Posted on 04/05/2017 5:06:46 PM PDT by markomalley
The U.S. intelligence community is in the midst of a severe crisis. It has been used, or perhaps allowed itself to be used, as a tool of political destruction, against some of the same U.S. citizens it was created to protect.
What I am talking about is the continuing Wiretapgate debacle. We are seeing the widespread abuse of intelligence by an incumbent administration to target political opposition. Long a technique in the developing world a tactic I often witnessed as a CIA station chief working abroad the Third World has come to roost in the United States. It is a tragedy of the first order.
The danger of politicization is widely accepted throughout the intelligence community as the greatest hazard, in theory, to the intelligence profession. If an intel service cannot be accepted as an unbiased arbiter, it loses the trust of its people, and risks becoming irrelevant and unheeded. History is littered with intel failures; one need only look to the invasion of Iraq to see how politicization can lead to costly failure and a trust gap that can take years to bridge and resolve.
Truth, despite the naysayers, is objective and absolute. The intelligence community has a responsibility to provide the most informed truth to the president. The truth, warts and all, will always be the soundest basis for any foreign policy. This is what our multibillion-dollar intel leviathan owes the American people and its government.
It has become clear to the American public, however, that intelligence leadership learned long ago to stop listening to its own philosophy.
The twin serpents of politicization and political correctness a Soviet term, by the way walk hand in hand throughout the intelligence community, as well as every other government agency. The PC mindset that now dominates every college campus is also positioned firmly throughout our government particularly within the intelligence community, which saw its greatest personnel influx ever in the post-9/11 environment. Todays intelligence community, the average age of which I would estimate at 32, was raised under the beleaguered Bush administration and reached professional maturity primarily under the Obama administration, immersed in a PC environment.
In this PC world, all diversity is embraced except diversity of thought. Federal workers have been partisan for years, but combined with the rigid Obama PC mindset, it has created a Frankenstein of politicization that has never been seen before.
Watching Evelyn Farkas admit on TV that the Obama administration wanted the intelligence community to get as much information as you can before Donald Trump took office resembles some sort of social science experiment gone bad and it frames the problems wrought by PC/political brainwashing. Here a mid-level official, permanently dwelling in a bubble of progressive liberalism, acknowledged being complicit in the breaking of U.S. ethics rules and perhaps law because, as she explained, thats what they needed to do!
Farkus has all the right credentials: a Ph.D. and a career shuttling between academia, the government and the press that is the hallmark of the anointed Washington insider class. What is lacking, however, is any level of self-awareness, common sense or judgment. She is emblematic of the denizens of the Deep State that everyone in Washington likes to tell us doesnt exist.
I am here to tell you, having served in the CIA and the Naval Reserve, that the Deep State does indeed exist. And its not a bunch of centrally controlled drones in black robes meeting at midnight. The Deep State is made up of thousands of similarly credentialed, remarkably un-diverse civil servants and political appointees who saw themselves promoted rapidly during the eight years of the Obama administration. The appointees have left, but make no mistake the progressive civil servants remain.
There is little doubt that intel leadership saw Obamas relaxation of rules regulating the sharing of NSA raw intelligence for which there is NO operational justification and did nothing. They also saw the Obama administrations demand for incidental collection on the Trump campaign at an unprecedented level and still they did nothing.
Like some binary poisonous reagent, these dynamics combined to foster an environment ripe for political abuse and leakage a fairly transparent attempt, from the point of view of any discerning intelligence officer. This weaponization of intelligence for the sake of discrediting the political opposition I have seen in Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Moldova and elsewhere sadly, it is now on our shores.
The present culture of the intelligence community and the shameless political shenanigans of the Obama administration combined to create this disaster. In earlier times, such a gambit would have failed; CIA leadership famously stood up to the Nixon administration when asked to domestically spy on Justice during Watergate, for example. It seems that today we lack the character and the competence to ensure that the intelligence community honors the trust of the American people.
<><> Title 18 U.S.C. §1341, Mail Fraud, 18 U.S.C.§1001, no Presenting a False Document to an Agent of the US Government (involves several felonies and could include forgery);
<><> 18 U.S.C.§1027 False statements and concealment of facts in relation to documents required by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and other possible offenses including civil and/or criminal RICO violations.
<><> 18 U.S.C. §§1961-68 (RICO Act)18 U.S.C. §1001 (making false Statements to Agents of the US Government),
<><> 18 U.S.C. §241(Conspiracies Against Civil Rights). Violation of Civil Rights under Color of law and conspiracy. Conspiring with others to violate Donald Trump and named others 4th amendment rights.
<><> Possibly full investigations centering on RICO conspiracies under 18 U.S.C. §1962(c) could be warranted because (1) the persons (2) were employed by or associated with an enterprise (3) that engaged in or affected interstate commerce and that (4) the persons operated or managed the enterprise (5) through a "pattern" (6) of racketeering activity, and (7) the taxpayers were injured by reason of the "pattern" of racketeering activity.
<><> Alleged Offenses could include Violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §2 41 Conspiracy Against Constitutional Rights which prohibits in relevant part, two or more persons (from conspiring) to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same . . . See, 18 U.S.C. §241.
Taxpayers demand the following agencies commence investigations at once:
<><> FBI -- Wire Fraud Division
<><> IRS-Fraud Unit
<><> Department of Justices Office of the Inspector General,
<><> Department of Commerces Office of Inspector General.
<><> DOJ's Criminal Division-- Public Integrity Section
<><> DOJ Criminal Division--Organized Crime and Gang Section.
Some of them are realizing this weapon could be used against them and they do not like the idea.
Democrats are Democrats first.
Being an American is way down on their list.
The democrat party builds nothing. It can only soil the institutions built by good men.
What is needed is a bloody purge. The first thing to employ is polygraph. We better get tough or get dead
More to the point—Taxpaying citizens are having their tax dollars used against them.
Just about to say, WaCompost, now the DungHill
Agree.
Schumer threatened Trump with this treachery before he took office.
Drain the swamp!
Deep State needs to be put up against a wall.
I'm one taxpayer who has zero confidence that any federal investigative agency or the Congress can be trusted to investigate their way honestly out of a paper bag. I also have no confidence in special prosecutors because the history of such people has been poor. What's the answer? Tough to say given our hyper political times.
I know polls are bs. But, when Republicans fight, the poll numbers go up.
Gallup... Trump 42% approval (+3)
Rasmussen... Trump 46% approval
Reuters... Trump 46.2% approval
I contribute the rising poll numbers to Republicans willing to go nuclear on Gorsuch, to the renewed push on repeal and replace, and to Susan Rice.
Some of the smarter journalists are figuring things out.
Onambla IS a Turd worlder, should we have expected any different?
Cynicism is understandable after years of the scurvy Clintons and Obama.
Our reps must be deluged w/ messages about this AND details of what we expect them to do.
The IC was a weapon throughout the Obammy admin. The past year and a half were nothing new. This Islamonazi was the worst thing this country ever sent to office
They are going to find out that Obama has been spying on all kinds of people. Senators, heads of state, all kinds of people
Elect third world people, get third world results. Same in California.
Does anybody think its odd the Trump is now taking sides against Syria, after campaigning we should stay out of the middle east, and also saying he doesn’t trust the intelligence community after such debacles like WMDs, and other made up stuff that got us into wars.... but now Trump is saddened by the intelligence reports of chemical warfare in Syria and all of a sudden its an interest to the citizens of united states to be the policeman?
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