassified letter from McMaster was sent in the mail to Rice’s home during the last week of April. Trump was not aware of the letter or McMaster’s decision, according to two Senior West Wing officials and an intelligence official, who spoke to Circa on condition that they not be named.

This is the letter from McMaster to Rice. Names, phone numbers and personal addresses have been blurred.

“I hereby waive the requirement that you must have a ‘need-to-know’ to access any classified information contained in items you ‘originated, reviewed, signed or received while serving,’ as National Security Adviser,” the letter said. The letter also states that the “NSC will continue to work with you to ensure the appropriate security clearance documentation remains on file to allow you access to classified information.”

Circa revealed in March that during President Obama’s tenure, top aides — including Rice, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch — routinely reviewed intelligence reports received from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad. They were doing so by taking advantage of rules Obama relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, according to documents obtained by Circa.

In June, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Rice as part of the committee’s larger investigation into the unmasking of Americans under the Obama administration. Rice maintains that she never accessed the information inappropriately and has agreed to testify before the committee.

Under the law, and under certain conditions, it is common practice for some senior government officials to be given the unfettered access to classified information, and their “need to know” is waived under “Executive Order 13526 Section 4.4 Access by Historical Researchers and Certain Former Government Personnel.” But the White House officials told Circa that under the current congressional investigation, and given President Trump’s ongoing concern that members of his team were unmasked, Rice’s clearance should have been limited to congressional testimony only or revoked until the end of the investigation. Rice and Brennan have confirmed they sought the unredacted names of Americans in NSA-sourced intelligence reports, but insisted their requests were routine parts of their work and that they did nothing improper. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power also has legal authority to unmask officials.

In a June tweet, Trump called the revelation that Rice and other Obama senior officials were unmasking members of his team the “big story… the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ that took place during the Obama administration.”

“Basically, this letter which was signed in the last week of April undercuts the president’s assertion that Susan Rice’s unmasking activity was inappropriate. In essence, anybody who committed a violation as she did would not be given access to classified information,” said a senior West Wing official, who was shown the document by Circa and verified its authenticity. “In fact, they would have their security clearance and right to ‘need-to-know’ stripped.”

“The point is, is that it lowers the bar for her,” the Senior West Wing official said.

“This memo McMaster sent to Rice makes it so that she doesn’t have to prove a continuing ‘need-to-know’ to have access to classified information and in effect is a White House pardon of Susan Rice and could be used by other Obama officials who conducted targeted unmasking of the campaign as a defense,” the official added.

The White House has not responded to requests for comment.

An intelligence official told Circa “that the NSA decision to provide this level of access to the subject of several ongoing investigations and to waive her ‘need-to-know’ requirement raises serious legal, moral and ethical concerns.”

According to information obtained by Circa, dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or who were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures.

Sometimes Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Rice, his Brennan and Lynch.

Shortly after Circa released the redacted documents disclosing the change in rules, it was revealed that Power had also extensively requested permission to unmask American names in incidental foreign intercepts.

Rep. Steve King on Obama’s Interference in Foreign Elections

August 3, 2017

August 2, 2017 by y

Source: Rep. Steve King on Obama’s Interference in Foreign Elections | Gates of Vienna

Rep. Steve King on Obama’s Interference in Foreign Elections

The talking heads in the media and Democrats in Congress have been obsessing about supposed Russian interference in last fall’s presidential election. In response to the continuous Trump-Russia-Putin litany, Congressman Steve King (R-IA) came back with his own list of the Obama administration’s interference in foreign elections — including one in Macedonia, which I had forgotten about. Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals translated into Macedonian, paid for by the American taxpayer!

But that evil Vlad Putin, he’s the REAL election meddler who needs to be watched…

For more on Rep. King’s efforts to investigate Obama and the Clintons, see this Sioux City radio report, or The New York Post.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for subtitling and uploading this video:

https://youtu.be/i8eOST0YmwA

Video transcript (including footage at the end that was left out of the video above):

00:00 Thank you Mr. Chairman, I’m listening to this debate and it strikes me that there is a few things that
00:04 have been left out of this discussion, and I do support
00:08 the gentleman from Florida’s amendment, and I follow
00:12 the ideology of this in the process. One of the things I would say to that is that
00:16 as I listen to the gentleman from Tennessee address this subject matter…
00:20 and raise his voice pretty strongly about the allegations of Obama vs.
00:24 Russians vs. Putin, I would make a couple of points on this, one is, it’s pretty
00:28 clear that the Obama administration sent their people over to Israel to work against
00:32 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Pretty much openly.
00:36 Significant dollars invested in that campaign over there. The president of the United States
00:41 with at least the moral support of the people that had worked for him…
00:45 in the country of Israel, seeking to shift the results of the election against the seated…
00:49 Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. Then,
00:53 the gentlemen, no I won’t yield, I have a lot of things I must say but thank you.
00:57 Then, the gentlemen did object to US tax dollars being used.
01:01 I just came back not that long ago from the Balkans where I sat in a place
01:05 like Macedonia. And there I learned that the United States
01:09 Government, borrowing money from China and Saudi Arabia,
01:14 had handed over somewhere at least $5,000,000.00 in contracts
01:18 transferred through USAID into George Soros’ organizations that were used
01:22 to manipulate elections in the Balkans. And that’s just particularly Macedonia,
01:26 not including the neighboring countries that are there. And some of that money
01:30 was used to translate Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals
01:34 into Macedonian, to distribute the books, and…
01:38 the Rules for Radicals and the actions of radicals were manifested within the election
01:42 in that part of the world, so I would say that
01:46 the Obama administration is a long way from clean on this, as far as being
01:50 involved in elections in other countries, not to mention little comments like
01:55 the British one, “If you vote BREXIT you are going to have to go to the back of the queue.”
01:59 So that is the taxpayer dollars piece of this but, the long string
02:03 that we should be looking at with this investigation and special counsel
02:07 so that is our request here, it goes a long way back. it goes clear back
02:11 to Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner,
02:15 650,000 emails which we still have access to! And
02:19 the question that was answered to us by James Comey which is
02:23 there was nothing to see there. We did a fast software search of 650,000
02:27 Emails, and in a case of Huma Abedin and Anthony
02:32 Weiner sharing laptops and sharing emails there was nothing new
02:36 in 650,000 emails, and what we have done in this Congress so far
02:40 is just taken his word for that. Now it seemed fairly logical to take his word at the time,
02:44 until you examine the investigation that he conducted
02:48 of Hillary Clinton, oh by the way, it was a matter…

Trump reportedly thinking about making Mike Pompeo national security adviser, shipping H.R. McMaster to Afghanistan

August 3, 2017

Trump reportedly thinking about making Mike Pompeo national security adviser, shipping H.R. McMaster to Afghanistan, Washington ExaminerDaniel Chaitin, August 2, 2017

(Please see also, McMaster, On ‘Warpath,’ Purges Key Trump Allies From White House NSC. — DM)

President Trump is looking at shifting CIA Director Mike Pompeo to the White House as national security adviser, according to a report Wednesday evening.

The move would bump H.R. McMaster, the current national security adviser. McMaster, a three-star Army general, would in turn be sent to Afghanistan to command U.S. forces in that country, the New York Times reported, citing several unnamed administration officials. The move could help McMaster earn his fourth star.

Trump has reportedly expressed frustration with Gen. John Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, because the U.S. and its allies are not “winning” the war there.

The White House shuffle, if it came to pass, would be the latest in a string of staffing changes, including the exit of Reince Priebus as chief of staff. He was replaced by John Kelly, a retired general who had been serving as secretary of homeland security.

McMaster too has overseen a National Security Council that has recently seen some people ousted.

McMaster was named national security adviser in February, replacing Michael Flynn after it was revealed he misled the administration about his communications with a Russian envoy. Pompeo, a former congressman from Kansas, was sworn in as CIA director in January, days after the inauguration.

Top Lawmaker Pushes Trump Admin to Freeze Pakistani Assets Tied to IT Breach Scandal

August 3, 2017

Top Lawmaker Pushes Trump Admin to Freeze Pakistani Assets Tied to IT Breach Scandal, Washington Free Beacon, , August 3, 2017

Debbie Wasserman Schultz / Getty Images

A leading lawmaker on the House oversight committee is urging the Trump administration to pursue a court order freezing recent wire transfers to Pakistan made by Democratic IT staffers who are accused of stealing computer equipment from House lawmakers’ offices and penetrating internal congressional networks, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), an oversight committee member and chair of its national security subcommittee, petitioned Attorney General Jeff Sessions to disclose if federal investigators are moving to freeze recent wire transfers of nearly $300,000 by Imran Awan, a top IT staffer for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) and scores of other Democrats who was recently arrested on charges of bank fraud.

Awan and several of his family members are believed to have stolen computer equipment used by Congress and penetrated sensitive networks linked to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and other networks.

Awan and others allegedly involved in the scandal remained on the congressional payroll for months after their activity became public, prompting calls by senior lawmakers for an independent investigation in Wasserman Schultz’s handling of the situation.

Awan is also believed to have defrauded the House of Representatives by using taxpayer funds to buy computer equipment that is now missing.

DeSantis, who has spearheaded efforts to move forward with the probe into this scandal, told the Free Beacon on Thursday that the Trump administration must take immediate steps to freeze any assets that may have been transferred by Awan to Pakistan.

“The DOJ needs to do what it can to freeze proceeds from any illicit transactions made by Awan,” DeSantis said. “Given the allegations against him it would be unthinkable that he’d be allowed to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pakistan.”

In his letter to Sessions, DeSantis seeks to ascertain what steps the DOJ is taking to investigate Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, who is also tied to the scandal.

“Given the alarming amount of funds that were wired to Pakistan, has the Department of Justice utilized the United States Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to investigate the financial records of Awan and Alvi to discover evidence of other potential crimes?” DeSantis asks.

“Have any U.S. financial institutions filed reports of suspicious activity on any bank account held by Awan or his wife?” the letter continues.

“Is the Department of Justice investigating whether any funds generated from the sale of stolen property of the House of Representatives were included as part of the wire transfer to Faisalabad, Pakistan?” DeSantis asks.

“Finally, will the Department seek a court order freezing the proceeds of any real estate transaction or from the sale of stolen technological equipment?”

DeSantis has described the situation as one of the biggest congressional scandals in the past 30 years, and other sources intimately familiar with the matter have told the Free Beacon that Congress has been roiled by the situation.

There is concern that sensitive information potentially obtained by Awan and other Democratic staffers could be used against lawmakers who may have been bound up in the penetration of sensitive congressional networks.

“I hope that we can work together to undo the serious damage done by these individuals while in the employment of the House of Representatives,” DeSantis writes. “While we can never tolerate breaches of the public trust, the wire transfer to Pakistan is particularly alarming as Pakistan is home to numerous terrorist organizations. I look forward to your timely response into these matters.”

The Free Beacon first disclosed earlier this week that Congress is seeking a brief from Capitol Police into their investigation of the situation, which some feel has proceeded too slowly.

Senior congressional sources say that investigators should set their sites on Wasserman Schultz, who has been accused of stonewalling on the matter. Some have even called for Wasserman Schultz to resign.

“The extent of the potential breaches has been made more clear” in recent weeks, according to one senior congressional source who would only speak on background when discussing the sensitive matter. “The inexplicable nature of the conduct of Wassermann Schultz and others has broadened” congressional interest.

Lawmakers are confused as to why Wasserman Schultz continued paying Awan and other staffers implicated in the breach for several months after this information came to light.

“At best for her that is gross misapplication of public funds that could merit resignation alone,” the source said. “There’s got to be more to that story.”

NSC Purge: McMaster ‘Deeply Hostile to Israel and to Trump’

August 3, 2017

NSC Purge: McMaster ‘Deeply Hostile to Israel and to Trump’, Breitbart, August 3, 2017

(According to President Trump’s agenda for today, he will meet with McMaster following his daily intelligence briefing. — DM)

Andrew Harnik / Associated Press

Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick wrote Wednesday evening that National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is purging pro-Israel staff from the National Security Council (NSC), turning the administration against President Donald Trump’s policies.

In a Facebook post, Glick noted that “all of these people” whom McMaster has fired this week — Rich Higgins, Derek Harvey, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick — “are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds.”

She noted that the firings were the latest evidence that NSA McMaster is “deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump”:

According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.

Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump’s visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall.

What hasn’t been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn’t. It was McMaster.

And even that, it works out wasn’t sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial — ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.

Glick noted that the three latest firings were not McMaster’s first attack on pro-Israel officials, or those critical of radical Islam. Two others had already been assigned to other jobs outside the National Security Council, she said.

Meanwhile, she noted, McMaster has replaced pro-Israel officials with anti-Israel, anti-Trump officials, and he allowed anti-Israel Obama holdovers to continue in their jobs:

[McMaster] fires all of Trump’s loyalists and replaces them with Trump’s opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes’ and Valerie Jarrett’s people in place.

(Malley was notoriously fired by Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign for meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and advocating negotiations with them. He was later brought into President Obama’s administration to negotiate with Iran, and advised Obama — evidently poorly — on how to fight the Islamic State.)

Glick noted that “McMaster disagrees and actively undermines Trump’s agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda,” including the Iran deal: “As for Iran, well, suffice it to say that McMaster supports the deal and refuses to publish the side deals Obama signed with the Iranians and then hid from the public.”

She also noted the irony that Trump had only hired McMaster, under pressure, because he was recommended by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

Finally, there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.

And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.

Senator John McCain. That’s right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.

Glick expressed disbelief that Trump could fire former General Michael Flynn as NSA “essentially for nothing,” while allowing McMaster to attack Israel, and undermining the rest of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, with impunity.

She suggested that Trump replace McMaster — or else Israel might begin to reconsider its embrace of Trump:

If McMaster isn’t fired after all that he has done and all that he will do, we’re all going to have to reconsider Trump’s foreign policy. Because if after everything he has done, and everything that he will certainly do to undermine Trump’s stated foreign policy agenda, it will no longer be possible to believe that exiting the nuclear deal or supporting the US alliance with Israel and standing with US allies against US foes — not to mention draining Washington’s cesspool – are Trump’s policies. How can they be when Trump stands with a man who opposes all of them and proves his opposition by among other things, firing Trump’s advisers who share Trump’s agenda?

She said that Trump should not fear criticism for firing another adviser:

One source claims that Trump’s political advisers are afraid of how it will look if he fires another national security adviser. But that makes no sense. Trump is being attacked for everything and nothing. Who cares if he gets attacked for doing something that will actually help him to succeed in office? Why should fear of media criticism play a role here or anywhere for this president and this administration?

Glick added, wryly: “Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?”

Read Glick’s full post here.

UTT Throwback Thursday: Warnings of US Government Penetration Coming to Fruition

August 3, 2017

UTT Throwback Thursday: Warnings of US Government Penetration Coming to Fruition, Understanding the Threat, April 3, 2017

(Please see also, McMaster, On ‘Warpath,’ Purges Key Trump Allies From White House NSC. — DM)

If Americans allow men like Herbert McMaster to continue to push a counter-factual narrative of the threat we face and keep those who understand the threat out of our national security apparatus, America will not have a functional national security apparatus inside the federal government for decades to come.

**************************

In 2009, Congresswoman Sue Myrick (Charlotte, NC) held a press conference with other members of Congress detailing the counterintelligence dangers of Islamic jihadi penetration in our government.  In the press conference Myrick highlighted the information contained in the book Muslim Mafia, much of which resulted from the efforts of UTT’s Vice President Chris Gaubatz, who went undercover inside the U.S. Hamas group CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations).

Gaubatz pulled over 12,000 documents out of CAIR’s headquarters and recorded over 300 hours of covert audio/video, revealing CAIR is involved in fraud, sedition, terrorism, and counterintelligence activities against the United States.

UTT’s Chris Gaubatz with US MB/Hamas Leader Nihad Awad

[To get your copy of Muslim Mafia click HERE]

The Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB)  World Underground Movement Plan reveals a significant part of their plan is to “Establish a shadow government (secret) within the government.”  Prior to seizing power in the United States, the purpose of the shadow government is to influence decision-making and gather intelligence.  Numerous declassified FBI documents dating back to the early 1980’s detail the Muslim Brotherhood’s subversive activities in the United States.

One such document dated 1988 confirms the MB’s intentions to infiltrate the government in order to overthrow it:

“Source advised that the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) is a secret Muslim organization that has unlimited funds and is extremely well-organized in the United States…They have also claimed success in infiltrating the United States government…in Phase I of the Islamic revolution…their organization needs to peacefully get inside the United States government and also American Universities.  Source noted that the ultimate goal of the Islamic revolution is the overthrow of all non-Islamic governments and that violence is a tool and a part of the Islamic revolution.”

Current events reveal the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Movement is following its plan and has several recent successes.

The IT scandal perpetrated against members of Congress by muslim Imran Awan (and family) – recently arrested while trying to flee the country – is much more than a “bank fraud” case.  It is a counterintelligence operation with notable success, including almost $300,000 being wired to Pakistan and access to numerous cyber accounts of Members of Congress.

Imran Awan (right) with former President Bill Clinton

The Department of Defense reported this week that its MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest) program to accelerate U.S. citizenship for foreign-born individuals has military leaders concerned about “foreign infiltration.”

More significantly, it was reported by The Atlantic on August 2nd that the National Security Advisor to the President, Herbert McMaster, fired Richard Higgins a few weeks ago.

This particular firing is significant because Richard Higgins ran the Pentagon’s Combatting Terrorism and Technical Support Office before joining the President’s National Security team.  From UTT’s perspective, Higgins was the most knowledgeable and strategically savvy man inside the national security apparatus with regards to the Islamic Movement and its marriage to the hard-left Marxist Movement.

Higgins’ firing is another victory for our enemies, and they know it.

Listen to Mr. Higgins measured and detailed explanation of the ideological threat from July 2016 HERE.

Readers should know that after the election of President Trump, UTT worked with a couple allies and brought to light that one of the two men vetting national security positions for the administration was a self-professed Christian conservative who was sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and was excluding all individuals who had an understanding of the Islamic threat from getting hired.

Herbert McMaster has made it clear he does not understand the threat from the Islamic Movement.  One of his many comments about Islamic jihadis includes:  “Groups like ISIL who use this irreligious ideology…this perverted interpretation of religion to justify violence, they depend on ignorance.”

The enemy definitely depends on ignorance for its successes.

Mr. McMaster’s counter-factual understanding of Islam and jihad are the intentional outcome of the Islamic Movement’s hostile information campaign which ensures our leaders and security professionals never get a reality/fact-based understanding of the Islamic threat because our leaders rely on our enemies – Muslim Brotherhood advisors – to tell us how to fight this war.

Our enemy controls the narrative.

This is also why federal/state/local law enforcement are shocked by the information they receive in UTT’s training programs.  FBI JTTF agents/officers and local police are unaware of the MB’s extensive jihadi network in he U.S. and how active the network is in communities all across America, and how much the MB has penetrated our society, especially the federal government.

UTT has to go to battle with the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, local/national media, and others nearly every time we conduct training.

This is how the Red-Green Axis (Marxists working together with jihadis) works to control the message. Terrorist groups like CAIR work with local media, the ACLU, the SPLC and others to shut down all discussion of threats related to Islam.

The warnings given to America by Congresswoman Sue Myrick eight years ago were in line with our enemy’s stated plan and supported by evidence collected by Chris Gaubatz inside the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas front group CAIR.

Now we see it all coming to fruition.

This begs the question:  Why is Herbert McMaster, the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, purging the National Security team of people who understand the threats (Richard Higgins and others) and ensuring others who also have a deep strategic understanding of the threats – like Stephen Coughlin – are not brought onboard?

This battle to get and keep professionals who understand the threat inside our national security apparatus is the Gettysburg of this war.

This “New Battle of Gettysburg” is a battle for a reality-based assessment of real threats from which a strategy for victory can be built versus establishment statists who refuse to identify and destroy America’s enemies.  It is a battle inside the White House and the national security sector of our government which will cripple America’s ability to fight and win this war going forward if it is lost.

We must win this battle, and it must begin with firing of Mr. McMaster.

Herbert McMaster, the National Security Advisor to President Trump

If Americans allow men like Herbert McMaster to continue to push a counter-factual narrative of the threat we face and keep those who understand the threat out of our national security apparatus, America will not have a functional national security apparatus inside the federal government for decades to come.

UTT continues to clearly articulate this war – because it is an insurgency – will be won or lost at the local level.  However, victory will come more swiftly if the federal government is also focused on identifying and defeating the enemy.

The Military Options for North Korea

August 3, 2017

North Korea test-launched on Friday its first ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting America’s East Coast. It thereby proved the failure of 25 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy. A single-minded rogue state can pocket diplomatic concessions

Source: The Military Options for North Korea

North Korea test-launched on Friday its first ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting America’s East Coast. It thereby proved the failure of 25 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy. A single-minded rogue state can pocket diplomatic concessions and withstand sustained economic sanctions to build deliverable nuclear weapons. It is past time for Washington to bury this ineffective “carrots and sticks” approach.

America’s policy makers, especially those who still support the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, should take careful note. If Tehran’s long collusion with Pyongyang on ballistic missiles is even partly mirrored in the nuclear field, the Iranian threat is nearly as imminent as North Korea’s. Whatever the extent of their collaboration thus far, Iran could undoubtedly use its now-unfrozen assets and cash from oil-investment deals to buy nuclear hardware from North Korea, one of the world’s poorest nations.

One lesson from Pyongyang’s steady nuclear ascent is to avoid making the same mistake with other proliferators, who are carefully studying its successes. Statecraft should mean grasping the implications of incipient threats and resolving them before they become manifest. With North Korea and Iran, the U.S. has effectively done the opposite. Proliferators happily exploit America’s weakness and its short attention span. They exploit negotiations to gain the most precious asset: time to resolve the complex scientific and technological hurdles to making deliverable nuclear weapons.

Now that North Korea possesses them, the U.S. has few realistic options. More talks and sanctions will fail as they have for 25 years. I have argued previously that the only durable diplomatic solution is to persuade China that reunifying the two Koreas is in its national interest as well as America’s, thus ending the nuclear threat by ending the bizarre North Korean regime. Although the negotiations would be arduous and should have commenced years ago, American determination could still yield results.

Absent a successful diplomatic play, what’s left is unpalatable military options. But many say, even while admitting America’s vulnerability to North Korean missiles, that using force to neutralize the threat would be too dangerous. The only option, this argument goes, is to accept a nuclear North Korea and attempt to contain and deter it.

The people saying this are largely the same ones who argued that “carrots and sticks” would prevent Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons. They are prepared to leave Americans as nuclear hostages of the Kim family dictatorship. This is unacceptable. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has it right. “What’s unimaginable to me,” he said last month at the Aspen Security Forum, “is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver.” So what are the military options, knowing that the U.S. must plan for the worst?

First, Washington could pre-emptively strike at Pyongyang’s known nuclear facilities, ballistic-missile factories and launch sites, and submarine bases. There are innumerable variations, starting at the low end with sabotage, cyberattacks and general disruption. The high end could involve using air- and sea-based power to eliminate the entire program as American analysts understand it.

Second, the U.S. could wait until a missile is poised for launch toward America, and then destroy it. This would provide more time but at the cost of increased risk. Intelligence is never perfect. A North Korean missile could be in flight to a city near you before the military can respond.

Third, the U.S. could use airstrikes or special forces to decapitate North Korea’s national command authority, sowing chaos, and then sweep in on the ground from South Korea to seize Pyongyang, nuclear assets, key military sites and other territory.

All these scenarios pose dangers for South Korea, especially civilians in Seoul, which is within the range of North Korean artillery near the Demilitarized Zone. Any military attack must therefore neutralize as much of the North’s retaliatory capability as possible together with the larger strike. The U.S. should obviously seek South Korea’s agreement (and Japan’s) before using force, but no foreign government, even a close ally, can veto an action to protect Americans from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries fire missiles into the East Sea during a South Korea-U.S. joint missile drill aimed to counter North Korea’s ICBM test on July 29, 2017. (Photo by South Korean Defense Ministry)

China clearly has enormous interests at stake, not least its fear that masses of North Korean refugees will flow across the Yalu and Tumen rivers into its territory. Neither the U.S. nor China wants conflict between their respective forces, so immediate consultations with Beijing would be imperative once military action began. Both considerations underline why urgent diplomacy with China now to press the benefits of peaceful reunification is vital.

The Pentagon’s military planners already should be poring through the operational aspects of a potential military strike. But politicians and policy makers also ought to begin debating the military options—for North Korea and beyond, since similar issues will arise regarding Iran and other nuclear proliferators.

For decades the U.S. has opposed attempts by any state without nuclear weapons to develop them. Washington has consistently failed to achieve that objective, and the world has become increasingly nuclearized. Stopping North Korea and Iran may be the last chance to act before nuclear weapons become a global commonplace.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.

This article first appeared in The Wall Street Journal and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

 

McMaster, On ‘Warpath,’ Purges Key Trump Allies From White House NSC

August 3, 2017

BY:
August 3, 2017 9:10 am

McMaster has list of senior officials he plans to fire

Source: McMaster, On ‘Warpath,’ Purges Key Trump Allies From White House NSC

An ongoing staffing purge being conducted by White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has thrown the West Wing into chaos, according to more than half a dozen Trump administration insiders who told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster has been targeting long-time Trump loyalists who were clashing with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration.

The purge is part of a larger drama unfolding inside the administration, between veteran Trump staffers committed to the president’s campaign vision of “draining the swamp”‘ in Washington and entrenched bureaucracies seeking to maintain control over policy decision-making, according to these sources, who said that many of these actions against his supporters are being conducted without Trump’s knowledge.

The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama’s landmark Iran deal, the controversial détente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord, according to these sources.

More purges are said to be on the way, according to multiple insiders who described a list of at least four other senior NSC officials McMaster intends to target. Other sources confirmed the likelihood of more purges, but disputed some details on that list.

“McMaster basically has this list and over the next two weeks he’s going to phase out” more senior officials loyal to Trump, said one administration insider intimately familiar with the upheaval occurring at the White House National Security Council. “They’re taking out people who were chosen to best implement the president’s policy that he articulated during the campaign.”

The latest victim of this purge is Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a senior NSC official originally hired by ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House acknowledged in a statement late Wednesday evening on Cohen-Watnick’s departure that McMaster viewed him as in conflict with his vision for the NSC.

A second senior official, Rich Higgins, who worked in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was fired last month. The president was not informed of the move until after Higgins was fired, according to one source who is in regular contact with senior NSC figures.

Published reports described Higgins’ firing as a “lasting victory” for McMaster over longtime Trump officials who helped get the president into office.

A third senior official, then-NSC senior Middle East director Derek Harvey, was removed from his post roughly a week ago. He had also been a Flynn hire and a vocal opponent of the Iran deal.

Victoria Coates, another Flynn hire who served as a senior NSC member up until this week, has been reassigned to the administration’s Middle East peace team.

“McMaster’s agenda is different than the president’s,” said one administration source with knowledge of the situation.

The moves have sparked outrage inside and outside of the administration, with multiple sources telling the Free Beacon that Trump is being pushed in a direction antithetical to the campaign promises that brought him into office.

One of the central flashpoints in this internal battle has been Iran and the future of the nuclear accord, multiple sources independently confirmed to the Free Beacon.

NSC officials such as Cohen-Watnick, Harvey, and others had been making the case that Trump should scrap the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal over increasingly aggressive Iranian ballistic missile activity and mounting evidence Tehran is breaching the accord. McMaster, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top Obama-era State Department officials who worked on the deal, have aggressively urged maintaining it.

“That’s why they took him out,” explained one source, referring to Harvey, who is said to have constructed a comprehensive plan on how to scrap the nuclear deal.

Another source described the Trump administration’s Iran policy as “completely gutted” in the aftermath of these firings.

“These were people who fought for Trump’s election since he was nominated,” said one of the multiple sources in close contact with the NSC. “Many of these people were in Trump Tower during the period between the election and inauguration. These are people who gave up everything to support him against Hillary [Clinton], and these are the people being purged by McMaster.”

“This is not how you treat people who do that,” the source said.

Another point of contention at the NSC was a Wednesday story by the Atlantic‘s Rosie Gray detailing the firing of Higgins.

The story described a memo written by Higgins outlining how the Trump administration should wrest control of policy-making from career staffers hostile to Trump. McMaster is said to have gone on the “warpath” over the disclosure of that memo, according to one source.

Another source told the Free Beacon McMaster looked for evidence in the NSC’s email system to determine the name of the memo’s author “and then fired him.”

One veteran GOP foreign policy hand who has been in constant contact with the administration since its transition to the White House told the Free Beacon that McMaster has sought to downplay outstanding issues with Obama-era holdovers believed to be undermining the administration.

“One of the first things H.R. McMaster did when he took over the NSC was order all the staffers who came in with Trump to stop talking about Obama ‘holdovers.’ It was an actual, literal, explicit instruction,” the source said. “He didn’t want anyone pointing out how Obama loyalists were still in place, undermining President Trump, and leaking against him.”

These loyalists are said to include many Obama holdovers, including key NSC personnel who work directly for senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes, who has become a central suspect in the leaks of damaging classified information to the press.

The Republican expert confirmed that more firings are likely on the way.

“After he was done protecting the entrenched bureaucracy McMaster went on offense, which is what you’re seeing now,” the source said. “He’s purging the people who came up with Trump and are genuinely loyal to him.”