Breaking: CIA Admits Russia NOT Behind Hack, and Obama CIA Chief IS Behind Trump-Russia Rumors

From: Constitution.com

By - Onan Coca -  April 20, 2017 

  
Thursday has NOT been a banner day for the CIA (or the FBI). Dueling stories have exposed the profound failures of the CIA during the Obama administration.

In one story we finally learn that Russia was NOT behind the hacks that exposed so much embarrassing information from the CIA. Instead the CIA and FBI are now admitting that it was an insider, and the CIA is currently hunting for that leaker. The second story explains how former CIA chief John Brennan worked hard to undermine the possibility of Donald Trump becoming President by leaking intelligence from our European allies to the rest of the government and to the media. It’s a sordid, and ugly story that finally proves just how dastardly, and underhanded Brennan truly is.

CBS News broke the story on the CIA leaks:

CBS News has learned that a manhunt is underway for a traitor inside the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA and FBI are conducting a joint investigation into one of the worst security breaches in CIA history, which exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.

Sources familiar with the investigation say it is looking for an insider — either a CIA employee or contractor — who had physical access to the material. The agency has not said publicly when the material was taken or how it was stolen.

WikiLeaks published the leaked material in March and CBS points out that WikiLeaks has said all along that they got the material from a CIA insider. What CBS fails to report is that for quite some time our intelligence community and the media have been blaming Russia for these leaks (WikiLeaks published the material in March but has had it for longer), when the truth is that Russia seems to have had NOTHING to do with it.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper broke the story on John Brennan though they attempted to shield the Obama/Clinton acolyte from blowback even as they explained his underhanded dealings.

(Our own Andrew West brought part of this story to you earlier today.)

The Guardian  explained that British spies first noticed the connections between the Trump team and the Russians but that other European intelligence agencies soon also picked up on the ties. These agencies then brought that information to Brennan at the CIA, because, the Guardian opines, American laws don’t allow our own intelligence agencies to spy on American citizens.

The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. “They are trained not to do this,” the source stressed.

“It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” the source added. “They [the European agencies] were saying: ‘There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.’

The reality is that our agencies weren’t “asleep,” they too could see the interactions, there just wasn’t any reason to think that the connections between some Trump team members and Russia was underhanded. While we in the United States believe in due process and the need for the government to have “probable cause” before accusing people of wrongdoing, apparently in Europe, no such probable cause is necessary.

The American Spectator explains what the Guardian‘s report had really uncovered. Here’s a hint, it wasn’t wrongdoing by Trump… but by John Brennan and the CIA:

Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, [John] Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.

John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump. An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia…

Any other CIA director would have disregarded such a flaky tip, recognizing that Estonia was eager to see Trump lose (its officials had bought into Hillary’s propaganda that Trump was going to pull out of NATO and leave Baltic countries exposed to Putin). But Brennan opportunistically seized on it, as he later that summer seized on the half-baked intelligence of British spy agencies (also full of officials who wanted to see Trump lose).

The truth is clear, Obama’s intelligence community worked hard to scuttle Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations and ensure that Hillary Clinton would become President. When that didn’t work, they turned to the media for help undermining the newly elected president and the media embraced the farce with gusto. The nighttime tales of Russian terror are nothing more than fairytales told by Obama’s cronies and regurgitated to the American people by a complicit media that seems willing to believe and repeat any negative story they hear about Donald Trump.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Trump’s first 100 days have been better than you think

From: New York Post

By Michael Walsh - April 15, 2017

As the end of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office approaches, now’s a good a time to cut through the fog of misinformation, disinformation, media propaganda, ideological bias and outright hostility that has greeted his arrival in Washington and take a clear-eyed look at how he’s really doing.

Answer: much better than you think.

Let’s take the area that was supposed to be his Achilles’ heel, foreign policy. After flirting publicly with the likes of John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and David Petraeus, Trump settled on dark horse Rex Tillerson, the former chief of ExxonMobil, to be his secretary of state. Like his boss, Tillerson had no prior experience in government — which has turned out so far to be an excellent thing.

Unencumbered by the can’t-do conventional wisdom of the Foggy Bottom establishment and its parrots in the Washington press corps, Tillerson has played the carrot to Trump’s stick, soothing Chinese feathers ruffled during the campaign with a March visit to Beijing and setting up the successful meeting earlier this month between The Donald and the Chinese president at Mar-a-Largo that — purely coincidentally! — coincided with the cruise-missile salvo fired at Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Since then, the Chinese have openly cautioned the troublesome regime of Kim Jong un in North Korea not to antagonize the US with further nuclear saber-rattling in the region; “Trump is a man who honors his promises,” warned the People’s Daily, the ruling party’s official newspaper. Among those promises: a better trade deal for China and an ominous presidential tweet to the Norks that they’re “looking for trouble,” and signed “USA.” Even now, US warships are steaming Kim’s way.

Regarding Russia, Tillerson rocked the former Soviets with a “frank discussion” in Moscow on Wednesday — diplo-speak for “contentious.” Meanwhile, at the UN, ambassador Nikki Haley has already proven her mettle, taking a hard line toward the Russians for their tactical alliance with Assad while making clear the US commitment to Israel.

Domestically, a first attempt at repealing and replacing ObamaCare flopped when Speaker Paul Ryan’s needlessly complex “better way” couldn’t muster enough GOP votes to make it to the House floor. But the fault was the ambitious Ryan’s. Now the way’s clear for a cleaner repeal. And, yes, tax reform’s on its way, too.

True, the president’s two executive orders regarding visitors from several Muslim countries have been stayed by federal judges refusing to acknowledge the plain letter of both the Constitution and the US Code 1182, which give the president plenary power regarding immigration. But the recent confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as an associate justice will quickly clear up that misunderstanding when the cases land in the Supreme Court. Further, the Republicans’ use of the “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster for high court nominees means Trump’s next pick is guaranteed a speedy confirmation.

Over at the National Security Council, H.R. McMaster has brought order out of the chaos that followed the abortive tenure of Mike Flynn, shuffling some staffers but retaining the services of crucial personnel. And at the Pentagon and Homeland Security, former Marine generals James Mattis and John Kelly can be counted on to faithfully execute presidential policy. Worries that they’re too soft on radical Islam are unfounded.

Less remarked but equally important has been the administration’s speedy action on downsizing the federal government, proposing real spending cuts and reorganizing the bloated bureaucracy, which has drawn bleats of protest from the DC swamp creatures watching their sinecures circling the drain. Trump’s also lifted the hiring freeze, in order to flesh out a still-undermanned executive staff and replace Obama holdovers.

Despite these clear successes, the Beltway media continues to depict the White House as a floundering, latter-day court of the Borgias, a back-stabber behind every arras. But that’s to be expected of a novice administration in its infancy. When the smoke clears, look for an uneasy balance of power between chief counselor Steve Bannon and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump can ill-afford to lose Bannon and his die-hard conservative base. And the sooner the floundering White House press operation is rebooted, the better; the administration has played defense against a hostile, sneering media long enough.

No new president will ever match the whirlwind of new programs introduced by FDR when he took office during the Depression — the gold standard cited by Democrats who equate activity with action. But Trump got elected for precisely the opposite reason: Less government is more freedom.

As long as he keeps that in mind, he — and we — will do just fine.


God bless,
JohnnyD