By Scott Shane and Mark Mazetti
President Obama, who Monday named John O. Brennan, right, as his choice for C.I.A. director, also chose Chuck Hagel, left, to be his next defense secretary.
Washington - President Obama’s nomination (click here) on Monday of John O. Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency puts one of his closest and most powerful aides in charge of an agency that has been transformed by more than a decade of secret wars.
Working closely with the president, Mr. Brennan oversaw the escalation of drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 and was the principal architect of the administration’s secret counterterrorism operations in Yemen. He became a prominent public spokesman for the administration, appearing on television after foiled terrorist plots and giving speeches about the legality and morality of targeted killing.
The question that now faces Mr. Brennan, if he is confirmed by the Senate, is whether the C.I.A. should remain at the center of secret American paramilitary operations — most notably drone strikes — or rebuild its traditional espionage capabilities, which intelligence veterans say have atrophied during years of terrorist manhunts....
...Another Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, said Mr. Brennan’s possible role in disclosing information to the news media should also get scrutiny. “John Brennan has not been absolved of responsibility for the slew of high-level security leaks that have characterized this White House,” Mr. Cornyn said in a statement....
Former Director Brennan was vetted extensively before he was Director of the CIA. There is no doubt his methods were different than Pompeo, but, that doesn't make him a problem or his time at the CIA.
Trump's ranting and raving about the deep state serve as loyalty of his base to build a revolution to overthrow the government. Trump with Barr's assistance makes real the idea the USA is on a wrongful path from it's constitution. Everyone that opposes Trump is the Deep State including judges. He does this for votes. He could not care less about the people that actually act against the government, but, the storyline is useful to Donald J. Trump. This is not politics, it is an ages-old movement based in White Supremacy/Nationalism.
By David Gutman, Jim Brunner and and Joseph O. Sullivan
State Rep. Matt Shea (click here) planned and participated in domestic terrorism against the United States before and during the armed takeover at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, an investigation commissioned by the Washington state House found.
The 108-page report found that beginning in November 2015, Shea, working with militia leader Ammon Bundy, helped “in the planning and preparation” of the Malheur takeover, a six-week conflict in which dozens of armed protesters occupied the refuge in rural Eastern Oregon. The standoff ended after one protester was shot and killed and dozens were arrested.
“Representative Shea, as a leader in the Patriot Movement, planned, engaged in and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States Government in three states outside the state of Washington over a three-year period,” according to the report released Thursday. “In one conflict Representative Shea led covert strategic pre-planning in advance of the conflict.”...
The US Senate, under Moscow Mitch McConnell, needs to get the rules of the impeachment hearing right without dog whistles.
They called it chaos. I call it undermining the USA Constitution.
December 24, 2018
By Julie Pace and Zeke Miller
Washington - Last year, (click here) during one particularly frenetic stretch in Donald Trump’s presidency, a top Republican senator said there were three men guarding the country from chaos: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House chief of staff John Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Within weeks, not one will be left in the administration.
Mattis’ abrupt resignation Thursday marks the end of the “contain and control” phase of Trump’s administration — one where generals, business leaders and establishment Republicans struggled to guide the president and curb his most disruptive impulses. They were branded in Washington as the “troika of sanity,” the “axis of adults” and the “committee to save America.”...
