Posted on 08/31/2018 7:07:34 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Another profession has closed ranks around a few bad actors. Despite the protestations of almost 200 former intelligence officials, common sense suggests that there was good reason to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance.
The notion that revocation infringes upon his First Amendment free-speech rights is belied by Brennan’s subsequent behavior because the former CIA director continues — unchecked by any Trump administration official — to lash out at the president at every opportunity via any available media channel.
Brennan fails the first and foremost qualification for a security clearance: the ability to keep a secret. In a New York Times opinion piece, Brennan wrote: “Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.” Yet, so far, there is no evidence in the public domain of collusion with the Russians by Trump or any member of his 2016 campaign. Russian meddling, yes; collusion, no.
If there is such evidence, it is secret, in which case, Brennan is guilty of a security breach. Revelation of the existence of a secret is equivalent to divulgence of the actual information. If no such evidence exists, Brennan simply is incompetent or an outright fraud. Whatever the case, he shouldn’t hold a security clearance.
Knowingly or not, Brennan is trading upon his status as a former official in making these public statements. Citizens can only take Brennan’s pronouncements as those of someone who should know — the former CIA director during the period of alleged collusion. Moreover, a holder of a security clearance remains a government employee in part. Brennan’s statements are no more the exercise of his free-speech rights than a professional boxer’s use of his fists amounts to engaging in fisticuffs, rather than using lethal weapons.
In effect, Brennan is arrogating to himself authority and responsibility that is officially lodged elsewhere. It is special counsel Robert Mueller’s mission to determine whether there was any collusion. Due respect would suggest that Brennan should reserve judgment until Mueller reports.
Finally, Brennan himself is not above suspicion. He was the nation’s top intelligence officer. As such, inevitably, he participated, at least to some degree, in the preparation of the controversial FISA warrant application for court approval to surveil members of the Trump campaign. It was the CIA that detailed its operative Stefan Halper in London to contact former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos to ascertain the nature of their Russian contacts.
Brennan may have personal exposure in the controversial launch of the Russian collusion investigation — at least reputational exposure, if not more serious exposure. So, now, he may be acting to protect his own flank. Brennan is compromised, in appearance if not in fact and, therefore, should not hold a clearance.
While the former senior intelligence officials have objected to actual or threatened removal of security clearances from former government officials, only Brennan’s has been revoked — for reasons an ordinary citizen might well consider justified. The few whose clearances Trump has threatened to revoke include two officials fired for cause by the Department of Justice — former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI agent Peter Strzok — and one, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who soon may follow them ignominiously out the door. To an ordinary citizen, it seems only prudent to revoke the clearances of officials fired for cause.
These four individuals might be considered bad actors more than the first victims of an intimidation campaign. The phalanx of former intelligence officials defending them brings the entire intelligence community under a cloud. No matter what anyone thinks of President Trump, he is right to have revoked Brennan’s clearance and to have put McCabe, Strzok and Ohr on notice. Even if he did so, in part, to wreak revenge or to punish or intimidate them, he is guilty only of having done the right thing partly for the wrong reason.
And only someone living under a rock is unfamiliar with Trump’s often provocative and insulting behavior; intel officers should get over their injured feelings.
There’s an even more practical reason to remove these clearances: they are not being utilized. The chances that anyone in the Trump administration is giving Brennan current access, or has given him access since the day he left, are slim and none. So, Brennan has no need for a clearance, and the government has no need for Brennan to hold a clearance. Brennan is not indispensable, so dispensing of him is a non-event.
Red Jahncke is president of Townsend Group International, a business consultancy headquartered in Connecticut. Follow him on Twitter @RedJahncke.
For me, THIS IS a national security issue.
How can we trust people outside the agency to keep secrets since we can't monitor their activities as we can while they're working in national security?
How can we determine who might be leaking intel to the press if we allow anyone with clearance to come and go?
I think if you tied a stipulation on that you couldn’t accept any pay after leaving the government job, if you held a clearance...that would pretty much stop all these idiots from this bad behavior or keeping the clearance.
What you tend to see is a guy has basically ten years after he leaves the government....to do some Hollywood or TV status contracts/appearances. After that....he’s pushed out of the front-row and disappears.
I didn’t know that either, but Brennan is such a total scum sucking dirt bag.
Those who side with Brennan are traitors pure and simple. Yes we are watching and taking note too.
I just realized we hadn’t heard anything new from Brennan this week....
And "the need to know" a secret.
brennan is an enemy islamist who should be hanged.
Brennan should never have been CIA Director.
Only an ineligible Marxist muslim usurper would appoint a muslim Marxist as CIA Director and only Bush League Republicans would confirm him.
A guy who voted the commie ticket for president became CIA Director. Who would have believed it?
Everyone who leaves the service with a clearance keeps it until it expires.
If I left right now, my clearance would be good until 2021.
You would then have to reapply/renew. Unless high ranking officials get special treatment.
One crucial question is how early this all happened?.........
ITEM——Hillary Clinton ran in the 2008 and 2016 democratic primaries——and in the 2016 general election.
ITEM——S/C Mueller “uncovered” that the “Russian collusion scheme” apparently “materialized sometime in 2014.
Now, here’s the $64,000 question not addressed....Why didn’t the CIA or the NSA or the FBI pick this up?
Were Obama’s CIA-co-ordinated PDB’s falsified?
Probably-—Brennan knew the Halfrican was too stupid to catch on.
Brennan got outed as calculatedly working the phony “pee dossier” into Obama’s PDB.
Dates are important b/c Snowden’s’ revelations indicate government spying apparatus began capturing all electronic data on Americans in 2001.
The Obama police state had a lot of help-—our govt mastered the capture of all keystrokes, telephone calls and digital traffic by 2005.
This we know:
<><> (A) traffic travels through FBI computers, and,
<><> (B) the CIA keeps constant tabs on Russian spies in Russia....... and elsewhere.
Again. Why didn’t the CIA or the NSA or the FBI pick this up?
The issue of retaining security clearance also stopped.
I suspect they realized they were putting a target on their backs by defending a practice that can't really be defended.
'We need security clearance because someone might need our opinion' is a weak argument when it comes to securing national intelligence.
You might have a current background check but when you leave your position you have no “need to know”
Some guy who retired last year or 2 years ago or whatever would not be walking into my SCIF unless he was on a list of people approved for access
I was thinking the same thing.
Vile leaker... press pawn ... national disgrace.
I agree, and I think the argument that Brennan would need it in case his successor comes a calling is digging real deep.
No one in the Trump admin should want Brennans thoughts on anything.
translation: Don’t hitch your wagon to an unstable nutjob who is likely indictable, guys.
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