Intelligence Corruption

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It’s hard to even say “Intelligence Corruption.” American Intelligence agencies have for decades been the most effective, most successful, most scandal-free of World Intelligence Agencies and have on the most part kept America safe. But in the last few years Americans are to their horror discovering that American Intelligence may not be so successful, may not be so effective, and certainly are NOT the most scandal-free of Intelligence Agencies across the Globe. For Americans, that is an unsettling thought — just one more thing about our government for which to be concerned.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Let’s start with the George H.W. Bush C.I.A. at a time when foreign intelligence information was purposely hidden from Americans — and not just the general public. Even members of Congress knew nothing or very little about operations in the Bush C.I.A. Bush (before he was “Bush 41”) ran an apparent corrupt C.I.A., rife with graft and corruption that included the funding of foreign militias and insurgents in countries around the world that smiled on drug smuggling, torture and murder used by these thugs to prop up their “worthy” causes, and even the overthrow of governments. How did you think the Bush family members obtained such close relationships with members of the Saudi Royal Family that are still in place even to this day? Bush protection and promotion of oil markets for the Saudi royals and, of course, “quid pro quo.”

Under Reagan it was the Iran Contra scandal that resulted in very public Congressional hearings, Reagan being caught in a “little white lie,” and Lt. Colonel Oliver North being convicted in the Contra Rebel scandal with guns from Iran.

Bill Clinton’s C.I.A. gave the President the opportunity to “do away” with Osama Bin Laden immediately following the first World Trade Center bombing. But Clinton passed on Bin Laden’s elimination. But the C.I.A. under Clinton experienced a horrendous scandal because of the exposure of a double agent. Aldrich Hazen Ames is a former C.I.A. officer turned KGB mole, who was convicted of espionage in 1994. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Ames was formerly a 31-year C.I.A. counterintelligence analyst who committed espionage against the U.S. by spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. At the time of his arrest, Ames had compromised more C.I.A. assets than any other mole in history.

It started getting worse at the C.I.A. in the George W. Bush (Bush “43”) White House. For four years, according to C.I.A. records, no one from the agency ever came to the Oval Office to give President Bush a full briefing on what was happening in the dark dungeons of Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. For four years, interrogators stripped, slammed and soaked their prisoners without the president’s being told exactly what was going on. By the time the C.I.A. director came in April 2006 to give Mr. Bush the agency’s first briefing about the interrogation techniques it had been using since 2002, more than three dozen prisoners had already been subjected to them. And when told about one detainee being chained to the ceiling of his cell, clothed in a diaper and forced to urinate and defecate on himself, even a president known for his dead-or-alive swagger “expressed discomfort,” according to a report released later.

“The C.I.A. repeatedly provided incomplete and inaccurate information to the White House,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded. Not only did the agency overstate the effectiveness of the interrogations in obtaining meaningful intelligence that could not be gained elsewhere,  but specific questions posed by White House officials “were not answered truthfully or fully.” Even to the extent that the President and his advisers understood the program, they kept other top administration figures out of the loop, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. An internal C.I.A. email from July 2003 said that the White House was “extremely concerned Powell would blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

In the Obama years, the big foreign intelligence occurrence was the “dismissal” by C.I.A. operatives of Osama Bin Laden. A handful of documents — some of which came from Bin Laden’s house — where released to the public by the Obama White House. That partial release was not a scandal at all, because those documents contained just a small trove of information. The real scandal was how Obama and his C.I.A. heads Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, John Brennan, and acting head Mike Morell released only what upheld and affirmed Obama’s theories about Iran. Had the U.S. public known about the Iranian leadership’s outreach and association with al Qaeda, even Democratic Congressmen might have been far less willing to tolerate the trust which Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry placed in their Iranian counterparts. After all, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the coordinating body for Iran’s security and defense policy, at a time when Iran was developing its al Qaeda outreach. Mike Pompeo when named C.I.A .Director released the additional documents previously kept hidden by Obama that revealed the damaging information about Obama and his minions. Let’s not forget the Edward Snowden scandal. Snowden today lives in exile in Russia after providing thousands of classified documents to Julian Asange who published for all the world to see.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Where to begin: J. Edgar Hoover’s reported extreme racist activities with his FBI’s intense surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Or his hatred for the Kennedy brothers — JFK and Robert — that began just because of their Catholic faith? For sake of time and space, let’s fast forward a bit.

Richard Nixon The FBI scandal during Nixon’s presidency was not one of the Bureau itself, but was uncovered by the number 2 man at the FBI — W. Mark Felt. He smelled a rat in the Nixon campaign and found a young reporter at the Washington Post to pass that information along to: Bob Woodward. Watergate was birthed and railroaded the Nixon presidency.

Ronald Reagan William Sessions, a former federal judge who took the FBI Director job under President Ronald Reagan in 1987 focused on white-collar crimes. Mr Sessions, however, violated bureau procedures and federal law by using FBI resources for personal trips and home improvements. After an in-depth internal ethics investigation, he sternly resisted six months of White House demands for his resignation. Sessions was retained until President Bill Clinton personally telephoned Sessions and fired him in July 1993.

George W. Bush Bush “43” appointed Robert Mueller as FBI Director in July of 2001 after his being Deputy Attorney General under Bush. Mueller received unanimous confirmation from the U.S. Senate. His service at FBI was remarkably without any serious scandals, although after the Boston Marathon bombing he admitted the FBI had received information about potential threats of terrorist violence from the older of the two brothers who activated the bombs.

Barack Obama retained Mueller’s services at the FBI. Amazingly, there were no reported real FBI scandals during those years. Mueller when he resigned as FBI Director gave Obama the strongest of recommendations to hire James Comey as his replacement. Obama did so. Comey served through the 2nd Obama term and into the first year of the Trump Administration. Then the “Scandal Bomb” at the FBI exploded.

• James Comey  On July 5, 2016, FBI Director Comey announced the bureau’s recommendation that the United States Department of Justice file no criminal charges relating to the Hillary Clinton email controversy. During an unusual 15 minute press conference in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Comey called Secretary Clinton’s and her top aides’ behavior “extremely careless,” but concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” On October 28, 2016, less than two weeks before the presidential election, Director Comey, a long-time Republican, announced in a letter to Congress that additional emails potentially related to the Clinton email controversy had been found and that the FBI will investigate “to determine whether they contain classified information as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” At the time Comey sent his letter to Congress, the FBI had still not obtained a warrant to review any of the e-mails in question and was not aware of the content of any of the e-mails in question.  After Comey’s letter to Congress, commentator Paul Callan of CNN and Niall O’Dowd of Irish Central compared Comey to J. Edgar Hoover in attempting to influence and manipulate elections. On November 6, 2016, in the face of constant pressure from both Republicans and Democrats, Comey conceded in a second letter to Congress that through the FBI’s review of the new e-mails, there was no wrongdoing by Clinton. On November 12, 2016, unsuccessful presidential candidate Hillary Clinton directly attributed her election loss to FBI Director James Comey.^[To quote many historians, political pundits, and many current and former intelligence officials, “we have just scratched the surface of FBI corruption under Obama.”
• On February 2, 2018, a four-page confidential memo by Republican House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, was released after being signed by President Trump. According to the memo, a dossier by Christopher Steele and opposition research firm Fusion GPS, was utilized by DOJ and FBI officials for FISA warrants to surveil Trump’s campaign member Carter Page. Additionally, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who resigned before the release of the memo, stated that the FISA warrant wouldn’t have been obtained without the information in the Steele dossier. It has been revealed that the Democrat National Committee and the Hillary Clinton Campaign paid through a D.C. law firm for the Steele dossier. And in NONE of the 4 FISA applications was the Clinton relationship with the production of the dossier revealed. All four FISA applications were signed by McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and former FBI Director James Comey.

Let’s summarize this latest FBI corruption with a summary list of James Comey lies:

1. Comey stated under oath he did not make the exoneration decision for Hillary’s transmission of classified information on that server until after she was questioned. Later it was proven he wrote the exoneration speech long before her interview;
2. Comey released some of his memos to a professor friend for that friend to release them to the Media. Comey stated none of the memos content was classified. That was later confirmed to be untrue;
3. There’s the claim Comey made when he issued his statement exonerating Clinton that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” That, too, was not true. As we noted in earlier writings here, “career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged;”
4. Comey testified that he briefed Trump about the salacious “dossier” before Trump was inaugurated because he’d learned that the media were about to report on it. But it was later proven that Comey briefed Trump for the express purpose of getting its embarrassing content out into the public. Since, as soon as that meeting was over, it leaked to the press;
5. In his Senate hearing, Comey was asked two questions by Senator Grassley: “Did you leak any FBI information to anyone in the press,” and “Did you authorize anyone to give information to the press.” To each Comey replied “No.” He lied under oath…..twice here. He gave his memos to his professor friend to leak to the Press. And Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe stated after he was fired that he (McCabe) was authorized to give information to the media and the he had done so. He further stated that Comey knew about his doing so and had approved — another lie.

Summary

For the sake of time, I will not detail any additional FBI corruption. But we all are aware of many more instances than these. But I am certain you get the message: the C.I.A. and the FBI have histories of corruption. Who pays the price for it all? The American people AND the Nation! For purely political purposes, leadership at both agencies have put themselves and that political purpose ahead of doing the right thing — which they committed to do in all circumstances while in office — which is to strictly serve the American people and keep bad people from hurting Americans and the Nation.

Both of these agencies are literally “in the tank.” I am not certain they can survive what we have seen in the last 2 years and what is certainly ahead as these current instances of corruption are dealt with. And apparently many more remain hidden still! No doubt there is more to come.

Regarding “more to come,” tomorrow we will look closely at a few other agency “players” and corruption there: the NSA, the DNI, the DOJ, Susan Rice, former Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder, and even former Obama UN Ambassador Samantha Powers.

Stay tuned….there’s a lot more to come in the coming days. And remember this: Candidate Donald Trump promised if elected, his job #1 was to “Drain the Swamp.”

It’s a big swamp with a bunch of bad creatures. His work is cut out for him.

 

 

 

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