..."national security against foreign powers is not a fit responsibility for police agencies and courts."

In the Washington Examiner, Andrew McCarthy writes,

...The immense powers wielded by our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus are essential to protecting the United States. The agencies that wield them, as currently constructed, are not.

...If the FBI and the courts are doing national security, they are necessarily practicing politics. Arms of government that make political determinations cannot properly be independent of political oversight and accountability.

...I’ve always believed the FBI could handle these related but different responsibilities. History proved me wrong. The bureau arrogantly insists on independence from political oversight not just in criminal cases but even when it is carrying out national security functions. It wants a free hand to act and even make policy judgments in the political realm, but it demands insulation from political accountability.

FISA was a well-meaning effort to give a modicum of due process to Americans suspected of acting as foreign agents. In point of fact, it does not provide meaningful due process because it cannot replicate the adversarial search for truth that is the hallmark of judicial proceedings. The FBI and Justice Department appear ex parte before the court; the surveillance subject cannot be effectively represented, and the proceedings are classified, so the expectation is that no one will ever check the executive’s representations. This is unlike criminal cases, which lead to prosecution, discovery, and significant legal consequences if government agents duped the judge into granting warrants.

...And now, with the Trump-Russia investigation, we’ve witnessed the abuse of power many FISA critics predicted for decades: the pretextual invocation of FISA surveillance powers to conduct a criminal investigation for which the investigators lack a criminal predicate — in this instance, the hunt for some crime that might render Donald Trump unelectable or removable. Worse, and quite naturally, the abuse has happened in a political context: the incumbent Democratic administration using the threat posed by a hostile power, Russia, to rationalize foreign counterintelligence surveillance of the opposition party’s political campaign, an abuse that continued for two years and impeded the Trump administration’s capacity to govern.

The FBI should be relegated to the investigation and prosecution of crime. The bureau excels in executing its law enforcement duties and can be trusted to operate with minimal political supervision because the criminal justice system features transparent judicial oversight. The foreign counterintelligence mission should be transferred to other intelligence community components and subjected to beefed-up congressional regulation and oversight. FISA should be repealed, with the courts returned to their judicial role of providing a forum for those injured by governmental overreach, rather than aiding and abetting in the overreach.

Much more rethinking of the intelligence community needs to be done. The Claremont Institute’s Angelo Codevilla, an insightful and provocative intelligence expert, argues the CIA is obsolete, politicized, and counterproductive. He would assign foreign intelligence responsibilities to the departments that carry out national defense and foreign relations missions — mainly, the Defense and State Departments — tailoring the gathering of intelligence to the practical needs of these missions. This would strip down the so-called “deep state,” a leviathan that warehouses mountains of intelligence to the detriment of our liberties and with dubious benefits to our security. Codevilla would also repeal FISA.

His ideas are worth exploring. What is already clear, however, is that national security against foreign powers is not a fit responsibility for police agencies and courts. Assigning it to them is a failed experiment: a temptation to intrusive surveillance of innocent citizens and politicized law enforcement. We should end the experiment before the public, in its frustration over the lack of accountability, clips the powers vital to our national defense.

Read more here.

How the CIA let the FBI out to dry

In Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds points out that the CIA let the FBI out to dry regarding Carter Page, but he expects the FBI will have an incentive to point out John Brennan’s involvement.

In the comments section of Glenn's blog, Raymond Jelli writes, "We need Clint Eastwood to make a sequel to Jewell about Carter Page. That would get Page his reputation and some money back.

Read more here.

The sorry state of the FBI and CIA

In American Greatness, Angelo Codevilla writes in part,

During my years on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff, CIA officials’ preference for their personal and corporate interests over professional standards continued to get worse. It turned out that every last one of the Cubans they thought were our agents were actually working for Cuban intelligence. In East Germany, the United States had not a single “good” agent. Not only had CIA never recruited even one high-level Soviet agent, but for a decade, Aldrich Ames, CIA’s own chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Union/Russia, the man who validated the Russians who offered their services and oversaw our operations in that country, worked for the KGB.

So congenial did the agency find the disinformation coming its way that it was reluctant to investigate. Finally, when it did suspect that the dispatches coming from our agents had been crafted by the KGB, it sent them on to the president anyway because, according to the inspector general, “they contained thoughts they believed the President should consider.”

In short, CIA officials—and not just a few people at the top—have so valued their own opinions, have so wanted to influence U.S. policy, that they have mistaken their own opinions and desires for the truth.

...Robert Mueller’s directorship (2001-2013), followed by his friend James Comey’s, made the FBI into the domestic danger it is today.

The investigation into the letters containing weapons-grade Anthrax, which killed five and injured 17 Americans, defined Mueller’s directorship and today’s FBI. No one was ever charged with the crime. From the beginning, the FBI’s “profiling” process concluded that no foreign government or entity had been responsible, but rather that the attacks had been the work of a lone, white, conservative scientist. Thus the bureau pursued and nearly broke Steven Hatfill, whose lawsuit the government settled for $ 5.8 million.

The FBI then turned its attention to someone else who fit its profile, Bruce Edward Ivins. He was never charged. The bureau ruined his reputation and hounded Ivans into suicide. After which the bureau declared him guilty, but refused to make public the evidence on which it had reached its conclusion. Reassuring, isn’t it?

To be sure, the current inspector general’s general reprimand of the FBI “ineffective management and oversight of confidential sources,” for the lack of “adequate controls” in its validation of human sources,” for “jeopardizing FBI operations, and placing FBI agents, sources, subjects of investigation, and the public in harm’s way,” refers primarily to the bureau’s massive political malfeasance since 2016. But that malfeasance results from a disease that goes beyond politics, a disease that has sapped the moral and professional character of a class of people for at least a half-century.

Alas, in the current political environment, only political reactions are possible.

Read more here.

"The whistleblower is just a face of an entire group at the CIA that is pushing this thing forward."

"These are holdovers from the Obama administration. They know they can outwait the president! There should be a Senate investigation of the CIA."

Shut down the CIA and start a new secret intelligence service?

Michael Ledeen reports in FrontPage Magazine, "You wouldn’t know it from the “news coverage,” but the CIA’s global secret internet communications network was uncovered by Iranian spooks between 2009 and 2013 (that would be the first Obama term), thanks in part to Iran’s enlisting an American double agent who knew all about the system. A very big deal, as Yahoo reported and Breitbart summarized:"

According to Yahoo News, CIA officials were stunned at how quickly and thoroughly the Iranians penetrated the system, which relied on phony corporate websites. One of the report’s cringe-inducing details is that once the Iranian double agent pointed out a disguised CIA website, Iranian intelligence unraveled the rest of the CIA network using Google searches for similar sites and monitoring traffic to those websites.

This was quickly followed by China’s catastrophic compromise of America’s spy network in 2011 and 2012, which culminated in the arrest and execution of about 30 U.S. agents and sources, essentially destroying the American network in China.

"It seems the Iranians were in cahoots with the Chinese, and you should not be surprised to learn that the Russians were part of the anti-American operation. Indeed, there seems to be no known limit on the global catastrophe, from the dozens of men and women who risked—and often lost—their lives for American security, to the knowledge our enemies gained about our sources and methods. All over the world."

With dawning horror, U.S. officials realized that once Iranian or Chinese intelligence officials were able to pinpoint CIA assets within their own borders, they were almost certainly capable of zeroing in on similar digital signatures in other countries, former officials said.

Former officials said the fallout from the compromises was likely global in scope — potentially endangering all CIA sources that used some version of this internet-based system worldwide.

"It would not be surprising if there were a lot more to this story. That “double agent,” for example, probably means that several CIA operations were penetrated. The agent may have had friends working on other projects. Such cases help explain why the CIA has an unenviably consistent record of almost always getting Iran wrong, from the revolution that removed the Shah in 1979, right up to the dreadful deal Obama cut with the mullahs, and to the current European campaign against the latest round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. We are now learning, for example, that the Iranian nuclear weapons program was bigger than we (the CIA, mainly) had believed.

What is to be done? Putting terrific leaders at the top of CIA obviously won’t do the trick. Pompeo, a good man, was director for nearly two years, and there is still no sign that the Intelligence Community is significantly improved. I’m afraid we have to go back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescription: shut it down and start a new secret intelligence service. It’s a big country, full of talented people. The analyses can be farmed out to think tanks and research centers, where much of the good work is done anyway. As for operations, much of the work should be done by the military, as General Flynn intended (this is one of the reasons CIA went after him, first at DIA and then again at the National Security Council.

And I have a scheme. Recruit young scholars and business people. Pay them to live abroad, and to befriend the next generation of leaders. That way, some years down the road, we will have agents in place who are on first-name terms with the top people. My own experiences testify to the effectiveness of this stratagem. I went off to Italy as a graduate student, and assimilated into the Roman political and intellectual worlds. One of the people I befriended was Bettino Craxi, then an unknown Socialist, who went on to become prime minister. One night it was urgent for President Reagan to talk to Craxi, who wouldn’t take a call from our Embassy late at night. But he did take a call from me, his old friend. It worked out. We need these informal avenues. CIA at its best has them, but not nearly on the necessary scale."
Read more here.

"Retreating political footprints"

Sundance writes at Conservative Treehouse,

...Mounting evidence supports the ongoing thesis the Department of Defense has actually seceded from the political elites. A wonderfully patriotic soft coup of sorts has actually taken place. Now, with the Presidency of Donald Trump, the white hats are poised on the horizon to reconstruct a nationalist-minded defense, security and intelligence apparatus.

...However, the Deep State will never give up; and in an effort to defend their exit, the outgoing intelligence leadership is using the “Russian conspiracy narrative” as a sagebrush sweep to hide their retreating political footprints.

Yes, this is President-elect Donald Trump specifically calling out CIA Director John Brennan as the most likely intelligence “leaker“ to the media.https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/01/15/cia-director-john-brennan-attempts-to-justify-his-agency-leaks-to-media-duping-delight/#

Read more here.

"Pumping air into this story every day"

Jennifer Calfas reports at The Hill,

More Democratic electors are joining the call for an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the presidential election before they cast their votes for president on Monday.

Twenty-nine electors now are pressuring Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to disclose more information about the CIA’s conclusion that Russian interference helped sway the election in President-elect Donald Trump’s favor.

On Monday, 10 electors — spearheaded by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — wrote an open letter to Clapper, demanding more information ahead of next week's vote.

“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” the letter reads. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”
Twenty-eight Democrats and one Republican have now signed the letter.

On Monday, the Clinton campaign voiced support for the effort.

“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” said John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, in a statement. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA concluded Russian interference helped Trump win the election. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined bipartisan efforts to further investigate the findings, saying the Senate Intelligence Committee should investigate the CIA's assessment.

“We’re going to follow the regular order. It’s an important subject and we intend to review it on a bipartisan basis,” he said.

Z Man has this response:

The absurdity of the Russian hacking claims should be enough to put this story to bed long ago, but the media is run by the Cult so they are pumping air into this story every day. The Washington Post ran a fake news story with claims that the CIA has proof the Russians forced John Podesta to write all of those embarrassing e-mails that got released by WikiLeaks. Put another way, the people running the Post are willing to destroy what is left of their reputation to promote something they know is nonsense.

It is one thing for a campaign to cook up fake news in order to divert attention. The Clinton people were desperate to get their scandals out of the news so they made up the Russian hacking stuff. Politicians of all stripes do this sort of thing. LBJ used to accuse his opponents of horrible things, just so they would have to deny it. What the Left is engaging in now is an attempt to undermine public support of the political system. It’s as if they figure that if they can’t win, then everyone must lose.

What makes it especially suicidal is the obvious consequences, if their efforts actually succeeded. Let’s assume they are able to crack the Electoral College and overthrow the election. The result would be a constitutional crises. As Steve Sailer pointed out the other day, the people pushing for that should think about who would probably step into the crisis to impose order. The military is full of PC ninnies, but there are plenty of people in uniform that would like a shot at changing it. It is a safe bet that they did not vote for Clinton.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. Still, the public does notice that the people in charge are unwilling to abide by their own rules. To some degree, that is why Trump won the election. Corruption is just lawlessness among the ruling class and Trump promised to clean it up. If the ruling class appears to be throwing the rules aside in order to stop Trump, the public is going to begin to wonder why they are supporting the political system at all. Millennials are already on the fence about democracy.

None of this is to say the nation is staggering toward revolution or civil war. That seems unlikely at the present date, but the lesson of history is that things can spiral out of control quickly. The number one duty of every ruling elite is to maintain public support of the system that props up the ruling elite. Progressive attempts to kick the legs out from under the system could eventually work. The fact that they will be the first ones sent to the gallows does not seem to bother them. In fact, they probably long for it.

Pompeo for CIA!

Ace of Spades writes about Trump's pick for the CIA, Mike Pompeo.

I don't know much about Pompeo but he (along with Senator Tom Cotton) blasted the Obama Administration for its secret side-deals with Iran.

These deals granted Iran leeway and license that Obama hid from the American public -- see, Iran can know about the concessions Obama gave them, but American voters can't. It's a matter of national security, you see? Our enemies can know these things, but not American citizens.

Commenter illiniwek writes,

ompeo graduated first in his West Point class ...
he pointed out to Hillary (in her "testimony") that she took 100's of emails from Blumenthal on Benghazi, but the people actually working there couldn't get her attention.

Sounds like another winner for Trump and America.

Commenter Carol writes,

Mike Pompeo is a very smart guy...graduated first from West Point, served in military, Harvard Law (same law school class as Ted Cruz, but Mike is older cuz of years in military). Came back to Wichita and worked in private biz before starting his own successful company. Four term congressman. Went to Geneva in summer of 2015 with Sen. Tom Cotton and broke story on secret Iran deals. He's a bulldog...doesn't give up. Does the right thing because it's the right thing. Great for America!
Very excited, but now waiting to see who runs in necessary special election (Brownback can't appoint).

Read more here.

In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA

The LA Times calls this "Unintended Conflict." Read the story here.

CIA leaves explosive material in a school bus they were using as a training exercise

The Washington Post reports,

The CIA left “explosive training material” under the hood of a Loudoun County school bus after a training exercise last week, a bus that was used to ferry elementary and high school students to and from school on Monday and Tuesday with the material still sitting in the engine compartment, according to the CIA and Loudoun County officials.

Read more here.

IDF warns soldiers: Beware of CIA recruitment

The Jerusalem Post reports,

the information security department, part of the IDF's intelligence force, issued a call to its officers and soldiers to beware of recruitment attempts by the CIA.

The advisory called on soldiers to "be aware and report any unusual incidences."

The warning was issued to all officers and soldiers of the IDF.

Attached to the warning was an article from Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot chronicling a phenomenon circa 2012 in which post-army youngsters, upon arrival in the United States, were taken in for extensive questioning by American authorities in an attempt to recruit their services.

Read more here.

Benghazi warnings were clear. Hillary apologizes, but does not take responsibility.

I subscribe to Dick Morris's videos. He did one today on Hillary. He does not like that woman at all. He knows her very well, having been an adviser to Bill during the Clinton presidency. In today's video Morris explains Hillary's tactics in apologizing but not taking responsibility for the lack of security in Benghazi. Morris also explains that the warnings were clear as can be about al Qaeda's presence in Benghazi. Go here to watch the video.