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Ex-CIA Director “Grateful” for Deep State’s Role in Taking Down Trump; Pelosi Now Colluding to Change 2020 Results With Impeachment Probe

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Steve Scalise: Pelosi Using Impeachment Probe to Influence 2020 Presidential Election

By Breitbart. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) told reporters Thursday that House Democrat leaders are using the partisan impeachment inquiry to help decide who will be the next president of the United States, suggesting the probe will interfere with the 2020 elections.

While briefing reporters in the wake of the House Democrat’s approval, along party lines, of the impeachment inquiry resolution, Scalise declared:

If you look at where we are at right now, we’re at an important point in history. Clearly, there are people that we serve with that don’t like the results of the 2016 election — that’s their prerogative — but the country next year will be deciding who our president is going to be. It should not be Nancy Pelosi and a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who’s going to be our president.

He went on to say that Democrats are not interested in getting to the bottom of the allegations that triggered the impeachment effort. Instead, their focus is solely on removing President Donald Trump from office and overturning the results of the 2016 elections, Scalise indicated. . .

They don’t really want to get to the truth. They want to remove a sitting president. In fact, the author of the articles of impeachment [Democrat Rep. Al Green from Texas] said, ‘if they don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.’ Now that’s not why we have impeachment.

(Read more from “Steve Scalise: Pelosi Using Impeachment Probe to Influence 2020 Presidential Election” HERE)

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Ex-Acting CIA Boss Expresses Gratitude for ‘Deep State’ Involvement in Impeachment Inquiry

By Fox News. Former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin indicated on Wednesday that he was grateful for the “deep state’s” role in prompting the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

CBS reporter Margaret Brennan had noted to McLaughlin that the origin of the impeachment inquiry likely furthered Trump’s concerns about the “deep state”.

“There is something unique you have to agree that now that the impeachment inquiry is underway, sparked by a complaint from someone within the intelligence community, it feeds the president’s concern, an often-used term about a ‘deep state’ being there to take him out,” she said.

“Well, you know, thank God for the ‘deep state’,” McLaughlin responded, provoking laughter and applause. (Read more from “Ex-Acting CIA Boss Expresses Gratitude for ‘Deep State’ Involvement in Impeachment Inquiry” HERE)

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CIA ‘Rattled’ by DOJ Inquiry Into Russia Investigation Origins

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The Justice Department’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation created “unease” at the CIA, according to a reporter who has followed its progress.

Uncertainty over what investigators are seeking and whether the inquiry has become a criminal investigation has prompted some CIA analysts who played a role in the intelligence assessment of Russia’s activities during the 2016 campaign to hire lawyers.

“It’s really not clear where he’s going with this, but a lot of people are very rattled. Those CIA analysts I mentioned had to hire their own lawyers because no one’s even sure whether this is a criminal investigation or not. And if it is a criminal investigation, what is the allegation of wrongdoing? No one I talked to can answer that,” Ken Dilanian said on Monday’s episode of Morning Joe on MSNBC. . .

A similar report was published by the New York Times that notes President Trump granted Barr expansive powers for the inquiry, but Durham lacked subpoena power and could only request documents and interviews when he was tasked with the review earlier this year because a criminal investigation was not opened. The report also states, however, that it is unclear whether the status of the review has changed.

“There’s a lot of unease at the CIA and disquiet about the notion of federal prosecutors going over and rooting in their files,” Dilanian said. “Not because they think they did anything wrong, but because these are sources and methods — some of the most highly classified documents and secrets in our government. And they are kept to a small set of people for a reason. It’s a need-to-know situation. And they’re questioning what is the need for John Durham and his prosecutors to go over and talk to them about that in the absence of any allegation of wrongdoing?”

(Read more from “CIA ‘Rattled’ by DOJ Inquiry Into Russia Investigation Origins” HERE)

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‘Whistleblower’ Attorney Was Informant who Scuttled Trump’s Nominee for CIA Watchdog

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Andrew Bakaj, the attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, previously was a whistleblower witness whose public allegations scuttled the confirmation of the Trump administration’s nominee for CIA inspector general.

Bakaj’s original complaint against Trump’s nominee was filed with the office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Intelligence Community. The IG at the time was Chuck McCullough, who is currently working at Bakaj’s three attorney law firm representing the so-called whistleblower.

Like Bakaj, the so-called whistleblower against Trump also filed his “Disclosure of Urgent Concern form” with the IG for the intelligence community, albeit with the new IG, Michael Atkinson.

Bakaj founded the Compass Rose Legal Group, which is representing the central so-called whistleblower on the matter of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president. Bakaj confirmed that his law firm is also representing “multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General.”

Bakaj previously interned for Hillary Clinton and did work for other Democrats. At the CIA, Bakaj helped to develop a whistleblower reprisal investigation program. (Read more from “‘Whistleblower’ Attorney Was Informant Who Scuttled Trump’s Nominee for CIA Watchdog” HERE)

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Trump: CIA Whistleblower Committed Treason (AUDIO); DEEP STATE: Reports Point to the Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Being a CIA Agent

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By LA Times. President Trump expressed disgust Thursday morning with the explosive whistleblower complaint, slamming the intelligence officer and the White House aides who helped him as “almost a spy” and suggested it was treason.

Speaking at a private event with U.S. diplomatic officials in New York, Trump described reporters as “scum” and raged at the Democrats’ new impeachment proceedings, which were spurred by the whistleblower’s complaint alleging that Trump tried to strong-arm Ukraine’s leader to interfere in the 2020 election.

The still-unidentified intelligence officer acknowledged that he did not listen to Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but cited accounts from more than half a dozen White House and other officials over the last four months as part of “official interagency business.”

“Basically, that person never saw the report, never saw the call, he never saw the call — heard something and decided that he or she, or whoever the hell they saw — they’re almost a spy,” Trump said.

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” he continued. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.” (Read more from “Trump: CIA Whistleblower Committed Treason” HERE)

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DEEP STATE: Reports Point to the Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Being a CIA Agent

By Townhall. So, who is this Trump-Ukraine whistleblower? Yes, the identities of whistleblowers are protected, but we all know pieces about who these folks are trickles down to the press. This is the Trump White House. The liberal media hates the president. They will do anything to destroy him, even outing the identity of the CIA agent. The New York Times reported that three anonymous sources told them the whistleblower is a member of The Company, though of course, Langley didn’t comment and the legal team for this person said such reporting was “dangerous.” This agent was assigned to the White House (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:

The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.

The man has since returned to the C.I.A., the people said. Little else is known about him. His complaint made public Thursday suggested he was an analyst by training and made clear he was steeped in details of American foreign policy toward Europe, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of Ukrainian politics and at least some knowledge of the law.

The whistle-blower’s expertise will likely add to lawmakers’ confidence about the merits of his complaint, and tamp down allegations that he might have misunderstood what he learned about Mr. Trump. He did not listen directly to a July call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that is at the center of the political firestorm over the president’s mixing of diplomacy with personal political gain.

(Read more from “Deep State: Reports Point to the Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Being a CIA Agent” HERE)

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Kellyanne Conway Blasts Ukraine Call ‘Leaker’: ‘I Hope You’re Watching’

By Fox News. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has taken aim at the unnamed “leaker” who raised concerns about President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Conway said whoever it was who proceeded to share information with the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint led to the current firestorm was hopefully tuned in to “The Story” when she appeared on Thursday evening.

“The whistleblower is someone who does not have firsthand knowledge of what happened,” she said, calling the individual “more blowhard than whistleblower.”

“I don’t consider them to be spies, but anybody who leaks conversations that are classified or are of national security sensitivity ought not to be working in the government — whoever you are — and I hope you’re watching, whoever you are.”

Conway continued to slam the anonymous person who was the purported conduit connecting the details of the phone call with the whistleblower. (Read more from “Kellyanne Conway Blasts Ukraine Call ‘Leaker’: ‘I Hope You’re Watching'” HERE)

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Kim Jong Un’s Assassinated Brother Was Supposedly a CIA Informant

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Kim Jong Un’s half-brother was working as a CIA informant before he was brazenly murdered in a Malaysian airport in 2017, according to a report Monday.

Kim Jong Nam, the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, “met on several occasions with agency operatives,” according to the report in The Wall Street Journal. . .

Little else is known about what Kim Jong Un’s older brother told the feds; however, the report did state he “was almost certainly in contact with security services of other countries, particularly China’s.” . . .

A Vietnamese woman tried in the case of Kim’s death was released from a Malaysian prison and returned to her native country earlier this month. Doan Thi Huong, the last suspect who’d been in custody after being charged in the death of Kim Jong Nam with VX nerve agent, said at the airport that “the case has come to a complete end.” . . .

In March, the Malaysian attorney general stunningly dropped the murder charge against Aisyah, following high-level lobbying from Jakarta. Huong sought to be acquitted after her co-defendant was freed, but prosecutors rejected her request. (Read more from “Kim Jong Un’s Assassinated Brother Was Supposedly a CIA Informant” HERE)

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Al-Qaeda Still Using CIA-Provided Missiles in Syria

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Video posted online Monday shows the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), using U.S.-supplied TOW missiles in its ongoing campaign against Assad regime forces in the northern province of Idlib. The video was published by Ebaa News, with claims that the target was a group of Syrian soldiers:

The incident took place in Abu Duhur, and the video claims that eight soldiers were killed. The missile appears to be a BGM-71D/E TOW of the variety that the CIA had provided to “vetted” Syrian groups prior to July 2017.

The spillage of weapons provided by the CIA and the Pentagon to so-called “moderate” rebel forces in Syria, only to fall into the hands of terrorist groups like HTS and ISIS, was perhaps the most predictable outcome of the civil war. One of the first actions taken by the Trump administration two years ago was to halt the CIA weapons program, which prompted many of the U.S.-backed groups to flock to al-Qaeda. The CIA program supporting the Syrian “rebels” was shut down entirely in July 2017. When President Trump shut down the program, both the Washington Post and the New York Times claimed that the move would aid Russia:

Now, it seems clear that the ultimate beneficiaries of the CIA weapons program lamented by the American media were al-Qaeda and ISIS. (Read more from “Al-Qaeda Still Using CIA-Provided Missiles in Syria” HERE)

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Questions About the Huge CIA Blunder That Allowed Enemies to Kill 70 U.S. Spies

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More than 70 foreign nationals working as spies for the CIA in Iran and China were systematically identified and slaughtered in the past decade, due to a ridiculously weak web-based system the CIA used to communicate with foreign assets it couldn’t reach directly. This according to a devastating November 2 report in Yahoo News written by journalists Zach Dorfman and Jenna McLaughlin (center-left, but generally trustworthy).

Although the Iranian roll-up occurred in 2011, and the Chinese rout occurred from 2010 to 2012, the CIA did not remedy the root cause of the problem in its transient messaging scheme until 2013, when Yahoo reports teams of co-opted staffers worked around the clock to dismantle the compromised system.

Based on at least one analysis, it looks like a simple internet search using the command “InURL” and other readily available search tools revealed to Iranian and Chinese intelligence agencies a network of interconnected web sites that ultimately led back to CIA official servers. Iranian intelligence appears to be the first to have discovered and used the easy exploit, so simple as to be hardly describable as a hack, then passed the methodology on to others. . .

Have tried and true, centuries-old spycraft behaviors such as dead drops, brush passes, cypher pads, and the like been adapted and put in place in a modern setting? How anybody can be stupid enough to place the personal identities of spies for the United States in an electronic directory in the first place beggars the understanding. We don’t need to know the exact details, but has this practice been nixed and something better put in place? . . .

This is an agency that seems lately given to fantasy and bureaucratic truculence, especially for its role in the idiotic Russia collusion imbroglio. Did former director Mike Pompeo address any of these issues during his tenure? Most of all, can we trust that current director and CIA lifer Gina Haspel has gotten rid of the fools who set up, maintained, and defended the horrific transient communication system, and gotten rid of the knaves who ignored and hounded the stalwart Reidy out of a job? (Read more from “Questions About the Huge CIA Blunder That Allowed Enemies to Kill 70 U.S. Spies” HERE)

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Largest in History: Ex-CIA Engineer Charged With Massive Leak to Wikileaks

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By Politico. A former CIA computer engineer has been indicted on charges he masterminded what appears to be the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency’s history.

Joshua Schulte, 29, was charged in a new grand jury indictment with providing WikiLeaks with a massive trove of U.S. government hacking tools that the online publisher posted in March 2017, the Justice Department announced on Monday.

Schulte was previously facing child pornography charges in federal court in New York, but the indictment broadens the case to accuse him of illegally gathering classified information, damaging CIA computers, lying to investigators and numerous other offenses.

In January, attorneys involved in the child porn case revealed in court that Schulte was the target of a major investigation into WikiLeaks’ release of a CIA collection known as “Vault 7.” (Read more from “Largest in History: Ex-CIA Engineer Charged With Massive Leak to Wikileaks” HERE)

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Ex-CIA Worker Charged for Massive Leak of ‘Vault 7’ Hacking Tools to Wikileaks

By South China Morning Post. A former employee in the CIA’s cyber-spying operation was indicted Monday on charges of leaking hacking tools to WikiLeaks in one of the most damaging of the agency’s breaches in recent years.

Joshua Schulte, 29, was charged with leaking unspecified information on the Central Intelligence Agency’s intelligence-gathering capabilities to a group identified only as “Organisation-1”, which then released the information on the internet.

While the indictment gave no other details, in earlier filings Schulte’s lawyer indicated the investigation involved the leak to WikiLeaks of the “Vault 7” collection of hacking tools, malware, viruses, trojans, and “zero day” exploits which comprised the CIA’s most valuable tools for tapping into adversaries’ computers.

WikiLeaks began releasing the 8,761 documents from Vault 7 in March 2017, embarrassing the agency and providing professional and amateur hackers around the world with the same tools that US spies used. (Read more from “Ex-CIA Worker Charged for Massive Leak of ‘Vault 7’ Hacking Tools to Wikileaks” HERE)

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U.S. Identifies Suspect in Major CIA Leak

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The U.S. government has identified a suspect in the leak last year of a large portion of the CIA’s computer hacking arsenal, the cyber tools the agency had used to conduct espionage operations overseas, according to interviews and public documents . . .

Joshua Adam Schulte, who worked for a CIA group that designs computer code to spy on foreign adversaries, is believed to have provided the agency’s top-secret information to WikiLeaks, federal prosecutors acknowledged in a hearing in January. The anti-secrecy group published the code under the label “Vault 7” in March 2017. It was one of the most significant and potentially damaging leaks in the CIA’s history, exposing secret cyber weapons and spying techniques that also might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials . . .

Federal authorities searched Schulte’s apartment in New York last year and obtained a personal computer equipment, notebooks, and hand-written notes according to a copy of the search warrant reviewed by The Washington Post. But that failed to provide the evidence that prosecutors needed to indict Schulte with illegally giving the information to WikiLeaks.

“Those search warrants haven’t yielded anything that is consistent with [Schulte’s] involvement in that disclosure,” Matthew Laroche, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, said at a hearing on Jan. 8, according to a court transcript. (Read more from “U.S. Identifies Suspect in Major CIA Leak” HERE)

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CIA Interrogator Sends Whoopi Goldberg a Warning After She Suggests Trump Be Waterboarded

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The former CIA agent who interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed warned Whoopi Goldberg against suggesting that President Donald Trump undergo waterboarding before he passes judgement on it, telling Fox News that the president might conclude it isn’t torture and that it works during interrogation.

Dr. James Mitchell, appearing Saturday on “Fox & Friends,” was responding to remarks made by “The View” host earlier in the week as she discussed Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, who’s come under fire for her part in the George W. Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. . .

“I think people who have actually been tortured who are saying this is not a good thing, you should listen to them because you have never been tortured,” she added in a nod to Sen. John McCain, who suffered torture as a POW during the Vietnam War and has opposed Haspel’s nomination.

Cheney told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo last week that he felt the enhanced interrogation program — which included waterboarding — should be restarted. While Trump had been a supporter of restarting waterboarding during the 2016 campaign, he backed off at the urging of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who opposes the tactic . . .

“Honestly, who cares what Whoopi Goldberg thinks?” Mitchell said of the talk-show host. “You know, I’m tempted to just completely dismiss it, but on second thought, maybe she could show us how it’s done. (Read more from “CIA Interrogator Sends Whoopi Goldberg a Warning After She Suggests Trump Be Waterboarded” HERE)

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