Tip by confidential human source guided FBI search of Trump’s home, reports claim

August 11, 2022 by 4 Comments

Mar-a-Lago MULTIPLE NEWS OUTLETS CLAIMED on Wednesday that Monday’s search by authorities of a Florida residential compound belonging to former United States President Donald Trump was based on information provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by a confidential human source. The source reportedly gave the FBI details about a number of classified documents that were allegedly hidden in Trump’s Florida estate, as well as their precise location.

America’s troubled political waters turned stormy once again on Monday morning, when around 35 FBI special agents and technical support personnel arrived at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in a convoy of unmarked vehicles. The FBI team proceeded to execute a search warrant, which authorized them to confiscate government files that were allegedly in storage at the luxury estate. According to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, these files belong to the state and should have been deposited to the National Archives upon Trump’s departure from the White House in January of 2021.

On Monday afternoon, the FBI staff reportedly left Trump’s residence with between 10 and 15 boxes of documents. In the ensuing hours, a number of commentators pointed out that, as per Trump’s attorney Lindsey Halligan, who observed the search in person, the FBI focused on just three rooms, ignoring the rest of the sprawling mansion —namely Trump’s office, a bedroom and a storage room. That, according to some, points to the strong possibility that the FBI special agents had prior information about the location of the files.

On Wednesday morning, Newsweek said it could confirm that the FBI had prior information about the precise location of the files. The news outlet cited two senior government officials, including “an intelligence source” who had “direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations” in the days leading up to the search. According to the sources, during the first week of August the government prosecutor in charge of the case was able to secure a search warrant by a West Palm Beach judge. The prosecutor reportedly did so by providing the judge with “abundant and persuasive detail” about the files, which “proved that those records were contained at Mar-a-Lago […] in a specific safe in a specific room”.

On Wednesday evening, The Wall Street Journal also reported that the FBI had been approached by “someone familiar with stored papers”. The source allegedly provided government investigators with information about the precise location of “classified documents” at Mar-a-Lago. The paper added that the FBI confidential source had direct access to the documents.

The US attorney general’s guidelines [PDF] define FBI confidential human sources as individuals who are “believed to be providing useful and credible information to the FBI for any authorized information collection activity”. They further stipulates that the FBI expects or intends to obtain “additional useful and credible information” from confidential human sources in the future, thus it usually builds a long-term relationship with these individuals. The guidelines also note that, given the sensitivity of the role of confidential human sources, their “identity, information or relationship with the FBI warrants confidential handling”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 11 August 2022 | Permalink

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Trump transition was ‘far and away’ most difficult in CIA history, internal report claims

November 29, 2021 by 7 Comments

Donald Trump CIA

THE PERIOD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the electoral victory of Donald Trump in 2016 was “far and away the most difficult” transition between administrations in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is the conclusion of a recently declassified CIA analysis of how American presidents-elect are briefed. The term ‘president-elect’ refers to individuals who have won the US presidential election, but have yet to assume the presidency. Presidents-elect are briefed by the CIA during the transition period, which typically lasts about 75 days, from early November until late in January of the following year.

The CIA analysis appears in the most recent edition of Getting to Know the President: Intelligence Briefings of Presidential Candidates and Presidents-Elect, 1952–2016. It is authored by John L. Helgerson, a 38-year veteran of the CIA, who retired in 2009 as the Agency’s Inspector General. The volume contains lessons learned by analysts who briefed presidents-elect in over sixty years. Chapter nine of the book, which contains an assessment of Trump as president-elect, was released [pdf] last week.

The chapter chronicles some of the challenges faced by the CIA in the days immediately after Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. Such challenges included CIA analysts having to wait for over a week for the Trump team to begin communicating them, its members “apparently having not expected to win the election”. Additionally, the Trump transition team had not thought of a way to safeguard printed documents shared with them by the CIA, which necessitated the Agency having to install a safe in the Trump transition team’s headquarters.

Eventually, president-elect Trump began receiving the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), a highly sensitive classified document produced each morning for the eyes of the president, vice president and a limited number of senior administration officials. However, unlike his vice-president elect, Mike Pence, Trump did not read the PDB, and eventually told the CIA he wanted a less text-heavy approach to the document if he was going to read it. The CIA complied with the request, as it tries to adapt its briefing method to the intelligence consumers’ preferred mode. Read more of this post

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White House considers barring Donald Trump from receiving intelligence briefings

February 2, 2021 by 1 Comment

Joe BidenUNITED STATES PRESIDENT JOE Biden and his senior aides are “reviewing” the possibility of preventing his predecessor, Donald Trump, from receiving briefings containing classified information. Such an eventuality would constitute a dramatic break from the longstanding tradition of providing intelligence briefings to former American presidents, who wish to continue to receive them after leaving office.

The reasoning behind granting former American presidents access to classified information, even after leaving office, is that they usually maintain a visible diplomatic presence with worldwide influence. Many keep a busy schedule that involves regular meetings with foreign dignitaries, in which affairs of state are discussed. Intelligence briefings can therefore be useful in allowing them to speak with authority on various matters of domestic and international policy.

But Trump may not be granted that ability, according to reports in several American media. The reports were sparked by an answer given by White House press secretary Jen Psaki to a question asked by NBC reporter Geoff Bennett on Monday. Bennett asked Psaki if the Biden administration had decided whether Trump should continue to have access to classified information. Psaki responded by telling Bennett he had asked “a good question”, and added that the issue was “obviously under review”. However, “no determination” had been made yet, said Psaki.

Psaki’s confirmation that the matter is under review follows comments by the incoming White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, who said last month that the new president would make a decision following recommendations by his intelligence advisors. Some former senior security and intelligence officials have come out strongly in support of barring Trump from having access to intelligence. Among them are former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, as well as Susan M. Gordon, former principal deputy director of national intelligence, who briefed Trump regularly for two years. Gordon argued in an a Washington Post op-ed last month that Trump’s foreign liabilities and close associations with “foreign entities” render him a “potential national security risk”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 02 February 2021 | Permalink

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White nationalists accosting disillusioned Trump and QAnon supporters, experts warn

January 26, 2021 by Leave a comment

US Capitol - IAWHITE NATIONALISTS IN THE United States are launching a concerted effort to recruit disillusioned supporters of former President Donald Trump, as well as adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, according to experts who spoke to The Financial Times. Their efforts have been prompted by the mass exodus of Trump and QAnon followers from mainstream social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, in recent months. Trump has himself been barred from these online platforms, and his supporters have been urging the former president’s followers to join social media, such as Parler, Gab and Telegram, which are seen as friendly to conservatives.

Many of the former president’s most ardent supporters are convinced that Trump was cheated out of office, and are increasingly issuing calls for an uprising against the government, and even secession. Meanwhile, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement are in disarray following Trump’s election defeat. Trump’s exit from the White House directly contradicted a major prediction adhered to by QAnon supporters. They were convinced that Trump would remain in office and fight a war to the death against a cabal of Satanist cannibals who supposedly control America.

According to experts, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right campaigners are finding fertile ground among the millions of disillusioned Trump and QAnon supporters, who are flooding into the non-mainstream corners of the social media universe. They warn that far-right activists are consciously and systematically infiltrating pro-Trump and QAnon online groups, in an attempt to “draw the remnants of these movements towards the extreme right”. These attempts appear to have been intensified after January 20, when Joe Biden was inaugurated president, experts told The Financial Times.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 26 January 2021 | Permalink

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NSA places its Trump-appointed lawyer on administrative leave, pending probe

January 22, 2021 by Leave a comment

NSAAMERICA’S LARGEST SPY AGENCY, the National Security Agency, has reportedly placed on administrative leave its general counsel, who was installed on orders by the White House just hours before the end of Donald Trump’s presidency. Michael Ellis worked as an aide to Representative Devin Nunes (R-Ca) until 2017, when he joined the White House as the senior associate counsel to President Trump and deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council (NSC). In 2020 he was promoted to NSC’s senior director for intelligence.

Last November, days after losing the presidential election, Trump attempted to appoint Ellis as NSA general counsel —effectively the chief legal officer at the spy agency. There was speculation that Trump’s move was part of an effort to declassify documents that he believed would harm the reputation of his domestic political enemies. But the NSA resisted the move, with its director, General Paul Nakasone, allegedly dismissing it as “an attempt to burrow a political appointee [who is] not qualified for the post into a career civil service position”. The Trump administration persisted, however, and last week the then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller ordered General Nakasone to appoint Ellis, as instructed, effective by 6:00 pm on January 16. The NSA continued to stall the move, but it eventually appointed Ellis as its general counsel at 6pm on January 19.

Now, however, it appears that Ellis has been placed on administrative leave, pending an investigation into his NSA appointment, which has been launched by the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General. According to The Washington Post, the investigation concerns “the circumstances of [Ellis’] selection” to serve as NSA’s general counsel. CBS News cites “a source familiar” with the case, who claims that Ellis is also facing allegations that he may have mishandled classified documents.

The NSA said it would not “comment on personnel matters”. The Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General said it would not confirm nor deny that Ellis was under investigation.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 January 2021 | Permalink

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Trump pardons alleged recruiter of US Navy analyst who spied for Israel

January 21, 2021 by 1 Comment

Jonathan PollardDURING HIS LAST DAY in office, United States President Donald Trump issued a federal pardon for Aviem Sella, an Israeli former intelligence officer, who allegedly recruited Jonathan Pollard, an American who sold secrets to Israel. Pollard was released in November of 2015, after serving a 30-year sentence for being what US government prosecutors called “one of the most damaging spies in American history”. The convicted spy recently relocated to Israel, where many see him as a national hero.

In 1987, along with Pollard, the US government indicted Sella, accusing him of recruiting and helping handle Pollard on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Sella, who today is 75, was a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. He allegedly began working for Israeli intelligence in the early 1980s. He left the US just days before Pollard was arrested while trying to enter the grounds of the Israeli embassy in Washington, seeking political protection. Israel refused to extradite him to the US and refused to charge him with a crime.

But in his last day in office yesterday, President Trump included Sella’s name in a list of 144 names of individuals to whom he granted last-minute federal pardons. In a statement, the White House explained Trump’s decision by saying that Israel had “issued a full and unequivocal apology [for Pollard’s spying], and has requested the pardon in order to close this unfortunate chapter in US-Israeli relations”. In a statement issued a few hours later, Pollard and his Israeli wife, Esther, said they were “truly happy” about Trump’s decision. They went on to day that pardoning Sella “puts an end to the affair’s bleeding wounds after 35 years”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 January 2021 | Permalink | Thanks to A.B. for corrections

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CIA chief ‘threatened to resign’ to prevent her replacement by Trump loyalist

January 18, 2021 by Leave a comment

Gina HaspelTHE DIRECTOR OF THE United States Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, reportedly threatened to resign on the spot in order to prevent a plan by the White House to replace her with a loyal ally of President Donald Trump. This was reported on Saturday by the American news website Axios, which cited three anonymous “senior administration officials” with direct knowledge of the matter.

President Trump reportedly planned to fire the heads of several federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including CIA, if he was re-elected in November. Following his electoral defeat, he discussed with his closest aides the possibility of proceeding with his plan to fire senior security and intelligence officials, as a form of retaliation against a part of the federal government that he views as disloyal to him. In particular, the president appears to believe that the CIA is in possession of secret documents that, if declassified, would harm the reputation of his domestic political enemies.

On November 9, the president summarily fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and replaced him with Chris Miller, who until then was serving as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He also installed Kash Patel as Miller’s chief of staff. Patel is an attorney whose rise within the ranks of the Trump administration has been nothing short of meteoric. In 2019, after serving as Principal Deputy to the Director of National Intelligence for a number of months, Patel became senior director of the Counterterrorism Directorate at the National Security Council. He was also a former aide to Representative Devin Nunes (R-Ca), and is believed to have been the main author of a memorandum issues by Nunes, which accuses the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of participating in a conspiracy to destroy Trump.

This memorandum, claims Axios, convinced Trump that Patel would make a good acting CIA director. He therefore planned to replace the CIA’s current deputy director, Vaughn Bishop, with Patel. He then planned to fire Haspel, which would elevate Patel to acting CIA director, according to Axios. The website claims that the president instructed the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to begin the process of replacing Bishop with Patel in early December. However, once Haspel was notified of the plan, she threatened to resign before Patel was installed at the CIA. Her resignation would mean that Trump would have to also fire Haspel’s replacement, Bishop, in order to place Patel at the helm of the agency.

By December 11, Trump had reportedly been convinced to keep Haspel as CIA director. A relatively amicable meeting between him and Haspel, followed by the counsel of his senior aides, allegedly contributed to his decisoin. Among those who spoke in Haspel’s favor was Vice President Mike Pence and Pat Chipollone, who serves as White House Counsel. At that time, said Axios, Meadows contacted Haspel to inform her that the president had reversed his decision, and canceled the paperwork for installing Patel at the CIA.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 January 2021 | Permalink

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FBI, NYPD forewarned Capitol Police of serious violence by Trump supporters

January 11, 2021 by 2 Comments

US CapitolTHE FEDERAL BUREAU OF Investigation and the New York Police Department gave Capitol Police officials specific warnings that supporters of United States President Donald Trump were determined to engage in serious violence on January 6, according to federal officials. The FBI even made contact with known far-right radicals across the United States in early January, and warned them not to travel to Washington for the pro-Trump rally that resulted in the bloody attack on the US Capitol, according to NBC News.

Citing “senior law enforcement officials”, including “a senior FBI official”, NBC reported on Sunday that the FBI had “credible and actionable information” about specific far-right radicals who intended to join the protest on January 6. This information was allegedly communicated to Capitol Police officials, according to the report. The senior FBI official, who is not named in report, told NBC that the Bureau made contact with those radicals and warned them not to travel to Washington for the protest. Citing “multiple law enforcement officials”, the news network also said that the Capitol Police was given extensive intelligence by NYPD about planned acts of violence on January 6. The intelligence was “specific”, “detailing the threats and extremist rhetoric on social media”, according to the news network.

Despite these warnings, however, Capitol Police reportedly turned down an offer of assistance by the US National Guard three days before the fateful siege of the Capitol Building Complex by thousands of pro-Trump insurgents, many of whom were armed. According to the Associated Press, despite the advanced and detailed warnings given to it, “the Capitol Police planned only for a free speech demonstration”.

Meanwhile, the experts warning of a significant risk of widespread violence on January 20, when President-Elect Joe Biden is scheduled to be sworn into office, are growing in number. On Sunday, Cindy Otis, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst and vice-president of the Alethea Group, which tracks online threats, warned that “we are in a tinderbox situation right now”. She pointed to numerous threats made online, which claim that last Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol was “just a taste of things to come”. There are reports that far-right insurgents are preparing for a violent showdown in DC, aimed at preventing Biden from entering the White House on January 20. Other reports suggest that groups of insurgents seek to organize synchronous potentially violent rallies in every state of the union that day.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 January 2021 | Permalink

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Trump administration cancels parole for US Navy analyst who spied for Israel

November 23, 2020 by 3 Comments

Pollard - aA UNITED STATES NAVY analyst who spent 30 years in prison after being convicted of spying on the United States for Israel, is expected to receive a hero’s welcome in Israel in the coming days, after the administration of President Donald Trump lifted his parole restrictions that prevented him from leaving the country. Jonathan Pollard, a former intelligence analyst for the United States Navy, was released from an American prison in 2015, after serving a lengthy sentence for selling US government secrets to Israel.

Throughout Pollard’s time in prison, the government of Israel lobbied for his release, claiming that the convicted spy did not harm American interests, but was simply trying to help Israel. However, the US Intelligence Community and successive American presidents consistently rejected Israel’s claims, arguing that Pollard’s activities were severely detrimental to US interests. Pollard was eventually released after serving the entirety of his sentence.

Ever since his release, Pollard had been required to wear an ankle monitor at all times. His Internet browsing was strictly regulated by the US government and he was not permitted to leave his New York home after sunset. He was also not permitted to leave the US, and Washington had refused to allow him to move to Israel, for fear that the Israeli government would provide him with monetary rewards for his espionage.

But now Pollard is expected to travel to Israel soon, after the Department of Justice announced on Friday that his parole would not be renewed —a move that effectively allows Pollard to leave the United States for the first time since his imprisonment. His lawyer, Eliot Lauer, told an Israeli television station that Pollard would soon be departing for Israel, adding that he looked forward to “seeing our client in Israel”. On Saturday, a press statement issued from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the lifting of Pollard’s parole restrictions, and said Israeli leaders “hope to see Jonathan Pollard in Israel soon”.

Pollard is expected to receive a hero’s welcome in Israel, where he has achieved celebrity status. He is especially revered by supporters of the center-right Likud party, which is currently led by Netanyahu. There are, however, many in Israel who see Pollard as an opportunist and have derided him publicly for accusing the state of Israel of abandoning him. Others in the Israeli intelligence community see the Pollard episode as deeply damaging to relations between the United States and Israel, and are critical of the decision to recruit Pollard, whose carelessness and brazen espionage style were bound to lead to his arrest sooner or later.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 23 November 2020 | Permalink

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Trump plans to axe defense secretary, FBI, CIA directors, if re-elected, say sources

October 26, 2020 by 4 Comments

Donald TrumpIF RE-ELECTED IN NOVEMBER, United States President Donald Trump has laid out plans to replace the secretary of defense, as well as the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to a new report. The website Axios, which published the report on Sunday, said the US president and his senior advisors have drafted a much longer list of names of senior military and intelligence officials who will be axed in November. However, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel top the list, said Axios.

The website cited two sources who have allegedly discussed with President Trump himself the fate of these and other officials. The sources told Axios that CIA Director Haspel is “despised and distrusted almost universally” within the president’s inner circle, whose members view her motives with “a lot of suspicion”. Another source familiar with “conversations at the CIA” told Axios that Haspel intends to step down —and possibly retire— “regardless of who wins the election” in November.

Trump is also “incensed” with FBI Director Wray, because he told Congress last month that the Bureau had not detected significant election-related fraud with either online activity or mail-in ballots, according to Axios. Additionally, the president reportedly lost trust in Defense Secretary Esper after he objected to the White House’s plan to deploy active-duty military personnel in major American cities, in response to popular protests sparked by allegations of abusive practices by law enforcement.

Axios added that, despite President Trump’s critical comments about his Attorney General, William Barr, in recent weeks, he has no “formal plans” to replace him at the present time.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 October 2020 | Permalink

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Dutch hacker says he logged into Trump’s Twitter account by guessing password

October 23, 2020 by 1 Comment

Twitter IA

A DUTCH ETHICAL COMPUTER hacker and cybersecurity expert claims to have logged into the personal Twitter account of United States President Donald Trump, reportedly after guessing his password. The hacker, Victor Gevers, took several screenshots of the private interface of Trump’s Twitter account, and shared them with Dutch news media, before contacting US authorities to notify them of the breach.

Trump attributes much of his popularity and electoral success to social media, and is especially fond of Twitter as a means of communication. He has tweeted nearly 20,000 times since 2015 (including re-tweets), with at least 6,000 of those tweets appearing in 2020 alone. His personal account, which uses the moniker @realDonaldTrump, has almost 90 million followers.

But Gevers, a self-described ethical computer hacker, cybersecurity researcher and activist, said he was able to guess the American president’s password and log into his Twitter account after four failed attempts. The hacker claims that Trump’s password was “maga2020!”. According to Gevers, Trump’s account did not require a two-factor authentication log-in process, which usually requires a password coupled with a numeric code that is sent to a user’s mobile telephone. As a result, Gevers said he was able to access Trump’s private messages on Twitter and —had he wanted to— post tweets in the name of the US president. He could also change Trump’s profile image, had he chosen to do so.

The Dutch hacker took several screenshots of the webpages he was able to access and emailed them to Volkskrant, a Dutch daily newspaper, and Vrij Nederland, an investigative monthly magazine. Shortly after accessing Trump’s account, Gevers said he contacted the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He said the US president’s password was changed “shortly after”, and that he was then contacted by the US Secret Service.

Also on Thursday, a Twitter spokesman said the company’s security team had seen “no evidence to corroborate” Gevers’ claim. He added that the San Francisco, California-based social media company had “proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government”. Such measures included “strongly” encouraging such accounts to enable two-factor authentication, said the spokesman. But he did not specify whether Trump’s account had activated this feature. The White House also denied Gevers’ claim, calling it “absolutely not true” and adding that it would “not comment on security procedures around the president’s social media accounts”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 23 October 2020 | Permalink

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Foreign spies target Walter Reed hospital for Trump’s health data, say experts

October 6, 2020 by 1 Comment

Donald Trump

Intelligence agencies from all over the world are almost certainly targeting the medical facilities and personnel involved in providing healthcare to United States President Donald Trump, according to intelligence insiders. The purpose of these efforts, which are considered “routine tasking” in intelligence circles, is to determine the status of America’s continuity of government plans and to acquire advanced warning of the plans and intentions of the White House, according to sources.

At least two reports emerged in the past few days about the strong probability that foreign intelligence operatives are currently seeking to collect sensitive biomedical information about Trump, who is battling a coronavirus infection. SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein wrote on Sunday that foreign spies are likely involved in efforts to place sources in places where discussions about the health of the American president are occurring. The targets of these efforts are not necessarily White House or other Trump administration officials. On the contrary, according to Politico’s Lara Seligman and Natasha Bertrand, these operations can target hospital staff, including doctors and administrators, as well as cleaners who have access to the US president’s bodily fluids and waste.

Some observers have criticized conflicting information given to the media about the US president’s health, as illustrated by White House physician Sean Conley’s comical efforts to evade the topic last week, after he was asked repeatedly by reporters if Mr. Trump had been on supplemental oxygen. Foreign spies are likely to have accessed detailed information about the US president’s health, and may have better information on the subject than the American public, said Politico.

Another intelligence tasking that foreign spies may be involved in is exploiting Mr. Trump’s time of physical weakness for propaganda purposes. The aim of such efforts would be “to paint America as unable to handle the pandemic”, thus creating “a crisis of confidence in the chain of command” and casting doubt on the ability of America to protect its senior leadership from the pandemic, according to intelligence insiders.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 October 2020 | Permalink

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Trump’s ex-spy chief warns American democracy may not survive November election

September 18, 2020 by 5 Comments

Dan CoatsThe former United States Director of National Intelligence, who served in the administration of President Donald Trump as the highest-ranking intelligence official until 2019, has warned that American democracy may not survive the upcoming presidential election. In a stark editorial published on Thursday in The New York Times, Dan Coats warns that whether “the American democratic experiment, one of the boldest political innovations in human history”, will survive after November, remains an open question.

The Trump administration appointed Coats in 2017 to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which was set up in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Its mission is to direct the 17-member United States Intelligence Community and to advise the president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council on matters of national security. In July 2019 Coats resigned, reportedly after disagreeing with President Trump’s policies on North Korea, Russia and the Islamic State.

In his editorial, Coats urges Congress to pass “emergency legislation” that will establish a “supremely high-level bipartisan and non-partisan commission to oversee the [upcoming 2020 Presidential] election”. The proposed commission would supervise the mechanisms that “tabulate, evaluate or certify the results” of the election and assure the American public that “the laws and regulations governing them have been scrupulously and expeditiously followed”, argues Coats. Additionally, it would refer “to the proper law enforcement agency” any incident of election “interference, fraud, disinformation or other distortions”.

Coats also calls on American leaders to perform what he describes as the “most urgent task [they] face”, which is “to ensure that the election results are accepted as legitimate”. Doing the opposite would mean succumbing to the pressure of enemies who “want us to concede in advance that our voting systems are faulty or fraudulent; [and] that sinister conspiracies have distorted the political will of the people”.

The former Director of National Intelligence concludes by warning that if the nation fails “to take every conceivable effort to ensure the integrity of the election”, there will be no winners, but only losers, after November. Consequently, the American voters will not simply be choosing a president, he says, but will be deciding “whether the American democratic experiment […] will survive”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 September 2020 | Permalink

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Republican ex-intelligence officials launch high-profile campaign against Trump

August 21, 2020 by 11 Comments

Trump CIAA group of former United States senior intelligence and national security officials, who support the Republican Party, launched today a campaign to deny Donald Trump a second term as president. Calling itself Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden, the group launched its high-profile campaign with a full-time ad in the business broadsheet The Wall Street Journal.

The ad is signed by 73 members and supporters of the Republican Party, who served in senior intelligence and national security posts under presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. The list of signatories includes former Air Force Secretary Mike Donley, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director General Michael Hayden. William Webster, who served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA, and Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, also signed the ad.

The text of the ad accuses the US president of corruption and lambasts him for lacking “the character and competence to lead this nation” in a time of crisis. It argues that Trump is “unfit to serve as president” because he “solicited foreign influence”, “disparaged [the US] armed forces, intelligence agencies, and diplomats”, and “imperiled America’s security”. In these and other ways, says the Republican group, Trump has “demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term”.

This development highlights the contentious and at times downright adversarial relationship that has existed between the White House and parts of the United States Intelligence Community during Trump’s presidency. At the same time, such a high-profile effort by established intelligence and national security figures to deny the US president a second term in office, could be used by the Trump campaign as evidence of his crusade against what his supporters refer to as the ‘deep state’. The term refers to a purported network of unelected interests that resist the president’s efforts to implement his political agenda.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 21 August 2020 | Permalink

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Chinese state-linked operatives funded Trump campaign to gain access, says report

June 30, 2020 by 3 Comments

Trump and Xi JinpingA report in The Wall Street Journal claims that individuals and groups with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army donated substantial funds to the re-election campaign of United States President Donald Trump, in return for access to the White House.

The paper claims that nearly half a million dollars were donated to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign on behalf of Chinese-linked interests soon after he was sworn in as president in January of 2017. Some of these donations were allegedly among the biggest made to the campaign. The list of donors is headed by four men, according to The Journal, some of whom are naturalized Americans of Chinese background, and at least one is a Chinese citizen and American permanent resident, which means he does not get to vote in the United States. He is believed to have donated $150,000 to the Trump re-election campaign.

Many of these donations are gathered through an organization that was created in the United States in 2017 to help the president get re-elected in 2020, says the paper. Funds raised by the group are funneled to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee. However, according to The Journal, the people behind the organization have ties to Chinese diplomats in the United States, as well as to the Chinese state.

The paper claims that the money given to the Trump re-election campaign earned some of these donors physical access to the White House and the president in at least one occasion, in May of 2017. Among those who were invited to visit the White House was a personal adviser to Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Others have ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said the paper. It added that some of these donors have also attended Trump re-election campaign strategy meetings and meetings of the Republican National Committee.

The Wall Street Journal allegations came just days after Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, claimed in a new book that the president solicited his Chinese counterpart for help in securing his re-election. In his new book, The Room Where it Happened, Mr. Bolton claims that the American president asked Mr. Xi to have China purchase billions of dollars of American soybeans, so that farming communities in the Midwest would continue to support the Trump ticket come 2020.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 30 June 2020 | Permalink

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