DNI Designee Ratcliffe - Best Qualified

Mueller Questioned by Ratcliffe     [CBSN]

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There is quite a furor over the appointment of Representative John Ratcliffe to become the next DNI [Director of National Intelligence].

Brennan

David Ignatius, a long-time supplicant of the CIA in even its most corrupt form, calls Ratcliffe a "dangerous, demented clown."  Keep in mind that Ignatius thought Brennan, the Muslim buffoon, to be brilliant; so much for the Ignatius credibility quotient.

Clapper

He also referred to James Clapper [the guy we saw smirking at Congressional committee members as he repeatedly perjured himself] "the most successful DNI since the position was created."  So, Ignatius manages to squeeze himself into a corner, worshipping the two most egregious criminals in the Intelligence Community since Jonathan Pollard, Ana Montes, Aldrich Ames, and Kim Philby.

The Washington Post, lacking any real understanding of a professional Intelligence Community, regards  the appointment of Ratcliffe as horrendous, tagging Ratcliffe as an "inexperienced, partisan politician."

We also hear from "former Intelligence officers" who demand that the DNI be selected from the executive levels of the CIA, or, at least from the existing DNI staff, or, By Gawd, from maybe the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [SSCI], managed by Dianne Feinstein who employed a Chinese Spy as her driver for 20 years.

Why, Ratcliffe lacks "any real experience, and worse, he likely has embraces Trump's 'Deep State' conspiracy theories about the CIA and FBI.  Goodness! Even a former "Station Chief" [aka: COS] claimed "this place is under siege."  That, of course, would presume there are any Station Chiefs with any degree of credibility these days.

Pretty much ignored is that the Intelligence Community lost virtually ALL credibility when it conspired in a combined effort to effect a coup against President-elect Trump.  And, let's not forget that Ilhan Omar, a Somali, sits on our House Foreign Affairs Committee - with a Top Secret Clearance.

So, before we comment on Mr Ratcliffe's selection, we refer you to the ABOUT section on our blog site so you can grasp a bit about our background, and why we feel entitled to weigh in on this topic, and to give our full endorsement to Mr Rattcliffe as the new DNI.
----

After the dust of  9-11 had settled, we sat down with President Reagan's Attorney General, Ed Meese, and laid the groundwork for the new position of the DNI.






Until 9-11 [and for a while after] the Intelligence Community was managed by the Director of Central Intelligence [DCI], who also was the Director of the CIA, giving that agency extraordinary power over the entire IC analyses, assessments, and operational activities. The DCI could over-rule any agreements and suppress any reporting; and the CIA could take credit for any assessments or reporting by other agencies. And when its own fumbling created disastrous results, it could, and did blame other agencies for its own errors.

 If there were successes, the CIA would claim the credit, no matter which agency had succeeded; and, if there were a failure, the CIA would run to the SSCI and point a finger [usually at Military Intelligence] claiming the Military was incompetent at Intelligence matters, and CIA should control all those operations [or analyses].

Given that history of abuse, we created the position of DNI to oversee the coordination of all components of the IC, but without the power the DCI had. Initially, the concept worked. But, then, under Obama, an IC which was limited to a few thousand employees of many specialties engorged to a population of nearly a million government and contract employees, creating a bureaucracy incapable of conducting or producing viable Intelligence. Thus, Trump's disdain for his IC support. Once again, having succeeded in neutering other components of the IC [e.g., DIA], the CIA assumed control of the IC once again with the combined power of Brennan and Clapper.

In plain and simple terms, the CIA was a Bully, and a fairly incompetent one at that with a long string of Intelligence failures, fiascos, abuses, and implications of corruption. Needless to say, this bullying annoyed the other members of the IC, and we all lurked in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to drive a wooden stake through  the heart of this almighty vampire.

CIA ignored all the Indicators and Reports

And that day came with the horrors of 9-11, an event the planning/plotting details of which were discovered and provided by FBI agents, foreign intelligence and police services [e.g., the Philippines], and indicators from commercial [Private Sector] resources.

In essence, there was a plethora of Indicators completely and totally ignored by the highly touted and self-proclaimed "Terrorism Expert" John Brennan, who, in spite of missing/ignoring all the indicators, immediately rose to prominence with George W Bush, going on to become, what else, the Director of the CIA!

This came as a stunning surprise to the entire IC, but particularly to the remaining CIA professionals who almost unanimously despised Brennan and regarded him as a complete buffoon [much as they had regarded Bob Gates, a previous Bush designee, who, in spite of a continuous history of failure at the CIA, was promoted to the position of DCI by President GHW Bush.

[We can speak pejoratively here since we were intimately familiar with the IC and had deep friendships and alliances with many CIA, DIA, NSA and FBI professionals, as well as colleagues in the Military Intelligence Services. Why, we even spent time with CIA as an operative, and at the Departments of Defense and State as a senior analyst with highly credible recognition (even from the DCI) - so we can't be accused of blowing smoke out our butt.]  We knew lots of folks (still do) throughout the IC and coordinated operations directly with the Assistant Attorney General, back before the IC became politicized and weaponized by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Mueller.  Given their atrocious behavior, we even wrote a blog on restructuring the IC.]

But, we have again digressed.
[Enough of slamming Brennan and Clapper; we'll spend more time on them in separate blogs.]

We worked with Ed Meese [Reagan's Attorney General] to create the DNI after 9-11 to eliminate the DCI position and to neuter the CIA's dominance of the analytical and operational community. We sought to create a lean and efficient Intelligence Community, unencumbered by bureaucratic bloating; one which could focus on creating viable operations through thorough and cooperative analyses from all elements.

Our proposed process, for example, might follow these components:
1) A CIA station might report rumors, via clandestine operatives, of coup plotting, while the Defense Attache might report comments by one or more of the military plotters.
2) CIA and DIA analysts would examine the profiles of the plotters, and establish key words for NSA to monitor in Communications Intelligence [COMINT].
3) NRO [the satellite imagery guys at the National Reconnaissance Office] could then monitor any and all military movements which might be gauged as supportive of a coup.
4) Since most coups are bloodless, we would also review Private Sector Intelligence showing commercial movements of personal goods and wealth transfers in preparation of the soon-to-be deposed leader.
5) We might even send in covert operatives to help the soon-to-be deposed leader on his way with dark means of transport.
6) And, all elements of the IC would work together on this project via the DNI o!ce where information on analyses and operations could be exchanged.

In fact, the process actually worked like that, briefly.  

We originally envisioned the DNI to occupy a rather small building near the White House which had served as a place for representatives of the IC to meet and coordinate issues and operations around the world.  Gradually, however, it expanded into a bloated empire of hundreds of thousands of bureaucratic entities incapable of coordination, much less creating actionable Intelligence.

Saddam Hussein

The politicization and bloating of the process began under George W Bush, whose primary goal was to create a smokescreen disguising his 9-11 attack as the basis for our new international war adventures throughout the Middle East, disposing of Saddam Hussein, our long-time Middle East ally and stabilizer [albeit brutal].  

[See Rick Francona's book: Ally to Adversary, which examines the bewildering process by which Saddam was transitioned from our Ally to the basis for the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm.]

And then, the IC was directed to create the basis for the endless war in Afghanistan to track down Osama bin Laden and kill him - a simple enough task in the old days with a few teams of lightly armed Special Forces operatives.  

But, the Bush and Obama Administrations expanded both the Military and the IC into massive, expensive, and incoherent bureaucracies, while destroying the competency of both entities. 

[Unfortunately for The Swamp, particularly IC executives, modern technology is now revealing that 9-11 was a Bush ruse which cost the lives of thousands of people for the amusement and profit of a select group of Deep State puppet-masters; they've been identified and will find their way to Gitmo for trial, and likely execution. The professional investigators of 9-11 can no longer be dismissed as "Truthers" or Conspiracy Theorists with Tin Foil caps since forensic science now includes highly technical resources to discount the official versions with detailed revelations of the events and participants.]

But, we've digressed again.

When the Deep State positioned Obama in the Oval Office, it became important to create Intelligence Estimates [NIE] which lent credence to the Global War on Terrorism and justified the bloating of the IC from as few as 10,000 analysts and operatives to nearly a million government employees and private contractors, destroying any hope of processing any level of intelligence through hundreds of layers of indecisive and incompetent, but well-paid bureaucrats.

The Plan was to make the system so convoluted that no one could understand it, or its products.

When Trump took office, he was faced with nonsensical IC smoke and mirrors briefings which  had no bearing on reality. 

Thus, Trump's disdain for, and refusal to accept his IC support. 

He preferred to get his Intelligence assessments from the Private Sector -- which had hired the professionals from the IC and given them the resources and facilities to conduct Intelligence as we had envisioned the DNI to operate.

Clapper and Brennan recognized the Handwriting on the Wall, indicating their power positions and commercial contracts, post retirement, were in jeopardy, at which point they attempted to stage a coup with the amateurish resources they had at hand. 

And, we are now witnessing the unravelling of that process.

So, now, we return to the origin of this tale.

What about Mr Ratcliff's qualifications, or lack thereof, to become the DNI.
[We list his Committee participation below]

Briefly, as we've noted, the DNI position is not one of power over the IC, but is precisely limited in that respect. 

In fact, the DNI, by charter, is limited to only MANAGE the IC and to coordinate the functions of the components of the IC as the Chief Executive Officer [CEO] of a large corporation would manage all the components of a large company. Just as the corporate CEO need not be a programmer to manage an Google, or an engineer to manage Bechtel, the DNI needs only management skills, and a legal mind since much of what the IC does require a legal review. 

Judge William Webster
No Intelligence Background
Before Appointment

Keep in mind, the IC currently consists of highly technical resources [NSA, NRO, NGA], along with HUMINT [clandestine, covert, and open source operations]. 

You will never find any executive skilled in all those specialties, but, recall that Jack Welch managed General Electric and increase the company's value by 4,000%.

Ross Perot managed EDS, leading it to become one of the most successful companies in US history.. 

The skills of Welch and Perot consisted of directing capable executives who, in turn, managed highly technical components -- much the same as the DNI would direct the executives in charge of the various Intelligence agencies which comprise the IC.

Perhaps the best and most respected Director was  Judge William Webster who successfully managed not only the FBI, but later became the Director of Central Intelligence -- as a lawyer/jurist - NOT an Intelligence specialist.

Mr Ratcliffe is a manager, so, like Webster, he won't favor one agency over another in his management process.  As an attorney, he can recognize all the elements of a good legal brief

as it would pertain to clandestine or covert operations; and, he would be the most capable executive of listening to the heads of the specialty units of NSA, NRO, NGA, DEA, FBI, DIA, and the Military Services and evaluating their assessments and/or their proposed courses of actions as they would merge into achieving an ultimate goal, or operation.

So, we suspect Mr Ratcliffe can manage the Intelligence Community in an equally common sense manner, even if he is not an Intelligence technician.

----------

Ed Notes:
Congressman Ratcliffe's assignments on Capitol Hill

House Committee Assignments

• House Intelligence Committee 
  • Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research Subcommittee
  • Intelligence and Modernization Readiness Subcommittee
• House Judiciary Committee
  • Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet
• House Committee on Homeland Security
  • Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Innovation
  • Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security
• House Ethics Committee

Will Google Control 2020 Election?

YouTube Screenshot of Project Veritas video featuring Google's
head of Responsible Innovation at Global Affairs Jen Gennai

Here's another investigative journalism piece we find revelatory

and critical to understanding the threat posed to our National Security 

by our "enemies from within"!

Project Veritas 

Reveals Google's 'Fairness' Efforts to 

Prevent 2016 From Happening Again

By TYLER O'NEIL 
24 June 2019
[Follow Tyler O'Neil on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil] 

Jenn Gennai

On 24 Jue 2019, Project Veritas released a powerful video revealing Google's liberal "Machine Learning Fairness" program, which a Google executive, Jenn Gennai admitted defined fairness in terms any supporter of President Donald Trump would disagree with.

Jenn also suggested that Senator (D-Mass.) Elizabeth Warren's  plan to break up Google is misguided because
only Google has the power to prevent "the next Trump situation."

She also expressed a goal with Google's algorithms — to prevent 2016 from happening again.

 Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better, it will make it worse because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation. It’s like, a small company cannot do that,"

Liz Warren
[FauxCaHauntUs]

Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation at Google Global Affairs, told an undercover Project Veritas journalist in the video.

Jenn further asks
 "We're also training our algorithms if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?  2020, certainly on top of my old organization, Trust and Safety, top of mind, they’ve been working on it since 2016, to make sure we’re ready for 2020."

It is possible Gennai was referring to the Russian Fake News farms active during the 2016 election, a problem which Google and other Big Tech companies should combat. As for those algorithms, the Project Veritas video focused on Machine Learning Fairness, also known as ML Fairness.

Gennai admits that her definition of fairness cuts against the way Trump supporters would understand the term.

She lays out a very intersectional understanding of fairness and says in the video:
"My definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalized communities. And that’s who I care about. Communities who are in power and have traditionally have been in power are not who I’m solving fairness for. 

Everyone is Equal!   But, Some
[e.g., Google] Are More Equal Than Others!

"Our definition of fairness is one of those things that we thought would be like, obvious, and everybody would agree to, and it wasn’t. There was the same people who voted for the current president do not agree with our definition of fairness.

"According to intersectionality, historically marginalized communities still face inherent biases against them and therefore in order for true fairness to be achieved, this inherent imbalance must be reversed. 

This means that fairness does not involve giving a white man and a black woman a fair shake, but rather shifting the playing field so the black woman has an advantage!

 Google Exec Boasted About Helping Hillary Clinton

 by Boosting Latino Turnout in 2016

According to a Google insider  

"Fairness is a dog whistle. It does not mean what you think that it means and you have to apply Doublethink in order to understand what they’re actually saying.

"What they’re really saying about fairness is that they have to manipulate their search results so it gives them the political agenda that they want. And so they have to rebias their algorithms."

As for that "rebiasing," it also explicitly involves news, according to Project Veritas.
The video shows leaked documents calling for Google to establish "a single point of truth" for news.

At PJ Media, an admittedly unscientific study found that 96 percent of Google search results for "Trump News" came from liberal sources.

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin & CFO Ruth Porat

Jenn Gennai admits in the video:
"We have gotten accusations on 'around fairness' is that we’re unfair to Conservatives because we’re choosing what we define as credible news sources and those sources don’t necessarily overlap with conservative sources so we’re getting accusations of fair from one side."

The Google whistleblower says
"They are not an objective source of information; they are a highly biased political machine that is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again."

In the video, Gennai says that
"... everyone everyone got screwed over in 2016. We all got screwed over in 2016. Again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so, we’re rapidly being, like, what happened there, and how do we prevent it from happening again?"

This is far from the first time that anti-Trump bias has been revealed at Google.

A Google executive bragged about efforts to boost Latino turnout "in key states" in 2016, expecting that voting bloc to pull for Hillary Clinton.

Employees at Google and other tech companies heavily favor Democrats in political contributions. A Google manager also blamed Trump's victory on "Fake News" and "Hate Speech."

PJ Media has reached out to Google for a response to the Project Veritas video, and will update this story with any response.

-------
Editorial Note:  

Deep State involvement?

Interestingly, the Russia, Russia, Russia anti-Trump meme was partially sponsored by the Co-Founder of Google, Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin [Серге́й Миха́йлович Брин], a Russian Jew born and bred in Soviet Union Moscow; miraculously, the family was granted official exit visas in 1977, "to leave the USSR" -- unusual since most folks were executed for trying to leave during that era. 

In fact, we, in US Military Intelligence [MI] smuggled Russian Jews out of the USSR in a covert "underground pipeline" at great risk to our existing Intelligence networks in the USSR and Europe - created over dozens of years; these  refugees, mostly with science backgrounds, were delivered to Brooklyn, NY, where they were to be debriefed by MI prior to their release to Jewish sponsors.  However, since the Jewish sponsors would immediately spirit the refugees away before the debriefings could even start, we shut the entire network down and advised the Brooklyn contingent to run their own exfil operation. 

Oddly, Brin received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, and later interned at Wolfram Research, developers of Mathematica.  Seemed money appeared from all directions to develop an embryonic start-up with Larry Page to develop a data search web crawler engine.

Once Google gained a public awareness foothold with the GoogleMail [GMail] application, things started taking off.  Then came Google Maps, which blossomed into the mysteriously dynamic and pristine - high-resolution satellite imagery "sold" to it by the Intelligence Community in 1990 under a program sponsored by then-President George HW Bush to sell Military technology to the Private Sector.  This new satellite imagery tool had been part of the National Reconnaissance Office [NRO] the very existence of which was highly classified until 2007 when we obtained permission from the NRO Director to publish its existence, location, and operational mission in the book we published: The Best of DC - Inaugural Edition [2007].  

The introduction to the public by Google came when it designated it's new product as "Keyhole" which stunned the Intelligence Community which was familiar with  the name Keyhole as half of the Talent-Keyhole designation for satellite imagery, classified well above Top Secret.  Suddenly, this Top Secret technology was part of the start up company called Google, and the product morphed into Google Earth.  Then again, the newer technology came with advanced satellites, which produced better imagery which linked to the National GeoSpatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) [formerly NGIC], the imagery products of which are particularly precise.  

[Nonetheless, Hillary's server was loaded with this TS/C material, which she "declassified" by cutting off the classification markings.  That used to be National Security violation, penalized by authorities with massive fines and very long prison terms - except Hillary has yet to be charged with any crime, so it must be ok now to release Top Secret Intelligence material.]

The cover story for this transfer of technology is that In-Q-Tel, a CIA sponsored private equity firm sponsored Google and Google Earth's development in 1999. Then again, In-Q-Tel must have also invested in a Time Machine to to back to 1990 to invest in developing the technology which Bush sold.  

Which leads us to the question of how deeply are the CIA and the Deep State intertwined?

Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative Destroyed

Hope Hicks testified, in full, before the House Committee,
answering all questions regarding Trump's contact with Russia.
The Democrats now focus solely on questions she declined
which addressed other White House issues.

Since the News Media buried this report, 

hoping the voting public would not notice, 

we are re-publishing it, as written, 

to give it global coverage and offset the 

Fake News the Democrats' are reporting.  

True journalism is rare today, so we want to 

give it our full support and widest distribution!

While the press portrayed Hope Hicks’s silence as all-inclusive, 

in reality she testified at length and in detail about all aspects of 

Trump’s presidential campaign. 

How Hope Hicks’s Testimony Destroyed The Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative.
The Federalist, 24June2019
By: Margot Cleveland 

Following the Thursday [13June2019] release of the transcript from Hope Hicks’s testimony before the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee, the media quickly concentrated on the questions Trump’s former communications director refused to answer.

But while the press portrayed Hicks’s silence as all-inclusive, in reality Hicks testified at length and in detail about all aspects of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. And that testimony established yet again that the Russia collusion narrative was a hoax. 

One theme of Democrats’ questioning of Hicks concerned the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians. Several times Hicks confirmed the lack of contacts between top Trump campaign members and Russia.

 “I’m telling you,” Hicks testified, “I wasn’t aware in the campaign of any contacts with Russian officials.”

Later, when asked again what, if any, communications and contacts there were between the Trump campaign and Russian or Russian officials, Hicks noted that during the campaign she wasn’t aware of any but later learned of insignificant contacts, such as Jeff Sessions meeting the Russian ambassador at a foreign policy speech.

Hicks further testified that a Russian official’s post-election comment that Russia was “in constant communication or constant contact with members of Trump’s inner circle throughout the campaign,” “was not true.”

“I’m not aware of anybody that regularly interacted with Mr. Trump that was a decisionmaker that advised him on a frequent basis that had, ‘regular contacts’ with any Russian officials,” Hicks stressed.

Hicks, who had previously worked for the Trump organization, also testified that she was not aware of any financial ties between Russia and the Trump Organization during the campaign. Nor did Hicks have any knowledge of any “foreign government providing cash or any other thing of value to Mr. Trump during the campaign,” or of any conversations during the campaign about Trump traveling to Russia (other than for the Miss Universe Pageant), or meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Hicks further told the committee that she only “became aware that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the 2016 elections” when the story hit the press.

Nothing on the DNC Hack Or Trump Tower 

Democrats on the Committee nonetheless pushed the Russia collusion narrative by attempting to portray an email Hicks received from the editor-in-chief of the Russian internet newspaper Vzglyad as evidence of a Russian conspiracy.

Joe Neguse

Democratic Representative Joe Neguse flipped to the much-referenced Robert Mueller report to read the special counsel’s finding that “one day earlier the publication’s founder and former Russian parliamentarian Konstantin Rykov had registered two Russian websites, Trump2016.ru and DonaldTrump2016.ru.”

But Neguse’s attempt to implicate the Trump campaign in Russia’s online efforts to interfere in the election failed badly.

Hicks noted: “I don’t recall receiving the interview request”; I received hundreds of interview requests, sometimes daily.”

Because Trump had no intention of participating in the interview, Hicks explained, she was not concerned about the identity of the outlet, and hadn’t even realized until after the fact that the email had come from a Russian.

Concerning the WikiLeaks hacks, Hicks made clear that the only discussion the campaign had was “...speculation about if there would be more emails or information released, but that was prompted by things in the media” and it wasn’t with certainty that more leaks would happen, but “with speculation and skepticism.”

“No” Hicks stressed, Trump did not talk about WikiLeaks or the hack, nor did anybody else in the campaign, other than what was discussed in the public domain. Hicks also testified that during the campaign she had heard nothing about Roger Stone and his supposed relationship with WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange, or about WikiLeaks’ “divulgence of information about the emails of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Podesta” beyond media coverage.

In short, Hicks stated that during the campaign, Trump never indicated that he knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks was responsible for the Democratic National Committee hacks or that he had knowledge that additional information would be released.

Hicks also confirmed that before the election she had not been told that anyone at the Trump campaign had been offered information about Hillary Clinton.

The Trump Tower meeting was another focus of committee questions:
Hicks told the committee that she did not know about the Trump Tower meeting or Donald Trump Jr.’s emails about that meeting until after Trump was elected president. She had also never heard “... any discussion from any Trump Organization employee or Mr. Trump about an ongoing effort to pursue a potential Trump Tower Moscow at that time...” another thread woven into the Russia collusion hoax.

Hick’s responses during last week’s hearing also provided fresh insight into Trump’s behind-the-scenes response to news of Russian interference. Hicks noted that the campaign only “... became aware that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the 2016 elections...” when the story hit the press. The president’s former confidant added that any conversations she was privy to during the campaign concerning Russia interference in the election mirrored what Trump said publicly.

The Trump Collusion Narrative Is a Red Herring 

Then, when asked what specifically Trump said during the campaign about public reports that his team was coordinating with Russia, Hicks relayed that Trump called it “nonsense.”

Trump believed that the Russia collusion conspiracy “...was something that the Clinton campaign had made up to deflect from the information that they viewed as harmful to their candidate, to their campaign...” Hicks explained.  She also testified that she agreed with his assessment and that the “... unsubstantiated claims that [the Trump campaign] were coordinating with Russia was an attempt to distract and deflect.”

Trump's former communications director added that the Trump campaign obviously knew there was no collusion, but admitted that had she been working instead for the Clinton campaign, she “probably would have taken a similar strategy.”

Hicks further noted that, whether the Russia collusion hoax was being peddled by the “Clinton campaign or speculated about in the media,” her discussions with candidate Trump focused on how to respond to the false claims.

Hicks also shared details of her conversation with Trump following his late-July 2016 off-the-cuff remark:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Hicks explained that she informed Trump that “... some in the media had taken the expression quite literally, and that they were concerned he was encouraging foreign governments to, you know, locate those emails, and that that was obviously something that the media felt was extremely inappropriate and demanded a response from Mr. Trump and the campaign as to what exactly he meant by that.”

Hicks stated that, “... both from Trump’s remark and her discussion with him after,” she understood the comment as a joke. When pushed about what Trump had said, Hicks conveyed that he noted
“it was intended as a light-hearted comment.”

Trump Was Concerned About Paul Manafort 

In practice, however, Trump took concerns about Russia’s meddling seriously, Hicks explained.

Paul Manafort

For instance, according to Hicks, after the media began questioning Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort. Trump, not realizing
Manafort’s close relationship with Richard Gates, asked Gates to keep an eye on Manafort.

Trump questioned some of Manafort’s “past work with other foreign governments, foreign campaigns...,” and stressed that “none of that would be appropriate to be ongoing during his service with the Trump campaign...” Hicks elaborated. He also asked Gates to let him know “if anything led him to believe that was ongoing.”

Mike Flynn

When, following Trump’s election, then-President Barack Obama raised questions about Michael Flynn to Trump, Hicks explained that warning tainted Trump’s view of Flynn going forward.

Trump “... was a bit bewildered that, you know, of all the things that the two of them could have been discussing,” it was Flynn that came up.

(This detail also raises the question of Obama’s motivation and his efforts to sour the president-elect’s relationship with Flynn.) 

Hicks’ testimony also negated several other Democratic and media talking points on Russia interference and collusion. While Democrats attempted to portray Trump as unperturbed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, Hicks countered, “I think he was concerned, but I think he was simultaneously concerned that folks with a political agenda were going to weaponize that assessment to try to undermine the legitimacy of this election.”

Misrepresenting the Truth for Political Gain 

Ted Lieu [CA-D]

Hicks similarly exposed how the media misrepresented information to further the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, when Representative Ted Lieu attempted to do the same during the hearing.

“In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr., was quoted as saying ‘In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia’” Lieu quoted to Hicks.

Hicks acknowledged that she had spoken with Trump Jr., about this statement, but only to ensure “the media wasn’t misrepresenting the remark or presenting it in any misleading way.”

Hicks obliterated many of the Russia-collusion talking points pushed by Democrats and the media for the last three years.

“And how was the media mischaracterizing Donald Trump, Jr.’s remarks?” Lieu quizzed.

The media “made it seem like there was Russian money coming into the Trump Organization in a way that was inappropriate or somehow sinister when Trump Jr., was merely describing the kinds of clientele that were purchasing luxury apartments, both in New York City, Chicago, and in South Florida.  They’re a luxury, globally recognized real estate company,” Hicks explained, so “it would be odd if [the Trump Organization] weren’t selling to people just because they’re affiliated with Russia.”

By the end of her nearly eight hours of testimony last week, Hicks had obliterated many of the Russia-collusion talking points pushed by Democrats and the media for the last three years, even more expertly than Mueller did in his special counsel report.

As one Democrat noted during the hearing, Hicks was “... with [Trump] every day,” during both the primary and general election.
She would have known had the campaign colluded with Russia.
Yet her testimony made clear there was no Russia strategy, significant contact, collaboration, or collusion, which is why when Hicks was asked whether she thought the President “might be angry about [her] testifying before Congress today...”
her ready reply punctuated her significant—but unreported—testimony:
“I think the President knows that I would tell the truth, and the truth is there was no collusion. And I’m happy to say that as many times as is necessary today.”


----------------------

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. 

Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk 
to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty 
member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business
at the University of Notre Dame. 

The views expressed here are 
those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Time to Restructure the Intelligence Community?

[The link to this story has now been removed from the Internet]

General [ret] Mike Flynn has run up enormous legal bills defending himself against the Democrats' and Media onslaught which accused him of collusion with the Russians, bordering on Treason.

This campaign against him consisted of baseless accusations which alluded to his past international business dealings which were not illegal in his status as a private sector businessman, nor were such discussions illegal in his role as a National Security Advisor since such discussions are, and always have been, de rigueur in a diplomatic/national security scenario; or even in a Presidential Campaign scenario [Mitt Romney met with both UK and Russian Intelligence representatives in his Presidential campaign, and the Media was fully knowledgeable of those meetings -- but said nothing.

I promise to lie through my teeth
I'm protected by Hillary!

Brennan feared Flynn would recommend the dissolution of the CIA's Directorate of Operations [DO] as it had morphed into a covert, rogue "nation changing" tool of the New World Order [i.e., A Global Government], and had downgraded and essentially eliminated its Clandestine Service [NCS].   

The reformulated NCS became a rudderless, unsupervised covert operation, often using Military SpecOps units to carry out CIA missions which were unsanctioned [e.g., Benghazi], leaving many of our soldiers dead in foreign countries; the standard excuse used for these deaths was that they had committed suicide.


DIA's Clandestine Service [DCS] had displaced CIA's Clandestine Service and recruited and deployed officers with superior educations, training, Military background, and sophistication -- while CIA's case officers and Station Chiefs left a great deal, including integrity, to be desired [evidenced by Benghazi].  Brennan, an analyst, was assigned as a Station Chief as a checkmark to becoming Director of the CIA.  He was regarded by field agents as a bumbling idiot, matching his reputation as a an analyst -- but, he served Bush and Obama well as their puppet.

Perjury is in my nature, so screw you, Congressman!
I'm protected by Hillary!

 Clapper is/has been regarded as a sleaze, as we've noted in the past regarding his role as US Pacific Command J2 where he blocked our efforts at identification and recovery of US POWs still held in Vietnam during the 1980s; he nearly destroyed DIA's analysis capability as he reorganized the independent analysis divisions, abused his position as DNI Director and weaponized the DNI into a political tool, using NSA and other IC resources to undermine Flynn and Trump, and Conservative politicians using blackmail and threats against families to achieve their goals. Congress demanded his resignation based on his blatant perjury during his testimony before Congressional Committees [he did not resign until the end of the Obama Administration.  

Clapper continues to manage companies with Intelligence Community agencies which have non-compete contracts, and obscure IDIQ contracts -- all of which need to be investigated, and perhaps terminated.  We highly recommend all these contracts be terminated, and the companies and their officers/employees have their security clearances terminated -- with full disbarment from any contact with any member of the Intelligence Community.

[Following 9/11, we established the DNI [Directorate of National Intelligence] to eliminate and replace the DCI [Directorate of Central Intelligence]  since the DCI was also the Director of CIA and controlled all the IC; too much power in a single seat.] 

Both Clapper and Brennan need to be brought up on a variety of charges, not the least of which would Treason.

CIA Interrogations - Enhanced, or Torture

Enhanced Interrogation:  AKA - TORTURE

We've noted the circulation of what purports to be a CIA public service announcement regarding the value of "Enhanced Interrogation" of "Terrorist Prisoners" which allegedly produced extraordinary and actionable Intelligence.
[We've attached an extract of this report at the bottom of this blog post.]

Much of the published information is true, but it was definitely not produced from enhanced interrogation, but rather via different sourcing, much of it from unclassified, open-source newspaper accounts.  So, you may discount the origin of the data.

We are very familiar with all forms of interrogation and have conducted hundreds of interrogations, both tactical and strategic in war zones and  special facilities, as well as CounterIntelligence interrogations to determine espionage threats..  

We never had a prisoner who couldn't be broken -- and turned, to include NVA Political Officers and hardened guerrilla fighters.  And they were tougher than Taliban. At no time did we ever have to use other than normal interrogation techniques, and at no time, did we ever have to use torture to obtain results.  Essentially, torture routinely gives false results and misleading information -- and bad intelligence.

Successful interrogations come from sophisticated conversations, rather than beating information out of a prisoner.  Most prisoners willingly provide as much information as is requested or demanded, and a professional interrogator is prepared with background and confirmed data to determine how truthful the subject is.  

Essentially, there are three forms of interrogation:

1)  Simple debriefing is for prisoners who have no resistance training.  They'll be happy to chatter away and disclose everything they know, and often, information they were unaware they have/had.  Handled properly, they can be enormously helpful.  In one case, a teenager, illiterate and fairly simple, provided the location of the master logistics center for the Spring Offensive - allowing us to capture it, and essentially ending that war, at least for a while.

2)  Professional interrogations, which require the interrogator to be  trained in psychology and who looks for nuances in the subject's eyes, facial movements, body moisture, voice rhythms, etc., to determine attempts to mislead the interrogator.  The interrogator begins with a number of folders on his/her desk, and accepts the prisoner who, through psychological manipulation, assumes and fears torture.  The folders contain parameters of verified information to answer key questions which can lead to new questions and sophisticated [though non-violent] techniques.  For the most part, the subject is unaware of the true objectives of the interrogation.

3)  Hostile interrogations are used to break down the  subject through disorientation, fear of the unknown, various forms of psychological techniques, and special manipulation techniques, augmented by input from HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, COMINT, ELINT, etc.  

Again, opening folders with information the subject believes was provided by other prisoners weakens his/her resistance.   Add in fear of being caught lying, and the fear of the unknown becomes far more effective than actual torture.  

[See Room 101 in the Orwell's book, 1984].  This process requires a great deal of sophistication and education on the part of the Interrogator, but, again, includes absolutely NO TORTURE.]

FITD [Forscom Intelligence Training Detachment] - the unit we formed at Ft Bragg [1976] trained all USFORSCOM [Forces Command] tactical units and strategic Reserve units in proper interrogation methods; we created SOPs and manuals, most of which were incorporated years later in TRADOC [Training & Doctrine Command]. 

FITD was later converted to the 111th MI Brigade which took over the mission.

[Notably, Enhanced Interrogation techniques were legalized, and added to the Army's Field Manual, though still regarded as extreme, and unnecessary for the most part]

Unfortunately, as we learned from many years of association with, and assignments to the CIA, their approach to interrogations was unique.  

Since they lacked professional interrogators, they would draw on the Military for both SpecOps and mundane things like interrogations.  Unfortunately, the CIA would secretly coordinate with the Pentagon for untrained Warm Bodies to conduct these ops, and they would frequently end up with unskilled Marines or Army Infantry troops unskilled in interrogation, but who learned their trade by watching TV programs like Jack Bauer's skill sets in 24, in which torture was routinely used -- with very poor results.  Although the Military had trained, linguistically skilled professional interrogators, the CIA would ignore them and frequently depend on local nationals who had knowledge of either psychology or interrogation skills.

The greatest issue we have with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" technique is that other countries [hostile and friendly] follow our lead.  If the US does it, it must be OK.  Worse, our adversaries/enemies look at us as the penultimate bad guys reflected in their propaganda themes, and use those techniques when interrogating US soldiers.  We were briefly captive of the Pathet Lao in southern Laos near the end of the war and were not amused by these techniques, which included fairly crude attempts at torture, before we found a way to exit the situation.  Later, we were interrogating an NVA captain at one point and asked him why the NVA treated our soldiers so viciously when they were captured.  He was astonished at the question and admonished me, saying, 

"We simply imitate your atrocities. Why, your troops mutilate our troops!  Your newspaper - Stars & Stripes herald such actions of one of your colonels."

Hatchet Hank Emerson

We were astonished, but placed a secure call to Saigon to a trusted friend at MACSOG who verified the torture and mutilation, and even shipped a copy of the Stars & Stripes which headlined this local hero, Lt Col Henry Emerson, thus affirming that we were, in fact, bad guys, leading to the torture of our own soldiers.  Such incidents continue today where we have fought.

We have enough enemies around the world now; we don't need more but we create enemies with the concept of torture.

In short, we do not support "enhanced" interrogation, a technique of negative value falsely touted by the CIA as a productive tool. We guarantee Enhanced Interrogation techniques will be/has been used against US PWs as a retaliatory measure.  

Ultimately, we are not labeling the US as the BAD GUY; but, we very much wish to see the CIA removed from such operations, particularly from controlling our Special Operations forces and Military Intelligence operations -- the actual trained Professionals in Military Operations and Human Intelligence programs!  

Below is an extract of the CIA's claim to intelligence production gained through, and which they claim justifies "Enhanced Interrogation".  

Keep in mind that virtually all of this information was 

published in the US News Media or on the Internet.