Archive for the ‘National Security Council’ category

Good Riddance

February 27, 2017

Good Riddance, Front Page MagazineRobert Spencer, February 27, 2017

hijabmodel

The establishment media has found a new heroine: Rumana Ahmed, a hijab-wearing Muslim woman who worked at the National Security Council during the Obama administration and for eight days into the Trump administration, at which point she quit. 

Ahmed explained: “I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim.” That’s enough to send the media into self-righteous ululations of anti-Trump fury, but as always, there is more to this story than what the media is telling you, and a good deal about Rumana Ahmed that they would prefer you did not know.

In her piece in The Atlantic explaining why she left the Trump NSC (and it is important to note that she wasn’t fired by her supposedly “Islamophobic” new bosses; she quit), Ahmed sounds themes of post-9/11 Muslim victimhood that have become familiar tropes among Leftists: after recounting her idyllic life “living the American dream,” she says: “After 9/11, everything would change. On top of my shock, horror, and heartbreak, I had to deal with the fear some kids suddenly felt towards me. I was glared at, cursed at, and spat at in public and in school. People called me a ‘terrorist’ and told me, ‘go back to your country.’”

Not surprisingly, Ahmed made no mention of the fact that this Muslim victimhood narrative has been sullied, if not vitiated entirely, by the high number of “anti-Muslim hate crimes” that turn out to have been faked by Muslims. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques and even murders: a New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”

Ahmed blamed yet another murder on “Islamophobia”: “A harsher world began to reemerge in 2015,” she wrote in The Atlantic. “In February, three young American Muslim students were killed in their Chapel Hill home by an Islamophobe. Both the media and administration were slow to address the attack, as if the dead had to be vetted before they could be mourned. It was emotionally devastating.”

In reality, there is no evidence that the Chapel Hill murders were committed by an “Islamophobe.” U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand declared the day after the murders: “The events of yesterday are not part of a targeting campaign against Muslims in North Carolina.” Rand said that there was “no information this is part of an organized event against Muslims.” Nor has any emerged since then, although that fact has not stopped Islamic advocacy groups from routinely treating these murders as evidence of a wave of anti-Muslim hatred in the U.S. Ruhana Ahmed in The Atlantic abets this cynical and disingenuous agenda.

In the same vein, Ahmed claims: “When Trump first called for a Muslim ban, reports of hate crimes against Muslims spiked.” In reality, as MRC Newsbusters noted in late November, “A number of these incidents have been debunked already, though the scant details on the majority of stories would be near impossible to disprove (or prove!).”

Ahmed is not only dishonest; she’s connected. Before she went to work for the Obama administration, she was an officer of George Mason University’s Muslim Students Association (MSA). According to Discover the Networks, the “was established mainly by members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in January 1963 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Nyack College theologian Larry A. Poston writes that ‘many of the founding members of this agency [MSA] were members of, or had connections to,’ the Muslim Brotherhood or Jamaat-i-Islami.” The MSA is “a radical political force and a key lobbying organization for the Wahhabi sect of Islam, telling students that America is an imperialist power and Israel an oppressor nation. MSA speakers routinely spew anti-Semitic libels and justify the genocide against the Jews which is promoted by Islamic terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and by the government of Iran.”

What’s more, “a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood internal document — titled ‘An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America’ — which named MSA as one of the Brotherhood’s 29 likeminded ‘organizations of our friends’ that shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These ‘friends’ were identified by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims ‘that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.’”

It is hard to imagine how someone who had served as an officer in an organization dedicated to “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within” would so quickly be appointed to the National Security Council, but that was Barack Obama’s America. The Trump administration is indeed setting a strikingly different tone, one that Rumana Ahmed finds unacceptable. Her dissatisfaction and departure from the NSC are good reason for every patriotic American to applaud.

Newly Installed NSA McMaster Reassures National Security Staff: No Witch Hunts Coming

February 24, 2017

Newly Installed NSA McMaster Reassures National Security Staff: No Witch Hunts Coming, Washington Free Beacon, February 24, 2017

Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster listens as President Donald Trump makes the announcement at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Monday, Feb. 20, 2017. McMaster will be the new national security adviser. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster listens as President Donald Trump makes the announcement at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Monday, Feb. 20, 2017. McMaster will be the new national security adviser. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

To help with this effort, McMaster recommended several books meant to help current White House officials understand his own foreign policy vision.

One senior White House official who spoke to the Free Beacon described the reading list as pleasantly surprising and a vast departure from the former Obama administration’s own national security vision.

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Incoming White House National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster sought to reassure senior Trump administration officials during his first “all hands” staff meeting Thursday, according to those who attended the get together and told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster informed staffers he does not intend to pursue a major shakeup of President Donald Trump’s national security team.

McMaster, who replaced Michael Flynn following his resignation last week, plans to navigate a vast departure from the Obama administration’s foreign policy vision, according to senior White House officials who described the meeting as “reassuring.” McMaster emphasized that he will not dismantle the team that Flynn had built.

As part of his discussion with White House national security staff, McMaster recommended a comprehensive reading list that included President Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal,” and several other tomes by leading historians about how to get the upper hand on America’s enemies. White House staff are said to have been mostly “thrilled” when hearing about the book list.

Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about McMaster’s vision, as laid out in the Thursday meeting, expressed optimism about his appointment and pushed back on what they described as false media narratives centered around White House disarray following Flynn’s departure.

“It’s no secret we’ve had a few more all-hands meetings than we intended in our first month—but General McMaster used this event to both reassure the NSC staff and to give us the tools to continue the mission,” said one senior White House National Security Council official who requested anonymity while discussing internal White House meetings.

McMaster explicitly told White House officials that he does not aim to dismantle Trump’s foreign policy team or push out those perceived as still loyal to Flynn. These comments run counter to a recent New York Times report claiming that McMaster is pursuing a massive reorganization of the president’s national security team.

“He made it clear he wasn’t there to grind a political axe or engage in a witch hunt,” the senior White House official said. “He was there to provide leadership, including direction on how to think about the task in front of us.”

To help with this effort, McMaster recommended several books meant to help current White House officials understand his own foreign policy vision.

One senior White House official who spoke to the Free Beacon described the reading list as pleasantly surprising and a vast departure from the former Obama administration’s own national security vision.

In addition to Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” McMaster recommended reading his own book, “Dereliction of Duty,” which catalogues the mistakes that led the United States into a quagmire in Vietnam.

He also requested that White House staffers read Peter Rodman’s “Presidential Command,” which McMaster reportedly referred to as the “gold standard” in foreign policy history. Rodman was an top official in the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both Bush administrations.

Senior White House staff are said to have found the mention of the book “very reassuring.”

“It’s certainly encouraging to see General McMaster highlighting his legacy,” one source said.

McMaster went on to further recommend two books by Zachary Shore, a historian and international conflict expert who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School.

One Shore book, “Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions,” was described as “a cautionary tale for the staff” at the White House. The other, “A Sense of the Enemy,” examines methods to overtake rival forces.

Lastly, McMaster recommended staff read an essay by Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan titled, “The Rhyme of History,” which tackles lessons from World War I.

Senior White House officials who took part in the meeting described the reading list as encouraging and part of an effort to restore conservative principals focused primarily on defending the U.S.’s best interests.

The mention of MacMillan’s essay in particular “suggests General McMaster does not consider the 21st century a sort of post-historical bubble, but rather that there is a great deal to be learned from history as we chart our path forward,” said one official who described McMaster as advocating a wholesale reversal from the Obama administration’s vision.

Several historians currently serve on the White House’s national security team, including Col. Derek Harvey, a former advisor to Gen. David Petraeus; Michael Anton, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and Victoria Coates, a former top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and art historian.

EXCLUSIVE: How The Nation’s Spooks Played The Game ‘Kill Mike Flynn’

February 16, 2017

EXCLUSIVE: How The Nation’s Spooks Played The Game ‘Kill Mike Flynn’, Daily CallerRichard Pollock, February 15, 2017

(Please see also, The CIA’s affront to Trump. — DM)

National Security Advisor Gen. Michael T. Flynn (ret.) — who resigned Monday — was the victim of a “hit job” launched by intelligence operatives, Obama government holdovers and former Obama national security officials, according to former intelligence officials who spoke with The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

The talk within the tight-knit community of retired intelligence officers was that Flynn’s sacking was a result of intelligence insiders at the CIA, NSA and National Security Council using a sophisticated “disinformation campaign” to create a crisis atmosphere. The former intel officers say the tactics hurled against Flynn over the last few months were the type of high profile hard-ball accusations previously reserved for top figures in enemy states, not for White House officials.

“This was a hit job,” charged retired Col. James Williamson, a 32-year Special Forces veteran who coordinated his operations with the intelligence community.

Noting the Obama administration first tried to silence Flynn in 2014 when the former president fired him as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Williamson called Monday’s resignation, “stage Two of ‘Kill Mike Flynn.”

Former intelligence officials who understand spy craft say Flynn’s resignation had everything to do with a “disinformation campaign” and little to do with the December phone conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

They charge officials from America’s top spy counsels leaked classified government intercepts of Flynn and President Trump’s conversations with world leaders and had “cutouts” — friendly civilians not associated with the agency — to distribute them to reporters in a coordinated fashion.

The issue of leaks was a prime topic for Trump when he tweeted Wednesday, “Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Retired Col. James Waurishuk, who spent three decades in top military intelligence posts and served at the National Security Council, said in an interview with TheDCNF. “We’ve never seen to the extent that those in the intelligence community are using intelligence apparatus and tools to be used politically against an administration official,” he said.

“The knives are out,” said Frederick Rustman, who retired after 24 years from the CIA’s Clandestine Service and was a member of its elite Senior Intelligence Service.

The intelligence community’s sprawling bureaucracy is organizing to topple the Trump presidency, Rustman charged in an interview with TheDCNF.

“I would not be surprised if Trump did not finish four years because of the vendetta they have out for him,” he said, calling the move on Flynn just a “mini-vendetta.”

Williamson told TheDCNF in an interview, “I truly believe it’s orchestrated and it’s part of an overall strategy. The objective is to piece-by-piece, dismantle the Trump administration, to discredit Trump.  This is part of an overarching plan.”

D.W. Wilber, who has over 30 years of experience in security and counterterrorism with the CIA and the Defense Department agrees.

“It appears to me there has been a concerted effort to try to discredit not only General Flynn, but obviously, the entire Trump administration through him.  He just happened to be the first scalp,” Wilber told TheDCNF in an interview.

Williamson agreed, telling theDCNF, “There are individuals who are well versed in information operations — we used to call that propaganda.  They know how to do it.  It’s deliberately orchestrated.”

Retired Marine Col. Bill Cowan, who often interacted with the intelligence operatives in combat zones, believes Mike Pompeo, Trump’s new CIA Director, must clean house. Otherwise, the administration will encounter four years of attacks.

“The director, Pompeo, if he doesn’t get a hold of the agency and its personnel, he can expect four years of this: clandestine, undercover disinformation, misinformation, psychological information to undermine this administration and this president,” he told TheDCNF.

Charles Goslin, a 27-year old former CIA operations officer also believes that many insubordinate intelligence staff are working within the National Security Council within the White House.

“With the NSC, I think that’s where the leaks are coming from on calls to foreign leaders. That’s where they undermined Flynn to the point where he got hammered,” Goslin told TheDCNF in an interview.

Goslin noted, “When Trump came in, even though they were able to staff key NSC positions, for the most part it’s still staffed by previous administration holdovers and bureaucratic appointees.”

“I don’t think they have any loyalty to the current administration,” the former CIA operations officer said, adding, “the NSC is going to be a hard one to fix.”

All of the former intelligence officials say the rage against Flynn dated back to when the decorated general headed up the DIA.  There he garnered a reputation to balk at the “politicization of military intelligence” in order to conform with President Obama’s world views.

Flynn refused to downplay the threat posed by the Islamic State and other radical Islamic groups throughout his two-year reign at the DIA. He was fired after offering congressional testimony that was at odds with the Obama administration’s posture on the Islamic threat.

Waurishuk, who interacted with Flynn as deputy director of the Special Operations Command and in other security matters, said Flynn was a “straight shooter” who always demanded accurate threat assessments and never bent to continue pressures of political correctness.

Waurishuk worked in military intelligence in the Obama administration. He told TheDCNF Obama officials “know Flynn and they hate Flynn because he would call them out.  So, this was their opportunity to wage what is a personal vendetta in some respects.”

California Republican Rep. Devon Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has promised to hold hearings on the leaking of classified information to reporters. The date has yet to be set for the hearings.

The CIA’s affront to Trump

February 16, 2017

The CIA’s affront to Trump, Washington Times, Angelo M. Codevilla, February 16, 2017

(It is absurd for the CIA to have control over whom President Trump can appoint to the National Security Council by refusing — for no stated or apparent reason — to grant the required security clearance. — DM)

ciatrumpstrumpCIA Bullies Trump Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The CIA has denied a security clearance to Trump National Security Council (NSC) official Robin Townley without any allegation, much less evidence of disloyalty to the United States. Quite simply, it is because the CIA disapproves of Mr. Townley’s attitude toward the agency, and this is unprecedented. President Trump appointed Mr. Townley to coordinate Africa policy at the NSC. The CIA did not want to deal with him. Hence, it used the power to grant security clearances to tell the president to choose someone acceptable to the agency, though not so much to him. This opens a larger issue: Since no one can take part in the formulation or execution of foreign or defense policy without a high-level security clearance, vetoing the president’s people by denying them clearances trumps the president.

Hence, if Mr. Trump does not fire forthwith the persons who thus took for themselves the prerogative that the American people had entrusted to him at the ballot box, chances are 100 percent that they will use that prerogative ever more frequently with regard to anyone else whom they regard as standing in the way of their preferred policies, as a threat to their reputation, or simply as partisan opponents. If Mr. Trump lets this happen, he will have undermined nothing less than the self-evident heart of the Constitution’s Article II: The president is the executive branch. All of its employees draw their powers from him and answer to him, not the other way around.

Using security clearances for parochial purposes — usually petty ones — while neglecting security, never mind counterintelligence, is an old story at the CIA which I got to know too well during eight years overseeing the agency as the designee of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s budget chairman. Because I did my quality control job vigorously, and because I placed on the budget cut list some of the many outside contracts that seemed corrupt, the agency made repeated attempts to withdraw my top-level, cross-cutting security clearances. After I left the Senate staff for Stanford, when the Naval Postgraduate School asked me to teach a highly classified course on signals intelligence, the school’s security office asked the CIA for my clearances. The bureaucrats there said they had never heard of me. I had to call Director of Central Intelligence Bill Casey, who ended up phoning them in personally to a startled Navy chief.

The CIA uses pretense about security to insulate itself from criticism, to protect its own, and to intrude into policymaking. Security against foreign intelligence ranks low in its priorities. For near a decade, its bureaucrats refused to look into obvious evidence that their own Aldrich Ames had sold out America’s entire agent network in the Soviet Union. Moreover, according to its inspector general, they continued to pass reports from that network to the president because they happened to agree with the direction in which these KGB-produced reports were pushing U.S. policy. The CIA also uses secrecy to avoid responsibility. It crafts the conclusions of its reports specifically to be leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post, while making sure that the thin or nonexistent facts behind those conclusions never see the light of day.

The CIA’s denial of a clearance to a presidential appointee minus good cause, however, breaks new ground and shows truly revolutionary boldness. Traditionally, bureaucrats have used sticks and carrots to convince political appointees to play along lest they suffer unpleasantness. Thus, presidents have ended up having to choose between suffering appointees who have “gone native” or replacing them. Now, the CIA’s denial of Mr. Townley’s clearance removes all subtlety by demanding that Mr. Trump appoint only “natives.” If Mr. Trump indulges that demand for self-emasculation, the message will go out to all agencies: They need pay no attention to what political appointees tell them, and they need fear no retribution for this or for pressuring appointees in any way they want. The message to the people who Mr. Trump has appointed or who are considering working for Mr. Trump is just as clear: You have no choice but to make yourself acceptable to the bureaucrats because, if you don’t, they will hurt you and the president will not help you. This cannot help but skew the pool of potential members of the Trump administration.

We cannot know nor does it matter why Donald Trump seems to be deferring to bureaucrats who have gone out of their way to delegitimize him. But we can be certain about the kind of dynamic engendered by deference in the face of assaults.

Special Report | Out Like Flynn

February 15, 2017

Special Report | Out Like Flynn, American SpectatorScott Mckay, February 15, 2017

(Apparently, General Flynn’s knowledge of and access to Obama’s secret agreements with Iran were a major reason why the “deep state” wanted him out. No longer a member of the National Security Council, he likely lacks access. Is there any reason he can’t tell selected members of the Council what and where they are? — DM)

outlikeflynn

Which gives rise to the mistake which ultimately cost him his job — pressed about the conversation, Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence that he and Kislyak did not discuss the lifting of Obama administration sanctions against Russia, which was apparently true. What Flynn had discussed, per an interview he did with the Daily Caller before he was forced out, was the status of the 35 Russian diplomats Obama had expelled from the country. He contends Kislyak raised the issue and was told it would be reviewed after the inauguration — but he made no promises to the Russian.

The expulsions were considered part of the sanctions, and therefore Flynn’s representation to Pence would go down as inaccurate — and the resulting media scandal following Pence’s reliance on Flynn’s statements to pass the adviser’s contention on in a TV interview ultimately made Flynn too hot to handle.

There should be no holdovers from the Obama administration left in the federal government beyond what the law forces on the president.

Which includes the CIA, NSA, and other agencies clearly infested with Harkonnens seeking to impose the same fate on Trump and his administration which befell Duke Leto Atreides.

All new administrations, particularly those taking over from predecessors in the opposite party, will struggle to find loyal servants within the bowels of the federal government. But no administration has politicized the bureaucracy and the intelligence community the way Obama did, and the government has never been so corrupted as it is now. The political assassination of Mike Flynn proves that, and Flynn will certainly not be the last. This administration is in a death struggle with the deep state, and only one will survive.

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If there is truth to the stories about the intelligence community’s campaign to force the resignation of Trump’s national security advisor, his should be the first of countless heads to roll.

“House Atreides took control of Arrakis 63 standard days into the year 10,191. It was known that the Harkonnens, the former rulers of Arrakis, would leave many suicide troops behind. Atreides patrols were doubled.”

— From the 1984 David Lynch movie Dune, as adapted from the Fran Herbert novel.

You’ve got to read, if you haven’t yet, the piece by Adam Kredo in the Washington Free Beacon about the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Michael Flynn on Monday.

Kredo weaves together the statements of several confidential sources to create an alarming tapestry that views not unlike the classic 1980s sci-fi film referenced above — it seems reasonably clear that leftovers from the Obama administration are actively sabotaging the new president.

A quick excerpt or two…

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Kredo’s piece isn’t the only one pointing to Iran as the real enemy of interest here rather than Russia. It’s worth watching Obama’s fundraising for his presidential library and other “philanthropic” activities with interest in the identities of his benefactors.

And there’s more…

“It’s actually Ben Rhodes, NIAC, and the Iranian mullahs who are celebrating today,” said one veteran foreign policy insider who is close to Flynn and the White House. “They know that the number one target is Iran… [and] they all knew their little sacred agreement with Iran was going to go off the books. So they got rid of Flynn before any of the [secret] agreements even surfaced.”

Flynn had been preparing to publicize many of the details about the nuclear deal that had been intentionally hidden by the Obama administration as part of its effort to garner support for the deal, these sources said.

Flynn is now “gone before anybody can see what happened” with these secret agreements, said the second insider close to Flynn and the White House.

Sources in and out of the White House are concerned that the campaign against Flynn will be extended to other prominent figures in the Trump administration.

Read the whole thing. It’s well worth your time.

But let’s understand what actually happened here. Yes, Mike Flynn had a conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29 regarding American policy toward that country. Yes, there is an ancient and little-known piece of legislation, the Logan Act, which makes it illegal for private citizens to conduct foreign policy, and yes, that law was put forth to justify accusations Flynn had committed a crime in his conversation with Kislyak.

But as a national security advisor designate it’s hardly realistic to have considered Flynn a private citizen, and he wasn’t going to be charged with anything for that conversation. Which gives rise to the mistake which ultimately cost him his job — pressed about the conversation, Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence that he and Kislyak did not discuss the lifting of Obama administration sanctions against Russia, which was apparently true. What Flynn had discussed, per an interview he did with the Daily Caller before he was forced out, was the status of the 35 Russian diplomats Obama had expelled from the country. He contends Kislyak raised the issue and was told it would be reviewed after the inauguration — but he made no promises to the Russian.

The expulsions were considered part of the sanctions, and therefore Flynn’s representation to Pence would go down as inaccurate — and the resulting media scandal following Pence’s reliance on Flynn’s statements to pass the adviser’s contention on in a TV interview ultimately made Flynn too hot to handle.

But this goes far beyond the Beltway scandal machine which is now running at top gear after largely idling for the past eight years spitting out its first Trump administration victim. What blew Flynn out of the water were leaks from the intelligence community — his conversation with Kislyak was recorded by the FBI, pursuant to a FISA warrant which had to come from the highest levels, possibly high enough to have reached Obama himself, and then a transcript was provided to the media in order to refute Flynn’s contention he hadn’t discussed the sanctions.

Mike Walsh called this troubling pattern a “rolling coup attempt, organized by elements of the intelligence community, particularly CIA and NSA, abetted by Obama-era holdovers in the understaffed Justice Department (Sally Yates, take a bow) and the lickspittles of the leftist media, all of whom have signed on with the ‘Resistance’ in order to overturn the results of the November election.”

He’s not wrong. He goes further and is also not wrong…

Welcome to the Deep State, the democracy-sapping embeds at the heart of our democracy who have not taken the expulsion of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party lightly. They realize that the Trump administration poses a mortal threat to their hegemony, and so have enlisted an army of Democrats, some Republicans, the “neverTrumpumpkin” conservative die-hards, leftist thugs, Black Lives Matter and anybody else they can blackmail, browbeat or enlist. They mean business.

What to do if you’re Trump? Fight.

It’s not enough to send Sean Spicer out to complain about the leaks, or to back his press conference statements up with early-morning tweets.

He must fight.

Trump clearly has not taken the sound advice of any executive engaged in a hostile takeover of a large organization — which is to fire everyone. There should be no holdovers from the Obama administration left in the federal government beyond what the law forces on the president.

Which includes the CIA, NSA, and other agencies clearly infested with Harkonnens seeking to impose the same fate on Trump and his administration which befell Duke Leto Atreides.

Trump went to Langley and spoke about inaugural crowds, and received warm applause from some of the same people concocting schemes to destroy his presidency. That was a mistake, and it must be recognized as such. Trump is late in drumming Obama’s people out of the government, and those people are now a cancer on his administration. He must clean out the intelligence community and the rest of the deep state, and he must drain the swamp in Washington. And he’s in a race against time in doing so.

All new administrations, particularly those taking over from predecessors in the opposite party, will struggle to find loyal servants within the bowels of the federal government. But no administration has politicized the bureaucracy and the intelligence community the way Obama did, and the government has never been so corrupted as it is now. The political assassination of Mike Flynn proves that, and Flynn will certainly not be the last. This administration is in a death struggle with the deep state, and only one will survive.

House Intelligence Committee Chair: Leakers of Flynn Call ‘Belong in Jail’

February 15, 2017

House Intelligence Committee Chair: Leakers of Flynn Call ‘Belong in Jail’, Breitbart, Kristina Wong, February 14, 2017

flynnflies

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tuesday that those who leaked the contents of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls “belong in jail.”

“That’s nine leakers that all belong in jail,” Nunes said. “Those nine people broke the law, clearly, by leaking classified information to anybody.”

Flynn resigned late Monday night, after a Washington Post report on Feb. 9 said he had privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with a Russian ambassador during phone calls in December — despite assertions by Trump officials, including the vice president, that he had never done so.

The Post’s report cited nine anonymous current and former officials “who were in senior positions at multiple agencies” who “had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats.”

“All of those officials said Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit,” the report said.

Nunes said he also wanted to know how U.S. intelligence agencies were wiretapping Flynn’s calls, which he said may also have been illegal.

The chairman said there are only two ways that intelligence agencies can listen in on an American’s phone call — after obtaining a warrant, or inadvertently, such as in the case of Flynn speaking with a foreign official being spied on, which the report suggests was the case.

Nunes said “it’s pretty clear” that there was no warrant.

“It’s pretty clear that’s not the case,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the FBI didn’t have a warrant on Michael Flynn … To listen to an American’s phone call you would have to go to a court, there’d be all that paperwork there. So I’m guessing that doesn’t exist.”

In case Flynn was speaking to a foreign official — Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in this case — Nunes said there should have been a process to mask Flynn’s identity.

“Unless it’s a high-level national security issue, and then someone would have to unmask the name, someone at the highest levels, they’d have to unmask that name,” Nunes said. “It’s a very high threshold to unmask an American citizen’s name, that’s a very high threshold, almost unprecedented. And if you were going to unmask it, it seems like you would immediately go get a warrant.”

“If they did that, how does all that get out to the public which is another leak of classified information,” he added. “Whoever did it, it’s illegal.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial on Tuesday also questioned whether spies listening to Flynn broke the law.

The editorial said U.S. intelligence services routinely get orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor foreign officials, but are supposed to use “minimization procedures” that don’t let them listen to the communications of an American.

“That is, they are supposed to protect the identity and speech of innocent Americans. Yet the Washington Post, which broke the story, says it spoke to multiple U.S. officials claiming to know what Mr. Flynn said on that call,” the Journal said.

“The questions someone in the White House should ask the National Security Agency is why it didn’t use minimization procedures to protect Mr. Flynn? Or did it also have a court order to listen to Mr. Flynn, and how did it justify that judicial request?” it added.

“If Mr. Flynn was under U.S. intelligence surveillance, then Mr. Trump should know why, and at this point so should the American public. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation, but the Trump White House needs to know what’s going on with Mr. Flynn and U.S. spies,” it said.

Nunes said he is seeking more information from the FBI on what happened.

“There’s nothing to investigate until I know what happened,” he said.

House Conservatives Back Investigation to Get ‘Full Understanding’ of Flynn Call

February 15, 2017

House Conservatives Back Investigation to Get ‘Full Understanding’ of Flynn Call, PJ MediaNicholas Ballasy, February 14, 2017

(Please see also Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn. — DM)

congressonflynnReps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), left, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) leave a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the Capitol on Feb. 24, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

WASHINGTON – Members of the House Freedom Caucus signaled today that they would support an investigation of retired Gen. Mike Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials.

Flynn resigned from his position as national security advisor in the Trump administration late Monday.

“We have to be careful because of commenting without the facts, but at the same time I don’t know how you get the facts without doing some investigation, so let me say that. I think there needs to be a full accounting so we understand what happened there,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said on Capitol Hill. “But I would also say from my standpoint that Gen. Flynn’s service both in uniform and out and is beyond reproach and I don’t want to question that. I’m not going to question that at all. I think maybe his actions were premature based on what I’ve heard.”

The White House has acknowledged reports that Flynn and the Russian ambassador had conversations that included discussion of sanctions before Trump took office, and that the Justice Department alerted the White House of the conversations and the potential that Flynn could be blackmailed by the Kremlin. However, Perry said Congress does not know the context of those Flynn conversations.

“I’m concerned that the heat has become hot based on the accusations without any facts to support them, but I think we do need to have a full understanding of what occurred,” he said.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) agreed with Perry’s comments.

“I would support an investigation if it’s warranted based on information from the intelligence community, and the first step would be for the intelligence committees to have that understanding with the intelligence community,” Amash said. “The rest of us in Congress wouldn’t have immediate access to the same information, so really it’s incumbent upon the intelligence community and the intelligence committees to work together so we know whether an investigation is warranted.”

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) questioned why the U.S. having a “good relationship” with Russia is being portrayed in the media as a “bad thing.”

“We need to be careful what we are saying because we don’t have all the facts, but I do think it’s incumbent upon the intelligence committees to determine what the facts are and see if there has to be further investigation,” he said. “I do find it a little bit fascinating that having a good relationship with Russia all of a sudden is a bad thing when you guys never said a peep about it when the president of the United States said that he would have more flexibility when he won re-election, when Hillary Clinton said she wanted a reset with Russia, when all these different things happened where they were trying to have better relationships with Russia.”

Labrador said the intelligence committees in the House and Senate need to examine the Flynn situation to find out exactly what happened.

“All of a sudden, having a good relationship with Russia apparently is a negative thing. But there’s no question about it in my mind that the intelligence committees need to look first, obviously in confidential meetings and others, but they need to figure out exactly what happened,” he said.

“And I think Gen. Flynn, he offered his resignation, did the right thing because the moment he misled the vice president of the United States, I think he had lost the confidence of the administration whether it was intentional of not, it was a significant enough issue where it should have been a straightforward answer,” he added.

Flynn said in his resignation that he “inadvertently briefed the vice president elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a press conference today that the obvious question about Flynn’s contact with Russian officials is, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Cummings called for an “emergency” public hearing with Flynn.

“I know he’s now resigned, but he’s not going to get off that easy. We need some answers to a whole lot of questions, but the obvious questions are what did the president know and when did he know it? Was the president aware of Flynn’s efforts? Did he support them?” he said. “Another question, why did Flynn continue to sit in on the most sensitive classified meetings until just two days ago? Ladies and gentlemen, something is wrong with that picture.”

Cummings also said he wants to see Flynn’s security clearance documents.

“I want to see them. I want to see what he put in those documents to find out if he was honest on those forms, and we need to know how much he got paid to have dinner with Putin – but that is only the beginning,” he said. “The Republicans need to join us. This is not a Democratic issue. This is not a Republican issue. It’s not an independent issue. This is an American issue for the soul of our democracy.”

National Security Council leakers worried Trump might arrest them

February 13, 2017

National Security Council leakers worried Trump might arrest them, American ThinkerEd Straker, February 13, 2017

If you’re a left-leaning member of the National Security Council and you’re unhappy with the duly elected president, what do you do?  Why, leak details of classified discussions and pending operations to the media, of course!

In a N.Y. Times article, which itself is based on NSC leaks, leakers try to portray the NSC in chaos, but in the process of attempting to do so, they reveal the scope of their disloyalty.

These are chaotic and anxious days inside the National Security Council, the traditional center of management for a president’s dealings with an uncertain world. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an “insider threat” program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks.

Now, why would NSC staffers talking with their colleagues, presumably about affairs of state, feel the need to encrypt their conversations from the man they work for?  I think the implication is clear – that these conversations are about undermining and leaking information to harm the Trump administration.

Nervous staff members recently met late at night at a bar a few blocks from the White House and talked about purging their social media accounts of any suggestion of anti-Trump sentiments.

Why would they need to do that?  Past anti-Trump sentiments are not against the law.  But leaking classified information is.  I think these leakers are trying to keep a lower profile to avoid being caught.

Last week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was exploring whether the Navy could intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen.

White House officials said that [the operation was cancelled]… because news of the impending operation leaked, a threat to security that has helped fuel the move for the insider threat program.

This is leakers in action.  But instead of writing an article about their illegality, this is only mentioned in passing, as part of the Times’ main interest in portraying the NSC as being in chaos.  What amazes me is how the Times doesn’t seem to think revealing bureaucrats leaking classified information is even a problem; the paper is are so disconnected from reality that its writers think anything, including disregarding national security laws, is justified, all in the pursuit of Trump.

[Some NSC staffers have left but] Many of those who remain, who see themselves as apolitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisanship. At an all-hands meeting about two weeks into the new administration, Ms. McFarland told the group it needed to “make America great again,” numerous staff members who were there said. New Trump appointees are carrying coffee mugs with that Trump campaign slogan into meetings with foreign counterparts, one staff member said.

Why is it partisan to have a mug featuring the slogan of the president…in his own White House?  When Obama was president, do you think staff avoided pro-Obama slogans?  I’m sure they didn’t.  These people are just appalled to be confronted with direct evidence that Trump is their president.  It shows that they don’t have either the temperament or the loyalty to do their jobs.

 

Honeymoon’s over: Ex-Obama official Susan Rice calls Trump NSC reshuffling ‘stone cold crazy’

January 29, 2017

Honeymoon’s over: Ex-Obama official Susan Rice calls Trump NSC reshuffling ‘stone cold crazy’, Washington Times, Valerie Richardson, January 29, 2017

susanricecomplainsNational Security Adviser Susan Rice during the daily press briefing in Washington on July 22, 2015. (Associated Press) **FILE**

She also retweeted a message from “Juan, P.E.” that said, “Trump loves the military so much he just kicked them out of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place.”

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It didn’t take long for the old administration to attack the new administration.

Former national security advisor Susan Rice ignited a feud Sunday with the Trump White House by ripping the recent reshuffling of the National Security Council as “stone cold crazy.”

White House spokesman Sean Spicer fired back by calling Ms. Rice’s comments “clearly inappropriate language from a former ambassador” and took a swipe at the Obama administration’s track record on national security.

“And when you talk about the missteps made by the last administration, with all due respect, I think Ambassador Rice might want to wait and see how we handle this,” Mr. Spicer said on ABC-TV’s “This Week.”

The back-and-forth came in response to Saturday’s memo placing White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the former editor of Breitbart News, on the National Security Council while removing the director of national intelligence and the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff from NSC principals meetings.

“This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy,” Ms. Rice said on Twitter. “Who needs military advice or intell to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?”

She also retweeted a message from “Juan, P.E.” that said, “Trump loves the military so much he just kicked them out of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place.”

Mr. Spicer said reworking the meetings represents an effort to “streamline the process for the president to make decisions on key, important intelligence matters,” insisting that Mr. Trump will receive guidance regularly from top military and intelligence officials in other venues.

“The president gets plenty of information from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He continues to meet with him on a regular basis,” Mr. Spicer said. “He gets briefed by the secretary of defense, but what they have done is modernize the National Security Council so that it is less bureaucratic and more focused on providing the president with the intelligence he needs.”

This wasn’t Ms. Rice’s first attack the Trump administration. Ms. Rice, who served under President Barack Obama for the entirety of his two terms, including four years as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., spent the first week of Mr. Trump’s presidency leveling critiques on Twitter.

“Trashing Trans Pacific Partnership is a big fat gift to China, a blow to key allies, and a huge loss for American global leadership. So sad!” Ms. Rice said in a Monday tweet.

On Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mexico, she said, “Messing with Mexico is stupid and dangerous. Mexico has been key to limiting the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S.”

A few days later, she hit the Trump administration for issuing a Holocaust Memorial Day message that referred to “innocent people” without specifically mentioning Jews, saying, “Just imagine the response if Pres. Obama did that!”

That Ms. Rice would target the Trump White House so quickly represents something of a departure from the traditionally hands-off approach of previous administrations. President George W. Bush was widely praised for refusing to criticize Mr. Obama after he took office.

One week into his successor’s term, Mr. Obama has stayed above the fray, but others close to the former president have felt no such compunction.

His 18-year-old daughter Malia was spotted last week at an anti-Dakota Access pipeline protest during the Sundance Film Festival after Mr. Trump signed a directive to expedite the review process.

Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has been hired by the Democrat-controlled California state legislature to serve as a bulwark against the Trump administration’s policies on issues such as climate change and immigration.

Ms. Rice’s combative stance drew pushback on social media. Not surprisingly, criticism has centered on her five Sunday talk-show appearances blaming the deadly 2012 Benghazi raid on a “hateful” anti-Islam YouTube video.

“Don’t you have some YouTube video you should be basing foreign policy on, has-been?” actor Nick Searcy, who appears in FX’s “Justified,” said in a tweet.

Others have cheered her on. “@AmbassadorRice Please stay active, don’t retreat into prudence and retirement,” said Jorge Guajardo, former Mexican ambassador to China.

Ms. Rice said she also was outraged that Vice President Mike Pence may chair NSC meetings instead of the president. “Never happened w/Obama,” she said.

Before the inauguration, Ms. Rice struck a more cooperative note, insisting she was “rooting hard” for incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

“While it’s no secret that this administration has profound disagreements with the next one, I intend to make myself available to him, just as my predecessors have for me,” Ms. Rice said in a Jan. 10 speech to the U.S. Institute for Peace. “We are all patriots first and foremost. Threats to our security and democracy should be above partisanship.”

Regarding Mr. Bannon’s role on the council, Mr. Spicer said the chief strategist is a former naval officer who has a “tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape that we have now.”

“Having the chief strategist for the president in those meetings who has a significant military background to help guide what the president’s final analysis is going to be is crucial,” Mr. Spicer said.