Following the resignation of General Michael Flynn, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich reveals that a deeper game is underway in Washington (Fox News, Feb 14, 2017):
Excerpts from Dennis Kucinich’s interview:
The White House, whether you’re for Trump or against Trump, is under attack from elements inside the intelligence community which are trying to elevate tensions between Russia and the United States. And at the bottom of that is money and an agenda for somebody to cash in on conflict between the US and Russia at any level.
What’s going on in the intelligence community with this new president is unprecedented. They are making every effort to up-end him. Who knows what the truth is anymore? This is like the electronic version of Mad Magazine: spy versus spy. …The bottom line is: we should not start a cold war again with Russia. The American people forked over billions of dollars for the last one and changed the quality of life in this country. There’s something wrong going on here in the intelligence community.
I want to remind the viewers and all those who are on the panel, that in the closing months of the Obama administration they put together a deal with Russia to create peace in Syria. A few days later, a military strike in Syria killed a hundred Syrian soldiers and that ended the agreement. …Inside the intelligence community and the Pentagon there was a deliberate effort to sabotage an agreement the White House made. This is like Deep State. This is like some kind of a spy novel. But it’s real and the American people have to understand that a game is being played with the security of our country.
The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn (Bloomberg View, Feb 14, 2017)
Excerpts from the Bloomberg View article:
It’s not even clear that Flynn lied. He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence.
One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That’s neither illegal nor improper.
It’s very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.
Flynn was a fat target for the national security state. He has cultivated a reputation as a reformer and a fierce critic of the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the director the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. Flynn was working to reform the intelligence-industrial complex, something that threatened the bureaucratic prerogatives of his rivals.
Eavesdropping on Michael Flynn (Wall Street Journal, Feb 13, 2017)
Excerpts from the WSJ article:
Did U.S. spooks have a court order to listen to his conversations? Why?
U.S. intelligence services routinely get orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor foreign officials. But under U.S. law, when they get those orders they are supposed to use “minimization” procedures that don’t let them listen to the communications of Americans who may be caught in such eavesdropping.
That is, they are supposed to protect the identity and speech of innocent Americans. Yet the Washington Post, which broke the story, says it spoke to multiple U.S. officials claiming to know what Mr. Flynn said on that call.
The questions someone in the White House should ask the National Security Agency is why it didn’t use minimization procedures to protect Mr. Flynn? Or did it also have a court order to listen to Mr. Flynn, and how did it justify that judicial request?
NSA Whistleblower: Agency ‘Absolutely’ Tapping Trump’s Calls (Breitbart, Feb 15, 2017)
Excerpts from the Breitbart article:
William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official turned whistleblower, contended in an exclusive interview today that the National Security Agency (NSA) is “absolutely” monitoring the phone calls of President Donald Trump.
Binney was an architect of the NSA’s surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when he resigned on October 31, 2001 after spending more than 30 years with the agency.
Asked whether he believes the NSA is tapping Trump, Binney replied: “Absolutely. How did they get the phone call between the president and the president of Australia? Or the one that he made with Mexico? Those are not targeted foreigners.”
Binney further contended the NSA may have been behind a data leak that might have revealed that Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, allegedly misled Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials about the contents of his phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.
Wilkerson says Flynn was not competent to serve as National Security Advisor (MSNBC, Feb 14, 2017)
Wilkerson is an important voice on what is happening. Amateur hour is compounding the problems.