US intelligence officials called to resign despite Trump’s Russia retraction
July 19, 2018 1 Comment
Several American former intelligence officials have called on their active colleagues to resign despite President Donald Trump’s retraction of his remarks about Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. On Tuesday, the US president issued an unusual retraction and correction of his public statement on Monday in Helsinki, Finland, in which he appeared to side with the Kremlin over his own Intelligence Community’s views. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is the coordinating body of the US Intelligence Community, has said that Russia tried to systematically interfere in the 2016 US presidential elections. According to the ODNI, the Kremlin’s goal was to augment the already heightened discord in American political life and deepen the mistrust between the electorate and state institutions, including Congress and the White House.
But President Trump dismissed those conclusions on Monday, while speaking alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin following the US-Russia summit in the Finish capital. During the joint press conference of the two leaders, the US president was asked to publicly adopt the US Intelligence Community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections. But instead of doing so, Trump said his Russian counterpart had strongly denied the American accusations. “My people came to me”, said Trump, referring by name to his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats, and “said they think it’s Russia”. However, Trump continued, “President Putin […] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be”. Following strong criticism of that comment, much of it from his own supporters, the US president retracted it on Tuesday in Washington, saying he misspoke in Helsinki. According to Trump, he said “would” when he meant to say “wouldn’t”.
The US president’s odd retraction came just hours after DNI Coats –a Trump appointee– issued a rare public statement rejecting Trump’s comments in Helsinki. “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy”, said Coats, adding that his office’s conclusion had been based on “unvarnished and objective intelligence”. Coats’ predecessor, former ODNI James Clapper, said during an interview with CNN on Tuesday that, if he still led the ODNI and had been “publicly thrown under the bus” by the president in that manner, he “would have stepped down in a heartbeat”. Read more of this post
The outgoing director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency has warned in an interview that it would be “disastrous” for Washington to abandon a nuclear treaty with Iran, which was agreed in 2015. John Brennan is a career intelligence officer and fluent Arabic speaker, who has served in the CIA for 25 years. He was appointed director of the agency in March of 2013 by President Barack Obama and is scheduled to leave the position in January of 2017, after nearly four years at the helm of the CIA.
Two more members of a computer hacker group that targeted senior United States intelligence officials, including the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, have been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The arrests of Justin Liverman, 24, and Andrew Boggs, 22, took place on Thursday in Morehead City and North Wilkesboro, in the US state of North Carolina. They are 
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Star on CIA’s memorial wall honors employee who took her own life
May 21, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis 3 Comments
The CIA holds an annual ceremony in recognition of its fallen members, at which time new stars are usually added to the memorial wall. Among them there is a star for Ranya Abdelsayed, who died on August 28, 2013, while employed by the CIA in Kandahar, Afghanistan. However, unlike the other 19 known deaths of CIA personnel in Afghanistan since 2001, Abdelsayed reportedly died by suicide. Her lifeless body was found by a colleague after she shot herself to death at Firebase Gecko, an International Security Assistance Force base in Afghanistan, which is commanded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is believed that Abdelsayed’s star is the only star on the CIA’s memorial wall that recognizes a CIA employee who took her own life.
In an article published on Sunday, The Washington Post’s Ian Shapira reports that not everyone at CIA agrees that Abdelsayed deserves to have a star on the Agency’s memorial wall. Shapira spoke to Nicholas Dujmovic, a recently retired CIA historian, who claims that Abdelsayed’s star “must absolutely come off the wall” because it violates the CIA’s own criteria for this highest of honors. Dujmovic opines that the memorial wall is reserved for deaths of CIA personnel that are “of an inspirational or heroic character”, typically deaths that are caused by hazardous conditions or violent actions by adversaries. The CIA historian tells The Washington Post that he has researched past deaths of CIA personnel and fears that “there has been an erosion of understanding in CIA leadership for at least two decades about what the wall is for and who is it that we’re commemorating”.
The paper reports that Dujmovic made his views known to CIA officials when the Agency’s Merit Awards Board decided to include a star in honor of Abdelsayed. But the Board upheld its decision, and so did the CIA’s director at the time, John Brennan. He told The Post that he stands by that decision today, arguing that Abdelsayed’s death was “something the Agency needed to recognize as being one of those unfortunate consequences of the global challenges the CIA addresses”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 May 2019 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan War, CIA, John Brennan, News, Nicholas Dujmovic, Ranya Abdelsayed, suicides, United States