Posted on 03/30/2017 11:45:04 AM PDT by blam
In the latest development surrounding last week's announcement by Devin Nunes, according to which President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies, the NYT reports that the pair of White House officials who played a role in providing Nunes with the intelligence reports behind his claim, have been identified.
The NYT has outed the Nunes sources, who it claims are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.
As reported previously, Nunes had refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe coming to the committee with sensitive information. He first disclosed the existence of the intelligence reports on March 22, and in his public comments he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.
Amusingly, the NYT adds that "the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence, and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis."
In other words, the US has devolved to the point where one set of anonymous sources is doxxing another set of anonymous sources in the pursuit of a political agenda.
Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.
Some further background on Cohen-Watnick from forward.com:
(snip)
C’mon people. This stuff is not normal. You know that, right?
And Spicer just iterated 5mins ago that these sources would not be revealed.
How does the NYT know to out a confidential source? Unless he/she is talking to both sides and playing games?
New York Times? Forget it.
How does a 30 year-old kid get named as a senior director of intelligence in any agency? That sure isn’t normal.
If the source material are the Presidential Daily Briefings from Nov-Jan, as I believe they are, NYT could narrow down who all has/had authed eyes for the PBD and by process of elimination ID them.
Good work. Now, who was it that leaked classified intel to the press?
“Amusingly, the NYT adds that “the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence, and to avoid angering Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis.”
So when the NYTimes reveals the names of sources who have commented on condition of anonymity, who is supposed to think anything but that the NYTimes cannot be trusted?
Interesting. But if they are outing these people on the basis of elimination, it’s at least somewhat conjectural. This was expressed as a certainty.
I ran an aerator over my garden hose one time. It didn’t leak nearly as much as our intelligence agencies.
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Time to put some serious screws to the New York Times.
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Remember Evelyn Farkas made her disclosure of surveillance TWO days prior to President Trump’s tweets about “wire tapping”.
Fake news from a fake news factory.
Shep is having a huge “O” reporting this. Am turning FNC off.
The NY Times is becoming extremely concerned that investigations are getting dangerously close to uncovering
some of the truth about Saint Barack’s criminal activity.
Yet another nothing burger. No one will get prosecuted. No one will go to jail.
America is done. Toast. Stick a fork in it.
So the press that expect you to respect they confidential source does not respect other people’s confidential sources
So it boils down will respect confidential sources that give us information that we want but won’t respect confidential sources that give us some of information we don’t want
So this would also mean that if someone came to the New York Times with a story the Times would only publish it if it was something that times agreed with politically
So New York Times .....if you tattle on Trump will publish the story.. if you tattle on Obama we will rat you out
I think Nunes has whistle-blowers in the NSA... and hopefully they're still alive.
Exactly, the longer a non-team player is in power, the bigger the chance of exposing illegal activities and thefts of public funds.
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