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FOCUS: Trump's Betrayal of the US Intelligence Community |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
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Thursday, 05 January 2017 12:07 |
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Rather writes: "Stunned disbelief. Anxiety. A mounting sense of betrayal. These are the smoke signals rising from those in and around the United States intelligence community over President-elect Donald Trump's dismissal of the evidence of Russian hacking in the presidential election."
Dan Rather. (photo: WNYC)
Trump's Betrayal of the US Intelligence Community
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
05 January 17
 tunned disbelief. Anxiety. A mounting sense of betrayal. These are the smoke signals rising from those in and around the United States intelligence community over President-elect Donald Trump's dismissal of the evidence of Russian hacking in the presidential election.
And now, in a series of tweets, Mr. Trump has taken the side of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over the collective conclusion of those tasked with our national security. Assange, in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity (who at this point must be considered a full-fledged propagandist and abetter) said he didn't get the information from Russia. Well if he says so... Let's just use that same standard for all of our adversaries. Nothing to see here. Why waste all these billions of dollars on intelligence gathering?
When it comes to our intelligence services, there must be many caveats. This work is more art than pure science, often picking out clues from a lot of noise. Our intelligence has been wrong in the past. The CIA and other organizations have overstepped their bounds at times, and their findings have been politicized (Iraq). Furthermore there is often a certain amount of dissent about many findings. I also must add that I have long felt we can benefit from taking a long, hard, and critical look at our intelligence apparatus, its structure, bureaucratic interferences, and fiefdoms. But in this case, those concerns are secondary as the agencies seem to be speaking largely in unison with the urgency of real evidence.
I have found the men and women who do these intelligence jobs to be serious about their line of work. Deadly serious. After all, when they are wrong people can and often do die. What do the vast network of people risking their lives undercover and in dangerous locals, men and women whose names we will never know, think of Mr. Trump's cavalier dismissal of their work? What about the thousands more at headquarters using their immense analytical skills in the service of country instead of, say, making millions on Wall Street? We need a robust intelligence force now more than ever. This is a matter of national security. It affects all Americans, and people around the world. Hopefully patriots within Mr. Trump's own party and in his inner circle will step up and tell the incoming president how dangerous this rhetoric is.
Heaven forbid we suffer another horrible attack. Heaven forbid our intelligence community was hollowed out, wasn't listened to or respected. These are the stakes.
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Why Is Trump Siding With Assange Over the CIA? |
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Thursday, 05 January 2017 09:48 |
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Peritz writes: "We are through the looking glass now. The next president of the United States is siding with Julian Assange, a man who wears his anti-Americanism proudly and acts like the textbook definition of a Russian asset."
Julian Assange. (photo: Peter Nicholls/Reuters)
Why Is Trump Siding With Assange Over the CIA?
By Aki Peritz, Politico
05 January 17
As a former CIA analyst, I never thought I’d see a U.S. president link arms with a man whose mission is to steal America’s hard-won secrets.
 e are through the looking glass now.
The next president of the United States is siding with Julian Assange, a man who wears his anti-Americanism proudly and acts like the textbook definition of a Russian asset, over the U.S. intelligence community – thousands of smart, patriotic people who work long hours for middling pay, some risking their lives to keep the rest of us safe.
I was once one of them, and I can only imagine how my former colleagues are feeling now. Never in our history has a U.S. president openly chosen to trust the word of a foreign adversary ahead of his own analysts.
Never, that is, until Donald Trump—who last night began a series of astonishing tweets expressing skepticism about U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia had hacked into Democratic Party institutions.
“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday,” Trump began, “perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” He followed up this morning with some positive vibes about Fox News’ Sean Hannity puff interview with Assange, including this gem: “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!”
And he’s gotten support or silence from far too many Republican members of Congress, including New York Rep. Peter King, who suggested last month that “some rogue person behind a desk somewhere” had leaked the CIA’s conclusions to influence the Electoral College.
As Trump himself might say, something’s going on here. Even as he’s thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for sending him nice letters and calling him “very smart,” the president-elect is giving him political cover for an unprecedented intrusion in America’s democracy. If this kind of behavior continues once he’s in office, it’s not hard to envision Trump provoking a Constitutional crisis – not to mention a major blowup with Republican hawks on Capitol Hill.
Even more baffling, to this former intelligence officer, is why we are still debating the basic fact of Russian meddling at all. Why does anyone, especially Congress, thinks these revelations—that other countries are actively compromising our sensitive political and legislative networks—are particularly surprising? The intelligence community has been stating this for years -- in public, no less.
Had America’s legislators been paying attention, they would know that many of the overall problems we have today were anticipated yesterday. That’s because every spring, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) releases a document called the Worldwide Threat Assessment, a laundry list of challenges facing America today. For more than a decade, the director of national intelligence has trudged to Capitol Hill with most of the senior intelligence community leadership to brief members of Congress about the threats facing our country. Parts of his findings are classified while other parts are public. Sometimes Congress is receptive. Other times, not so much.
It’s a long document that few members have probably read. This is probably because few elections will be won or lost based on national security threats.
But members might want to take a second look at the accumulated wisdom of the intelligence community. Why? Because the alarm bells have been ringing on cyber and counterintelligence for years.
After all, who knew Russian hackers presented such a dangerous threat to the U.S.? Well, the intelligence community certainly did, assessing earlier this year that “Russia is assuming a more assertive cyber posture based on its willingness to target critical infrastructure systems and conduct espionage operations even when detected and under increased public scrutiny.”
These members would have also noticed the intelligence community has been saying for the last three years the No. 1 threat to the U.S. is not terrorism or weapons of mass destruction but cyber-related challenges. In fact, the ODNI published this assessment in early spring 2013, before Edward Snowden became a household name later that year, and certainly well before anyone thought Trump would run for president.
The possibility of a cyberattack linked to the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) – those networked devices that are becoming an increasingly normal part of our lives -- which occurred a few months ago on the U.S. East Coast was mentioned in this spring’s threat assessment second paragraph: “Security industry analysts have demonstrated that many of these new systems can threaten data privacy, data integrity, or continuity of services.” And more ominously: “In the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”
For many technology futurists and some national security folks, these warnings are old hat. And any report that needs signoff from 17 different bureaucracies with their own peculiar dysfunctions is bound to be a lowest common denominator document. Many cooks in the kitchen and all that.
Granted, the intelligence community's analysis is far from perfect. There is no crystal ball that predicts the future. And once the intelligence community’s judgments are there, in print, anyone can attack, malign, criticize—or follow—them. But those who are skeptical of the intelligence community’s findings should present an evidence-based alternative—not claim falsely, as Trump did during the third presidential debate, that “our country has no idea” who or what is attacking us. A know-nothing defense to these threats is a recipe for disaster.
For decades, a pillar of the Republican Party has been to support a strong national security state, dedicated to aggressively confronting America’s enemies. The intelligence community has always been the tip of that spear. Now, the election is over; the balloons have fallen. Trump is the president, and the vast majority of Americans accept that. It’s his job to defend and protect the people who protect us, not undermine and mock them. And if he won’t do it, Republicans in Congress must step up and do it for him.
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Republican Senators Threaten to Cut Worldwide Embassy Security If US Doesn't Move Its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem |
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Thursday, 05 January 2017 09:46 |
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Jilani writes: "Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be seen as a green light to some Israeli government officials, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seek to make Jerusalem the undivided capital of the state of Israel. That, in turn, would preclude the Palestinians from establishing a state that includes East Jerusalem."
Security in front of US Embassy. (photo: Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP)
Republican Senators Threaten to Cut Worldwide Embassy Security If US Doesn't Move Its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem
By Zaid Jilani, The Intercept
05 January 17
 trio of GOP senators have introduced legislation that would cut security, construction, and maintenance funds for U.S. embassies around the world in half until the president moves the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
In 1995, Congress passed a law requiring the federal government to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all campaigned on relocating the embassy and executing this law. But once in office, every one of them invoked a waiver in the law that allows them to hold off on the move if they deem it necessary to the national security interests of the United States to do so.
Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be seen as a green light to some Israeli government officials, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seek to make Jerusalem the undivided capital of the state of Israel. That, in turn, would preclude the Palestinians from establishing a state that includes East Jerusalem. Most international observers believe that this would render the two-state solution impossible and thus be damaging to peace.
The pattern has been for candidates to campaign on the pledge, which is strongly sought by pro-Israel activists who are influential during election season, but drop it once they reach the Oval Office. While campaigning for president, Donald Trump initially wouldn’t commit to moving the embassy — but by the end of the campaign cycle placed himself fully behind the relocation to Jerusalem.
Because history suggests he might change his mind, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller introduced the new legislation, which would include real — and dangerous — consequences for U.S. diplomatic staff if Trump refuses to quickly relocate the embassy. The bill would immediately cut in half funding for embassy security, construction, and maintenance until the relocation occurs. In fiscal years 2018 and 2019, it would cut off all security, construction, and maintenance funding worldwide except for the embassy in Tel Aviv until it is relocated.
Ironically, Cruz and Rubio loudly attacked the Obama administration for failing to properly secure the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens were slain in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012.
Eight months after the attack, Cruz wrote in the National Review: “Our brave men and women who continue to put their lives on the line every day in similar, dangerous situations deserve to know we are doing everything possible not only to protect them in the event of a terrorist attack, but also to deter these attacks from happening again. Better late than never.”
In the summer of 2016, Rubio lamented in a Breitbart post that “leadership was sadly lacking in this case and resulted in disaster” and called on the government to properly secure diplomats in the future.
“It is my hope that this report serves as a reminder of the importance of allocating the appropriate resources to keep all Americans safe, both at home and around the world,” he wrote. “Congress and the Executive Branch need to work together to do everything possible to make sure something like this does not happen again.”
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When Trump Falls Out of Love With Putin |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 04 January 2017 15:06 |
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Weissman writes: "No matter how terrible we expect the coming years to be, let me predict against all conventional wisdom that Trump will make them worse by pulling back from his bromance with Putin and joining whole hog in an intensified nuclear arms race, more proxy wars, and even direct confrontation with Russia."
Donald Trump (left) and Vladimir Putin (right). (photo: Mike Segar)
When Trump Falls Out of Love With Putin
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
04 January 17
 o matter how terrible we expect the coming years to be, let me predict against all conventional wisdom that Trump will make them worse by pulling back from his bromance with Putin and joining whole hog in an intensified nuclear arms race, more proxy wars, and even direct confrontation with Russia.
I offer this in the face of Putin’s refusal to retaliate tit for tat to Obama’s booting out 35 of Russia’s accredited diplomats and imposing other sanctions over Putin’s alleged hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief. In a gesture of goodwill that Trump called “very smart,” Putin brilliantly laughed off Obama’s attempt to create problems for the incoming president.
Please join me in the heresy. Remind everyone you know of the obvious. Neither Obama nor the joint report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nor the 17 US intelligence agencies offer even a sliver of evidence that Putin made Trump our president.
What they provide are details on hacking and on why Washington believes that Russia did it. Some details are convincing. Few are conclusive. But none of them get to what Obama claims he is giving us. However much hacking Russia did or did not do, hacking alone could not have had any impact on how Americans voted.
In effect and perhaps with intent, Obama is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. He promises a tale of Russian interference in our electoral choice. But he only delivers allegations of Russia’s electronic snooping, much like the American spying all over the world that Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, and others have documented in far greater detail.
To give us what he promises, Obama and his people would have to prove Russian links to the emails WikiLeaks published from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief. In voting as tight as the electoral college race, almost anything could have made the difference, from Hillary’s failure to spend enough time and money in the rust belt to her failing to convince left-leaning voters that she would deliver on her promises to the embarrassment that the content of the WikiLeaks emails caused her.
But Obama’s bait-and-switch offers no evidence at all about any Russia link to those emails. He and his spooks and secret police say nothing at all about it. Nada. Niente. WikiLeaks denies that what they published came from Russian sources, most recently in an interview with Fox News. Their denials should not be the last word on the subject, but they gain considerable weight from Obama’s failure even to address the issue.
So, Mr. Obama: either provide some evidence – not on hacking but on any Russian link to the WikiLeaks emails. Or, if you can’t do that, quit hawking Cold War hysteria over an unsubstantiated spy story.
Which brings us back to Trump. Whatever his undoubted ignorance and self-interest, he somehow grasps an element of geopolitical reality that writers at RSN have been documenting for years. Washington and its allies have systematically provoked Russia by expanding NATO and the European Union (EU) and staging “color revolutions” right up to the country’s current borders. Carl Gershman, the head of the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has even called for Washington to oust Putin from power, much as NED helped remove the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in the American-made coup in Kiev.
Despite himself, the bumptious Trump pushes us to ask tough questions. Why continue these provocations against Russia? Why create unnecessary conflict by dragging Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs and their neo-Nazi storm troopers ever deeper into NATO and the EU? Why not acknowledge that Crimea is far more historically, culturally, and militarily important to Russia than to the West. No matter how much Putin’s supporters deny it, taking Crimea violated international law and treaty obligations. But wouldn’t the US, Europe, and Russia all be better off treating his annexation as a fait accompli?
Obama, the Clintons, and America’s foreign policy elite like to avoid such debates. They prefer to bear-bait Trump as some kind of Russian agent.
Unfazed by the name-calling, on December 22 Trump offered a revealing tweet. “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” he wrote.
“Let it be an arms race,” he told Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski the following day. “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” What a Russian agent!
Responding, Putin vowed to stay “neck-and-neck” with the United States in any nuclear arms race. He also called for strengthening “the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.” Putin was, in fact, responding less to Trump than to decisions by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to place antiballistic missiles and radar systems in Eastern Europe that could give the US the capability to launch a nuclear first-strike against Russia.
These were just the first steps in what will become an increasingly strained relationship between Putin and Trump. The next will come quickly.
“We’re all over the place fighting in areas that we shouldn’t be fighting in,” Trump declared in a recent speech in North Carolina. “This destructive cycle of intervention and chaos must finally come to an end.”
An obvious jab at George W. Bush and the obsession with regime change that defined his neo-con subordinates, Trump gave voice to the war weariness that most Americans share. But he quickly revealed one of his many fatal flaws.
“We will stop racing to topple … foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with,” he said. “Instead our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS.”
Destroy the Islamic State, defeat the terrorist threat ? these were to be the foundation stones of Trump’s grand alliance with Putin. But Putin’s vicious carpet-bombing in Aleppo shows the limits of unlimited destruction. The war grinds on, and the killing of the Russian ambassador in Ankara proves once again that military action promotes terrorist attacks, as Europeans and Americans have repeatedly learned.
Putin and Trump will find further difficulties squaring diverse approaches to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. But the biggest pressure on Trump comes from the support Congressional Republicans gave Obama’s Cold War-mongering. Trump’s “softness” on Russia can only lead to open warfare in the Republican Party, and potentially to his impeachment if he does not back down.
Predicting is difficult, especially about the future, said the philosopher Yogi Berra. But Trump hardly cares enough about anything other than himself to let Republican Cold Warriors and their Democratic fellow-travelers gain personal traction against him going into the Congressional elections of 2018.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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onald Trump takes office in two short weeks. As I’ve 
