When Lying Gets You Promoted

On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some of the appointees to the Biden administration. Some of the names are very familiar.

The article reports:

Several of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter casting doubt on the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 presidential election have ended up serving in roles with President Joe Biden’s administration.

In less than three years, the Biden administration has brought on six out of the 51 former intelligence official signatories of the October 2020 letter arguing that the leak of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Earlier this week, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) selected three signatories of the letter to join a federal “intelligence experts” national security group, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

These 51 intelligence officials already knew that the laptop was real and the information on it was valid, yet they lied to influence an election. They should be in jail–not in government.

In case you have forgotten, in July 2023, The Washington Examiner reported:

An FBI official told the House Judiciary Committee in a transcribed interview this week that at least one top agent and likely others who were warning social media companies about a “hack and dump” operation ahead of the 2020 election knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was real.

Laura Dehmlow, head of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, said, according to excerpts of the testimony obtained by the Washington Examiner, that her then-colleague Brad Benavides “certainly” was aware of the laptop’s authenticity.

The Daily Caller notes:

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe will be members of the new group, which will advise DHS on intelligence and national security matters including “terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology,” according to the DHS announcement. All of them signed onto the October 2020 letter casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop before the presidential election.

The Daily Caller News Foundation verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop contents in October 2020.

Is there anyone out there who still believes that the 2020 election was legitimate? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t believe that Americans need to do everything they can to make sure 2024 is an honest election?

When The Chickens Come Home To Roost

When the chickens come home to roost, deny, deny, deny. That is how James Clapper is handling the charges that the letter signed by 51 retired intelligence community leaders influenced the election.

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

In case anyone is wondering who was responsible for the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assures us it was not the 51 retired intelligence community leaders who penned the letter which said it was. Instead, it was the media who mischaracterized their words.

Clapper’s signature topped the list of prominent former government officials willing to stake their reputations on the infamous letter that was written to sow doubt about a story that, if it had not been suppressed, could arguably have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election.

One of the major problems with that statement is that in August on 2017, James Clapper was hired by CNN as a national security analyst. He was the media he is accusing of mischaracterizing his words.

The article notes:

Specifically, Clapper, who is best known for lying to Congress in 2013 about the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ telephone records and for his role in perpetuating the Russian collusion hoax, blamed Politico for “deliberately distorting” their letter in an October 2020 piece titled , “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

“There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” Clapper told Washington Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.”

Paragraph five is indeed a disclaimer. It states : “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

But if Clapper felt the letter had been deliberately distorted, he certainly had ample opportunity to clear things up. After leaving office at the end of the Obama administration, Clapper became a political analyst for CNN, giving him a major media platform from which to do so. Yet he remained silent — even as leftist pundits and congressional Democrats spread the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story had been planted by Russia.

It’s amazing how many things go on in Washington that no one is responsible for. It’s like there are invisible people in that city that are there simply to create havoc!

That’s Not His Job

On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a recent claim made by a former CIA officer.

The article reports:

One of the former CIA officers who signed a letter claiming stories about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden were disinformation says he helped swing the 2020 election away from former President Donald Trump.

“I take special pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump,” John Sipher, who served for decades as a senior operations officer at the CIA, wrote in a recent post on Twitter. “I lost the election for Trump? Well then I [feel] pretty good about my influence.”

Sipher and 50 other former U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter on Oct. 19, 2020, alleging that the effort to distribute its contents “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” despite not knowing whether the laptop was legitimate.

The letter was at the core of a story from Politico that claimed the New York Post story about the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

The Post was the first to report about emails on the laptop, which was dropped off at a computer repair store and never picked up by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, according to the store’s owner.

It has since been proven that the laptop was real and the letter was in fact Democrat disinformation. Meanwhile, John Sipher is bragging about influencing an election by lying about something he really did not know. What kind of people are running (or have been running) our government?

The article concludes:

Sipher got into arguments with former acting DNI Richard Grenell and others on Twitter, where he later said his claims of helping Trump lose were sarcasm.

He also wrote that “the letter didn’t say the laptop was disinformation,” but, in May 2021, posted a link to the Politico story that did say that.

Nick Shapiro, once a top aide to former CIA Director John Brennan—both Shapiro and Brennan signed the missive—and who provided it to Politico, hasn’t responded to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Most of the other signers didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined the requests, the Post reported.

Former DNI James Clapper told the paper that he stands by the statement “made AT THE TIME.”

“I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate,” Clapper said.

“The letter explicitly stated that we didn’t know if the emails were genuine, but that we were concerned about Russian disinformation efforts,” said Russ Travers, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “I spent 25 years as a Soviet/Russian analyst. Given the context of what the Russians were doing at the time (and continue to do—Ukraine being just the latest example), I considered the cautionary warning to be prudent.”

What garbage.

The Fourth Branch Of Government

Today The Conservative Treehouse posted an article in a series on their blog titled, “The Fourth Branch of Government, The Intelligence Branch.”  Yesterday they previewed the series. Today’s article is very complex, and I strongly suggest that you follow the link above to read the complete article. The article explains a lot of the inequities that have arisen in our justice system in recent years.

The article reports:

Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor.  The checks create silos of proprietary information that works around oversight issues. That’s part of the problem.

Ironically the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented.  The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the executive branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S.   This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.

The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information.  You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of government.

♦ The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W Bush.  Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.

Why does this matter?  Because many people think defunding the IC is a solution; it ain’t… not yet.  Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).

That is just a preview. The article explains how the surveillance state has been used for political purposes since the Obama administration. It illustrates how the foundation was laid for the political prosecutions we are currently seeing. We are not in a good place, and I am not sure we will be able to get out of the bad place where we currently reside.

There Will Be No Consequences, But The Truth Does Matter

Slowly but surely, documents from the Russian Hoax are being declassified. These documents tell a story that is very different from the one told to Congress by the people involved. Unfortunately, most of the bureaucrats who lied under oath to Congress will probably never be held accountable for their lies.

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a recent document that was declassified.

The article reports:

The very day in January 2017 that then-FBI Director James Comey signed a FISA surveillance warrant application declaring content from Christopher Steele’s dossier had been “verified,” he wrote President Obama’s outgoing intelligence community chief with a very different assessment of the British spy’s intelligence on Russia collusion, a newly released memo shows.

“We are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting,” Comey wrote in a Jan. 12, 2017 email to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that was declassified and made public through an open records lawsuit by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.

The memo recounts an internal debate inside the U.S. intelligence community during one of the most delicate moments in the FBI’s then six-month old Crossfire Hurricane probe.

CIA officials had already informed Comey’s FBI that the target of the FISA warrant, Carter Page, wasn’t a Russian spy but rather an asset helping U.S. intelligence. The bureau had received warnings about Steele and the reliability of his source network, including that it might have been compromised by Russian disinformation. Agents had also just recommended on Jan. 4, 2017 shutting down the probe’s inquiry into incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lack of evidence.

The FBI had been warned the previous summer that Hillary Clinton’s campaign may have planted the false Russia collusion story as a way to “vilify” Trump and distract from her email scandal, and agents were about to interview Steele’s primary sub-source, who would discount much of the information in the dossier attributed to him as bar talk and unconfirmed rumor not worthy of official intelligence.

The article concludes:

The FBI also failed to disclose to the FISA judge that the source known as Person 1 was under a separate counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, the IG report footnotes show.

In fact on Jan. 12, 2017, the very day Comey signed the FISA and engaged with Clapper, the FBI had received clear warnings in a report that some of Steele’s dossier information about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations,” according to another declassified footnote from the IG report.

In other words, Comey’s representations to Clapper and sworn avowals of verification to the FISA court had already been directly undercut by his bureau’s own evidence.

Unfortunately I have no doubt that the illegal surveillance of American citizens is continuing under the Biden administration. Because there were no consequences under the Obama administration for these actions, there really is no incentive to end the illegal behavior.

 

Sunlight Is The Best Disinfactant

Townhall is reporting today that Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified documents showing the Obama administration officials allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn in transcripts of calls he had with Russia’s former ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

The article reports:

Information on the Flynn-Kislyak phone call was leaked to The Washington Post in 2017, leading many to wonder whether an Obama administration official had illegally disclosed classified information.

In 2017, Rep. Devin Nunes, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he had evidence “current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

He continued, “The committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.”

The article notes:

Both former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were pressed by GOP senators in 2017 about their role in alleged unmasking abuses, and denied any wrongdoing. There were reports that United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power unmasked hundreds of U.S. persons, but she has said this is “absolutely false.”

Former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that the National Security Agency, the CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department all had the ability to unmask individuals.

U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly investigating the leaks of potentially classified information related to Flynn to the media in early 2017. (Washington Examiner)

There were many things that went on during the Obama administration regarding classified information that need to be examined. Things that should have remained classified were leaked for political purposes, and things that were classified solely for the purpose of hiding illegal surveillance activities by the administration were kept secret. It’s time to examine that and correct the misdeeds.

Complicated, But Important

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the ongoing case of Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS journalist who was spied on by the government as she investigated the Fast and Furious scandal and later Benghazi.. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to the article as it includes a lot of detail about the case.

The article reports:

According to a recent court filing [Source Here] a person who was engaged in the “wrongful activity” has come forward to provide Ms. Attkisson with details about the operation.  As a result of those whistle-blower revelations Attkisson is able to name specific individuals who were running the operation

…Former DOJ Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is named as the person who was in charge of the operation; and the former head of the FBI DC field office, Shawn Henry is also outlined.

Mr. Henry is the head of Crowdstrike, a contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company.  Those who have followed the aspects related to the FBI use of the NSA database to illegally monitor U.S. persons; and those who followed the DNC cover story of Russia “hacking”; will be familiar with Crowdstrike.

According to the updated lawsuit (full pdf below) Rod Rosenstein, as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, was in charge of the Obama 2011 and 2012 operation to monitor journalists specific to Ms. Attkissons reporting on Fast-n-Furious and Benghazi.

The article concludes:

This is the same time-frame when DNI James Clapper falsely denied to congress about the U.S. government -through the NSA- collecting metadata on all U.S. electronic communication.  This is the same time-frame where CIA Director John Brennan was monitoring the computer networks of congressional intelligence oversight staff.

When you overlay the new information from the Attkisson lawsuit, what emerges is the picture of an intentional effort by the Obama administration to weaponize the ability to collect electronic information on domestic political opposition.  It’s one long continuum.

This is not acceptable government behavior in a representative republic. It remains to be seen what will be done about it.

There Are A Few Honest Patriots Left In Washington

The Conservative Treehouse reported yesterday that former NSA Director, Admiral Mike Rogers, has been working with U.S. Attorney John Durham for several months during his investigation into the origin of the 2016 intelligence operation against candidate Trump.

Who is Admiral Rogers? In May 2018, I posted an article about him.

In the article I quoted The American Thinker:

The FBI is asked–way back as early as 2015, but who knows? — to be helpful to the Dems and they agree. What they do is they hire non-government consultants with close Dem ties to do “analytical work” for them, which happens to include total access to NSA data. Advantages? For the Dems, obviously, access to EVERYTHING digital. A gold mine for modern campaign research. For the FBI there’s also an advantage. They get to play dumb — gosh, we didn’t know they were looking at all that stuff! They also don’t have to falsify anything, like making [stuff] up to “justify” opening a FI [full investigation]on an American citizen and then lying to the FISC to get a FISA on the USPER [US person] and having to continually renew the FISA and lie all over again to the FISC each renewal. And the beauty of it all is, who’s ever going to find out? And even if they do, how do you prove criminal intent?

So everything’s humming along until a pain in the a** named Mike Rogers at NSA does an audit in 4/2016, just as the real campaign season is about to start. And Rogers learns that 85% of the searches the FBI has done between 12/2015 and 4/2016 have been totally out of bounds. And he clamps down — no more non-government contractors, tight auditing on searches of NSA data. Oh sh*t! What to do, just give up? Well, not necessarily, but there’s a lot more work involved and a lot more fudging the facts. What the FBI needs to do now is get a FISA that will cover their a** and provide coverage on the GOPers going forward. That means, first get a FI on an USPER [US person] connected to the Trump campaign (who looks, in [April] or [May] 2016, like the GOP candidate) so you can then get that FISA. That’s not so easy, because they’ve got to find an USPER with that profile who they can plausibly present as a Russian spy. But they have this source named Halper.

So they first open a PI [preliminary investigation]. That allows them to legally use NatSec Letters and other investigative techniques to keep at least some of what they were doing going. But importantly this allows them to legally use Halper to try to frame people connected to the Trump campaign — IOW, find someone to open a FI on so they can then get that FISA. However the PI is framed, that’s what they’re looking to do. It has legal form, even if the real intent is to help the Dems. And you can see why this had to be a CI [counterintelligence] thing, so in a sense the Russia narrative was almost inevitable — no other bogeyman would really fit the bill, and especially on short notice.

So that’s what they do, and Halper helps them come up with Papadopoulos and Page, so by the end of July they’ve got their FI. Problem. Their first FISA is rejected, but eventually, 10/2016, they get that.

And then Trump wins and Rogers visits Trump Tower. And the Deep State has a fit.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

♦ On November 17th, 2016, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers went to see President-Elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, New York. –SEE HERE– Director Rogers never told his boss DNI, James Clapper or anyone else in the intelligence community.

♦ On November 18th, 2016, the Trump Transition Team announced they were moving all transition activity to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. –SEE HERE– Where they interviewed and discussed the most sensitive positions to fill. Defense, State, CIA, ODNI.

The transition team was set up in Trump Tower. The very next day, November 18th 2016, Trump moves the entire transition team to Bedminister New Jersey?

The information the FBI collected, and the stuff Fusion GPS was creating via Christopher Steele, was used to create the Russian Narrative and also to manipulate the FISC into giving them a FISA warrant. ie. “The Insurance Policy”.

Ultimately, the people within all of these intercepts is what Devin Nunes discovered when he looked at the “unmasking requests” which were a result of those FISA 702(17) collections on Team Trump. That’s why Devin Nunes was so stunned at what he saw in February and March 2017.

Back to FISA Judge Collyer.

On October 26th, 2016, NSA Director Rogers wouldn’t know what Collyer knew about the FBI requesting a surveillance warrant on Carter Page and by extension the Trump campaign. However, Collyer would be putting the briefing about database searches together with her knowledge of the FISA application she authorized.

In her mind, those Trump Tower searches would likely be part of the arc of the FBI investigation. To FISC Judge Collyer everything may seem to be in the lane of legal, albeit stretched on the database (FISA-702) searches, up and until she is informed the underlying evidence for the FISA application was built on FBI fraud and misrepresentations to the court in 2019 by IG Horowitz.

Now, it’s all out in the open and no longer subject to opinion.

After the DOJ inspector general informs, positively affirms, Judge Collyer was purposely misled into cooperating with, and authorizing, a fraudulent FBI investigation…. well, now Collyer is also likely rethinking those Trump Tower searches Director Rogers told her about back in 2016.

There are a few honest men in Washington. Admiral Rogers is one of them.

The Glass Isn’t Even Half Full–It’s Broken

We all have that one friend that we care about but is just hard to be around. If someone handed them a handful of hundred dollar bills, they would complain that they weren’t new bills. If they won the lottery, they would complain about the taxes they would have to pay. You get the picture. This morning President Trump announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed by American Special Forces soldiers. Unfortunately we have become so divided as a nation that the Democrats and their media allies could not share in rejoicing at the death of a very evil man.

Townhall posted an article today that illustrates that point.

Before President Donald Trump’s press conference on Sunday confirming the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” to discuss what he was hoping to hear the president say.

One of the biggest things Clapper was interested in was seeing “the contributions the intelligence community made” that led to al-Baghdadi’s death. 

He admitted “taking down” al-Baghdadi has “huge symbolic meaning,” especially because he has been a target for quite some time. 

But Clapper warned the move could “galvanize” the Islamic State.

“What is going to be interesting is to the extent to which this negatively affects ISIS or does it galvanize ISIS, the remnants of ISIS, which still survives as an ideology and has franchises in other places besides Syria,” he explained. 

Good grief. There was a time when we assassinated the leaders of Al Qaeda as soon as they became leaders. After a while, no one wanted to lead the organization. We may have to do the same thing again, but in the meantime, a horrible man is no longer a threat to anyone. Thank God we were not this divided during World War II–we would all be speaking German now if we had been.

Does America Have Equal Justice Under The Law?

We are about to find out if the same rules apply to everyone. One America News Network is reporting today that Attorney General William Barr’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation is turning into a criminal case. For those listening to the mainstream media spin that this is just retribution for impeachment, have you considered the Constitutional protections that were violated when there was massive surveillance on the Trump campaign, the Trump transition team, and even the Trump presidency? Have you looked at the changes made in the handling of classified information that took place in the final days of the Obama administration that made leaking information much easier?

The article notes:

The change reportedly allows U.S. attorney John Durham, who was chosen by Barr to lead the probe, to subpoena documents as well as witness testimonies and to file criminal charges if necessary. This comes after reports last week said Barr was expanding the investigation after Durham found something “significant.:” However, it’s still not clear what exactly prompted the switch.

The probe was first launched in May as an administrative review into the origins of the Russia hoax. President Trump has repeatedly denounced former special council Robert Mueller’s Russia probe by calling it a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.” When asked whether he prompted the attorney general to open the investigation, however, the president said he hadn’t, but also said he appreciates Barr’s work.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, Durham has reportedly expressed interest in investigating former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, who were in charge while the since-debunked Steele dossier was released. This led to the secret surveillance of Trump campaign officials in 2016.

It was recently reported that multiple CIA officials have pursued legal council because of Durham’s legal review. Horowitz has said his report will be released in the near future.

Spying on Americans by the CIA is illegal. However, if the CIA used overseas resources to accomplish what was illegal, they need to be held accountable. One of the things that the Obama administration was known for was the politicization of government agencies–the IRA targeted conservative groups by slow walking their 501(c)(3) applications, the administration dismissed charges against the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation when there was video evidence, the administration eavesdropped on James Rosen and his parents because they didn’t like his reporting, etc. It would not really be a surprise if they had used the government to further their political agenda. It will be interesting to see if anyone is held accountable for the violations of the civil rights of American citizens that occurred during the Obama administration.

Fighting Back Legally

The American Spectator posted an article today about the ongoing legal case of General Flynn. As you know, General Flynn’s new lawyer, Sidney Powell, is the author of the book Licensed to Lie, which details government abuses in cases against Enron and Ted Stevens among others. Ms. Powell has a very clear understanding of prosecutorial misconduct and how to deal with it.

The article at The American Spectator details a case in which a policeman charged with rape was able to get the charges dropped by shedding light on the actions of the prosecutors regarding the witnesses. The article refers to this as ‘graymail’ and suggests that this tactic will be used by Ms. Powell to defend General Flynn.

The article reports:

As you may recall, there are many disturbing questions surrounding the federal government’s investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Flynn. Although he has pled guilty to a flimsy and corruptly contrived charge of lying to the FBI, that plea came about after he had — according to media reports — bankrupted himself by paying $4 million in legal fees to the Washington law firm that represented him prior to Powell. In short, it appears that Flynn pled guilty because he couldn’t afford any more justice.

In addition to the law firm’s impressive professional achievement of turning a mere guilty plea proceeding into a reported $4 million payday, the known facts and circumstances surrounding the Flynn case are equally remarkable. We know that the charges arise out of an ambush interview orchestrated by former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe regarding contacts that Flynn, the incoming Trump administration’s National Security Adviser, had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. According to Powell’s thorough, broadly worded, and aggressive discovery motion, recently produced (and previously withheld) government documents disclosed that “Flynn passed his polygraph test in 2016 and his security clearance was renewed. This was at the same time the FBI seems to have been investigating him under the pretext that he was an ‘agent of Russia’ and/or of Turkey. Interestingly, the new production also shows that [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper refused to assist in the investigation for Mr. Flynn’s security clearance, which Mr. Flynn received after a full investigation despite Mr. Clapper’s actions.” In addition, at the bar of the Court, Powell advised U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan that the recently disclosed documents showed the government had concluded that Flynn was neither a Russian nor a Turkish agent.

The article notes:

So why and how was Flynn targeted for destruction by the FBI and Justice Department? Powell’s discovery motion seeks answers to these questions by demanding the production of evidence exposing the links between the investigation and prosecution of Flynn to the Obama administration’s efforts to target, spy on, and frame Donald Trump.

The article goes on to list the documents requested.

The article concludes:

Moreover, if Judge Sullivan grants the defense even partial relief, the prosecutors will then be faced with a bitter choice, to wit:

(a) They can produce the damning evidence of the government’s corrupt activities in order to continue the prosecution of their ludicrous and petty false statements case against Flynn. Or (b) the prosecutors can do the smart thing by dropping the charges and quietly disappearing into the witness protection program.

If the prosecutors want my advice, in the event Judge Sullivan grants any part of Powell’s lethal motion, they should pick option (b) and ask the U.S. Marshal’s Service to relocate them to Arizona. I hear it’s nice there in the winter, and retirees can live comfortably on even a modest government pension.

I really like Plan B.

It Is Scary That This Happened In America

Yesterday Jay Sekulow posted an article at Fox News about new information found in recently disclosed documents.

The article reports:

Stunning new information just released by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) shows that the Obama administration stepped up efforts – just days before President Trump took office – to undermine Trump and his administration.

The ACLJ, where I serve as chief counsel, has obtained records that show the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, under Director James Clapper, eagerly pushed to get new procedures as part of an anti-Trump effort. The procedures increased access to raw signals intelligence before the conclusion of the Obama administration, just days before President Trump was inaugurated.

By greatly expanding access to classified information by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, the Obama administration paved the way for a shadow government to leak classified information – endangering our national security and severely jeopardizing the integrity and reputation of our critical national security apparatus – in an attempt to undermine President Trump.

Consider the fact that had Hillary Clinton been elected, this would never have been done. This is further evidence that the Obama administration considered itself an arm of the Democrat party–the did not consider themselves accountable to the American people for their actions.

The article continues:

As I told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel program, the documents were obtained as a result of one of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits – this one against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency.

The documents confirmed what we suspected: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence rushed to get the new “procedures signed by the Attorney General before the conclusion of this administration,” referring to the Obama administration.

The documents also reveal that Robert Litt, who worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense’s Director of Intelligence Strategy, Policy, & Integration: “Really want to get this done … and so does the Boss.” Presumably “the Boss” is a reference to Director Clapper. 

And documents the ACLJ received that were produced by the National Security Agency show that NSA officials discussed that they “could have a signature from the AG as early as this week, certainly prior to the 20th of Jan.” In other words, certainly before President Trump’s inauguration.

Consider what we now know about the nature and degree of Deep State opposition to President Trump.

The article also notes:

In this particular instance, it concerned us when we heard that, according to The New York Times, “in its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.”

On December 15, 2016 – after President Trump’s election – Director of National Intelligence Clapper executed a document titled “Procedures for the Availability or Dissemination of Raw Signals Intelligence Information by the National Security Agency Under Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333.”

On January 3, 2017 – just days before President Trump’s inauguration – then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch executed the document, indicating her approval.

According to The New York Times, “the new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations.”

Changing the law may have been legal, but does anyone actually doubt the intention?

This Incidental Information Is Going To Be Very Important In The Near Future

Before you read this article, I want you to consider how the Democrats (particularly the Clintons) have avoided being held accountable for skirting the law in the past. Generally speaking, the playbook means keeping questions about whatever the scandal is in the news until everyone is sick of hearing about the scandal. At that point, when the answers begin to come out, everyone tunes out because they are totally bored with anything having to do with whatever behavior went on. That is exactly the playbook that is being used on the question of how the Russian-collusion investigation began and why members of President Trump’s campaign and transition team were under surveillance. Keep that in mind as you read the following.

Today Breitbart posted an article with the following headline, “Biden Present at Russia Collusion Briefing Documented in ‘Odd’ Susan Rice Email.”

The article reports:

Vice President Joe Biden was documented as being present in the Oval Office for a conversation about the controversial Russia probe between President Obama, disgraced ex-FBI chief James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and other senior officials including Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice.

In an action characterized as “odd” last year by then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Rice memorialized the confab in an email to herself describing Obama as starting “the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’”

Grassley, in a letter to Rice, commented: “It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation.”

Grassley noted the unusual timing of the email sent by Rice to herself more than two weeks after the January 5, 2017 White House meeting on the Russia investigation, but mere hours before she vacated the White House for the incoming Trump administration.

The email, Grassley documented, was sent by Rice to herself on Trump’s inauguration day of January 20, 2017.

“If the timestamp is correct, you sent this email to yourself at 12:15 pm, presumably a very short time before you departed the White House for the last time,” Grassley wrote to Rice in a letter seeking clarification on a number of issues regarding the email and the Oval Office briefing at which Biden was documented as being present.

The article cites a Washington Post article describing how few people were involved in the Trump/Russia investigation:

The lengthy Washington Post article from 2017 detailed the closed circle of Obama administration officials who were involved in overseeing the initial efforts related to the Russia investigation — a circle than was narrowly widened to include Biden, according to the newspaper report.

According to the newspaper, in the summer of 2016, CIA Director John Brennan convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.”

The Post described the unit as so secretive it functioned as a “sealed compartment” hidden even from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; a unit whose workers were all made to sign additional non-disclosure forms.

The unit reported to top officials, the newspaper documented:

They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.

The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, the Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved, and not Biden. Those officials were CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey. Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings, the Post stated.

This is looking more and more like an attempted political coup.

I Can’t Believe He Said That

Yesterday CNS News posted an article that included the following:

Clapper told CNN the “logical thing to do” would be to wait for the Justice Department inspector general to finish his investigation into the FBI’s actions.

“Are you concerned here that these administration officials and the attorney general are doing this for political reasons?” host Jim Sciutto asked Clapper.

“Well, you have to wonder about that,” Clapper said.

“Is there a political dimension? This obviously complies with the longstanding request of President Trump that the investigators be investigated.

As far as I know…when I was DNI, I didn’t see anything improper or unlawful. And I think we’re losing sight here of what the big deal is, which is the Russians. That’s what started all this.

The predicate for this was what the Russians were doing to engage with the Trump camp. And now we know that there were dozens of such encounters or attempts, many by identified Russian operatives.

So to me, the kind of the implicit message here is, well, it would have been better if we ignored the Russian’s meddling, which I think would have been completely irresponsible.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Let the record show that President Obama chose to ignore reports of Russian meddling until after Hillary Clinton lost the election. Let the record also show that the group conducting the supposedly impartial investigation of Russian meddling was made up of Clinton donors and Clinton supporters who somehow overlooked the role of the Steele Dossier in the beginning of the investigation.

I person wiser than I once said that if you want to know what the Democrats are up to, look at what they are accusing their opponents of. I suspect the the investigation now being carried out may turn out to be the proof of that statement.

 

 

The Saga Continues

As the Russian collusion charges are exposed as a hoax, many of those involved are heading for the tall grass or implicating others. There is no honor among thieves, and many of these people compromised their principles long ago.

Today The Gateway Pundit posted an article about some recent remarks made by James Clapper to Anderson Cooper.

The article reports:

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: The 2017 assessment that the President says he now agrees with, that was done while you and then NCI Director John Brennan were still in office. So, how can we reconcile the President attacking you, but apparently after a very long time finally, allegedly saying — or saying he allegedly agrees with the product of the intelligence community that you, yourself oversaw?

JAMES CLAPPER: Yes, well, this is — yes, as we’ve come to know the President, he is not a stalwart for a consistency or coherence. So it’s very hard to explain that. One point I’d like to make, Anderson, that I don’t think has come up very much before, and I’m alluding now to the President’s criticism of President Obama for all that he did or didn’t do before he left office with respect to the Russian meddling. If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller’s investigation.

President Obama is responsible for that, and it was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place. I think it’s an important point when it comes to critiquing President Obama.

That sounds to me as if James Clapper is blaming President Obama for the surveillance of the Trump campaign and later the transition team of President Trump. That spying violated the civil rights of a number of Americans. There are also some serious questions about the basis for the FISA warrants. It seems that a number of laws were violated and the people who violated those laws need to be held accountable.

Why I Have Concerns About Our Justice System

John Solomon at The Hill posted an article yesterday about some of the information in the Russian investigation that should be made public.

The article reports:

If President Trump declassifies evidence in the Russia investigation, Carter Page’s summer bike ride to a Virginia farm and George Papadopoulos’s hasty academic jaunt to London may emerge as linchpin proof of FBI surveillance abuses during the 2016 election.

The two trips have received scant attention. But growing evidence suggests both Trump campaign advisers made exculpatory statements — at the very start of the FBI’s investigation — that undercut the Trump-Russia collusion theory peddled to agents by Democratic sources.

The FBI plowed ahead anyway with an unprecedented intrusion into a presidential campaign, while keeping evidence of the two men’s innocence from the courts.

Page and Papadopoulos, who barely knew each other, met separately in August and September 2016 with Stefan Halper, the American-born Cambridge University professor who, the FBI told Congress, worked as an undercover informer in the Russia case.

Papadopoulos was the young aide that the FBI used to justify opening a probe into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016, after he allegedly told a foreign diplomat that he knew Russia possessed incriminating emails about Hillary Clinton.

Page, a volunteer campaign adviser, was the American the FBI then targeted on Oct. 21, 2016, for secret surveillance while investigating Democratic Party-funded allegations that he secretly might have coordinated Russia’s election efforts with the Trump campaign during a trip to Moscow.

To appreciate the significance of the two men’s interactions with Halper, one must understand the rules governing the FBI when it seeks a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant such as the one secured against Page.

First, the FBI must present evidence to FISA judges that it has verified and that comes from intelligence sources deemed reliable. Second, it must disclose any information that calls into question the credibility of its sources. Finally, it must disclose any evidence suggesting the innocence of its investigative targets.

Thanks to prior releases of information, we know the FBI fell short on the first two counts. Multiple FBI officials have testified that the Christopher Steele dossier had not been verified when its allegations were submitted as primary evidence supporting the FISA warrant against Page.

Likewise, we know the FBI failed to tell the courts that Steele admitted to a federal official that he was desperate to defeat Trump in the 2016 election and was being paid by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to gather dirt on the GOP candidate. Both pieces of information are the sort of credibility-defining details that should be disclosed about a source.

To put it succinctly, the whole investigation into Russian collusion was based on false premises and was a distraction to avoid looking at the abuses of the Justice Department during the Obama administration. It’s time we put Russia aside and ask why Lois Lerner, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, et al, are not under investigation. Using government bureaucrats to spy on an opposition party candidate is a new low in America. Those responsible need to be held accountable so that it will not happen again.

The Plot May Be Beginning To Unravel

One of the problems with trying to maintain a conspiracy is that as it begins to unravel, people begin to say things to distance themselves from responsibility for any wrongdoing that has occurred. I believe that is what is happening regarding the wiretapping of the Trump campaign and possibly regarding the Mueller investigation.

The Gateway Pundit quoted President Obama’s Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, today. James Clapper made the following statement on CNN yesterday:

If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today including Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.

We need to put this into perspective in terms of what was going on during the final days of the Obama administration. During the final year of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations. made an unprecedented number of requests for unmasking Americans whose conversations were inadvertently captured in wiretapped conversations. (article here) Americans were routinely being spied on by their government at this time.

Most Americans, particularly those familiar with procedures in the intelligence community were reluctant to believe what was reportedly going on with domestic spying. However, the truth has become obvious in recent days.

The following is an interview with Andrew McCarthy, who was initially skeptical that the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court was being used for political purposes. The interview is posted at YouTube:

I believe that the Mueller investigation is the ‘insurance policy’ discussed in Andrew McCabe’s office. We know that Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were involved in that discussion. We don’t know if anyone else was. The investigation was supposed either to create enough turmoil to remove President Trump from office (before he could cut taxes, appoint judges, or actually accomplish anything) or to cripple his presidency to the point where he accomplished nothing. Obviously the plan has created a lot of turmoil, but not a lot of the results the plotters were aiming for.

Ideally we will see this entire charade resolved within the next year. I am hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic.

Does This Man Not Remember Watergate?

The Daily Caller posted an article today about a recent comment by James Clapper.

The article states:

Former Director of Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday night on CNN that it was “a good thing” there was an FBI informant spying on the Trump campaign.

Clapper admitted the FBI “may have had someone who was talking to them in the campaign,” referring to President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He explained away the possibility of an FBI informant spying on the campaign as the bureau was trying to find out “what the Russians were doing to try to substantiate themselves in the campaign or influence or leverage it.”

James Clapper was President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. At one point didn’t James Clapper take an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Did he read the Fourth Amendment?

The Fourth Amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is frightening.

This Sums Up The Past Two Or Three Years

On Friday, a website called American Greatness posted an article about the abuses and misdeeds of the ruling class in Washington in recent years.

The article has a good summary of where we have been:

Bureaucratic Collusion
Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and their collaborators in the FBI, Department of Justice, and CIA did anything but professional law enforcement. Their contempt for the rule of law is plain. In reality, they appear to have colluded to:

The article concludes:

Andrew McCarthy sums it up: “…we have collusion all right: the executive branch’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus placed by the Obama administration in the service of the Clinton campaign. To find that, you don’t need to dig. You just need to open your eyes . . . After nearly two years with no corroboration, a fair-minded commentariat would . . . be asking why the FBI and Justice Department presented unverified information to a federal court in order to spy on Americans.”

A rogue ruling class has successfully undermined the constitutional foundation of America, a crime far worse than Watergate. They remain a fundamental threat to our civil liberties.

The Inspector General’s report is supposed to come out May 8. It will be interesting to see how much of it is made public. There is enough information out there already to convince most Americans that certain parts of their government are corrupt. If that corruption is not dealt with and those responsible held accountable, then America will have lost the concept of equal justice under the law.

When Is A Leak Not A Leak?

This article is based on two articles–one posted at The Washington Examiner today and one posted at Fox News yesterday. Both articles have to do with leaking by high ranking members of our government.

The Washington Examiner article deals with James Clapper. The article states that Mr. Clapper provided the House Intelligence Committee with ‘inconsistent testimony’ about his contact with the media.

The article reports:

The former spy chief initially said he did not speak with journalists about a secret intelligence assessment containing the information, before later admitting he discussed the dossier with CNN reporter Jake Tapper and possibly others, the report said.

A spokesman for the committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the committee will seek criminal charges. Last month, Clapper avoided charges for a separate alleged lie to Congress due to a five-year statute of limitations.

A spokesman for Clapper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the report, Clapper “flatly denied” during a July 2017 interview with the committee “discuss[ing] the dossier [compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.”

The activities of the upper levels of our government during the past two years are shameful.

The article at Fox News reports:

Former FBI Director James Comey, in a wide-ranging interview with Fox News on Thursday, defended sharing his memos about conversations with President Trump with multiple people, while denying it was a “leak.”

“That memo was unclassified then,” Comey told anchor Bret Baier during an appearance on “Special Report.” “It’s still unclassified. It’s in my book. The FBI cleared that book before it could be published.”

Comey acknowledged giving the memos to at least three people including his friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman. He said he sent Richman a copy of the two-page unclassified memo and “asked him to get the substance of it out to the media.” 

“The reason I’m smiling, Bret,” Comey said. “I don’t consider what I shared Mr. Richman a leak.” 

It really doesn’t matter whether or not Mr. Comey considered it a leak. I suspect that those familiar with laws regarding leaks might come to a different conclusion.

Both these stories are examples of the war on President Trump that has been going on since he became a candidate for President. It is sad that certain areas of our government have been politicized to the point that they can be used to work against the policies of an elected President. It truly is time to clean house thoroughly in Washington.

Why Are These People Ever Believed?

Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness yesterday about four members of the Obama Administration that seemed to be challenged when asked to tell the truth and were never held accountable for their lies.

The four members are former United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, Former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Defense Intelligence Agency Director James Clapper.

These four people routinely misled the American public for political purposes.

The article cites some examples of Susan Rice’s lying:

On five occasions, Rice lied to the media that the murder of Americans in Benghazi, Libya by al-Qaida affiliated-terrorists was a result of spontaneous rioting—in response to an obscure, rogue, and right-wing Coptic filmmaker.

…Rice assured the nation that the AWOL and traitorous Bowe Bergdahl was a hostage taken during combat and had served nobly (“with honor and distinction”). In fact, the renegade Bergdahl likely was exchanged for terrorist prisoners for two reasons: one, to diminish the number of terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as promised by Obama during his campaign, and two, to highlight the humanitarian skills of Barack Obama in bringing home an American “hero,” especially defined as one who was so loudly aware of his own country’s foibles.

Rice also assured the nation that her administration, through its diplomatic brilliance, had eliminated Bashar Assad’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

…Once House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced that key administration officials illegally might have unmasked and leaked the names of U.S. citizens on government intercepts connected to the Trump campaign and transition team, Rice issued a blanket denial (“I know nothing about this”). That assertion predictably was untrue, as Rice herself was forced to concede when she altered narratives to later justify rather than deny her role in such improper leaking.

Rice assured the nation there were no hidden side-deals in the Iran Deal, such as a prisoner-swap concession.

Obviously the woman is not a stellar example of honesty.

Next the article deals with former FBI Director James Comey:

Comey did not interview Hillary Clinton in his supposedly exhaustive investigation of her alleged crimes before he cleared her of any wrongdoing.

Comey did know of a FBI communications trail surrounding the stealthy June 2016 meeting of Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac.

Comey did accede to Lynch’s cover up by altering the official nomenclature of the investigation to an innocuous “matter.”

Comey misled about the actual contents of Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s email communications; the versions that he gave at various times and in different venues cannot be reconciled.

In his habitual lies of omission, Comey made no effort to correct a false public impression that he had helped foster and yet knew was a lie—namely that the FBI was investigating Trump on charges of Russian collusion at the very time he was assuring the president of just the opposite.

…Comey had obfuscated or masked the FBI’s role in the acquisition and dissemination of the infamous Steele-Fusion fake dossier. He was likely less than honest as well about his full knowledge of Obama administration reverse targeting, unmasking, and leaking related to U.S. citizens—both before and after the election.

Obviously, Comey expected to be rewarded for his actions in a Hillary Clinton Administration.

Next the article addresses the conduct of former CIA Director John Brennan:

Brennan had a weird habit of becoming outraged at any who quite accurately alleged that he was mendacious, such as when he deceived the Senate Intelligence Committee officials that he had never unlawfully surveilled the computers of particular U.S. senators and their staffs (e.g., “beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do”).

Brennan also misled Congress when he assured that U.S. drone strikes had not killed a single civilian—a preposterous claim that was widely and immediately recognized as deceptive before he was forced to backtrack and admit his untruth.

…Brennan also told a series of whoppers to establish his new politically correct bona fides, among them that jihad was “a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.” Tell that to the incinerated victims of self-proclaimed jihadist Mohammed Atta or those beheaded by ISIS.

In his third incarnation, as a postelection stalwart opponent to Donald Trump, the partisan former “nonpartisan” intelligence chief Brennan has both quite publicly denied that U.S. intelligence agencies ever improperly surveilled and unmasked the identities of Trump campaign and transition officials.

Even on his last day of office, Brennan was still busy reviewing intelligence surveillance of U.S. citizens and later deceiving Congress about it. His part in preparing the Benghazi talking points, and in the creation of the Russian collusion mythos, are still not known fully. Nor understood is his apparent background role in the rather strange and abrupt postelection resignation of his immediate predecessor David Petraeus.

Brennan’s misunderstanding of jihad was dangerous to American national security.

Last, the article addresses former Defense Intelligence Agency Director James Clapper:

Indeed, it is uncanny how Clapper emulated the Brennan model: the former Bush appointee reinventing himself as an Obama partisan after assuring the country that Saddam Hussein’s WMD depots were transferred to Syria; lying about the rise of ISIS and pressuring others in military intelligence to mimic his pre-planned deceptions; not being forthcoming about surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition; becoming a loud and partisan accuser of Trump’s supposed mendacities on cable television, while finding himself increasingly exposed at the center of the growing unmasking scandal.

If Brennan lied about surveilling U.S. senators and the drone program, Clapper in turn lied to Congress about the National Security Agency’s illegal monitoring of U.S. citizens.

If Brennan assured Americans that jihadism was not a violent effort to spread radical Islam, Clapper topped that by assuring Congress that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular.”

One thing that is noteworthy but not mentioned in the article cited above is the fact that John Brennan, in 2011, during his time as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism received at request form Farhana Khere, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates requesting that all material relating to Islamic-based terrorism be removed from government documents and briefings. According to the book Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin, “The Department of Defense followed shortly thereafter with a Soviet-style purge of individuals along with disciplinary actions and re-education.” Why our government put the interests of a Muslim-Brotherhood related group above the security interests of America is anyone’s guess. I have personally met a CIA agent who was no longer allowed to brief our diplomats and military after this change was made.

I have no doubt that if Hillary Clinton had won the election, these four individuals would be part of her administration. As it stands, they are still part of the deep state that is working against President Trump. When we hear these individuals make public statements, we need to remember what they have done in the past.

 

Important Or Not?

President Obama has recently cited intelligence failures as the reason America was taken by surprise by the rise of ISIS. The intelligence community has not been happy with this statement.

The U.K. Daily Mail reported yesterday that President Obama has had accurate information about the rise of ISIS since before the 2012 election. The problem is that since ISIS is nothing more than a reconstitution of Al Qaeda, an organization which the Obama Presidential campaign claimed had been destroyed during the first presidential term of President Obama. Therefore the threat was ignored publicly. It was evidently also ignored privately.

Breitbart.com reported yesterday that according to the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Obama has attended only 42.1 % of his daily intelligence briefings (through September 29, 2014). This information came out after President Obama blamed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for intelligence failures related to ISIS.

The article at Breitbart reports:

“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” said Obama.

According to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, members of the Defense establishment were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s attempt to shift blame.

“Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting,” a former senior Pentagon official “who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq” told the Daily Beast.

On Monday, others in the intelligence community similarly blasted Obama and said he’s shown longstanding disinterest in receiving live, in-person PDBs that allow the Commander-in-Chief the chance for critical followup, feedback, questions, and the challenging of flawed intelligence assumptions.

…Ultimately, as ABC News reported, the White House did not directly dispute the GAI’s numbers but instead said Obama prefers to read his PDB on his iPad instead of receiving the all-important live, in-person briefings.

As Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” I think we need a commitment from our President to attend intelligence briefings. Reading something on your iPad is no substitute for hearing an intelligent discussion of a subject.