FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Gen. Robert Ashley, National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Paul Nakasone and Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about "worldwide threats" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
The Hill: Top intelligence officials to brief Gang of Eight on Thursday
CIA Director Gina Haspel and National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone will brief congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight on intelligence related to suspected Russian bounties on U.S. forces on Thursday.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed at a press briefing that the classified briefing would take place on Thursday. The Gang of Eight includes the top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
McEnany told reporters she was unsure whether anyone other than Haspel and Nakasone would participate in Thursday’s briefing.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The person who should show up at this meeting is this CIA officer .... O'Brien says top CIA official decided against briefing Trump on Russia bounty intel (CBS).
16 comments:
The experience of Representative Elissa Slotkin as an intelligence official told her there was something very unusual in the way the White House handled disturbing reports on Russia.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, at a news conference on the Russian bounty allegations on Tuesday.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, at a news conference on the Russian bounty allegations on Tuesday.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Emily Cochrane
Published July 1, 2020Updated July 2, 2020, 5:37 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — From the moment President Trump publicly denied knowledge of intelligence that suggested that Russia had offered bounties for killing American troops in Afghanistan, something seemed off to Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan.
Ms. Slotkin, a former White House national security aide and intelligence briefer whose tasks included ensuring that previous presidents were made aware of such potentially momentous reports, began calling around to some of her former colleagues from the George W. Bush administration. Check me on this, she said. What would we have done?
The answer was clear, Ms. Slotkin said in an interview. They would have alerted superiors to make sure the president learned of the assessment.
“If I had been at the National Security Council under either Bush or Obama, and this had come in, I would have slapped a cover note on top of it, sent it up the chain to the national security adviser and said, ‘Sir, I want to flag this,’” Ms. Slotkin said. “‘There’s some conflicting views. But it’s important — I think we should flag it for the president ahead of his calls.’”
The emergence of the disturbing reports and Mr. Trump’s responses — a combination of denial, claims of ignorance and attacks on leakers and the news media — have raised broader questions about how the president and his White House handle intelligence matters. And based on her personal experience, Ms. Slotkin has taken a lead role in demanding answers.
Ms. Slotkin, 43, is a first-term member of the House, where she is one of a tight-knit circle of moderate female lawmakers with deep experience on national security and was part of a small group of Democrats who went to the White House this week to be briefed about the Russian bounties.
More than a decade ago she was a young analyst at the C.I.A., where Ms. Slotkin described her role as being a “human sifter” of the most important intelligence information filtering in about Iraq.
After her team’s daily 6:15 a.m. briefing, she would comb through new intelligence and foreign media reports and State Department cables to see what needed further examination and what needed to reach Mr. Bush in the memo she wrote every night. At times during her intelligence career, she would personally provide briefings to Mr. Bush and other senior administration officials, alongside other senior intelligence officials.
Parrot at 6 o'clock low.
Another copy and paste effort.
ghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say — A small-time businessman became a key middleman for bounties on coalition troops in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence reports say. Friends saw him grow rich, but didn't know how. — KABUL, Afghanistan …
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Discussion: The Guardian, The Week, Raw Story, CANNONFIRE, Foreign Policy, Talking Points Memo, LI Press, Townhall, Business Insider, DeadState and Task & Purpose
RELATED:
Washington Post:
White House does not plan any immediate response over intelligence reports on Russian bounties targeting U.S. troops — The White House is not planning an immediate response to intelligence reports of Russian bounties given to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition forces …
Jim Sciutto / CNN:
Trump's resistance led intel agencies to brief him less and less on Russia — Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's resistance to intelligence warnings about Russia led his national security team, including those who delivered the President's Daily Brief to brief him verbally less often …
Discussion: The Daily Beast, Raw Story, The Guardian, The Moderate Voice and Washington Post
Michael McFaul / Washington Post:
Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder he's ignoring the Russian bounties.
Discussion: Chicago Tribune, Axios, The Hill, Raw Story and Foreign Policy
Emily Cochrane / New York Times:
Slotkin, Former Intelligence Briefer, Presses White House on Russia Reports
Discussion: The Sun, The Hill and Business Insider
Fox News:
National security adviser says Trump's CIA briefer decided not to share Russia bounty intel
Discussion: The Hill and The Daily Caller
Donald Trump has “essentially gone awol from the job of leadership that he should be providing a country in trouble” during the coronavirus pandemic, a former defence secretary and CIA director said on Wednesday.
Leon Panetta, who served in various capacities under nine US presidents, became the latest prominent public figure to accuse Trump of effectively surrendering to the virus and abandoning Americans to their fate, using the military jargon awol, meaning absent without leave.
“This is a major crisis,” Panetta told Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, noting that top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has warned that America may hit 100,000 new cases a day, twice the current rate.
“But the president, rather than bringing together some kind of national strategy to confront this crisis, simply resorts to tweeting about vandalism and other things to kind of divert attention from the crisis that’s there.”
He added: “We have a president that is not willing to stand up and do what is necessary in order to lead this country during time of major crisis. I have never experienced a president who has avoided that responsibility.”
Donald Trump has “essentially gone awol from the job of leadership that he should be providing a country in trouble” during the coronavirus pandemic, a former defence secretary and CIA director said on Wednesday.
Leon Panetta, who served in various capacities under nine US presidents, became the latest prominent public figure to accuse Trump of effectively surrendering to the virus and abandoning Americans to their fate, using the military jargon awol, meaning absent without leave.
“This is a major crisis,” Panetta told Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, noting that top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has warned that America may hit 100,000 new cases a day, twice the current rate.
“But the president, rather than bringing together some kind of national strategy to confront this crisis, simply resorts to tweeting about vandalism and other things to kind of divert attention from the crisis that’s there.”
He added: “We have a president that is not willing to stand up and do what is necessary in order to lead this country during time of major crisis. I have never experienced a president who has avoided that responsibility.”
More copy and paste efforts at 8:50 and 8:52.
The 8:50 effort was riddled with fluff. It was a very poor effort by a person with a lackadaisical attitude and no attention to detail.
Not up to college level. Hell, not up to 1st grade level.
As Trump’s response has oscillated between the threat not being credible and him not being made aware of it, some veterans have expressed alarm at the latter explanation – at a president who is not being given, or who is not reading, important briefing documents.
“I think it’s even worse if he didn’t know,” Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic congresswoman from New Jersey, told NJ.com.
“That speaks to a much broader crisis. What is he doing to fulfill his role as commander in chief? How is it that we were briefing allies on this and our own president didn’t know? I don’t have any theories on how that might happen. I can’t fathom it.”
Sherrill added: “If you’re going to put your life on the line for country, you want to have leadership in place that’s going to value your life, and do what they can to protect you. That’s the deal. So yeah, it’s very personal to me.”
The sentiment was echoed by Erik Hendriks, whose son was killed in an attack in Afghanistan in April 2019. The attack has been linked to the Russian bounty effort, and Hendricks questioned what Trump and the military knew about the plot in advance.
“When they sign up and they go – any soldier, a marine, navy, air force, army – I’m sure they want to believe that the government is 100% in their corner,” Hendriks told Associated Press.
“And if any of this is true, how could a soldier actually believe that anymore? How could this government let one soldier go on patrol out there knowing this is true?”
Hendriks’ mother, Felicia Arculeo, and Shawn Gregoire, the mother of Michael Isaiah Nance, who was killed in the same attack, have demanded an investigation into the Russian bounty plot and the Trump administration, as pressure grows on the president to explain what happened.
“I really want someone to get to the bottom of this,” Gregoire told CNBC. “Even if he was not briefed, what’s happening now?”
Referring to Trump, Gregoire asked: “What are you doing now, now that you know?”
Trump’s immediate response has been to post a series of distressed messages to Twitter, where – despite initially claiming he did not receive intelligence on the Russian plot – he has since attempted to dismiss the concept as a hoax.
It is a major crisis because Democrats want it to be a major crisis.
The intelligence was not actionable and so some of the 17 intelligence agencies discussed it amongst themselves, but never forwarded it to the President with course of action (COA).
The COA they discussed were a sharply worded letter to Putin and additional sanctions. A lot of Russian government officials and companies are already sanctioned, so sanctions would do what?
Compare this to Obama's behaviour, where in the plain light of day, he traded 5 high ranking Taliban prisoners for 1 deserter and then promoted the deserter.
Compare this to Les Aspin and Bill Clinton, who denied American soldiers tanks, because it would look too war like. Instead we had to beg for 4 Pakistan M48 tanks and lost 19 soldiers.
So a few dweebs are screaming bloody murder for more sanctions, while the Democrat Party tells us that sanctions do not work vis-à-vis Iran and Venezuela. Why are Democrats suggesting a strategy that elsewhere they denounce or declare ineffective?
We all know the fly by and crap copy and paster will not debate one item. It can't. It does not like debates just crappping.
"More Than 1,000 Canadians March to US Embassy in Ottawa Chanting “We Love Trump” on Canada Day"
"The universities, some with multibillion-dollar endowments, will accept no moral responsibility. They are not overly worried that many of their indebted graduates discover their majors don’t translate into well-paid jobs or guarantee employers that grads can write, speak, or think cogently."
"The epidemic and lockdown required distance learning, but at full price.
The idea that universities can still charge regular rates when students are forced to stay home is not just an unsustainable practice, but veritable suicide.
If one can supposedly learn well enough from downloads, Zoom talks, and Skype lectures, then why pay $50,000 or more for that service from your basement?"
there is no evidence that students can learn as well remotely as in a classroom. In fact, at the lower levels of education, there is growing evidence that remote learning is not working very well
1. And Parrot feels threatened by Academia falling apart and so he engages.
2. I'll take Victor Hansen Davis's word over parrot's word any day of the week.
3. Power points presentations are so much more effective in person than off site.
4. Rather involved, complex problems are discussed, worked on and solved via the internet. People working for a living do this all the time. With a shared virtual whiteboard and voice a professor could assist a student in overcoming a problem in a STEM class.
5. Going virtual would right size faculty for different departments according to the need and not due to tradition.
PS: I can see where there would be less fringe benefits for a professor and an 'electronic' paper trail, so I can see why some would not like it.
A) Kids could save room and board. If kids want to see the big city, they would have more money. They could take Amtrak into the big city once a week or once a month and party.
B) Without room and board and with reduced tuition, then kids would see it is feasible by working part time and summer to pay for it. Students would graduate with zero debt. Professors, however, would be poorer.
"It Was Only a Matter of Time… Angry DC Black Lives Matter Protesters March Down Street Chanting Blood Libel Against Jews"
Chickens are coming home to roost for liberal Jews.
"In fact, at the lower levels of education, there is growing evidence that remote learning is not working very well[sic]"
We are talking about college.
If students cannot be trusted with college work with remote learning, they cannot be trusted in the work place.
THIS IS NOT GOOD: In May Reports Came Out that Bill Clinton Dated Ghislaine Maxwell – Now She’s Under Arrest – What Next?
She is going to flip on Bill!
www.ProtectElderlyVotes.org
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/senior_living_facilities_all_the_vote_fraud_we_cannot_see.html
Regardless what they come up with at the meeting presenting the evidence to the public is imperative. Neither any member of the "gang of eight" nor US Intelligence are very credible or trustworthy sources.
The allegations made are very serious and the repercussions of them could have very profound impacts. Before risking the lives of my loved ones in an escalation of the current conflict with Russia arguably the most powerful military force on earth there needs to be VERY good reasons and citing sources who've been often wrong in the past isn't good enough.
Also, it's important to understand why Trump was elected. One of the overriding reasons was to end Cold War 2 and we are drawing down in Afghanistan as we should. Hopefully we'll be out soon. Trump appears to be making the right moves here. It will be within this context that Trump and his team will act. The goal is ti get out of Afghanistan and we need to remain focused on that.
I figured out we needed to get out of Afghanistan in 2005. I'm pleased at least POTUS is catching on. Had a sensible policy that actually advances our interests been pursued back then this particular issue doesn't arise today.
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