Posted on 07/31/2017 11:15:05 AM PDT by SJackson
National security adviser H.R. McMaster continues to purge conservatives from the ranks of the National Security Council.
On Thursday, McMaster fired Col. Derek Harvey, a renowned Middle East expert who served under Gen. David Petraeus. Neither the White House nor the National Security Council gave a reason for Harvey’s firing.
Harvey is recognized in national security circles as a brilliant Middle East strategist. The Weekly Standard (which first reported Harvey’s firing) describes him as an “out-of-the-box thinker who has shown a keen knack for identifying threats before they’ve matured.” The report then cites a passage from Bob Woodward’s 2008 book “The War Within,” which delivers an intimate look into Harvey’s remarkable background:
In the late 1980s, Harvey traveled throughout Iraq by taxicab—500 miles, village to village—interviewing locals, sleeping on mud floors with a shower curtain for a door. He [was] full of questions, intensely curious and entirely nonthreatening. After the 1991 Gulf War, when the CIA was predicting the inevitable fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Harvey, then a major, insisted that Hussein would survive because members of the Sunni community knew their fortunes were tied to his. He was right. Months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Harvey wrote an intelligence paper declaring that al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan posed a strategic threat to the United States.
In 2008, Gen. Jack Keane described Harvey as “hands down the very best intelligence analyst that the United States government has on Iraq.”
Harvey released a statement after his firing:
statement just in from Derek Harvey, fired today from NSC: pic.twitter.com/5mn1kBKk42 — Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) July 27, 2017
Harvey was closely involved in president Trump’s efforts to rid the National Security Council of Obama holdovers, who were suspected of leaking national security secrets to the press. After extensive research, Harvey compiled a list of suspected leakers and reportedly delivered it straight to the president, who then took his list to McMaster.
Even though President Trump asked McMaster to fire the individuals on the list, the NSC chief refused the president’s directives to get rid of the Obama holdovers. This comes as Congress continues to sound the alarm about the national security implications of a White House that can’t control the release of classified information.
And as the classified leaks continue to spill into the public domain at a record-high rate, the National Security Council remains staffed with a shockingly high percentage of holdovers from the Obama era. Reached for comment, a White House official estimated that well over fifty percent of the National Security Council staff are Obama holdovers.
But instead of firing the Obama holdovers, McMaster has purged several conservative Trump supporters from the ranks of the NSC.
He has also allowed top officials from President Obama’s White House to come and go in and out of the White House compound as they please. Robert Malley, Obama’s “ISIS czar,” who has been described as an apologist for Islamic terror groups, has met with National Security Council staff on multiple occasions.
Promotions to top positions in the NSC include Kris Bauman, who created President Obama’s West Bank security plan that endangers Israel’s sovereignty. McMaster has placed Bauman in charge of Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the NSC. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Bauman blamed sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “inciting” Palestinian terror and demanded that Israel engage with the Hamas terrorist group. In June, Bauman’s proposal to implement his Obama-era plan into the Trump administration was leaked to anti-Israel Haaretz.
So why hasn’t Trump taken action to fire McMaster? Or will he just tweet about it?
McMaster is a turncoat. He must go.
Never forget the Rats were delighted when McMaster was picked. He is soft on the muzzies, he needs to go.
Sounds like he’s going underground.
McMaster did a decent job in the Iraq war, but he’s apparently a hard lefty. Destroy him.
So what you’re saying is that there are Obama holdovers who were just doing their job then, and are enthusiastic about implementing the Trump agenda? I do hope that agenda is still about stopping the global insane regime change warmongering the US has caused since Clinton mixing it up in Yugoslavia. If President Trump isn’t going to end that, why did we vote?
Brietbart's Jordan Schachtel and Jarrett Stepman announced their resignations Monday afternoon.
"The company no longer resembles the ideals that inspired me to start writing for them three years ago," Schachtel, a national security correspondent, said in a statement.
He also cited the website's full-throated support of GOP front-runner Donald Trump as one of the main reasons for his departure, writing, "Some of us have been fighting behind the scenes against the party-line Trump propaganda for some time, but without any success, unfortunately."
Two more Breitbart employees resign over alleged Trump campaign assault
That quickly became my conclusion too.
More fake news...
I think it's possible that in the future there will be a
mass firing of these creatures who inhabit the NSC.
These Obama creeps are being lured to the Nation Security Council
water hole only to find that there will be some nasty crocodiles waiting there to bite their heads off.
Meanwhile you will not find the "National Security Council"
having much influence on anything.
BTW, why is the "National Security Council" needed anyway?
“These Obama creeps are being lured to the Nation Security Council
water hole only to find that there will be some nasty crocodiles waiting there to bite their heads off.”
Wishful thinking I fear. I am so sick of hearing about these betrayals and that they are going clear out the holdovers and leftists any minute now yet it never happens.
McCabe, McMaster, Rosenstein, Powell and on and on it goes.
And everyone knows our "strategy" in the Middle East has been BRILLIANT...riiiiigt?
Conservative Review is a NeoCon stronghold...grain of salt.
Ditto.
I read McMaster’s book, “Dereliction Of Duty” concerning the MacNamara/Johnson surrender fiasco of the Vietnam War, and it seemed hard to find a liberal mind at work therein. But it’s hard to fathom what goes on with these types who suddenly seem to acquire a Colin Powell save-the-world complex when thrust into the upper echelons of power.
McMaster and Powell should be the two next to go.
ANY action that irks the Weekly Standard, or Conservative Review is a right and proper one.
They are nothing but dens of Globalist Neocons.
And I welcome the opportunity to argue the point.
General Kelly will be firing this McMasters in a couple of days, he won’t put up with this crap...
McMasters is a a turn coat, a globalist and works with everyone that he is not suppose to...
Fire away CofS Kelly and POTUS Trump!!!
My first thought on the subject.
I get the feel in the article that feelings have been hurt and a shoulder has been chipped.
No mo’ Obama ho’s (holdovers)
No mo’ Obama ho’s (holdovers)
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