John Brennan : Just an Obama Political Hack

PROGRESSIVE NOISE ABOUT THE REVOCATION OF JOHN BRENNAN'S SECURITY CLEARANCE. Is deafening. But it is all politically motivated and wrong. • • • FIRST, THE FACTS. On August 15, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a statement from President Trump announcing that the administration is revoking former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. Sanders read the statement from President Trump, saying the President has a constitutional responsibility to protect classified information. Several other former and current officials are being considered for having their clearances revoked : James Clapper, James Comey, Susan Rice, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, and others. Sanders said they are willing to consider reviewing any security clearance as they deem necessary. • Here is President Trump's Statement : "As the head of the Executive Branch and Commander in Chief, I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information. Including by controlling access to it. Today, in fulfilling that responsibility, I have decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Historically, former heads of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been allowed to retain access to classified information after their government service so that they can consult with their successors regarding matters about which they may have special insights and as a professional courtesy. Neither of these justifications supports Mr. Brennan’s continued access to classified information. First, at this point in my administration, any benefits that senior officials might glean from consultations with Mr. Brennan, are not outweighed by the risks posed by his erratic conduct and behavior. Second, that conduct and behavior has tested and far exceeded the limits of any professional courtesy that may have been due to him. Mr. Brennan has a history that calls in to question his objectivity and credibility. In 2014, for example, he denied to Congress that CIA officials under his supervision had improperly accessed the computer files of congressional staffers. He told the Council on Foreign Relations that the CIA would never do such a thing. The CIA’s Inspector General however contradicted Mr. Brennan directly, concluding unequivocally that agency officials had indeed improperly accessed congressional staffers files. More recently, Mr. Brennan told Congress that the intelligence community did not make use of the so-called Steele Dossier in an assessment regarding the 2016 election, an assertion contradicted by at least two other senior officials in the intelligence community, and all of the facts. Additionally, Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations, wild outbursts on the internet and television about this administration. Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries which is to sow division and chaos. More broadly, the issue of Mr. Brennan’s security clearance raises larger questions about the practice of former officials maintaining access to our nation’s most sensitive secrets long after their time in government has ended. Such access is particularly inappropriate when former officials have transitioned into highly partisan positions and seek to use real or perceived access to sensitive information to validate their political attacks. Any access granted to our nation’s secrets should be in furtherance of national, not personal interest. For this reason I have begun to review the more general question of the access to classified information by government officials. As part of this review I am evaluating action with respect to the following individuals : James Clapper, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr. Security clearances for those who still have them may be revoked and those who have already lost their security clearance may not be able to have it reinstated. It is for the forgoing reasons that I have exercised my constitutional authority to deny Mr. Brennan access to classified information and I will direct appropriate staff of the National Security Council to make the necessary arrangements with the appropriate agencies to implement this determination." • • • DEFENSE SECRETARY GENERAL JIM MATTIS SPELLS IT OUT. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed solidarity with President Trump’s stripping of former Obama CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance earlier in the week. Mattis told Pentagon reporters traveling with him in South America : “All I can tell you is, I have taken security clearances away from people in my previous time in uniform, and a security clearance is something that is granted on an as-needed basis.” • Mattis's comment came in response to a question about what he thought of former intelligence officials denouncing the President for stripping Brennan’s security clearance. • • • ADMIRAL McRAVEN GETS IT ALL WRONG. Earlier in the week, retired Navy Admiral Bill McRaven published a letter criticizing the President for stripping Brennan’s security clearance and asking him to take away his as well. It was a shocking attack on the President from a man who had been the ninth commander of the United States Joint Special Operations Command from August 8, 2011, to August 28, 2014, and the man who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Admiral McRaven said in his statement : "Dear Mr. President : Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him. Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency. Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs. A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself. Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation. If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be." • The leftist Daily Beast published a long article about Admiral McRaven when he retired from the Navy. In the article, Kimberly Dozier wrote that "the Special Ops Commander swears: I won’t be Hillary's VP. He commanded the bin Laden raid -- and expanded US commandos’ global footprint. Now Admiral Bill McRaven is leaving the military. He promises -- promises -- that politics won’t be next." Dozier's article paints McRaven as "a somewhat bewildered man -- surprised, stymied, and in some cases burned by the fame and notoriety that launched his three years there, as the military commander of the 2011 raid that killed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. His fame and the public respect for his role was such that multiple special operations officials say he was even approached as a possible vice presidential candidate for the as-yet-undeclared Hillary Clinton presidential campaign -- something he openly denies ever happened. But the rumors persist throughout special operations circles even as he accepted a top post with the University of Texas. 'I am not running with Hillary,' he said forcefully when last asked this past spring -- a statement reiterated by his spokesman this summer. Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill responded Thursday with one word to an emailed query : 'Rumors.' " • The Daily Beast called Admiral McRaven's "Texas-sized frame, southern drawl and knack for working a room of a dozen or two thousand -- and also to the larger role his troops have played as special operations has quietly expanded its presence to fight Islamic militants worldwide...the go-to force for the Obama White House, with hundreds deployed in the past few months to work with Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting the onslaught of the militant Islamic State." But, the Daily Beast also quoted OBama Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who portrayed McRaven as leading "a community transitioning from its essential role in the post-9/11 wars to confronting the next generation of challenges -- dynamic, dispersed, and networked." According to the Daily Beast : "In most ways, McRaven was exactly the right man for the job of running U.S. Special Operations Command. His counterterrorism credentials were ideal for the mop-up operations of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, at least as the operation was then perceived before the near-meteoric rise of Islamic extremist groups in Africa, Syria and Iraq. In other ways, he was miscast, the consummate action man, combat commander and blunt speaker wedging himself into a role that required the political skills of an ambassador with the emotional intelligence of a psychologist, and sometimes, the underhandedness of a spy. He had set for himself the tall task of shaking up how special operations does business, trying to streamline everything from the way the command speaks to Capitol Hill to the way its top commander speaks to his far-flung officers overseas.He ran straight into the buzz saw of congressional egos, interagency earls defending their fiefdoms against his alleged overreach, and even the naysayers in his own ranks who quietly fought against his initiatives, poisoning them with a phone call to key congressional or Pentagon staffers. Sometimes, the calls pointed out areas McRaven's team was genuinely pushing legal bounds, but more often, they were simply pointing out areas where the four-star SEAL’s plans might steal influence from another organization, or rob a lawmaker of jobs in his district by moving a large facility." The Daily Beast wrote that : "McRaven's own reputation took a bashing early own when the administration got slammed for telling the story of the Bin Laden raid, accused by Republican critics of using the operation for political gain. They blamed him as the source for a slew of articles detailing the raid, and claimed he'd ordered his officers to cooperate with the producer and scriptwriter of the film Zero Dark Thirty....The admiral said openly that he was simply trying to use the raid to convince administration leaders and legislators that special operations was the way ahead, especially in a time of trimmed budgets and a war weary public that was tired of watching all-out combat on cable news. In retrospect, McRaven conceded privately to friends that maybe he was too open, said too much, appeared too often and even trusted some members of his own team too much, according to current and former US special operations officers who worked on or were briefed on his initiatives." • For a man who understood what Special Operations needed for effective communication -- he was the commander who made it possible for special operations personnel to talk directly to each other and not have to go through regular military command -- Bill McRaven certainly missed the boat when he spoke out not only against the Brennan security clearance revocation but against the President, criticizing him in ways that are thoroughly political and have no place in the public statements of high-ranking military officers, active or retired. McRaven insisted in 2014 that he would not be Hillary's running mate, but he nonetheless introduced her and spoke for her during the run-up to the 2016 election. McRaven is violating the norm of civil-military behavior in trying to defend the Obama and Hillary stalwart John Brennan -- who has long played both sides of the intel-political line : wanting the glory of being beyond politics but using his position as CIA Director to advance his politics, first as an Obama surrogate in 2008, and then as CIA Director, where he was overtly political, misleading or lying to Congress about CIA staff actions. For Admiral McRaven to defend John Brennan by saying to the President that Brennan is "one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him" is a fundamentally flawed view of a man who is at best partisan and political when he should have been above the political fray as CIA Director. • As Churchill said : "Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required." And in this case -- as Navy SEA Leader Admiral McRaven should know better than almost any other American -- defending the integrity of the security clearance process and choosing to represent the need for intelligence leaders who are not political but patriotically American was what was required. Was Admiral McRaven 'had' by Progressive friends and advisors...was he naive...deluded by the ProgDem cabal...arrogant??? Is McRaven so sure of his position that he was willing to attack a President he obviously does not support by tossing aside the Steele Dossier, Fusion GPS, the FBI, DOJ, Clapper and Brennan lies, Strzok, Ohr, Comey, Rosenstein, Mueller and heaven knows what else that McRaven has access to because of his own security clearance. • • • PROGRESSIVES RUN TO BRENNAN'S AID -- BUT THE PUSHBACK IS MAJOR. After President Trump revoked his security clearance, John Brennan tweeted that his “principles are worth far more than clearances.” To which Benghazi hero Kris “Tanto” Paronto had a stinging answwer for Brennan. Conservative Tribune at Western Journal published an article last Friday about Kris Paronto, saying : "He’s a retired Army Ranger and a Benghazi Hero. Kris Paronto has proven he doesn’t put up with guff from anyone, and former CIA Director John Brennan just learned the hard way that that also applies to social media. Brennan has been busy bashing President Donald Trump, as per usual, and claimed that being stripped of his no-longer- necessary security clearance is somehow Trump attempting 'to suppress freedom of speech (and) punish critics.' Please note that while Brennan is making this claim, he is still freely speaking and criticizing Trump. On social media and television. In response, Paronto fired off a tweet at Brennan that shone a very bright spotlight onto Brennan’s tweet-mentioned 'principles.' In his sights was the horror show of what happened in the aftermath of Benghazi : '@KrisParonto. My principles are greater than clearances too John, especially when you and the @CIA kool-aid drinkers punished us for not going along with the Benghazi cover-up story in order to protect you, @HillaryClinton ‘s & @BarackObama ‘s failures. You put your politics before us.' " And, when Brennan tweeted : "@JohnBrennan. What responsible & right-thinking adult can point to @realDonaldTrump as a role model for our youth? Whenever he spews lies, insults, and polarizing hate speech against fellow Americans, think of its harmful impact on our young people and the way they talk, act, & treat others." Paronto fired off a direct hit : "@KrisParonto. Don’t you worry your pretty balding head about the youth John. As long as they’re Servicemen, Servicewomen and law enforcement out there who are willing to sacrifice their lives for others there are plenty of role models out there better than @KingJames or lying @CIA directors." Then, when Representative Jim Jordan tweeted about the security-clearance-stripping faux-scandal : "@Jim_Jordan. Why should FBI and DOJ officials keep their security clearance when they're fired or caught leaking? Of course they should lose their clearance" Paronto took aim at Brennan again, tweeting : "@KrisParonto...Or caught lying to Congress OR caught spying on Pres. candidates OR caught using their positions to influence US elections OR caught fabricating stories about attacks on US personnel in Libya OR providing weapons to ISIS backed militias in Syria ..should I go on @JohnBrennan?" BUT, the whammy came when The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis tweeted about Brennan’s “principles” in action, Pa&ronto tweeted : "@seanmdav. John Brennan was CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers were bombed. He was deputy exec. director of the agency on 9/11. He was CIA chief of staff during the Iraq WMD debacle. And he ran the CIA when it spied on Congress (which he lied about under oath)....But the left wing elitist feels it necessary to lecture conservatives, including the President, about honor & integrity. @JohnBrennan #NoHonor #NoIntegrity #Leftisthack." Canada Free Press says that : "Much of what has been claimed about Brennan in the tweets can be verified through news reports, government hearing records and other authoritative sources. While Paronto has strong reason to not be a fan of Brennan, his criticism of the man might not be only fueled by his personal experience. Paronto is also not the only hero taking aim at Brennan in recent days, either. Navy SEAL Robert J. O’Neill, known as the killer of terrorist kingpin Osama Bin Laden, has also taken his turn. When Obama lackey Ben Rhodes called Brennan the 'point person' responsible for Bin Laden’s demise, O’Neill understandably objected to the claim. Brennan just can’t quite seem to catch a break. And the more he and his fans keep trying to cast him as a hero to our nation and a victim of Trump, the more likely it is that he won’t catch a break any time soon, either." You can read the full artricle at < westernjournal.com/ct/benghazi-hero-kris-paronto-john-brennan/ >. • Kris Paronto had company in attacking the integrity of John Brennan. • National Security Advisor John Bolton says it was President Trump's decision to revoke former CIA Director Brennan's security clearance, but added in his Sunday interview on ABC : "It was my view at the time that Brennan and others in the Obama administration were politicizing intelligence. I think that is a very dangerous thing to do.” • But, retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Fox News Sunday : "I think John's an extraordinary servant of the country, but I think he has been incredibly critical of the President, and I think that has put him in a political place which actually does more damage for the intelligence community -- which is apolitical." We note that Brennan had publicly accused President Trump of "treason" after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer in Helsinki, Finland, and he has repeatedly lambasted Trump with Twitter posts that critics have charged improperly hint at classified insider information about the ongoing Russia probe. However, Mullen added that Trump's decision to revoke Brennan's security clearance last week raised significant concerns : "For someone of my age, it brings back the whole concept of the 'enemies list' under President Nixon. And even before that, in the early 1950s, the McCarthy era -- where the administration starts putting together lists of individuals who don't agree with them." [It must be something in the water at Annapolis that makes Admirals get things so lopsidedly wrong.] • Also speaking to Fox News Sunday, Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Ron Johnson criticized Brennan's political comments, but suggested an alternative to yanking his clearance : "John Brennan really did cross the line. He's one of the leaders of the resistance movement....I understand President Trump's frustration," Johnson said, noting that Brennan began harshly criticizing the President as soon as he took office. Senator Johnson added that former officials with security clearances aren't automatically entitled to view classified information : "The best way of handling this, in any administration, is : If you don’t want to consult with somebody, you don’t necessarily have to yank their security clearance. Just don’t give them access to the classified material." • President Trump's Saturday tweet took care of any GOP elite idea about trying to 'save' Brennan's security clearance while denying him access to classified material : "@realDonaldTrump. Has anyone looked at the mistakes that John Brennan made while serving as CIA Director? He will go down as easily the WORST in history & since getting out, he has become nothing less than a loudmouth, partisan, political hack who cannot be trusted with the secrets to our country!" • By far, the James Clapper comment noted by the Daily Caller was the 'unkindest cut.' James Clapper was director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, so his criticism of former CIA Director Brennan on Sunday, saying that his former colleague’s anti-Trump rhetoric has become “an issue in and of itself” was devastating. When CNN's Jake Tapper asked Clapper : "Do you think that John Brennan’s hyperbole is an issue here, is one of the reasons we’re having this crisis?” Clapper responded : "I think it is. John is sort of like a freight train and he’s gonna say what’s on his mind. John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself.” But, true to his Obama-Progressive self, despite his criticism, Clapper was among 12 former intelligence community officials who issued a letter on Thursday in support of Brennan. The letter said : “You don’t have to agree with what John Brennan says (and, again, not all of us do) to agree with his right to say it, subject to his obligation to protect classified information,” the retired officials wrote. • We note again that Brennan is still talking and there is no rein being put on his right to free speech. • • • BRENNAN'S POSITION. On Sunday, Brennan denied that he has improperly traded on his access to classified information to trash Trump, telling NBC's Meet the Press that "I don’t believe I’m being political at all....If my clearances and my reputation as I’m being pulled through the mud now -- if that’s the price we’re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it’s a small price to pay. I’m going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future, and if it means going to court, I will do that." • But, it appears that even when defending himself, Brennan cannot get the facts right. He also told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that he learned since retiring that Russians began hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails on the day Donald Trump joked about it in July 2016. Breitbartl says that the problem is that the widely-cited claim is untrue -- a piece of “fake news” evidence, drawn from one of the indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, that has fueled unfounded theories that Trump colluded with the Russians during the presidential election. Breitbart wrote : "Todd asked Brennan to respond to a statement by Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who challenged him to produce whatever new evidence he had discovered. Brennan referred to 'the fact that Donald Trump, when he was the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, when he called publicly on the Russians to find Hillary’s emails, I didn’t realize when I was CIA director it was that very night that Russian intelligence went after her emails.' That is based on the dates in Mueller’s indictment in July of 12 Russian nationals for hacking during the 2016 election, which indicated that 'on or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after-hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.' However, the first attempts to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails actually occurred in March 2016, not July 2016, according to the Associated Press -- though those initial attempts may not yet have been directly linked to any criminal indictments. The fact that Brennan continues to cite mainstream media mistakes -- including the erroneous interpretation of Trump’s joke as some kind of signal to Russia -- suggests that he has also swallowed the media’s pronounced anti-Trump bias. His reference to additional facts may simply refer to a narrative -- or, less charitably, a conspiracy theory -- that the media have recycled in an effort to keep suspicions of Russian collusion alive despite the failure of law enforcement or intelligence services to substantiate them." • • • ANDREW McCARTHY EXPLAINS WHO BRENNAN REALLY IS. But, it was National Review's Andrew McCarthy who put John Brennan in his place. On Monday, McCarthy wrote : "Brennan’s tweets about Trump are objectively outrageous....Brennan...speaks out in a nod-and-a-wink manner, the undercurrent of which is that if he could only tell you the secrets he knows, you’d demand Trump’s impeachment forthwith. Indeed, “undercurrent” is probably the wrong word : Brennan, after all, has expressly asserted that our 'treasonous' President is “wholly in the pocket of Putin” and has “exceed[ed] the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Such demagoguery would be beneath any former CIA director, but it is especially indecorous in Brennan’s situation. There are ongoing investigations and trials. Brennan’s own role in the investigation of the Trump campaign is currently under scrutiny, along with such questions as whether the Obama administration put the nation’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Clinton campaign, and why an unverified dossier (a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project) was presented to the FISA court in order to obtain surveillance warrants against an American citizen. Until these probes have run their course, Brennan should resist the urge to comment, especially in ways that implicate his knowledge of classified matters. Quite apart from the ongoing investigations, there is considerable evidence that intelligence was rampantly politicized on Brennan’s watch as CIA director and, before that, Obama’s homeland-security advisor. For example, Obama-administration national-security officials deceptively downplayed weapons threats posed by Syria, Iran, and North Korea. As The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes notes, Brennan directed the CIA to keep under wraps the vast majority of documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, precisely because that information put the lie to Obama-administration narratives about a “decimated” al-Qaeda, the moderation of Iran, and general counterterrorism success. (Since this week’s craze is the Trump administration’s use of non-disclosure agreements, we should add Hayes’s reporting that Brennan’s CIA presented NDAs to survivors of the Benghazi terrorist attack -- at a memorial service for those killed during the siege -- in order to silence them while the Obama administration’s indefensible performance was being investigated.) In 2015, over 50 intelligence analysts complained that their reports on ISIS and al-Qaeda were being altered by senior officials in order to support misleading Obama-administration storylines. Brennan himself was instrumental in the administration’s submission to the demands of Islamist organizations that information about sharia-supremacist ideology be purged from the training of security officials. That last decision flowed logically from Brennan’s absurd insistence that the Islamic concept of “jihad” refers merely to a 'holy struggle' to 'purify oneself or one’s community.' It’s as if there were no other conceivable interpretation of a tenet that, as the late, great Bernard Lewis observed, is doctrinally rooted in the imperative of forcible conquest -- which is exactly how millions and millions of fundamentalist Moslems, including those who threaten the United States, understand it. Airbrushing sharia-supremacist ideology in order to appease an administration’s Islamist allies may be fit work for political consultants; it ill suits a director of central intelligence. Brennan, moreover, has proved himself irresponsible and untrustworthy. In 2014, when it first surfaced that his CIA had hacked into the computer system of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff investigating the agency’s enhanced-interrogation program, Brennan indignantly denied the allegation. 'Nothing could be further from the truth,' he insisted. 'I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.' Of course, it was the truth. An inspector-general probe established that the hacking had, in fact, occurred. And not just that; as the New York Times reported, CIA officials who were involved in spying on the Senate committee maintained that their actions 'were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan.' Brennan eventually apologized to senior committee senators. Then he handpicked an 'accountability board' to investigate the matter. As I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn, Brennan used the pendency of the accountability board’s examination as a pretext to avoid answering Congress’s questions; then the board dutifully whitewashed the matter, recommending that no one be disciplined. • • • DEAR READERS, shortly after former President Obama's CIA Director John Brennan seemed to promise a lawsuit after President Donald Trump revoked his security clearance for “erratic conduct and behavior,” Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that he relished the opportunity to question the former CIA director under oath. Giuliani said : “We’ll take his deposition right away. As the plaintiff he’d have to go first. I’d volunteer to do that case for the President. I’d love to have Brennan under oath for I don’t know how many days -- two, three days? We’ll find out about Brennan.” Giuliani went on to suggest that he would question Brennan about alleged intelligence failures that took place under his leadership, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, a terror attack that killed 19 US servicemen while he was CIA station chief in Riyadh. Giuliani also alluded to Brennan’s 1976 vote for the Communist Party USA’s presidential candidate, Gus Hall. • As so often, Rudy Giuliani calls the Progressives to order. He takes no prisoners when he dares them to put themselves under oath and submit to cross examination. John Brennan will not sue President Trump, any more than Admiral McRaven or Admiral Mullen will. We Deplorables can take it to the bank that President Trump and his national security advisors know their business better than Brennan ever did. At the end of the day, John Brennan was just another Obama political hack.