Category: intelligencecommunity

CIA director hanging by a thread as Trump eyes releasing US intelligence on Russian interference

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

When White House counsel Pat Cipollone opposes something Donald Trump is intent on doing, you know it's got to be bad. But it's exactly where Cipollone stands on Trump's deep desire to declassify U.S. intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which would be incredibly damaging to national security and U.S. intelligence-gathering moving forward.

Trump has always viewed the Russia investigation as a cloud hanging over his tenure from Day One, delegitimizing his big triumph in 2016 as impossible without the help of foreign interference. It may be the one instance where he's right. But his intention to declassify U.S. intelligence on Russia to support his pet project at any cost to national security has met with stiff opposition from CIA Director Gina Haspel and divided Republicans into two camps, according to The New York Times. You're either a Trumpist or a traitor.

Trump also remains miffed at the CIA over the agency's failure to neutralize the whistleblower complaint regarding the July 2019 call with Ukraine that ultimately led to his impeachment. But releasing the intelligence on Russia appears to be the main motivation behind Trump's fixation on axing Haspel, who has shared her concern with congressional members.

The Times writes that GOP lawmakers "came subtly to Ms. Haspel's defense" Tuesday when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invited her to a meeting at his office—a signal of support for her, however weak. Of course, McConnell isn't willing to do something more overt because he's too busy kowtowing to Dear Leader so Republicans can get Trump’s help in the upcoming Georgia runoffs, which will decide the fate of the Senate majority.

Trump has already moved to consolidate power in the intelligence community, installing loyalists this week at key intelligence posts at the Defense Department and National Security Agency. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who oversees the 17-agency intelligence apparatus, is already a tried and true Trumpist. So the only major barriers to Trump's near-total takeover of the intelligence community are Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, who reportedly have both been on Trump's post-election chopping block.

Just imagine what Trump would have done if he had won.

Ousted intelligence watchdog ‘disappointed and saddened’ by Trump. Welcome to the club

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Michael Atkinson did the right thing. As Intelligence Community inspector general, when Atkinson became aware of a whistleblower complaint that had direct bearing on national security, he briefed Congress on it, ultimately setting in motion the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. That inquiry proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump had abused the power of the presidency by trying to force the Ukrainian president into announcing bogus investigations into Trump's top political rival in 2020, Joe Biden.

Over the weekend, Atkinson finally got axed by Trump—because in the midst of a global pandemic that is ravaging the United States, crushing hospitals, and tearing apart families and communities, retribution is Trump's top priority. In case there was any question about that (which there wasn't), Trump told reporters Saturday that Atkinson had been a "disgrace" who did "a terrible job." In other words, Atkinson prioritized the safety and security of the country over blind loyalty to Trump.

In a statement to reporters, Atkinson said he was “disappointed and saddened” to be ousted for "having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial inspector general." 

Not to trivialize Atkinson's heroism, but welcome to the club of being disillusioned by Trump—not that most of the members of that club ever expected Trump was capable of anything greater. Indeed, most knew Trump would be an epic disaster in all facets of government and basic human instincts, right down to the bitter end.

Sign and send to your U.S. representative: Investigate Trump for firing inspector general who brought whistleblower report to Congress.

Trump is purging those ‘insufficiently loyal’ just when America needs competence more than anything

Posted on by Mark Sumner

At a time when the United States is facing an international crisis that demands cooperation, coordination, and above all the best possible information, Donald Trump is continuing to gut America’s intelligence agencies of experience and skill. Since his impeachment, Trump has accelerated his purge of the judiciary and intelligence to sweep them clear of anyone who isn’t found sufficiently loyal to Trump, meaning willing to ignore the truth and dismiss national interest to support Trump’s personal goals.

Replacing the acting director of national intelligence with Richard Grenell—a man whose entire skill set consists of joining Trump to tweet his disdain for allied nations and democratic leaders while praising authoritarian dictators and encouraging racism—is far from the final step. Trump is determined to make the intelligence services his personal tool, and if that means destroying their value to the nation … he’s more than okay with that.

According to Politico, Grenell is only the start, as Trump “tightens his grip” on the intelligence community. The idea that a phrase like “purge of career officials and political appointees deemed insufficiently loyal” is now used not as a dig, but as a factual description of exactly what is happening in the U.S. government, should be shocking.

Before his election, and even after it, many pundits looked on the way Trump was insulting the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies and confidently smirked that he was making very dangerous enemies. “You don’t want to pick a fight with those guys,” was an oft-repeated refrain. After all, the intelligence community has the intelligence, along with the tools to gather more. They know where all the skeletons are buried.

What no one seems to have accounted for is that the intelligence community could come forth with armloads of moldy bones and dump them on the table of a Justice Department that was actively engaged in a cover-up on behalf of Trump. And behind them was a Republican Senate that had already abandoned every principle except support of Trump. And behind them was a MAGA crowd that genuinely liked the idea that its champion bully-boy could tell law enforcement where to stick it.

And so he is. Acting director of national intelligence Joseph Magquire was fired because someone two tiers down the totem pole dared to give the House Intelligence Committee an accurate briefing on election interference. Republicans protested, because accurate information is so 2016. Someone in intelligence hadn’t gotten the word that everyone from the EPA to the Treasury Department was only there to provide information that boosted Trump, whether it was real or not. Now Maguire is out, and everyone else has definitely gotten the message.

As he has against the media, Trump has waged a constant war against the intelligence community, demeaning their value, diminishing their credibility, and insulting their … well, intelligence, even when he was theoretically responsible for their work. The Republican vote in the Senate to dismiss clear charges of abuse and obstruction against Trump in his impeachment trial was the final signal  that anything the intelligence communities might surface against Trump from now until doomsday would have all the impact of hurling feathers against a stone. For Trump and his supporters, the idea that the intelligence community is a threat is laughable … because that assumes that facts matter. They clearly don’t.

Trump’s intelligence community remake isn’t an effort to prevent the agencies from surfacing any information that might be inconvenient to Trump. That threat is over. Instead, the purpose of Trump’s remake is to genuinely boost the agencies’ value—as weapons against Trump’s enemies.

Just as Attorney General William Barr is all-in on using the Justice Department to assist Trump’s friends and assault his political opponents, a revised intelligence community provides ample opportunity to turn what were conspiracy theories lurking at the end of Breitbart and Q-ville into charges that are levied by men in appropriately dark suits against those on the enemies list.

The cost to the nation is just scenes like acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf bumbling through a briefing on coronavirus in which Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy kept showing that he knew the facts infinitely better than the supposed expert in charge of keeping the nation safe. Look back on that last sentence in wonder … and fear. Wolf wasn’t hired for his knowledge. He was hired for his demonstrated skill in lying, even when his lying was obvious.

Trump already has his Cheka. Now he needs his KGB. Only even the KGB had some respect for competence.

The intelligence community erupts as Trump purges everyone opposed to Russian election interference

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Step One: The intelligence official in charge of election security delivers the required briefing at a closed-door session of the House Intelligence Committee and informs the members of that committee that a) Russia has already engaged in interfering with the 2020 election, b) it is trying to sow dissension among Democrats, and c) the ultimate goal is to support Trump. 

Step Two: Republicans on that committee rush to Donald Trump, not to warn him about Russian interference but to complain that Democrats know about the interference. Trump responds by hauling in the acting director of national intelligence, raking him over the coals, and replacing him with a man whose entire skill set consists of making hate-tweets and promoting Russia.

Step Three: Chaos. Only … not enough chaos.

On Friday morning, NBC News was one of several outlets reporting a “near meltdown” in the intelligence community after the news was released that acting direct of national intelligence Joseph Maguire was to be replaced by xenophobic hate-bomb specialist Richard Grenell. Much of what’s happening inside the ODNI hasn’t become public, but there has apparently been enough pushback that Trump has already announced that Grenell will be a short-term appointment until he picks someone else.

Then, on Thursday evening, Trump offered the role to Doug Collins—an offer that still seems to be open. But Collins has already declared that he doesn’t want the job, because he’s still intent on running for a Senate slot in Georgia, a task that’s been complicated by Trump’s praise for the recently appointed Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler. 

As of Friday morning, Trump has announced that he will be appointing someone other than Grenell, but who that someone will be is still up in the air. In the meantime, the intelligence community has joined the Judiciary Community at full boil. It’s become absolutely clear that Trump is purging intelligence officials whose only crime is that they provided accurate intelligence to a committee that is not just cleared, but required to receive that information.

When word came that Maguire was being swapped out for Grenell, the initial reaction was a mixture of two parts disgust and one part puzzlement. Grenell has absolutely no experience in intelligence, and he’s never run so much as a shoe store. What he has done in his short time as U.S. ambassador to Germany is offend American allies and widen the fractures in the NATO alliance as he praised neo-fascist leaders, attacked his host country for admitting refugees, and defended Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But of course, Republican leaders in Congress rushed to applaud this appointment, even as everyone else scratched their heads.

It didn’t take long before the reasons behind the intelligence makeover became clear. At a closed-door briefing for the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday, intelligence official Shelby Pierson provided a required update on what the intelligence community knew about the security of the 2020 election. Pierson revealed that Russia was already actively engaged in interfering in the upcoming election, and that it was interfering for the purpose of supporting Donald Trump.

Republicans present at that meeting—who included Devin Nunes, Mike Conaway, and John Ratcliffe—rushed to the White House in concern. But they were not concerned about the Russian interference. They were concerned that Democrats knew about the interference. Trump shared that concern and seemed to be convinced that Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff had been given some special information, though there seems to be no indication that this is true.

Trump then called in acting DNI Joseph Maguire and reamed him out for allowing Pierson to give a long-scheduled and congressionally mandated briefing. Even though Maguire had been instrumental in trying to block the intelligence community whistleblower report that started off the impeachment investigation of Trump from ever seeing the light of day, that little favor did not seem to cool Trump’s fire. At the end of the day, he canned Maguire and went looking for someone who would be loyal to Trump rather than to the nation.

What’s happening at both the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at this moment is a last stand by those who have some concern other than protecting Trump’s political interests. What’s most frightening is just how small that group of fighters appears to be.

Trump’s targeting of truth tellers is turning the intelligence community into a crowd of cowards

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Donald Trump’s removal of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, his brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was not a “massacre” in the spirit of what happened with Richard Nixon’s dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Because what raised the body count in Nixon’s case was that his own people resigned rather than carry out clearly immoral orders. That’s not a problem for Trump.

The whole story of Donald Trump’s occupation of the White House has been one in which every unit of the government—from the EPA to the DOJ to the State Department—has been systematically cleansed of competency in favor of reflexive obedience. So naturally no one at the White House had a second thought about escorting out a decorated veteran for the crime of speaking the truth, or another veteran for the crime of being related to someone Trump doesn’t like. And just as naturally, Trump had no hesitation in owning these actions.

But what Trump has done so far, may be just a hint of the destruction to come, and what he’s already done to the intelligence agencies represents a looming threat from both inside and outside the nation.

Every time Trump plumbs new depths of odiousness, his staff makes a scramble to create an excuse. On Friday, that excuse was that Vindman wasn’t being let go because he obeyed a congressional subpoena; it was all just part of a “shrinking” of Trump’s already wildly reduced White House staff. 

And every time Trump’s staff constructs one of these pretexts for why he’s not as awful as he seems, Trump rushes forward to make it clear that he so, so is. Just as he continuously blew up the various reasons that Republicans concocted as excuses for Trump’s actions in Ukraine, he couldn’t allow the public to think that he was anything less than a monster in sending away Vindman.

That’s why Trump was on Twitter Saturday morning to make it clear he was sacking the Ukraine expert for being “very insubordinate.” Why Yevgeny Vindman was also shipped off wasn’t clear. Apparently he was insubordinate adjacent. Trump’s advisers surely have an excuse for that one, too.

Of course, both Vindmans are just immigrants in the armed services. As The Washington Post reported last November, Trump’s attitude in that area was godawful on multiple fronts.

“The Trump administration has reversed almost all progress, out loud and with purpose. Their message to immigrant service members is the same as that to Vindman: You are foreign, you are suspect, you cannot belong.”

But if what Trump has done so far seems egregious (because it is), it’s barely a patch on things to come. As The Washington Post reports, Trump has his staff working up the removal of intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson. Atkinson’s involvement was simply that he notified Congress of the existence of a whistleblower complain as required by law. 

Who watches the watchmen? Not a damned soul, apparently. Or at least no one who is allowed to do anything about it. Like speak.

At the State Department, at the National Security Council, at the CIA, the FBI, the DOJ … everywhere in the government the actions have been the same. Long term non-partisan employees have been forced from their positions and roles that have never in the past been political have been made over in the service of Trump. By long tradition, the CIA director does not attend the State of the Union address to avoid even a symbolic suggestion that the agency acts out of anything but its best interpretation of the information. But Gina Haspel was there on Tuesday night, bouncing up with the best Republican jack-in-the-boxes to applaud every moment of Trump’s partisan attacks and game show stunts.

Even before Trump gets around to sacking Atkinson, the conversion of the intelligence community into another aspect of his campaign machinery is already clear. As Politico reports, the regular briefing of Congress on threats to the nation has been delayed. The reason for that delay: “fears of provoking Trump's ire.”

Even though the purpose of this annual appearance is to outline the biggest threats to the nation in front of the nation, intelligence agencies are now arguing to move the whole hearing behind closed doors. More than that, they want the whole threat overview classified. After all, people don’t need to know what the dangers are; not when the biggest is sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Intelligence agencies don’t want to tell Congress the truth about what is happening in public, because they’re afraid they might say something Trump doesn’t like. Because saying something that Trump doesn’t like can be punished. Even if it’s true.

Especially if it’s true.