Thursday, January 05, 2017 10:11:26 PM
My Two Minds Are at War Over Trump's Beef with the C.I.A.
The "intelligence community" is capable of the worst behavior, but can anyone else keep the president-elect honest?
Getty Alex Wong
By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 5, 2017
In April of 1948, the newborn Central Intelligence Agency scored one of its first real coups, in every sense of that word. For the previous five months, the agency had been shuffling money and operatives into Italy in order to assure that the Christian Democratic Party would defeat the Communists in that country's elections. Overseeing the operation, which was plainly in violation of the law and the CIA charter, was noted spooko di tutti spooki James Jesus Angleton.
Angleton, according to author Tim Weiner, funneled more than $10 million into that project, much of it "repurposed" from donations meant to help Europe rebuild after World War II, and still more of it coming from American Catholics who were terrified that the Vatican would be surrounded by a sea of red. It worked, of course. And the CIA was on its way to a half-century of meddling, ratfcking, and outright bungling.
Related Story
Even Trump Can't Afford to Roll Back the Sanctions
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51934/russia-hacking-sanctions/
So, today, one of the more remarkable performances on the Senate Armed Services Committee came from Senator Thom Tillis, a second-term Republican from the newly insane state of North Carolina. Most of the Republicans on the committee, which was hearing testimony regarding the involvement of Russian hackers in the recent presidential elections, did their damnedest to divert the discussion away from that particular point. But nobody did so more entertainingly than did Tillis, a hardcore Tea Party Republican who, in the wake of the revelations concerning the relationship between Russian dirty tricks and the triumph of Donald Trump, suddenly and miraculously discovered his inner Howard Zinn.
--
TILLIS: The glass house comment is something that's very important. There is a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that's estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn't include coups or regime changes. So, tangible evidence that we've tried to affect an election to our purpose. Russia's done it some 36 times. When Russia was apparently trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their elections. So I'm not here to talk about that, but I'm here to say that we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw.
--
The jaw, she drops, and the gob, she is smacked. Would anyone like to guess the general reaction from someone like Thom Tillis if a Democratic senator hinted that a Russian cyberattack on the democratic process was something the country maybe, sorta, perhaps had coming because of what it did in Italy in 1948?
Remember what happened to anyone who intimated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that maybe, sorta, perhaps the policies of this country might have had something to do with motivating fanatics to fly airplanes into buildings? And while an over-amped Lindsey Graham—cut down to four Red Bulls before committee hearings, Senator—tried to wrench things back on track, saying repeatedly that he's willing to "start throwing rocks," it was Tillis' little speech that best illustrated the kind of chaos that has been sown in our political system since Vladimir Putin and his government decided to drop a thumb on the scale.
Getty Sasha Mordovets
I am of two minds on this deal, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't yelling at each other all the time. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a president who doesn't wholly trust what is too often and too gently referred to as "the intelligence community." And, over the years, when it has screwed the pooch, which is often, the CIA has in the past been too quick to duck and let the rest of the country take the blowback in the face. So, in theory, anyway, I agree with Tillis, who never would agree with me if I made the same case in a different context.
However, on the other hand, Donald J. Trump is the president-elect. We do not know whom he may owe for that distinction and, hell, we don't know to whom he owes any debt at all. On Wednesday, there was a leak from Camp Runamuck describing how El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago plans to "reorganize" the intelligence community. From The Chicago Tribune ..
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-trump-national-intelligence-restructuring-20170105-story.html :
--
Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer denied Thursday that Trump was considering "restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure." Spicer did not specifically address possible changes to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was looking at changes to the intelligence agency. The person familiar with the plans said Trump was not intending to gut any intelligence agency, but was looking for ways to streamline operations and improve efficiency. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity… Trump has questioned Russia's involvement and challenged the intelligence community's track record, particularly the information that led to the Iraq war. On Wednesday, he appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization publicly released the hacked Democratic emails. Trump noted in a tweet that Assange said he had not received the materials from Russia.
--
There is no reason in the world to be sanguine about this. Unless you see the current president-elect as sui generis in his sweet-tooth for authoritarian solutions based in his own perception of his own unconquerable genius, you can't understand how truly perilous this is—especially considering that his primary national security advisor is going to be Michael Flynn, whose trolley left the rails long before Trump's did.
Related Story
How Russian Spies Hacked This Election
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/
The president-elect knows that, whatever's out there concerning his business dealings and his relationship with the Putin regime, there's only one network of institutions that's likely to be able to find it. And he's going to do the best he can not to reform those institutions, but to bring them and their capacities further under his personal control. So maybe the best outcome is that we have an "intelligence community" to keep an elected president honest.
It's at this point that my two minds start throwing stuff at each other, and I have to lay down for a spell.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52072/trump-intelligence-community-cia/
See also:
Ex-CIA Director Leaves Transition Team After Trump Trashes Intelligence Community
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=127660959
The "intelligence community" is capable of the worst behavior, but can anyone else keep the president-elect honest?
Getty Alex Wong
By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 5, 2017
In April of 1948, the newborn Central Intelligence Agency scored one of its first real coups, in every sense of that word. For the previous five months, the agency had been shuffling money and operatives into Italy in order to assure that the Christian Democratic Party would defeat the Communists in that country's elections. Overseeing the operation, which was plainly in violation of the law and the CIA charter, was noted spooko di tutti spooki James Jesus Angleton.
Angleton, according to author Tim Weiner, funneled more than $10 million into that project, much of it "repurposed" from donations meant to help Europe rebuild after World War II, and still more of it coming from American Catholics who were terrified that the Vatican would be surrounded by a sea of red. It worked, of course. And the CIA was on its way to a half-century of meddling, ratfcking, and outright bungling.
Related Story
Even Trump Can't Afford to Roll Back the Sanctions
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51934/russia-hacking-sanctions/
So, today, one of the more remarkable performances on the Senate Armed Services Committee came from Senator Thom Tillis, a second-term Republican from the newly insane state of North Carolina. Most of the Republicans on the committee, which was hearing testimony regarding the involvement of Russian hackers in the recent presidential elections, did their damnedest to divert the discussion away from that particular point. But nobody did so more entertainingly than did Tillis, a hardcore Tea Party Republican who, in the wake of the revelations concerning the relationship between Russian dirty tricks and the triumph of Donald Trump, suddenly and miraculously discovered his inner Howard Zinn.
--
TILLIS: The glass house comment is something that's very important. There is a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that's estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn't include coups or regime changes. So, tangible evidence that we've tried to affect an election to our purpose. Russia's done it some 36 times. When Russia was apparently trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their elections. So I'm not here to talk about that, but I'm here to say that we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw.
--
The jaw, she drops, and the gob, she is smacked. Would anyone like to guess the general reaction from someone like Thom Tillis if a Democratic senator hinted that a Russian cyberattack on the democratic process was something the country maybe, sorta, perhaps had coming because of what it did in Italy in 1948?
Remember what happened to anyone who intimated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that maybe, sorta, perhaps the policies of this country might have had something to do with motivating fanatics to fly airplanes into buildings? And while an over-amped Lindsey Graham—cut down to four Red Bulls before committee hearings, Senator—tried to wrench things back on track, saying repeatedly that he's willing to "start throwing rocks," it was Tillis' little speech that best illustrated the kind of chaos that has been sown in our political system since Vladimir Putin and his government decided to drop a thumb on the scale.
Getty Sasha Mordovets
I am of two minds on this deal, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't yelling at each other all the time. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a president who doesn't wholly trust what is too often and too gently referred to as "the intelligence community." And, over the years, when it has screwed the pooch, which is often, the CIA has in the past been too quick to duck and let the rest of the country take the blowback in the face. So, in theory, anyway, I agree with Tillis, who never would agree with me if I made the same case in a different context.
However, on the other hand, Donald J. Trump is the president-elect. We do not know whom he may owe for that distinction and, hell, we don't know to whom he owes any debt at all. On Wednesday, there was a leak from Camp Runamuck describing how El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago plans to "reorganize" the intelligence community. From The Chicago Tribune ..
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-trump-national-intelligence-restructuring-20170105-story.html :
--
Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer denied Thursday that Trump was considering "restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure." Spicer did not specifically address possible changes to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was looking at changes to the intelligence agency. The person familiar with the plans said Trump was not intending to gut any intelligence agency, but was looking for ways to streamline operations and improve efficiency. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity… Trump has questioned Russia's involvement and challenged the intelligence community's track record, particularly the information that led to the Iraq war. On Wednesday, he appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization publicly released the hacked Democratic emails. Trump noted in a tweet that Assange said he had not received the materials from Russia.
--
There is no reason in the world to be sanguine about this. Unless you see the current president-elect as sui generis in his sweet-tooth for authoritarian solutions based in his own perception of his own unconquerable genius, you can't understand how truly perilous this is—especially considering that his primary national security advisor is going to be Michael Flynn, whose trolley left the rails long before Trump's did.
Related Story
How Russian Spies Hacked This Election
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/
The president-elect knows that, whatever's out there concerning his business dealings and his relationship with the Putin regime, there's only one network of institutions that's likely to be able to find it. And he's going to do the best he can not to reform those institutions, but to bring them and their capacities further under his personal control. So maybe the best outcome is that we have an "intelligence community" to keep an elected president honest.
It's at this point that my two minds start throwing stuff at each other, and I have to lay down for a spell.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52072/trump-intelligence-community-cia/
See also:
Ex-CIA Director Leaves Transition Team After Trump Trashes Intelligence Community
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=127660959
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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