Bryan Dean Wright

INTERVIEW (Part I): Former CIA Officer Explains The Shocking Details And Dangers Of The ‘Deep State’

Deep State

Donald Trump

Media

On Tuesday, testifying before a military commission prepared to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks which killed roughly 3,000 Americans, James Mitchell, the psychologist who supervised the CIA’s interrogation program after September 11 and has been attacked because some of those techniques included waterboarding, defiantly told the commission, “Let me tell you, just so you know: if it were today, I would do it again.”
Mitchell and another psychologist, John “Bruce” Jessen, helped create the interrogation techniques used on the terrorists. Mitchell stated, “I thought of my moral obligation to protect American lives against the temporary discomfort of terrorists who took up arms against America. I decided I would just live with it.”
As the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-01-21/ksm-guantanamo-911-psychologist">Los Angeles Times</a> noted, “The five men — Mohammed and his nephew, Ammar Baluchi, along with Ramzi bin Shibh, Mustafa Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash — are accused of conspiring to murder almost 3,000 people. They were all captured in either 2002 or 2003 and have been in American custody since.&#8221;
James G. Connell III, lead defense attorney for Baluchi, thanked Mitchell for coming to court. Mitchell fired back, “I actually did it for the victims and families, not for you.” He later stated, “You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years, so you shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t want to spend a lot of time with you.”
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8491509/Osama-bin-Laden-killed-CIA-admits-waterboarding-yielded-vital-information.html">The Telegraph</a> reported in 2011, &#8220;American officials have said that one of the crucial clues that led to bin Laden was a piece of information about an al-Qaeda courier that came from September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or from the so-called 20th hijacker, Mohammad al-Qahtani.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Isiw2doiA">Speaking</a> in a powerful interview with AEI fellow Marc Thiessen in 2016, Mitchell said of KSM, “In the beginning he was like the devil; he was belligerent; he was hostile; he was angry; then after EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) and we drifted into debriefings, he became charming and more cordial. You know, evil doesn’t always look evil; it’s most powerful when it can get inside your defenses, and KSM is one of those guys, when he turns on the charm, he’s extremely good at it.&#8221;
Mitchell continued, “Interrogation for the CIA was when you were questioning somebody who was actively trying to resist providing you with the information. They’re trying to hide their secrets and wouldn’t engage with the question. So in those particular cases, the enhanced interrogation techniques would be used normally only for a couple of weeks. Usually within about 72 hours, people were beginning to try to find ways to cooperate. When they started to find ways to cooperate, we moved as quickly as we could into debriefing.”
Mitchell explained that the so-called “fireside chats” following the debriefing sometimes yielded information because the individual felt that the official debriefing was over and would relax and talk more freely. Mitchell spoke of how KSM later gave classes to CIA members on various subjects related to terrorism, such as how they got their funding, etc. Mitchell said KSM would say afterward, “Now you should be on the FBI’s most wanted list because you’ve been trained by KSM.”
Mitchell said other individuals spent time playing basketball or other pursuits, but KSM liked to pontificate. Speaking of how KSM could turn on the charm, he said, “It was like Yoda. It was like talking to Yoda. Except that Yoda could sometimes be the devil.”
Mitchell recalled Jessen saying to KSM, “You know I noticed at times that it looked like you wanted to say something, like you had more to say, but then you backed away from it.” Mitchell continued, “KSM looked at me, you know, like I was his errand boy, he looked at me and he said, ‘Go get that lady who takes the notes,’ even though she was the WMD expert and a phenomenal analyst, remember, he’s a terrorist who basically didn’t like women; didn’t really like talking to them. And he said, ‘Go get that lady who takes the notes,’ and then when she came back with me, he described beheading and dismembering Daniel Pearl.”
Mitchell continued, “I did tear up, of course, I tear up a lot; I cry at dog food commercials, but he talked about cutting his throat and dismembering him, and one of us, I can’t remember which one of us it was, said, ‘Was that difficult for you?’ because we found it reprehensible, and he said, ‘Oh, no. I had lots of sharp knives, and I had to keep sharpening them; the only difficult thing was cutting through the neck bone.’ Just that casually. And then he went on to describe, like I said, how he’d dismembered him and buried him in a hole because the ground was too frozen. It was horrible.”
Mitchell recalled that the CIA went back to confirm KSM had actually been the one who beheaded Pearl, and when he was told that it had been confirmed, he said, “Yes. I cut his head off with these blessed hands.” Mitchell said, “And he was mugging for the camera.”
&nbsp;

James Mitchell

Psychologist Who Waterboarded Alleged Mastermind Of 9/11 Attacks: ‘I Would Do It Again’

Terrorism

The FBI has reportedly asked to interview the CIA whistleblower whose complaint led to Democrats opening an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The Senate Intelligence Committee has already started interviewing those connected to the whistleblower&#8217;s complaint.
&#8220;The FBI recently sought to question the CIA whistleblower who filed a complaint over President Trump’s July 25 Ukraine call — a move that came after a vigorous internal debate within the bureau over how to respond to some of the issues raised by the complaint’s allegations and whether they needed to be more thoroughly investigated,&#8221; Yahoo! News <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-seeks-interview-with-cia-whistleblower-121637359.html">reported</a>. &#8220;But no interview has yet to be scheduled. It is unclear what the intended scope of the interview would be or whether the whistleblower’s lawyers will agree to it. Mark Zaid, one of the lawyers for the whistleblower, said he and his co-counsel would have no comment. An FBI spokesperson also declined comment.&#8221;
NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fbi-seeks-interview-whistleblower-n1086691">noted</a> that the FBI is not at the moment interested in investigating the whistleblower, adding that &#8220;the outreach to the whistleblower was approved by the FBI’s Washington field office, and neither Attorney General William Barr nor those in his orbit at the Justice Department were made aware until media reports surfaced on Wednesday, according to another source familiar with the matter.&#8221;
News that the FBI wants to interview the whistleblower comes at the same time that other reports note that the Senate Judiciary Committee has already started interviewing people connected to the whistleblower&#8217;s complaint.
&#8220;North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the chair of the committee, said Tuesday that the panel has been &#8216;interviewing people that might be tied to&#8217; the complaint,&#8221; BuzzFeed News <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/senate-intelligence-whistleblower-complaint-trump">reported</a>. &#8220;Burr declined to reveal exactly how many people the committee has already questioned behind closed doors, but a spokesperson for Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the committee vice chair, said it was &#8216;multiple individuals involved in the handling of the complaint.'&#8221;
&#8220;Burr has expressed frustration that committee staff have been unable to interview the whistleblower, whose attorneys have conveyed concerns about their client’s safety,&#8221; BuzzFeed News added. &#8220;They have offered to have the whistleblower answer questions in writing, but Burr said &#8216;that was rejected.'&#8221;
Burr also issued an apparent warning to the whistleblower, saying that the Senate Intelligence Committee could force him to be questioned in person.
“We’ve got a track record of protecting whistleblowers, witnesses,” Burr said. “We’ve offered to meet him anywhere, anytime. Clearly, this is not somebody that wants to meet, and before this is over, they will be compelled in some way, shape, or form to meet with us.”
Numerous reports on the alleged whistleblower have noted that the whistleblower is a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/politics/whistleblower-registered-democrat/index.html">registered</a> Democrat, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/joe-biden-worked-with-whistleblower-when-he-was-vice-president-officials-reveal">worked</a> with former Vice President Joe Biden, and had a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/whistleblower-had-professional-relationship-with-democratic-2020-presidential-candidate-report/">bias</a> in favor of one of Trump&#8217;s 2020 Democratic presidential candidate opponents.
The whistleblower <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/us/politics/adam-schiff-whistleblower.html">reached out</a> to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff&#8217;s aides prior to filing an official complaint.
The Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/adam-schiffs-staff-includes-2-aides-who-worked-with-whistleblower-at-white-house">added</a> that Schiff &#8220;recruited two former National Security Council aides who worked alongside the CIA whistleblower at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations.&#8221;

Richard Burr FBI

FBI Wants To Interview Whistleblower, Senate Committee Interviewing People Involved With Complaint

Impeachment

U.S. Senate

Back in May, 58-year-old Jennifer Hernandez was arrested after multiple attempts to enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Hernandez awaited a trial for her trespassing charges, she showed up at the D.C. home of former President Barack Obama, despite a court order blocking her from any government-related facilities.
Let’s rewind. On April 22, Hernandez showed up at CIA headquarters. She drove through the main vehicle entrance and then entered the main building, The Military Times <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2019/05/08/woman-arrested-for-trespassing-at-cia-headquarters-and-asking-for-agent-penis/">reported</a>. She was, of course, stopped by a CIA police officer. She claimed she was in the building to meet with a recruiter for her employment application. Her story was quickly debunked, and she was asked to leave, which she did.
On May 1, Hernandez returned. She again said she needed to speak with her recruiter and was again told to leave, this time with a handwritten warning. On May 2, Hernandez appeared at the agency again and again claimed she needed to speak with her recruiter, saying his phone had been turned off so she could only contact him in person. Police interviewed Hernandez at that time, and yet again asked her to leave.
Undeterred, Hernandez showed up the next day, on May 3. Her North Carolina ID had not been returned to her the previous day. On this day, Hernandez asked to speak with “Agent Penis,” her alleged recruiter. She was given her ID card back and said she would take the bus home. She refused to get on the bus, allegedly telling police officers, “do you really think I’m going to leave?” She was arrested and charged with a trespassing misdemeanor.
WTOP now <a href="https://wtop.com/local/2019/11/judge-says-woman-arrested-in-cia-trespass-looking-for-agent-penis-later-visited-obama-home/">reports</a> that Hernandez was released prior to her trial and visited the D.C. home of Obama. U.S. District Court Judge John Anderson has been trying to find a way to resolve Hernandez’s case without jail time.
“You have to meet people halfway,” Anderson reportedly said while trying to convince Hernandez to get mental health treatment to avoid a criminal prosecution.
“We’re trying to help you, not punish you,” Anderson said, adding that “The restraint the government is showing is unusual and appreciated.” The government had not objected to Hernandez being released before trial.
Anderson also told Hernandez that the court wanted to get her “to a safer place and get you the help you need.”
Whitney Minter, Hernandez’s federal public defender, told reporters that she was working with prosecutors and probation officials to avoid a trial, and was considering having Hernandez plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Hernandez reportedly told the court that one of her family members had been trying to kill her for the past 22 years and mentioned other alleged threats. She said she would never go back to Obama’s home.
“Tell me what to do, and I will abide by the law.”
Anderson told her: “You shouldn’t be going to places like the CIA and the Obamas’ house. You have to fight the callings, and you just can’t go back there.”
Anderson also said he wanted “to get this resolved in a nonjudicial way.”

CIA logo hat

Remember The Woman Who Went To The CIA Asking For Agent Penis? She Just Showed Up At Obama’s House

Mental Illness

Attorneys for the whistleblower whose complaint about President Trump&#8217;s July 25 phone call with Ukraine&#8217;s president sparked the Democrats&#8217; impeachment inquiry issued a statement Thursday threatening legal action against journalists who publish &#8220;the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html">The New York Times</a> was first to provide some details about the whistleblower behind the complaint that started the impeachment inquiry, reporting in late-September that the whistleblower is allegedly a CIA agent who was &#8220;detailed to work at the [Trump] White House at one point.&#8221; The Times noted that the whistleblower&#8217;s attorneys confirmed their client&#8217;s position with the CIA. In the following weeks, speculation continued to swirl and pressure mounted from Republicans, including Trump, for the identity of the whistleblower to be revealed.
This week, multiple outlets revealed the name that, as <a href="https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/10/30/whistleblower_exposed_close_to_biden_brennan_dnc_oppo_researcher_120996.html">RealClearInvestigations&#8217;</a> Paul Sperry put it, is reportedly &#8220;an open secret inside the Beltway.&#8221; In response, the whistleblower&#8217;s attorneys, Andrew P. Bakaj and Mark S. Zaid, issued a release Thursday addressing &#8220;speculation&#8221; on the whistleblower&#8217;s identity.
&#8220;Our client is legally entitled to anonymity,&#8221; the statement reads. &#8220;Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger. Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.&#8221;
Below is the full text of the release (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>In correspondence dated October 22, 2019, the Counsel of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency made it clear that &#8220;Whistleblowers play an essential public service on coming forward by reporting their reasonable belief of waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct, and that whistleblowers &#8220;should never suffer reprisal or even the threat of reprisal for doing so.&#8221; Significantly, the letter quotes Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), Chairman and co-founder of the U.S. Senate&#8217;s Whistleblower Caucus, who noted recently regarding this matter that whistleblowers &#8216;ought to be heard out and protected&#8217; and &#8216;we should always work to respect whistleblowers&#8217; request for confidentiality. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire — himself an appointee of President Trump — stated in his public testimony on September 26, 2019, that the whistleblower &#8216;acted in good faith and followed the law every step of the way.&#8217;
Members of the media have a similar role in protecting those who lawfully expose government wrongdoing.
Accordingly, we neither confirm nor deny the identity of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower. Our client is legally entitled to anonymity. Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger. Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Attorneys for Ukraine call whistleblower new statement on speculation about the intelligence community employee’s identity. <a href="https://t.co/UdsmSQ226P">pic.twitter.com/UdsmSQ226P</a>
— Kelly O&#8217;Donnell (@KellyO) <a href="https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1190081824514555904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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In his report Wednesday revealing the &#8220;one name&#8221; that Beltway sources say is the whistleblower, Sperry explained the outlet&#8217;s rationale for revealing it. &#8220;RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Further, the official&#8217;s status as a &#8216;whistleblower&#8217; is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has &#8216;some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate&#8217; — as the Intelligence Community Inspector General <a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190826_-_icig_letter_to_acting_dni_unclass.pdf">phrased it</a> circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.&#8221;
Citing federal documents, Sperry reported that the whistleblower is allegedly a 33-year-old &#8220;registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia &#8216;collusion&#8217; investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.&#8221; The whistleblower reportedly &#8220;left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media&#8221; and &#8220;has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.&#8221;
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&#8220;He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,&#8221; a former NSC official told RealClearInvestigations.
When <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html">The New York Times</a> first revealed that the whistleblower was a CIA agent who was previously detailed to the Trump White House, and that the whistleblower&#8217;s attorneys confirmed their clients&#8217; CIA status, the Times&#8217; Executive Editor Dean Baquet defended the decision to print the information because they wanted readers &#8220;to make their own judgments about whether or not he is credible.&#8221;
&#8220;We decided to publish limited information about the whistle-blower — including the fact that he works for a nonpolitical agency and that his complaint is based on an intimate knowledge and understanding of the White House — because we wanted to provide information to readers that allows them to make their own judgments about whether or not he is credible,&#8221; said Baquet. &#8220;We also understand that the White House already knew he was a C.I.A. officer.&#8221;
</div>

President Trump

Alleged Identity Of Whistleblower Leaked; Whistleblower’s Lawyers Release Statement Threatening Journalists

New York Times

Ukraine

From the moment this ridiculous Ukraine story began, I have called it the Wile E. Coyote scandal: yet another gizmo from the Acme Impeachment Company designed to catch President Roadrunner and destined to blow up in the Democrats’ faces instead. As I write this, I feel that has become a description of painfully exquisite precision — because it seems to me the Democrats have reached the end of the road, run off the cliff, and will hang there in mid-air until they look down and fall into the oblivion they so deserve.
No matter how hard the networks, The New York Times and CNN try to sell this piece o’ garbage, it still looks the same way: like a sinister ploy by corrupt members of the intelligence community and their willing media executioners, an attempt to distract us from upcoming revelations about Obama’s anti-Trump spying campaign and discredit those who are investigating it.
But the Ukraine story has collapsed and, like mid-air Wile E. Coyote, the Left doesn’t know it yet. The central charge — that the president withheld aid from Ukraine to pressure them into investigating Joe Biden’s son in order to scuttle his campaign — makes no sense. Reports in the New York Times and Buzzfeed that the Ukrainians weren’t aware the aid had been delayed makes the story implausible. And the revelation that McCarthyite Trump foe Adam Schiff had contact with the whistleblower who ratted Trump out makes the whole thing look like the political hit job it almost surely is. (The indispensable Kimberly Strassel has a revealing timeline in her Friday Wall Street Journal column showing how Schiff manipulated information as Dianne Feinstein did with the Kavanaugh smear.)
The press is as clueless as their pet Democrats. Trapped inside their own echo chamber, they don’t know how ridiculous they sound to the rest of us. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin actually interviewed former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe in a weird attempt to debunk charges against McCabe’s FBI. Remember, these are the guys who seem to have engineered spy games against Trump on the basis of Russian disinformation paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
“You were one of the top officials who made sure the Russia investigation was opened. You were at the top levels,” said Brooke — as if that made him an expert instead of a possible perp.
And McCabe — fired after coming under federal investigation for allegedly lying about press leaks — was shocked — shocked — to find that anyone could be suspicious of him. “The circumstances behind the opening of the Russia case are not a mystery. I have testified under oath about them as early as December of 2017. Jim Comey has made comments about them publicly. I have. We&#8217;ve both written books that touched on the issues.”
So the suspect says he’s innocent and his alleged co-conspirator agrees — how could anyone possibly continue to suspect him?!
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace has the excuse of being on an openly left-wing outlet — but still. She brought on former CIA Director John Brennan, another of the alleged engineers of the anti-Trump plot. Wallace asked him if he could see any reason why he should be investigated.
Brennan was baffled! He then maundered on, Brennan-like, about how Trump was trying to discredit the investigation into Russian election interference. But that, in itself, is dishonest. Trump isn’t trying to discredit that. He’s trying to find out why he, a Republican candidate, was spied on by a Democrat administration. Seems like a pretty good question to me.
The truth will out, even as much of the press corps conspires to keep that truth from being revealed or believed. Meanwhile, the Democrats hover in mid-air as if they’re still on the road to victory.
But they can’t avoid looking down forever.

Adam Schiff

KLAVAN: What The Democrats Don’t Know Will Hurt Them

Andrew McCabe

John Brennan

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh came loaded for bear on Monday, repeatedly taking aim at the Democrats&#8217; and the Drive-by-Media&#8217;s impeachment narrative, which he said is made up entirely of &#8220;lies.&#8221;
&#8220;The one thing that will get you through this and the one thing that you have to understand, is practically everything in the media about impeachment is a lie,&#8221; Rush said on his radio program Monday (transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/09/30/everything-youre-hearing-about-impeachment-is-a-lie/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>). &#8220;Everything is a lie. There isn’t any of it that is true, except if you switch things and have it apply to things the Democrats have done. Then most of it becomes true.&#8221;
&#8220;It is the most amazing thing, and they continue to make it up as the days and the hours go by,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They make it up to fit whatever objection is raised. They make it up to fit whatever suspicion is raised about what they’re doing. There are no boundaries here, folks. They’re gonna get rid of Donald Trump by hook or crook no matter what, and it doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t matter the mechanism. It doesn’t matter the validity. They’re going to do it. They have intended to do it since election night of 2016.&#8221;
Though he said all the Democrats&#8217; lies are &#8220;too numerous&#8221; to list, the host offered his listeners some of the big ones, including Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff having &#8220;lied through his teeth&#8221; when he made up quotes about Trump supposedly asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to &#8220;dig up dirt&#8221; on Joe Biden in the famous July 25 call.
&#8220;He said, ‘I want you to dig up dirt on my opponent. Dig up as much as you can. Make it up! And don’t get back to me ’til you do,'&#8221; said Limbaugh, adding, &#8220;That didn’t happen!&#8221;
Rush then pointed out reports that the requirements for whistleblower complaints were quietly downgraded from those with first-hand knowledge to second-hand knowledge a few weeks before the complaint against Trump was filed (a claim which subsequent <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-shows-russian-trolls-how-its-done-with-trump-inspector-general-whistleblower-smear">reports</a> have refuted). The allowance of &#8220;hearsay,&#8221; said Limbaugh, allows for Trump&#8217;s opponents to push through their objective &#8220;to get rid of Trump.&#8221;
Limbaugh then highlighted two other &#8220;noteworthy&#8221; developments from the last few days that demonstrate his premise that there&#8217;s a full-on &#8220;coup&#8221; going on conducted by the Democrats and the deep state. The first thing involved avid anti-Trumper John Brennan, the former CIA Director who&#8217;s now an analyst with NBC News, urging federal officials to come forward with damning accusations against the president.
&#8220;Now, John Brennan’s hands are as dirty as Obama’s in this whole thing,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;John Brennan (you probably have forgotten) traveled to Ukraine back in the time period around 2016 under a fake passport so it wouldn’t be known that he had gone, and he was arranging data on the dossier and all of the other dirt that they were trying to amass. Ukraine — not Russia, Ukraine — is the center of the universe of all this. Now, over the weekend John Brennan, Obama’s director of CIA — a man who voted for the Communist Party candidate in 1976 — John Brennan is among the radical leftists who personally, viscerally despise Donald Trump. He signaled everybody in the deep state to attack the president.&#8221;
Limbaugh then read Brennan&#8217;s tweet: &#8220;A reminder to federal officials: There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
A reminder to federal officials:
There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute.
If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1177917399254872064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Brennan just sent out a call to everybody in the administrative state to come forward and be your own whistleblower,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;He’s giving them cover. He’s telling them, &#8216;Come forward! We’ll protect you. You can make it up. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive … now is the time to report it.'&#8221;
&#8220;The next thing that happened that really made me blow my gasket was this story that’s the whistleblower fears for his or her safety and is now under federal protection,&#8221; said Limbaugh, adding later, &#8220;So the CIA agent here that’s been placed in the White House to spy on Trump — with secondhand, thirdhand knowledge — now goes and acts as a whistleblower and is afraid that he might be murdered by Trump. That’s the story. They had to protect him. Federal protection! He was afraid, feared for his life. Yeah, like Trump is gonna go get him. And then they actually said, &#8216;The whistleblower may have a point. You see what Trump did? Trump said he wants to confront his accuser! Trump says he has a right. The whistleblower is right to be afraid.'&#8221;
&#8220;The whistleblower is the most protected, popular, safe person in this country!&#8221; Limbaugh exclaimed. &#8220;The entire left is looking out for whoever this is, and yet they have to run a story — and the Drive-Bys trumpet it to the heavens — that the whistleblower’s afraid of being murdered! That’s what the story was. &#8216;Fears for safety&#8217; means &#8216;afraid of being killed.'&#8221;
&#8220;That’s a lie,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;That’s an exaggeration. All of this is just compounding on itself.&#8221;
Limbaugh also stressed a point he&#8217;s made previously about the whistleblower complaint, then offered up a theory about its origins: &#8220;Everybody that’s looked at this knows that this complaint was written by lawyers, not intelligence people. In fact, it’s being praised! It’s being held up as an example for would-be writers as a teaching tool, this complaint. I think it was written by House Intelligence Committee staffers, if you want to know the truth. I can’t prove it. But since we don’t need direct, firsthand knowledge, I’m gonna blow the whistle on the House Intelligence Committee. These are people that know this system cold, by the way. This thing as a blatant, total setup — carefully thought through, brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed so far.&#8221;
During the segment, Rush spelled out his central premise: &#8220;If Trump is so easily removed, if Trump is so egregious and has committed so many repugnant acts, why do you have to build a case made on so many lies? Why not just tell people the truth of what Trump did? Well, because the truth doesn’t get ’em anywhere near impeachment. The truth gets them nearer jail. The truth gets them near a problem. That’s what they’ve got to keep covered up. That’s what they’ve got to shift. They have to shift the aura of suspicion away from them themselves and on to Trump — and, of course, with the aid and assistance of the Drive-By Media, they can do just that, and they are.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-department-takes-new-action-on-hillary-investigation">State Department Takes New Action On Hillary Investigation</a>

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh: Everything Media’s Telling You About Trump Impeachment Is A Lie

On his radio show Thursday, Rush Limbaugh addressed the revelations from The New York Times about the identity of the &#8220;whistleblower&#8221; who sparked the controversy of President Trump&#8217;s July 25 phone call with Ukraine&#8217;s president that has given the Democrats a rationale to move forward on their impeachment campaign.
According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html">Times</a>, the whistleblower is &#8220;a CIA officer detailed to the White House,&#8221; and, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1177285616993804288">Paul Sperry</a>, former D.C. bureau chief for Investor&#8217;s Business Daily,  rumors are &#8220;swirling&#8221; that the whistleblower was one of former CIA Director and current NBC analyst John Brennan&#8217;s &#8220;old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of #Spygate which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine.&#8221;
&#8220;This is part of the same intel cabal that ran the Russia collusion mess!&#8221; Limbaugh exclaimed after reading an excerpt of the Times&#8217; report on the as-of-yet still anonymous whistleblower (transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/09/26/the-deep-state-coup-hasnt-ended-its-just-taken-a-turn-toward-ukraine/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>). &#8220;So he was a CIA officer. He was a plant! He was a deep state plant from the CIA at the White House!&#8221;
&#8220;Okay, what does this prove?&#8221; Limbaugh said. &#8220;It proves the intelligence community is spying on the president. It proves it. Trump said it during the 2016 campaign. They laughed at him; they mocked him. They said, &#8216;You&#8217;re insane. You&#8217;re crazy. Nobody&#8217;s monitoring your calls. Nobody&#8217;s tapping your wires. The CIA&#8217;s not spying on you!&#8217; Yes, they are. Not, &#8216;yes, they were.&#8217; Yes, they are.&#8221;
&#8220;He &#8216;is a CIA officer detailed to the White House,&#8217; meaning not a Trumper,&#8221; Rush continued. &#8220;This is somebody the CIA, the intel community, sent over there. This guy was put there as a spy and did his job &#8230; I knew the intel community was part of this — and, folks, nothing’s changed. Nothing’s new. It’s the same operation. They just failed to get Trump on Russia.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s the same theme! Trump interfered in the 2016 election. The Russians meddled; Trump colluded. The FBI tried to plant spies to prove this,&#8221; Limbaugh said before stressing something he&#8217;s stated repeatedly on his show: &#8220;It did happen because the meddling happened with the Democrats. The Democrats meddled and interfered by creating (the Hillary Clinton campaign buying) the Steele dossier.&#8221;
Along with the Times report, Limbaugh pointed to a tweet from Sperry, stating, &#8220;Rumors swirling the anti-Trump whistleblower was of Brennan&#8217;s old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of #Spygate which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine.&#8221;
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Rumors swirling the anti-Trump whistleblower was one of Brennan&#8217;s old CIA humps detailed over to &#8212; planted inside &#8212; the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Spygate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Spygate</a> which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) <a href="https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1177285616993804288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Trump is right. The whistleblower is a political hack,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;The rumors are circling now that he is one of John Brennan’s buddies. John Brennan ran the CIA for Obama. He was one of the original Never Trumpers running the Russia investigation. He was on TV every day promising people Trump was going to jail. He was promising people that Trump was gonna get frog-marched. He was promising people that Trump was going to be found guilty of treason. And then when the Mueller report came out no collusion, Brennan was out: I must have been given false information. No, your efforts bombed. Your efforts failed. So the whistleblower, one of John Brennan’s old CIA buddies planted inside the White House to spy on Trump and to try to undermine the Barr investigation into the original FBI investigation, like when did it begin, who’s really responsible for it.&#8221;
&#8220;The FBI was tasked with taking out Trump in the Russia investigation,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;The CIA has been tasked with taking Trump out on this Ukraine business.&#8221;
Limbaugh also noted that the Democrats have reportedly had the whistleblower complaint since August, yet chose to sit on it. &#8220;Adam Schiff’s had this on his desk since August! Pencil Neck had it,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;This whistleblower report is just like the Christine Blasey Ford letter, which had just been waiting there for Dianne Feinstein, in that case, to unveil it. This has been an operation needing only a timeframe for execution. The timeframe is they decide to go with this shortly after everybody thinks that Pelosi has authorized impeachment.&#8221;
&#8220;So this is supposed to go on top of that as the perception of evidence that Trump has done something impeachable,&#8221; he said, stating in a mockingly dramatic tone: &#8220;&#8216;He has asked Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 elections.&#8217; That’s based on the fact that Trump supposedly asked the guy to look into Biden. It’s okay for Hillary to hire Christopher Steele and to create a phony document, the Steele dossier — and it’s okay for the Democrats to take that to the FISA court and use that as evidence for a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition. Oh, that’s perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. The Russians can collude with the Democrats and vice-versa all day long if the objective is to get Trump.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-democrats-quid-pro-quo-claim-against-trump-is-weak-heres-why">Shapiro: Democrats’ ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Claim Against Trump Is Weak; Here’s Why</a>

Limbaugh: Turns Out Ukraine ‘Whistleblower’ Was ‘Deep State Plant From The CIA’

Hillary Clinton

Joe Biden

In what could be really bad news for Democrats, according to CNN&#8217;s Laura Jarrett, Attorney General William Barr is now drawing the net tighter around those people who may have targeted Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign; he&#8217;s working with the CIA, National Intelligence and the FBI to investigate surveillance issues related to the Trump campaign.
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Some news &#8211; AG Barr working closely with CIA Director Haspel, ODNI Director Coats and FBI Director Wray on surveillance issues related to Trump campaign &#8211; suggesting broader interagency effort underway
&#8212; Laura Jarrett (@LauraAJarrett) <a href="https://twitter.com/LauraAJarrett/status/1128309617014886400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Jarrett <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/politics/russia-investigation-origin-barr-haspel-coats-wray/index.html">reported</a> that on Tuesday, President Trump told reporters he did not direct Barr to involve other agencies, saying, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t ask him to do that. I didn&#8217;t know it. But I think it&#8217;s a great thing that he did it. I saw it last night, and they want to look at how that whole hoax got started. You know what? I am so proud of our attorney general, that he is looking into it. I think it&#8217;s great.&#8221; U.S. attorney John Durham has joined Barr as the investigation gets underway; the DOJ&#8217;s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, is also involved; he has been reviewing the surveillance warrant the FBI obtained targeting Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page as well as the FBI <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-inspector-general-homing-in-on-fbis-use-of-unverified-steele-dossier">relying on the unverified dossier</a> produced by British ex-spy Christopher Steele that targeted Trump.
Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-inspector-general-found-carter-page-fisa-extensions-were-illegally-obtained-joe-digenova-says">said last week</a> that Horowitz found that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant extensions against Page had been illegally obtained. Speaking on Fox Business, diGenova said Democrats were launching their investigations into President Trump to direct the public away from what Horowitz might find. He stated, &#8220;They are doing that as a diversionary tactic away from the inevitable conclusions of the DOJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who, by the way, we have learned has concluded that the final three FISA extensions were illegally obtained. The only question now is whether or not the first FISA was illegally obtained.&#8221;
DiGenova added that Horowitz &#8220;apparently, as a result of those disclosures &#8230; which he was unaware of &#8212; the bureau hid those memos from Horowitz &#8212; as a result of that they&#8217;re doing additional work on the first FISA. It may be that all four FISAs will have been obtained illegally.&#8221;
On May 1, Senator Lindsay Graham <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/01/lindsey_graham_when_the_mueller_report_is_put_to_bed_were_going_to_investigate_how_all_of_this_started.html">warned</a> that an investigation would be coming, saying:
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The other campaign. The other campaign was investigated, not by Mr. Mueller, by people within the Department of Justice. The accusation against the Clinton&#8211;Secretary Clinton was that she set a private server up somewhere in her house, and classified information was on it, to avoid the disclosure requirements and the transparency requirements required of being Secretary of State. So that was investigated. What do we know? We know that the person in charge of investigating hated Trump&#8217;s guts. I don&#8217;t know how Mr. Mueller felt about Trump, but I don&#8217;t think anybody on our side believes that he had a personal animosity toward the president to the point he couldn&#8217;t do his job &#8230; 
We&#8217;re going to, in a bipartisan way, I hope deal with Russia, but when the Mueller report is put to bed, and it soon will be, this committee is going to look long and hard at how this all started. We&#8217;re going to look at the FISA warrant process. Did Russia provide Christopher Steele the information about Trump that turned out to be garbage that was used to get a warrant on an American citizen, and if so, how did the system fail? Was there a real effort between Papadopoulos and anybody in Russia to use the Clinton emails stolen by&#8211;stole by the Russians, or was that thought planted in his mind? I don&#8217;t know, but we&#8217;re going to look. And I can tell you this. If you change the names, you all would want to look, too. Everything I just said, just substitute Clinton for Trump and see what all these people with cameras would be saying out here about this.
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Video of Graham below:
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The Net Grows Tighter: Barr Now Working With CIA, FBI, National Intelligence To Investigate Alleged Surveillance Of Trump Campaign

Barack Obama

Democratic Party

Republican Party

William Barr

On his talk radio program Tuesday, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh discussed the newly revealed messages from former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Trump-Russia investigation after his overt anti-Trump bias came to light. Strzok&#8217;s newly released texts and emails from December 2016 and April 2017 triggered a request by two high-ranking Republican senators&#8204; on Monday for further investigation. The reason they&#8217;re so &#8220;significant,&#8221; said Limbaugh, is they provide a possible clue about the role of John Brennan&#8217;s CIA in spreading false &#8220;collusion&#8221; claims to the press.
On Monday, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a <a href="http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-05-06%20RHJ%20CEG%20to%20IC%20IG%20(leaks).pdf">letter</a> to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson highlighting a text and an email from Strzok that raised serious questions. In a December 2016 text to his paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strozk wrote: &#8220;Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they&#8217;re kicking in to overdrive.&#8221; Then, in an April 2017 email to some of his FBI colleagues, Strzok wrote: &#8220;I&#8217;m beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn&#8217;t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks.&#8221;
Limbaugh addressed the &#8220;fascinating&#8221; development on Tuesday. &#8220;Now, this is significant, because we now know that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It looks like the CIA was, in fact, leaking false Trump-Russia stories to the press to undermine Trump. These are leaks that even the FBI agents running their own version of a coup thought were wrong and incorrect, and it was John Brennan running the CIA at the time.&#8221;
&#8220;[T]hey&#8217;re concluding that Brennan and the CIA are leaking and putting this stuff in the media that they, then, have to deal with themselves,&#8221; he said after dismissing the idea that this was a &#8220;CYA&#8221; attempt by the FBI. &#8220;And they are concluding here, these are &#8216;incorrect leads all these media folks have.&#8217; That is a solid indication that the FBI&#8217;s looking at this as it&#8217;s happening, and that the CIA is releasing a bunch of BS that even the FBI thought was BS. And the media was just swallowing it all up, not questioning any of it.&#8221;
Why was the media unquestioningly accepting this &#8220;BS&#8221;? Because &#8220;it came from Obama&#8217;s CIA, which they revere,&#8221; said Limbaugh.
The host then highlighted one of those early leaked claims that proved to be false: that Putin was &#8220;personally involved&#8221; in colluding with Trump, a claim reported just two days before Strzok&#8217;s December text:
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&#8220;U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack.&#8221; That has to be Brennan. It has to be. It has to be the CIA. From the article: &#8220;U.S. intelligence officials now believe with &#8216;a high level of confidence&#8217; that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.&#8221;
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&#8220;So here&#8217;s Strzok Smirk, and they&#8217;re looking at this, and they see this. They know they didn&#8217;t put that out there, and figured it had to come from their &#8216;sisters&#8217; at The Agency,&#8221; said Limbaugh. He then quoted again from the report on the false claim:
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&#8220;Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.&#8221;
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&#8220;That&#8217;s all from an NBC story December 14th, 2016, and it syncs right up with Strzok Smirk&#8217;s texts,&#8221; he said. Rush then &#8220;flash-forwarded&#8221; to today, with a new poll finding that <a href="https://scottrasmussen.com/57-of-democrats-believe-president-trump-guilty-of-treason/">55% of Democrats</a> believe that Trump is a traitor. &#8220;There it is! If that&#8217;s all the kind of garbage these people, these Democrats have been consuming for two years, what do you think they&#8217;re gonna think?&#8221; Rush exclaimed. 
&#8220;Folks, there has to be a price paid by the people who have done this,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I mean, this is a flat-out lie. Somebody literally made this up, or they got scammed by some agents in Russia who are running a scam on Brennan and they knew what Brennan wanted to hear, so they told him.&#8221;
Transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/05/07/newly-released-strzok-page-communications-implicate-cia/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>

Limbaugh: Here’s Why The Newly Revealed Texts From Anti-Trump Strzok Are So ‘Significant’

Peter Strzok

Russia

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok appears to have suspected that the Central Intelligence Agency was orchestrating leaks to the media about alleged contacts between members of Donald Trump&#8217;s presidential campaign and Russia, several of which turned out to be wildly inaccurate.
Strzok &#8212; who together with his lover, then-Bureau lawyer Lisa Page, expressed their desire to use law enforcement power to &#8220;stop&#8221; Donald Trump from becoming president &#8212; said in an April 2017 email that signs pointed to the agency&#8217;s involvement.
&#8220;I&#8217;m beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn&#8217;t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks,&#8221; Strzok wrote in an email to FBI colleagues.
The revelation comes after Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked Michael K. Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, if he had probed whether the CIA was involved in leaking to the media.
Along with the April 2017 email, the two senators cite a December 2016 text message that Strzok &#8212; who was serving as the top investigator on the Trump-Russia probe &#8212; sent to Page, with whom he was having an affair.
&#8220;Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they&#8217;re kicking in to overdrive,&#8221; Strzok wrote.
&#8220;Strzok did not identify a specific leak, but a day earlier, NBC News broke a bombshell story that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the U.S. election hacks. The story was sourced to &#8216;senior U.S. intelligence officials,'&#8221; The <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/06/peter-strzok-cia-leaks-email/">Daily Caller</a> wrote. Strzok&#8217;s April email referred to a report by The Guardian, titled &#8220;British spies were first to spot Trump team&#8217;s links with Russia,&#8221; which, as The Daily Caller notes, &#8220;appears to have raised his suspicion that the CIA, which is referred to in government circles as &#8216;the agency,&#8217; had intelligence that had not been shared with the FBI.&#8221;
The two Republican senators say the emails and text messages should prompt a probe into the intelligence community&#8217;s involvement. The messages &#8220;demonstrate the need to investigate leaks from agencies or entities other than FBI,&#8221; said Johnson, the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman, and Grassley, who is the Senate Finance Committee chairman.
&#8220;For example, who are the &#8216;sisters&#8217; and what does it mean to say that the &#8216;sisters have [been] leaking like mad&#8217;? What are they worried about, and what are they kicking into &#8216;overdrive&#8217;? Which &#8216;agency&#8217; is he referring to and why does Strzok believe the referenced news article highlights that &#8216;agency as [a] source of some of the leaks&#8217;?&#8221; the senators wrote.
During a Senate hearing last week, Attorney General Bill Barr testified that the Justice Department is conducting &#8220;multiple criminal leak investigations&#8221; into media contact with department officials that occurred during Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into alleged Russia collusion.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46857/here-are-messages-anti-trump-fbi-agent-about-james-barrett">Here Are The Messages From Anti-Trump FBI Agent About &#8216;Political&#8217; Media Leaks That Prompted Call For New Investigation</a>

Anti-Trump FBI Agent Suspected CIA Was Behind Leaks To Media In Trump-Russia Probe

Charles Grassley

After two years, over 2,800 subpoenas, and nearly 500 search warrants and witness interviews, Special Counsel Robert Mueller &#8220;did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.&#8221; While the &#8220;Trump-Russia collusion&#8221; conspiracy theory that has largely driven the mainstream news cycle for two years is dead, the story behind the investigation is getting juicier by the day.
More details about how U.S. intelligence attempted to infiltrate, or &#8220;spy&#8221; on, the Trump campaign have come to light, including that the FBI used an &#8220;attractive&#8221; female undercover investigator in an ultimately fruitless attempt to draw out some relevant &#8220;collusion&#8221;-related information from Trump aide George Papadopoulos.
&#8220;The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?&#8221; <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fbi-sent-investigator-posing-as-assistant-to-meet-with-trump-aide-in-2016/ar-AAAOePQ">The New York Times</a> reported Thursday. &#8220;The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign&#8217;s links to Russia.&#8221;
The role of the woman, who told Papadopoulos her name was &#8220;Azra Turk,&#8221; is &#8220;one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances,&#8221; the Times notes.
Trump has decried the FBI&#8217;s investigation into his campaign as &#8220;Spygate&#8221; &#8212; and the name seems more appropriate with each new revelation. The Times admits as much, noting that the &#8220;Azra Turk&#8221; wrinkle could give Trump and his defenders &#8220;ammunition&#8221; about their &#8220;spying&#8221; allegations.
Turk reportedly joined informant Stefan A. Halper in London because the bureau wanted to make sure they had a trained investigator to oversee the operation. Halper is a Cambridge professor whose role in the Trump campaign &#8220;spying&#8221; scandal has been known for months. The Times reports (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>
In his book, &#8220;Deep State Target,&#8221; Mr. Papadopoulos described her as attractive and said she almost immediately began questioning him about whether the Trump campaign was working with Russia, he wrote. Mr. Papadopoulos was baffled. &#8220;There is no way this is a Cambridge professor&#8217;s research assistant,&#8221; he recalled thinking, according to his book. In recent weeks, he has said in tweets that he believes Ms. Turk may have been working for Turkish intelligence but provided no evidence.
The day after meeting Ms. Turk, Mr. Papadopoulos met briefly with Mr. Halper at a private London club, and Ms. Turk joined them. The two men agreed to meet again, arranging a drink at the Sofitel hotel in London&#8217;s posh West End. During that conversation, Mr. Halper immediately asked about hacked emails and whether Russia was helping the campaign, according to Mr. Papadopoulos&#8217;s book. Angry over the accusatory questions, Mr. Papadopoulos ended the meeting.
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Despite the repeated attempts by two FBI operatives to get something of worth out of Papadopoulos, the operation &#8220;failed to glean any information of value from the encounters,&#8221; the Times notes. (<a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fbi-sent-investigator-posing-as-assistant-to-meet-with-trump-aide-in-2016/ar-AAAOePQ">Read the full report here.</a>)
The role of Turk and the FBI&#8217;s extensive attempt to get information from Papadopoulos does further damage to FBI top counterintelligence agent Bill Priestap&#8217;s insistence to Congress that the FBI was not going after Turmp and his campaign. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is currently investigating the FBI&#8217;s handling of the surveillance of the campaign.
Papadopoulos has since tweeted a response to the Times&#8217; report, writing: &#8220;I agree with everything in this superb article except &#8220;Azra Turk&#8221; clearly was not FBI. She was CIA and affiliated with Turkish intel. She could hardly speak English and was tasked to meet me about my work in the energy sector offshore Israel/Cyprus which Turkey was competing with.&#8221;
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I agree with everything in this superb article except &#8220;Azra Turk&#8221; clearly was not FBI. She was CIA and affiliated with Turkish intel. She could hardly speak English and was tasked to meet me about my work in the energy sector offshore Israel/Cyprus which Turkey was competing with <a href="https://t.co/wbyBnvb6io">https://t.co/wbyBnvb6io</a>
&#8212; George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) <a href="https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1124006816189489152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 2, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46667/rep-meadows-new-info-suggests-fusion-gps-anti-james-barrett">Rep. Meadows: New Info Suggests Fusion GPS Anti-Trump Research Funneled Directly To DOJ</a>

FBI Used ‘Attractive’ Female Agent To Try To Get Info Out Of Trump Aide

Robert Mueller

Former Central Intelligence official, David Cohen, made an appearance on Sunday night&#8217;s episode of HBO&#8217;s Game of Thrones.
The scene took place in Winterfell, where Cohen&#8217;s character, wearing a hood, was lining up to receive food from Ser Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham). Cohen&#8217;s character was in line with two other men to eat before being drafted into the forces defending Winterfell from the army of the dead. 
&#8220;My Lord, we&#8217;re not soldiers,&#8221; one of the men say. 
&#8220;You are now,&#8221; replied Ser Davos, adding &#8220;Look, I made it through most of my years without ever getting near a fight but then I survived the Battle of the Bastards, right outside these walls. If I can live through that, you will live through this. They will outfit you with weapons at the forge. Right that way.&#8221;
Cohen&#8217;s character then walks off without having any lines. 
Alex Thomas, Playboy&#8217;s Washington correspondent, first mentioned Cohen&#8217;s cameo in a tweet last week. 
&#8220;SCOOPLET &#8212; Former Deputy Director of the CIA David Cohen to appear in the second episode of Game of Thrones (no, I&#8217;m not kidding),&#8221; Thomas reported.
Thomas added that &#8220;Cohen got on the show because his brother-in-law is a co-creator, he&#8217;ll get about 15 seconds of screen time as a field worker.&#8221;
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Cohen got on the show because his brother-in-law is a co-creator, he&#8217;ll get about 15 seconds of screen time as a field worker
&#8212; Alex Thomas (@AlexThomasDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexThomasDC/status/1118662824065142785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Cohen responded telling Thomas that &#8220;You seem to have good sources in Winterfell,&#8221; adding in another tweet. &#8220;As Arya might say, &#8216;A man has no name.&#8217;&#8221;
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As Arya might say, &#8220;A man has no name.&#8221;
&#8212; David S. Cohen (@cohendavid) <a href="https://twitter.com/cohendavid/status/1118702949629341701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The CIA&#8217;s official Twitter account also blew Cohen&#8217;s cover in a tweet on Sunday night.
&#8220;A perk of working for the CIA is world travel. Apparently that sometimes extends to other realms&#8230;&#8221; the CIA tweeted. &#8220;&#8216;Little birds,&#8217; be on the lookout for a former deputy director of ours wandering through #Westeros in tonight&#8217;s episode of #GameOf Thrones.&#8221;
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A perk of working for CIA is world travel. Apparently that sometimes extends to other realms&#8230;
&#8220;Little birds,&#8221; be on the lookout for a former deputy director of ours wandering through <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Westeros?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Westeros</a> in tonight&#8217;s episode of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GameOfThrones?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GameOfThrones</a>. <a href="https://t.co/DBIzIFKoju">pic.twitter.com/DBIzIFKoju</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1120123885771476992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Way to blow my cover!&#8221; Cohen <a href="https://twitter.com/cohendavid/status/1120128555680182277">responded</a>, teasing.&#8203;
Cohen later <a href="https://twitter.com/cohendavid/status/1120341192934342663">tweeted</a> that he is &#8220;Back from Winterfell&#8221; and &#8220;looking forward&#8221; to appearing on Andrea Mitchell&#8217;s NBC show to &#8220;discuss the Trump administration&#8217;s efforts to push Iranian oil imports to zero.&#8221;&#8203;
According to <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/440098-game-of-thrones-former-cia-deputy-director-david-cohen-cameos">The Hill,</a> Cohen served under President Barack Obama from 2015 to 2017&#8203;
The cameo isn&#8217;t the first time this the hit show has overlapped with politics this season. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is attempting to use the hit HBO show as a way of connecting with voters amid her falling poll numbers. 
The Daily Wire reported on Monday: 
<blockquote>
She&#8217;s down nearly 10 points from August 2018.
But Elizabeth Warren has a back-up plan. If she can&#8217;t be president, she can at least be an HBO critic. In what appears to be a desperate attempt to court the Millennial vote, Warren penned a &#8220;review&#8221; of &#8220;Game of Thrones,&#8221; season 8, episode 1, for The Cut, where she gives her take on the show&#8217;s central characters and takes the not-at-all-controversial position that Daenarys Targaryen should sit on the Iron Throne when the series ends in five weeks.
Actually, Warren really, really likes Daenarys, the sometimes-hapless ruler of several mid-level kingdoms in Essos, who crosses the ocean to take control of a land she&#8217;s never even visited and doesn&#8217;t know much about. Qualifications are no matter, though, because Dany&#8217;s win somehow relates to income inequality and institutionalized racism.
</blockquote>

Former Obama CIA Deputy Director Makes Cameo In Game of Thrones

Spike Lee&#8217;s personal protest of the Best Picture winner and his call for people to get on the right side of history and vote against &#8220;hate&#8221; weren&#8217;t the only headline-grabbing moments involving the 91st Academy Awards Sunday night. A rather creative &#8212; if a bit head-scratching for some followers &#8212; series of tweets by the CIA involving the Oscar-nominated film &#8220;Black Panther&#8221; managed to create some buzz.
In a tweet thread that got picked up by <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/cias-black-panther-tweets-oscars-leaves-fans-confused/story?id=61289094">ABC News</a>, the CIA engaged its followers with what it calls its new &#8220;#ReelVsRealCIA&#8221; series. The intelligence agency announced at the beginning of the Oscars Sunday that during the ceremony they&#8217;d be &#8220;exploring&#8221; the overlap of real vs. fictional technology featured in &#8220;Black Panther,&#8221; which managed to get seven nominations and take home three (in costume, production design, and score).
&#8220;As part of our #ReelvsRealCIA series, &amp; in honor of the 7 #Oscars nominations for @Marvel&#8217;s #BlackPanther, we&#8217;re exploring how much of #Wakanda&#8217;s futuristic technology is available to the real-world intelligence officers of today,&#8221; the CIA&#8217;s official account tweeted as the festivities kicked off.
&#8220;During tonight&#8217;s #Oscars we&#8217;ll ask a series of poll questions to get your views on the feasibility of Wakandan technology today &amp; share the expertise of a top CIA scientist, &#8216;Rebecca,&#8217; on how #Wakanda&#8217;s tech matches up w/emerging &#8216;real life&#8217; tech,&#8221; the agency explained.
The agency then asked its first poll question: &#8220;In #BlackPanther, a unique metal called #vibranium helped the fictional African nation of #Wakanda become the most technologically advanced country on the planet. Do think vibranium is: A real metal, Based upon real metals, Possible future tech, Total fiction&#8221;
A majority (55%) correctly answered &#8220;total fiction,&#8221; while 8% said it was real, 20% said it was based on real metals, and 17% thought it was a real possibility in the future.
&#8220;The #vibranium in Black Panther&#8217;s suit protects him from kinetic damage, &amp; vibranium sneakers are both super-quiet &amp; amazing shock absorbers for jumping. Those would be great for spies, right?&#8221; the CIA added.
Just to be clear, the agency then made sure people knew vibranium isn&#8217;t real: &#8220;The magic metal from #Wakanda might not exist, but there are real-life materials that possess some similar qualities to those of the fictional Wakandan isotope, #vibranium.&#8221;

<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
As part of our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> series, &amp; in honor of the 7 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a> nominations for <a href="https://twitter.com/Marvel?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Marvel</a>&#8217;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>, we&#8217;re exploring how much of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wakanda?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Wakanda</a>&#8217;s futuristic technology is available to the real-world intelligence officers of today. <a href="https://t.co/YQ3r0H34Xq">pic.twitter.com/YQ3r0H34Xq</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099837630534086657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
During tonight&#8217;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a> we&#8217;ll ask a series of poll questions to get your views on the feasibility of Wakandan technology today &amp; share the expertise of a top CIA scientist, &#8220;Rebecca,&#8221; on how <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wakanda?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Wakanda</a>&#8217;s tech matches up w/emerging &#8220;real life&#8221; tech.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099841181519892482?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
In <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>, a unique metal called <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vibranium?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vibranium</a> helped the fictional African nation of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wakanda?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Wakanda</a> become the most technologically advanced country on the planet.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a>
Do you think vibranium is:
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099844069092741121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vibranium?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vibranium</a> in Black Panther&#8217;s suit protects him from kinetic damage, &amp; vibranium sneakers are both super-quiet &amp; amazing shock absorbers for jumping. Those would be great for spies, right?
Too bad vibranium isn&#8217;t real.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099847092221165569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The magic metal from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wakanda?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Wakanda</a> might not exist, but there are real-life materials that possess some similar qualities to those of the fictional Wakandan isotope, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vibranium?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vibranium</a>.
To learn more, see: <a href="https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA">https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099847245346807808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
As ABC notes, that last line triggered some questions from followers, including mocking questions about the CIA&#8217;s role in taking down the &#8220;real-life&#8221; violence-embracing Black Panthers, whether or not the CIA has an opinion on ghosts, Area 51, or &#8220;ghosts of aliens,&#8221; and why the CIA was wrecking everyone&#8217;s fictional world party. One user wonder, &#8220;Y&#8217;all hacked?&#8221; Another summed up a bunch of people&#8217;s responses: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how to feel right now. I&#8217;m on the fence between being intrigued and wondering why you&#8217;re tweeting about this.&#8221; Still others celebrated the agency for having some fun and trying to inform the public in a creative way.
A few examples of responses:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
That&#8217;s cool and all, but we the people are still wondering: 
1) Are aliens real? 
2) Who Assassinated JFK? 
3) Who killed Biggie and Tupac? 
5) Why is Jadakiss as hard as it gets?
&#8212; Dj Intense (@djintensenyc) <a href="https://twitter.com/djintensenyc/status/1099847879835963392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
do u think area 51 has not only aliens, but the ghosts of aliens that have died there? alien ghosts, CIA get on that
&#8212; M (@MuirbucksCoffee) <a href="https://twitter.com/MuirbucksCoffee/status/1099849860621180928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://t.co/sSsrCS42Uo">pic.twitter.com/sSsrCS42Uo</a>
&#8212; Matt Scott (@mattscotttweets) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattscotttweets/status/1099866292973113344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Great use of your account. Thank you for using your platform to inspire knowledge
&#8212; Brent Begyn (@GarfieldsLasgna) <a href="https://twitter.com/GarfieldsLasgna/status/1099850069346607104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Despite some negative reactions, the CIA wasn&#8217;t discouraged and kept on tweeting, including another poll: &#8220;If real, which of these Wakandan technologies do you think would be the most appealing to real-world spies? Sand Tables (12%), Panther Habit (13%), Lesotho Blankets (22%), and Holograms (53%).&#8221;
The agency then followed up by providing some real-world thoughts about each:
<blockquote>
Holograms: They&#8217;re real-life hot tech right now &amp; as they improve, intel practitioners in the future could incorporate holographic displays for operations or holographic projections to illustrate situations to the President or other policymakers.
Lesotho Blankets: One of the least plausible technologies in #BlackPanther, but if you could weave carbon nanotubes into a cloak &amp; add in some hologram effects, you&#8217;d have a shield that would be the envy of any intel service operating in a warzone.
Panther Habit: Rather than suits for superheroes, in the real world people are interested in nanoparticles for biotech &amp; medicine, but the world&#8217;s spy agencies might like outfits that could reform on the fly in order to foil surveillance.
Sand Tables: The ability to remotely manipulate objects from a distance &amp; physically interact w/data or temporary items would allow people, including intelligence officers, to get hands-on w/information &amp; work together from different locations.
</blockquote>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
If real, which of these Wakandan technologies do you think would be the most appealing to real-world spies?<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars2019?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars2019</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099851754731122688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Holograms:
They&#8217;re real-life hot tech right now &amp; as they improve, intel practitioners in the future could incorporate holographic displays for operations or holographic projections to illustrate situations to the President or other policymakers.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099854669625450497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Lesotho Blankets:
One of the least plausible technologies in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>, but if you could weave carbon nanotubes into a cloak &amp; add in some hologram effects, you&#8217;d have a shield that would be the envy of any intel service operating in a warzone.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099854981992198144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Panther Habit:
Rather than suits for superheroes, in the real world people are interested in nanoparticles for biotech &amp; medicine, but the world&#8217;s spy agencies might like outfits that could reform on the fly in order to foil surveillance.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099855172057137154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Sand Tables:
The ability to remotely manipulate objects from a distance &amp; physically interact w/data or temporary items would allow people, including intelligence officers, to get hands-on w/information &amp; work together from different locations.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099855328437514241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
And they still weren&#8217;t done. Another poll: &#8220;Which fictional Wakandan technology would you most like to see made real in the future? Virtual Cars (43%), Kimoyo Beads (28%), Panther Habit (13%), Lesotho Blankets (16%).&#8221;
After noting that &#8220;Rebecca&#8221; would like to see Kimoyo beads the most, the agency signed off by thanking everyone for joining them and wishing &#8220;Black Panther&#8221; good luck at the Oscars.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Which fictional Wakandan technology would you most like to see made real in the future?<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099858148691722240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Looks like the Wakandan tech w/the most votes is: Virtual cars.
Our CIA scientist, &#8220;Rebecca,&#8221; says she&#8217;d be most excited for Kimoyo beads.
Curious about her take on what Wakandan tech could become real-life tech? Check out: <a href="https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA">https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099861100542205952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Thanks for joining us for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReelvsRealCIA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReelvsRealCIA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wakanda?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Wakanda</a>. Good luck to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackPanther?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackPanther</a> &amp; all the <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAcademy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TheAcademy</a> nominees at tonight&#8217;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Oscars?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Oscars</a>.
For more Reel vs Real CIA, see: <a href="https://t.co/ZAdWlIwJfM">https://t.co/ZAdWlIwJfM</a>
To explore Wakandan technology today w/a CIA scientist, see: <a href="https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA">https://t.co/B0iV7cufqA</a> <a href="https://t.co/Z7A8WYF99L">pic.twitter.com/Z7A8WYF99L</a>
&#8212; CIA (@CIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1099861655310213121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43881/trump-has-message-spike-lee-after-his-racist-hit-james-barrett">Trump Has Message For Spike Lee After His &#8216;Racist Hit&#8217; On Him At Oscars</a>

CIA Starts Tweeting About ‘Black Panther’; People Have Questions

Hollywood

The State Department has withdrawn Hillary Clinton&#8217;s security clearance for classified information after the former Democratic presidential candidate requested the action days after President Trump pulled the clearance for Barack Obama&#8217;s CIA Director John Brennan.
Brennan&#8217;s security was yanked on August 15, and Trump announced he would be evaluating access to classified information held by thousands of former government officials. Clinton&#8217;s clearance was withdrawn August 30 at her request, but no doubt because Trump was set to move on the issue.
Clinton and former chief of staff Cheryl Mills lost their clearances, as did four other Clinton staffers whose names were redacted, according to a letter dated September 21 to the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was published Friday by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Clinton was investigated by the FBI over a private email server she had in her home, which she kept secret. She used the server to move email among her top aides, including hundreds deemed &#8220;classified.&#8221; The FBI investigated, but then-FBI director James Comey, a bona fide Trump hater, chose not charge her.
Shortly before Clinton&#8217;s request, Trump had revoked Brennan&#8217;s security clearance citing &#8220;a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations&#8221; about his administration, and for Brennan&#8217;s move to &#8220;sow division and chaos,&#8221; he said.
Brennan had became a darling of the liberal media, appearing on NBC News and MSNBC regularly. He literally made a job of ripping the president (some &#8220;contributors&#8221; make $100,000 or more), prompting Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to pose a few questions: &#8220;Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; he tweeted on July 23.
Brennan said the move showed that Trump &#8220;clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.&#8221;
Grassley had asked the State Department more than a year ago to find out whether Clinton and her aides still had security clearances. The White House also said in August that the president was reviewing clearances of other top officials, including former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice and former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.
In pulling Brennan&#8217;s clearance, Trump said: &#8220;I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation&#8217;s classified information, including by controlling access to it. Today, in fulfilling that responsibility, I have decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Brennan&#8217;s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation&#8217;s most closely held secrets.&#8221;

TRUMPED: Hillary Clinton No Longer Has Government Security Clearance

Rand Paul

In his book &#8220;Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987,&#8221; Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote about a deathbed conversation he had with CIA Director William J. Casey. President Reagan, a Republican, was at the time in the throes of the Iran-Contra affair, and Mr. Woodward just happened to get Casey to admit that he had known about the diversion of Iran arms sale money to the Contras.
Woodward said he went into Casey&#8217;s hospital room, in disguise, just before he died, but writer Conrad Black said that Casey was not &#8220;compos mentis at the time, and that his room was heavily secured from such intrusions.&#8221;
&#8220;Mr. Casey&#8217;s widow, Sophia, has denied that Mr. Woodward had interviewed her husband in the hospital,&#8221; The New York Times reported at the time.
Still, Woodward&#8217;s claim made headlines across the nation &#8212; especially at the liberal Post.
Following Casey&#8217;s death, Reagan wrote: &#8220;[Woodward]&#8217;s a liar and he lied about what Casey is supposed to have thought of me.&#8221;
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Most people have forgotten that story about Woodward &#8212; as well as about his highly criticized book about John Belushi. Like many liberal authors, Woodward sometimes runs fast and loose with his &#8220;facts,&#8221; but because he claims to have tapes of sources, the mainstream media treats his tomes like gospel.
But in fact, Woodward most often puts quotation marks around quotes he never heard. Woodward relies on what he says are first-hand sources (though some are actually second- and third-hand) to recount &#8212; verbatim, mind you &#8212; things that were said in a meeting, sometimes three years prior.
Woodward addresses the very grievous problem in a note to readers in his new book, &#8220;Fear: Trump in the White House.&#8221; &#8220;When I have attributed exact quotations, thoughts or conclusions to the participants, that information comes from the person, a colleague with direct knowledge, or from meeting notes, personal diaries, files and government or personal documents.&#8221;
Now, just for the record, no &#8220;journalist&#8221; worth his salt would do that. The clear way to handle such a conundrum is to report that Person A said that Person B said XYZ. Best, too, if it&#8217;s not in quotes. No one knows exactly what was said if there&#8217;s no recording, so paraphrase &#8212; and tell the readers you&#8217;re paraphrasing from another source.
But not Woodward. He puts those words &#8212; sometimes full conversations &#8212; in quotes.
Another Woodward claim in &#8220;Veil&#8221; was that Reagan, while recovering from being shot in a 1981 assassination attempt, could &#8220;concentrate for only a few minutes at a time&#8221; and that he would be &#8220;remain attentive only an hour or so a day.&#8221; That, of course, fed into the mainstream media hype that Reagan was a dunce.
But Reagan&#8217;s doctor, Dr. Daniel Ruge, said no, telling The Associated Press that &#8220;&#8220;his recovery was superb &#8230; I never saw anything like that [description in the book] &#8230; it&#8217;s certainly news to me and I was there all the time.&#8221;
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And take Woodward&#8217;s 2004 book &#8220;Plan of Attack&#8221; about George W. Bush&#8217;s decision to go to war, in which Woodward claimed CIA Director George Tenet said there was a &#8220;slam dunk case&#8221; that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Tenet, though, said he was taken out of context, asserting he was being set up as a scapegoat for the failures of the Iraq war. In a &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; interview, Tenet said that he had said &#8220;slam dunk&#8221; to suggest it would be easy to build a public case for the war because, at the time, everyone &#8212; including liberals like Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry &#8212; agreed that Saddam did, in fact, have WMDs.
When &#8220;Plan of Attack&#8221; came out, the New Republic&#8217;s Gregg Easterbrook wrote: &#8220;Extended sections of [Woodward&#8217;s] recent efforts have been fabricated in the literalist sense, with speculative conversations placed in quotation marks. What is presented may be similar to what was actually said but cannot have the verity Woodward claims (unless George W. Bush and Colin Powell taped their private conversations). Woodward and his editors have thus cheapened the quotation mark, changing its meaning from &#8216;what was said&#8217; to &#8216;whatever sounds about right&#8217; &#8230;. Does Woodward crave attention so badly he can no longer write a book that conforms to the standard disciplines of nonfiction and to standard distinctions between truth and conjecture?&#8221;
Then there&#8217;s that weird Belushi book (why a political writer was penning a book about a late-night TV star is another question). Friends of Belushi objected to Mr. Woodward&#8217;s portrayal of him in &#8220;Wired,&#8221; claiming some scenes were just made up.
&#8220;There were certainly things that he just got patently wrong. He painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate &#8212; certain stories in there that just weren&#8217;t true and never happened,&#8221; said Dan Aykroyd, a longtime friend, in the book &#8220;Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.&#8221;
So now comes &#8220;Fear: Trump in the White House.&#8221; Woodward claims to have talked to dozens of Trump officials &#8212; taping them, of course &#8212; who tell all kinds of horrible stories about Mr. Trump. Coming just before the midterm elections &#8212; he picked, for some reason, Sept. 11 as his publication date &#8212; it&#8217;s clear that Woodward hopes to have an effect on the makeup of Congress.
Woodward &#8212; remember, he&#8217;s a journalist &#8212; said &#8220;people better wake up to what&#8217;s going on.&#8221; Well, sounds like a real journalist, right?
The White House on Monday said it would not honor Woodward with a point-by-point rebuttal. &#8220;I think that would be a complete and utter waste of our time,&#8221; White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. &#8220;So, no.&#8221;
&#8220;I would certainly rather take the actual on-record account from people who are here, who have been working in this building, who have been interacting with this president day in, day out, like [Secretary of Defense] Gen. [James] Mattis, like [Chief of Staff] Gen. [John] Kelly, like myself,&#8221; Sanders said, &#8220;not disgruntled former employees that refuse to put their name on things when they come out to attack the president.&#8221;
Trump, for his part, has said much the same. &#8220;The book is a work of fiction. If you look back at Woodward&#8217;s past, he had the same problem with other presidents. He likes to get publicity, sell some books,&#8221; the president said.
And sell some book he will. Woodward always does &#8212; regardless of whether he includes &#8220;facts.&#8221;

FAKE NEWS NON-FICTION: Bob Woodward’s Long Habit Of Making Up Quotes

George W. Bush

John Kerry

Donald Trump stripped former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance last week, and now the Obama appointee is threatening to take legal action.
Brennan told NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; Sunday that multiple lawyers have reached out to him about the president using his executive authority to revoke his clearance. The CIA director-turned-MSNBC security analyst said he&#8217;s considering pressing for an injunction to stop Trump from moving forward with revoking his clearance as well as the clearances of nine other former government officials connected to the Russia probe and/or critical of the president.
&#8220;If my clearances and my reputation as I&#8217;m being pulled through the mud now, if that&#8217;s the price we&#8217;re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it&#8217;s a small price to pay,&#8221; Brennan said, the <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/brennan-considers-legal-action-stop-clearance-revocations-151506505--politics.html">Associated Press</a> reports. &#8220;So I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future. And if it means going to court, I will do that.&#8221;
On Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34561/white-house-revokes-former-cia-director-john-kassy-dillon">announced</a> that Trump was revoking Brenna&#8217;s clearance, citing his &#8220;erratic conduct and behavior&#8221; and &#8220;wild outbursts.&#8221; The administration also accused Brennan of &#8220;leveraging&#8221; his clearance to make false claims against the Trump administration. The former CIA director&#8217;s &#8220;series of unfounded and outrageous allegations,&#8221; the White House says, have been made with the apparent goal of &#8220;sow[ing] division and chaos.&#8221; Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that &#8220;something had to be done&#8221; to stop Brennan and company from continuing to fuel the &#8220;rigged witch hunt.&#8221;
Brennan&#8217;s potential abuse of his security clearance hasn&#8217;t just been questioned by Trump; as <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/34580/trump-was-right-revoke-former-cia-director-joseph-curl">The Daily Wire</a> noted, others, including Sen. Rand Paul, have openly questioned how Brennan is using his access to information. &#8220;Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; Sen. Paul tweeted in late July.
In its coverage of Brennan&#8217;s legal threat, AP notes that Trump has the authority to revoke security clearances. Currently, he is required to handle revocations according to an executive order signed by President Clinton in 1995, but Trump could also issue a new executive order if he wants to alter the revocation and appeal process. &#8220;Former Obama-era CIA Director Leon Panetta, who also served as defense secretary, said Sunday that Trump must abide by the executive order unless he decides to change or cancel it,&#8221; AP notes.
More than 75 intelligence officials have denounced Trump for his threats to revoke the clearances, while pundits and politicians are invoking &#8220;McCarthyism&#8221; and Nixon&#8217;s &#8220;enemies list&#8221; to condemn the president&#8217;s handling of those &#8220;sowing division and chaos.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34625/senate-intel-chair-heres-why-brennans-accusations-james-barrett">Senate Intel Chair: Here&#8217;s Why Brennan&#8217;s Accusations Against Trump In NYT Op-Ed Aren&#8217;t Believable</a>

Former Obama CIA Director Threatens Lawsuit Against Trump

Trump Administration

Let&#8217;s say a company like Apple fired an employee. But, for some reason, Apple lets the now ex-employee keep his access to all internal workings of the company &#8212; plans for new products, proprietary numbers on sales, everything.
That&#8217;d be insane, right? Should that employee happen to be disgruntled, there&#8217;s no telling what he could do with such information.
But for some reason, liberals and the mainstream media think former President Barack Obama&#8217;s CIA Director John Brennan should keep his security clearance, even though he is actively using his access to derail President Trump.
Trump on Wednesday pulled Brennan&#8217;s security clearance, citing &#8220;a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations&#8221; about his administration, and for Brennan&#8217;s move to &#8220;sow division and chaos.&#8221; Trump said his decision was driven by the ongoing federal investigation into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election.
&#8220;I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,&#8221; Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. &#8220;And these people led it. &#8230; It&#8217;s something that had to be done,&#8221; Trump said.
But Brennan took to the pages of The New York Times on Thursday, writing an op-ed piece in which he said Trump is clearly guilty of colluding with Russians.
&#8220;The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of &#8216;Trump Incorporated&#8217; attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets,&#8221; he wrote in the Times.
As for the loss of his clearance, Brennan said that the move showed Trump &#8220;clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.&#8221;
But let&#8217;s get something straight: Just like a driver&#8217;s license, retaining security clearance after one leaves a federal post is a privilege, not a right. Yes, some officials have, in the past, kept such clearances, but that was before the hyper-politicization of the intelligence branches.
And Brennan is among the most partisan, repeatedly attacking Trump.
As just one example, Brennan wrote on Twitter on July 16: &#8220;Donald Trump&#8217;s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to &amp; exceeds the threshold of &#8216;high crimes &amp; misdemeanors.&#8217; It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump&#8217;s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.&#8221;
For his bashing of Trump, Brennan became a darling of the liberal media, appearing on NBC News and MSNBC regularly. He literally made a job of ripping the president (some &#8220;contributors&#8221; make $100,000 or more), prompting Sen. Rand Paul to pose a few questions: &#8220;Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; the Kentucky Republican tweeted on July 23.
So Trump simply said, &#8220;Hey, if you&#8217;re going to take this classified information and use it to bash me &#8212; instead of to help your colleagues in the intelligence field &#8212; maybe you don&#8217;t deserve the courtesy of extending your security clearance.&#8221;
Far too many people have security clearances, anyway &#8212; something Obama also sought to rein in. In November 2013, Politico wrote: &#8220;The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.&#8221;
The Politico piece also cited then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who &#8220;questioned the booming rolls of security-clearance holders. At last count, more than 4.9 million people held clearances, of whom over 1.4 million were cleared for access at the &#8216;Top Secret&#8217; level.&#8221;
Of course, when Trump first began mulling the revocation of said security clearances, Clapper was aghast. (Clapper, you&#8217;ll recall, leaked the anti-Trump dossier to CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper and helped orchestrate a meeting between former FBI Director James Comey and Trump, which was later leaked to CNN and used as their &#8220;news hook&#8221; to launch the media&#8217;s &#8220;Russia&#8221; narrative. Clapper also lied to Congress about leaking information to Tapper and then was rewarded with a contract at CNN a few months later.)
Appearing on CNN as a paid contributor (like Brennan is with NBC), Clapper slammed Trump&#8217;s plan: &#8220;This is just a very, very petty thing to do. And that&#8217;s about all I&#8217;ll say about it.&#8221;
But soon, Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden all might have their clearances revoked.
And that&#8217;s as it should be.
Said Trump on Monday: &#8220;I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation&#8217;s classified information, including by controlling access to it. Today, in fulfilling that responsibility, I have decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Brennan&#8217;s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation&#8217;s most closely held secrets.&#8221;
Pretty simple, really.

CURL: Trump Was Right To Revoke Former CIA Director Brennan’s Security Clearance

James Clapper

James Comey

Michael Hayden

Susan Rice

During Wednesday&#8217;s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced that the White House would be revoking former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance. 
Sanders read a statement that cited Brennan&#8217;s &#8220;erratic conduct and behavior&#8221; and accused him of &#8220;leveraging&#8221; his clearance to make false allegations and engage in &#8220;wild outbursts&#8221; against the Trump administration.
The statement also revealed that several other individuals&#8217; security clearances are under review, including Peter Strzok, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr. 
Brennan was appointed to his former position by President Barack Obama in January 2013, and replaced by Mike Pompeo in January 2017. 
The announcement comes after weeks of Brennan attacking the President on Twitter, including on Tuesday when he described Trump as &#8220;so dangerous for our Nation.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
It&#8217;s astounding how often you fail to live up to minimum standards of decency, civility, &amp; probity. Seems like you will never understand what it means to be president, nor what it takes to be a good, decent, &amp; honest person. So disheartening, so dangerous for our Nation. <a href="https://t.co/eI9HaCec1m">https://t.co/eI9HaCec1m</a>
&#8212; John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1029369165843517440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
In June, Brennan described Trump&#8217;s press conference with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as &#8220;nothing short of treasonous.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Donald Trump&#8217;s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to &amp; exceeds the threshold of &#8220;high crimes &amp; misdemeanors.&#8221; It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump&#8217;s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
&#8212; John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1018885971104985093?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 201</a></blockquote>
</div>

White House Revokes Former CIA Director John Brennan’s Security Clearance, Several Others Under Review

Mike Pompeo

Sally Yates

Earlier this week (seriously, just this week), the mainstream media got its undies in a wad over talk that President Trump planned to revoke the security clearances of some high-level former intelligence officials.
The story began on Monday, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he&#8217;s going to ask Trump to revoke former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance (the guy who keeps calling every action by Trump &#8220;treason&#8221;).
&#8220;Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; the Kentucky Republican wrote on Twitter. &#8220;Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance.&#8221;
Of course, the MSM and liberals across the nation were outraged. How dare Trump take away security clearances for people who no longer work for the federal government!, they cried. The proposed move is just another example of Trump trying to be king, they screeched.
The story, of course, died in a couple days as the MSM moved on to the next Outrage Of The Day. But with just a little reporting, we at The Daily Wire have found that former President Barack Obama wanted to do exactly the same thing &#8212; and a former Obama intelligence official (who now thinks the idea is, again, treasonous) thought it was a good plan.
&#8220;W.H. looks to scrub clearance list,&#8221; <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/government-security-clearance-list-100195">Politico</a> wrote in November 2013.
<blockquote>
The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.
Reeling from National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden&#8217;s leaks of top-secret surveillance programs and mentally computer contractor Aaron Alexis&#8217;s deadly shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, the intelligence community is coming to the conclusion that the sheer number of personnel with clearances is making the government and the country as a whole vulnerable to a slew of dangers.
In a directive obtained by POLITICO, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper questioned the booming rolls of security-clearance holders. At last count, more than 4.9 million people held clearances, of whom over 1.4 million were cleared for access at the &#8220;Top Secret&#8221; level.
</blockquote>
Hilarious, because James Clapper, director of National Intelligence throughout most of Obama&#8217;s two terms, thinks Trump&#8217;s plan is a terrible idea.
Clapper, in case you don&#8217;t remember, leaked the anti-Trump dossier to CNN&#8217;s Jake Tapper and helped orchestrate a meeting between former FBI Director James Comey and Trump, which was later leaked to CNN and used as their &#8220;news hook&#8221; to launch the media&#8217;s &#8220;Russia&#8221; narrative. Clapper also lied to Congress about leaking information to Tapper and then was rewarded with a contract at CNN a few months later.
On Monday, Clapper &#8212; appearing on CNN, of course &#8212; slammed Trump&#8217;s plan: &#8220;This is just a very, very petty thing to do. And that&#8217;s about all I&#8217;ll say about it.&#8221;
Back in 2013, when Obama broached the subject, Clapper said: &#8220;When it is determined that access to classified information is no longer required, the department or agency shall terminate such access and debrief the individual.&#8221;
What&#8217;s more, an NBC reporter affirmed Paul&#8217;s suspicion that some former intelligence officials are cashing in on their access.
Ken Dilanian, an intelligence and national security reporter, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: &#8220;Security clearances are a valuable commodity. By making this threat, @realdonaldtrump is seeking to levy a financial penalty on @johnbrennan and Clapper. There are always public policy reasons that former intel leaders remain cleared &#8212; so they can help their successors.&#8221;
David Martosko, the White House reporter for the Daily Mail, called him out, saying: &#8220;Wait &#8212; how can removing Brennan&#8217;s and Clapper&#8217;s security clearances result in a &#8220;financial penalty&#8221; if they&#8217;re not earning money from them? Doesn&#8217;t this make the White House&#8217;s claim substantially true?&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Wait &#8212; how can removing Brennan&#8217;s and Clapper&#8217;s security clearances result in a &#8220;financial penalty&#8221; if they&#8217;re not earning money from them? Doesn&#8217;t this make the White House&#8217;s claim substantially true? <a href="https://t.co/wcUJbCJcai">https://t.co/wcUJbCJcai</a>
&#8212; David Martosko (@dmartosko) <a href="https://twitter.com/dmartosko/status/1021740608774447107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
And finally, there&#8217;s the obvious point that runs opposite of Dilanian&#8217;s: What if those former intel leaders are actively working against the president? Is Trump beholden to keep their security clearances in place, even if they&#8217;re abusing their power?
The clear answer is no.
But none of it matters. The MSM just needed something to be outraged about, and very few if any reporters are going to bother to examine the matter further.
But now YOU know.
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