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Cuts of hundreds of staff members at the White House and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have curbed leaks and stifled anti-Trump activists within both agencies, according to senior administration officials. Acting DNI Richard Grenell, who stepped down Tuesday, streamlined ODNI in his four months in office by reducing staff and contractor positions by as much as 400. Mr. Grenell said other positive reforms during his brief stint included declassifying congressional testimony showing no collusion between Trump officials and Russia in 2016, and imposing rules to protect the identities of U.S. officials inadvertently captured in overseas...

Tomorrow morning ends the tenure of Richard “Ric” Grenell as the acting Director of National Intelligence. At 12:15pm DNI John Ratcliffe will be sworn-in [LINK] and the declassification/sunlight baton will be passed to senate confirmed DNI John Ratcliffe. On the topic of the FBI capture and use of the December 29, 2016, Flynn-Kislyak phone call… First we had a hunch; then it became a suspicion… that evolved into a likelihood… that has now become a strong probability. The capture of the December 29th phone call, which generated the raw “CR cuts“, was an FBI summary, modified for a specific interpretation....

On Friday, it was reported that State Department Inspector General Steve Linick had been fired. Immediately, the left pounced calling it “an unlawful act of retaliation.” The story was that Linick was conducting an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for asking subordinates to run personal errands for him and his wife. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) said, “I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.” House Democrats may want to hold their fire...

Link and title only due to USA restrictions on FR.

BERMAN: Asking for names [to be unmasked], nothing wrong with that. Unmasking in itself, nothing wrong with that. Leaking classified information — and by definition these phone calls were classified — that’s a problem, correct? CLAPPER: Absolutely, it is. BERMAN: And if anyone did leak the contents of these conversations with or without the name, that would be a problem, yes? CLAPPER: [connection ends] BERMAN: We’ve lost the shot. I wonder if we can at least get him on the phone to finish this. Let’s try to get Director Clapper back. All right, we’re gonna work on getting that shot...

Foreign powers test US defenses amid coronavirus pandemic BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 04/19/20 08:00 AM EDT U.S. adversaries are probing America's defenses as the world is preoccupied with the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. In the past two weeks, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have all moved to test Washington in the sea, in the air and on land as U.S. forces have become more restricted in movement amid concerns over the spread of COVID-19. “Exactly how distracted is the U.S. military? They want to know,” said Susanna Blume, the director of the defense program at the Center for...

New York - TIME has obtained the first documented look inside the highly classified realm of military interrogations since the Gitmo Camp at Guantanamo Bay opened. The document is a secret 84-page interrogation log that details the interrogation of 'Detainee 063' at Guantanamo Bay. It is a remarkable look into the range of techniques and methods used for the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, who is widely believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker, a compatriof Osama bin Laden and a man who had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks....

Attorneys call videos ‘sickening’ Lawyers for the man known as the "20th hijacker" of 9/11 are suing the U.S. government to release "sickening" videotapes they say show Guantanamo Bay interrogators torturing their client. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Mohammed Al-Qahtani was a victim “of torture and other profoundly cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." "The American public should now be permitted to see what occurred for itself," the lawsuit said. Between 2002 and 2003, Al-Qahtani suffered through marathon interrogation sessions and was subjected to severe temperatures, sleep deprivation and other...

Julian Assange tried to contact Hillary Clinton and the White House when he realized that unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables given to WikiLeaks were about to be dumped on the internet, his lawyer told his London extradition hearing on Tuesday. Assange is being sought by the United States on 18 counts of hacking U.S. government computers and an espionage offense, having allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. soldier known as Bradley Manning, to leak hundreds of thousands of secret documents by WikiLeaks almost a decade ago. On Monday, the lawyer representing the United States told the hearing that Assange,...

A former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee has pleaded guilty to charges related to the leaking of classified information to two journalists, the Justice Department (DOJ) said. Henry Kyle Frese, 31, pleaded guilty on Thursday to the willful transmission of top-secret national defense information to journalists. He faces up to 10 years in prison. Frese was arrested when he arrived to work at a DIA facility in Virginia in October last year where he worked as a counterterrorism analyst. The 31-year-old—who held top-secret government security clearance—was accused of helping the journalists research information on a classified United States government computer...

Gruesome photographs of dead Iraqis, allegedly killed by US Marines in Haditha, will soon be made public. That is, if the leaks keep coming and the anti-war crowd has its way.The photos were given to the Washington Post by the enemy within. An unnamed "defense official". He or she gave the Post the entire Naval Criminal Investigation Service report into the incident at Haditha.On January 7, the Post published, Marines' Photos Provide Graphis Evidence in Haditha Probe. "Among the images," according to the article, "there is a young boy with a picture of a helicopter on his pajamas, slumped over,...

Before breaking his silence Thursday in an interview with ABC News, Attorney General William Barr complained privately "for weeks" to President Donald Trump about his tweets and public statements related to Justice Department investigations, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. Despite those apparent warnings, however, Trump over the past several weeks was unrelenting in his targeting of his various political enemies in speeches and over Twitter like former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former special counsel Robert Mueller. In fact, Barr sat in the front row during a post-impeachment event at the...

The Justice Department said Friday it will not pursue criminal charges against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, after a nearly two-year-long investigation into accusations brought by the agency's independent watchdog who found that he lacked "candor" when questioned about leaking to the media. In a letter to McCabe attorney Michael Bromwich obtained by Fox News, Justice Department attorney J.P. Cooney said the investigation is now “closed.”

The White House is expected to pull the nomination of Elaine McCusker to be the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer in the latest staffing fallout from President Trump’s impeachment, The Post has learned. McCusker resisted the president’s directive to stall about $250 million in military aid to Ukraine and her emails protesting the delay were leaked in January to the blog Just Security ahead of Trump’s Senate trial. “This administration needs people who are committed to implementing the president’s agenda, specifically on foreign policy, and not trying to thwart it,” a White House official told The Post.

During the Senate impeachment trial Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts declined to read a question submitted by Sen. Rand Paul which included the name of Eric Ciaramella, the man RealClear Investigations has identified as the whistleblower at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. The Kentucky Republican submitted the question card, and after reading it, Roberts replied, “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.� Paul’s question did not use the term whistleblower or identify Ciaramella as the whistleblower. Senator @RandPaul sends question to the desk during Impeachment Trial.Chief Justice Roberts: "The presiding officer declines to read the question...

Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme. He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program. The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by...

A former CIA officer has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for leaking details of a secret mission to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Jeffrey Sterling of O’Fallon, Missouri, was facing a recommended sentence of 20 years or more under federal sentencing guidelines for violations of the Espionage Act. …

Senate Democratic leadership is urging President Trump to declassify the official war powers notification he submitted to Congress regarding the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani via a drone strike. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez wrote a letter Sunday to Mr. Trump asking him to release the notification that was transmitted to Congress this weekend. The letter to the president was made public on Monday. “It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Menendez wrote. “An entirely classified notification is simply not...

Yesterday CTH noted 2020 as the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind. We will see several years effort merging. Today, more evidence toward that objective is visible. The House Judiciary Committeee (HJC) argued in the DC court of appeals to obtain the Mueller grand jury information [6(e) material], and compel testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn. Also today, more leaks from the inside the administration. The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officials working on their behalf. That House network also has...

2020 is the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind. Predictably we will see several years of prior effort beginning to merge, and it begins today. NOTE: For interested readers it will be impossible for me to summarize the background for each step prior to putting the next puzzle piece into place. Therefore I strongly suggest bookmarking posts for later reference because it would take tens of thousands of words to understand for anyone who steps into the light mid-way through. [Just an FYI] Tomorrow, January 3rd, 2020, the House Judiciary...