Free Republic

Former United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice bucked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s intelligence following weeks of scrutiny over leaks at the Pentagon amid massive spending reductions at the Department of Defense (DOD). Rice, who previously served as national security adviser in the Obama administration, questioned Hegseth’s proven ability to lead on an international level in conversation with “No Lie With BTC” podcast host Brian Taylor Cohen. “Well, if you’re a white male Christian cisgender macho MAGA man, you can be as dumb as a rock and be deemed qualified to serve as secretary of Defense. That’s apparently what we’ve learned from...

President Biden on Friday made two new appointments to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and one of them is among the 51 former intelligence officials who signed on to a letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop was a product of Russian disinformation. Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff at the Pentagon and the CIA under President Obama, will now sit on a 16-seat board that serves to give the president advice on matters related to national intelligence. Bash became an outspoken national security pundit for MSNBC during the Trump years. The other appointment was Blair Effron, cofounder of Centerview...

Hundreds of people serving on the Pentagon’s 42-civilian advisory boards were forced to resign on Tuesday upon the orders of Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The move effectively purged many Trump appointees who were put in place in the final days of the Trump administration. While the resignations were reportedly part of a broader review ordered by Austin, the Pentagon’s top spokesman did acknowledge that move was prompted by the 11th-hour appointments by Trump. “The Secretary was deeply concerned with the pace and the extent of recent changes to memberships of department advisory committees,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon’s...

The president of the AFL-CIO stepped down from a council advising the White House on Tuesday, hours after President Trump reiterated that both sides were to blame for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacist groups rallied over the weekend. "President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement. He announced that both he and AFL-CIO leader Thea Lee would step down from Trump's Manufacturing Advisory Board. "We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups."...

Today, the Donald J. Trump campaign announced a new executive board convened to provide advisory support to Mr. Trump on those issues important to Evangelicals and other people of faith in America. The executive board will also lead a much larger Faith and Cultural Advisory Committee to be announced later this month. The leaders on the executive board were not asked to endorse Mr. Trump as a prerequisite for participating on the board. Rather, the formation of the board represents Donald J. Trump’s endorsement of those diverse issues important to Evangelicals and other Christians, and his desire to have access...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

In the speech Jan. 28, President Bush cited British intelligence in asserting that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from an unnamed country in Africa. The White House later said the claim should not have been made, after reports that the intelligence community expressed doubts it was true. After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something...

A senior CIA official this week said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "absolutely wrong" to oppose placing all components of the intelligence community -- including those now under the authority of the Pentagon -- under the centralized control of the director of central intelligence. James Simon, assistant director of central intelligence for administration, said he supports a recommendation advanced by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, head of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, to transfer the National Security Agency, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office from the purview of DOD to direct DCI control. "Brent...