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. Today’s 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, that’s 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 doesn’t exist.
I am here to tell you, having served in the CIA and the Naval Reserve, that the Deep State does indeed exist. And it’s 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 Obama’s 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 administration’s 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.
“The most stunning thing I have seen in mylife so far is Our Gov setting up an Islamic beachhead in Africa to invade Europe”
Can you provide sources/links? I’d like to understand that statement better. Thanks.
Dude, I’ll tell ya, when I went to the San Diego Naval base and saw all those ships and seen all those sailors and working civilians there, I was like, “Holy Sheet the federal government is frigging huge.”
It’s probably 100 times worse today
How the intel community was turned into a political weapon against ALL of us by the democrats.
” 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.”
The entire mindset of Obama and everyone under him was Third World. He genuinely admired people like the various African leftist thug leaders, the Brothers Castro, Chavez, etc. And the people under him, not only appointees but young civil servants brought up in PC land, would do anything he told them or hinted at (Stalin was very good at “hinting”), not only because they were PC, but because the cult of personality is a fundamental part of Third World politics. Whatever Dear Leader says becomes the law, and he must immediately be praised by the captive press for his wisdom and his every word or hint carried out by his underlings.
He probably ought to delete that stuff and overwrite the disc.
What a perv.
In Hillary's State Department they just used hammers.
“Our intelligence agencies are totally controlled by the Democrat Party and America is in danger!”
There is, I think, a subtle but important difference between “controlled by the Democrat Party” and “staffed by doctrinaire leftists.”
Either way the demonrats get what they want, but Satan’s little energizer demons are not sitting around waiting for orders from the DNC. Motivated seemingly from within, they take the initiative to do more harm than the DNC could dream up or execute.
When you have hordes of like-minded people acting independently in support of the same goals, no leader is needed to issue orders. No conspiracy is required to move toward their shared goals.
Of course, these leftists are generally glad to do whatever the DNC wants. This is in line with the general principle, “Scumbags of a feather misprision together.” Or, as Solzhenitsin put it, “Evil people always support each other; that is their main strength.”
The people, the individuals, the humans who occupy those positions are irredeemably corrupt. They cannot be helped, even if we wanted to get into the “reeducation camp” business. The least drastic course of action that I see is to fire *all* of them, and prevent them from following the “resist” course that the left is on.
Thanks so much for your concern but rest assured, I’m just fine; happy as a lark!
Here’s hoping that you are doing well too.
I greatly enjoyed our invigorating debates over the years. The issue that we debated is now most likely relegated to being like water under the bridge.
Bol. The issue, in its broader terms, was Obama’s honesty. I maintain he is a pathological liar. You, I believe, imagine he has some semblance of integrity. If you can still maintain that with everything that’s come to light since Hussein left the country...well, it just underscores the fact that you’re an Obot, simple as that.
They honestly thought they would be in power forever and truth be told, they came damn close.
I stated earlier that I believe many of Obama’s supposed allies HAVE been spied on, that many of the higher-ups in the DEM Party know it and the revelation scares the hell out of them.
I discussed that issue in narrow terms not broad terms. I wanted Congress to hold hearings and/or a prosecutor to convene a grand jury investigation. Those are the traditional ways of determining alleged criminal lies from truths.
Take good care, I’m moving on now.
You backpedal almost as well as you defend Obama. We have in fact discussed Obama’s integrity. It’s impossible to discuss the various lies he’s told related to his birth without discussing his overall honesty. If he tended almost always to tell the truth, that would carry weight when evaluating his birther lies. Otoh, if he lies pathologically [he does] then that too factors into the assessment of the inconsistencies and anomalies related to his tall nativity tales.
Obama’s obsessive dishonesty is on full display at the moment, as day by day we learn more about his illegal spying on Trump. Obama is a Malignant Narcissist, and as such he felt entitled to whatever intelligence he desired. His pigmentation will almost certainly protect him from prosecution, but at least a fuller picture of his dishonesty and fundamental nastiness is emerging.
Have you noticed, btw, that not even the sycophantic MSM is prattling about the absence of scandals in Obama’s administration any more? If it’s come to this in less than three mos, imagine what revelations the next few years will bring.
In the works well before 9/11/2001. See Hart-Rudman Commission.
It isn't necessary to create a problem, to turn the wheels of the Hegelian Dialectic. Allowing a problem works just as well.
Deposing Khadaffi in Libya, and putting Morsi in Egypt; destabilizing Jordan and Syria to create a refugee crisis. “Invading Europe” is easy, because the robber barons in charge of the EU want the influx. It’s part of “leveling the misery” around the world, destabilizing societies and civilizations, and (they hope) an eventual contraction of population without their dirty hands being obvious.
Thanks Cboldt.
I’ve read a bit about these NWO monsters and like to get as broad a perspective as possible.
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