CIA

Mixed signals on Gina Haspel

Featured image What should we make of Gina Haspel’s selection as CIA Director? I don’t know. On the one hand, she appears to be Mike Pompeo’s pick. Haspel was Pompeo’s Deputy Director, so he knows what the CIA would be getting. And I have confidence in Pompeo’s judgment. On the other hand, Haspel has received praise from both James Clapper and (sort of) John Brennan. Clapper says: I think the world of »

How the Democrats Will Respond to Pompeo and Haspel Nominations

Featured image Erica Werner is the Washington Post’s congressional reporter. I think we can assume she speaks for the Democratic Party. This is her tweet in response to President Trump’s announcement that he is appointing Mike Pompeo Secretary of State and Gina Haspel CIA Director: A Benghazi bomb-thrower will be SecState and a torture overseer will be CIA director — IF CONFIRMED BY THE SENATE — Erica Werner (@ericawerner) March 13, 2018 »

Tillerson out, Pompeo in at State Department

Featured image President Trump has removed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him. The move has been talked about for months. Relations between Trump and Tillerson have never been good. Unnamed officials say they reached a breaking point recently, though they haven’t said why. There is speculation that Tillerson’s statement that he believes Russia is responsible for the poisoning of a Russian ex-pat »

CIA: Public can’t see classified info given to favored reporters

Featured image Earlier this week, the CIA filed a brief in federal court arguing that it can selectively release classified information to trusted journalists while withholding the same information from other citizens who request it through open records laws. As Will Racke reports for the Daily Caller, the agency claimed that limited disclosures to reporters do not waive national security exemptions to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The case stems from »

Where we are now

Featured image Collusion hysteria has bedeviled the Trump administration since day 1, precisely as intended. It has brought us the Special Counsel to provide the predicate for the removal of Trump from office. It has produced absurdity upon absurdity delivered by such artists of the calculated lie and the straight face as Adam Schiff. All the while, the mainstream media have made themselves instrumental to the production by serving as the faithful »

Call me Moby

Featured image The great white electronic wailer known as Moby was in the news this week, advocating the claims of the Steele/Trump dossier in the course of a radio interview with WFPK in Louisville. Moby has been on the case since this past February, when he first posted an advisory after “meeting with friends in DC.” He conveyed his advisory on Instagram here to create “a public record beforehand” of events to »

Did CIA Use Entertainers to Smear Trump? [Updated]

Featured image The biggest scandal of our time is the manner in which the Democratic Party, under Barack Obama, weaponized the intelligence agencies and the FBI for political purposes. An obscure news story–obscure but for the fact that it was linked by Drudge–suggests that the CIA may have used entertainment personalities to smear Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration. The story relates to Moby, who I take it is an entertainer of »

On DNC/FBI/Russia Collusion, the CIA and NSA Played a Part Too

Featured image As Scott noted earlier today, Andy McCarthy has written a definitive summary of what we know now about the collusion among the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, Fusion GPS, Steele and the Putin regime to 1) prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidential election, and 2) undermine his administration post-election. I can’t urge you strongly enough to read Andy’s NRO article. I want to add this footnote: the politicized leaders »

The CIA on Climate Change

Featured image Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado notes that the State Department now has a searchable online database of historic documents, and Roger decided to see what a search for “climate change” would cough up. The very first thing is a CIA assessment from August 1974 on the dire consequences of . . . global cooling. Guess what? The world was going to come to an end! We were »

Trump Was Right About the Intelligence Agencies

Featured image Byron York comments on second thoughts by a former second in command of the CIA: “Mr. Trump continues to exhibit paranoia about American intelligence agencies,” wrote the ‘Never Trump’ conservative Max Boot in the New York Times a week or so before the president took office. “Consumed by his paranoia about the deep state, Donald Trump has disappeared into the fog of his own conspiracy theories,” declared the Times’ Maureen »

Tom Cotton to CIA?

Featured image John noted last night that, according to strong rumors, Sen. Tom Cotton will resign from the Senate and succeed Mike Pompeo as head of the CIA. Pompeo, according to the same rumors, will become Secretary of State. I’d rather see Cotton in the Senate than at the hornets nest across the river in Langley (and, frankly, the hornets nest of the Trump administration). However, I think I understand why he »

Liberals Attack Sen. Cotton For Wanting to Enforce the Law

Featured image Rumor has it that Rex Tillerson will soon be out as Secretary of State, to be replaced by current CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The rumor holds that Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is slated to take Pompeo’s place as CIA Director. I am not sure why anyone would want to leave the Senate for the CIA; maybe Cotton is tired of having to defer to John McCain, Susan Collins et »

Investigate this (6)

Featured image Last week Jennifer Kerns called for an investigation into the placement of what I’ve been calling the Trump Dossier into the hands of the Obama administration — the hands of John Brennan in particular. Kerns didn’t quote the Gershwin brothers song, but she had the refrain: let’s call the whole thing off. I drew on her Washington Examiner column in “part 2 of this series. Kerns now returns with more »

CIA keeping a watchful eye on. . .its director!

Featured image This Washington Post story is called “At CIA, a watchful eye on Mike Pompeo, the president’s ardent ally.” It sounds like the CIA is spying on its own director. If there is such a thing as the “deep state,” I think we have sighted it. According to Post reporter Greg Miller, “Mike Pompeo has taken a special interest in an agency unit that is closely tied to the investigation into »

At the Times, self-parody strikes deep

Featured image In today’s New York Times Matthew Rosenberg seeks to disparage and undermine DCIA Mike Pompeo. Rosenberg’s article runs on page one under the headline “Trump’s Man in the C.I.A. Adds a Political Tone.” At the Times, self-parody runs deep. This is what we have in Rosenberg’s profile. It purports to present Pompeo’s “mixed reception” at the CIA without a single quote to this effect from inside the agency. It brings »

Analyze this

Featured image A long-time reader and retired FBI agent of vast and relevant experience comments on Paul Sperry’s New York Post column, discussed by John in the adjacent post. The emphases in his quote from Sperry’s column are his: I remain convinced that the FISA warrants that were twice sought to target associates of Trump (and possibly Trump himself) are the key to blowing up the Russia narrative. As Andy McCarthy regularly »

The Intelligence Community Finally Scores!

Featured image I have been reading for many years that the CIA is more formidable in Washington infighting than anywhere else. Is there a penalty for rarely seeing what is right around the corner? One might think that is the job of an intelligence agency, but somehow repeated failures have only resulted in larger budgets. While many individual agents are undoubtedly conservatives, the careerists who run the CIA have long been liberals, »