Is John Brennan Exploiting his Security Clearance for Money?

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

Did Brennan Start Russia Investigation Because of Liberal ...

Hat tip to Senator Rand Paul:

Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018

Former Obama National Security Council advisor and Director of the CIA, John Brennan is constantly on CNN. When there is a commercial break, Brennan is tweeting:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018

Mr. Trump: Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Jim Clapper is a man of integrity, honesty, ethics, & morality. You are not. Jim Clapper served his country for over a half century, including in Vietnam. You did not. By your words & behavior, you diminish the Office of the Presidency. https://t.co/bYlmZInDoM

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) April 28, 2018

Why does Brennan still have security clearance?

Brennan spent 25 years at CIA. He was once the station chief in Saudi Arabia and worked as an Near East and South Asia analyst. Given his history and security clearance, Brennan is a paid national security and intelligence analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Sidebar reminder, in 1976, he voted for Gus Hall for president. Gus was the Communist Party USA candidate. Another sidebar, when he was CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, the Khobar Towers were bombed killing 19 U.S. servicemen. Oh yeah, he was quite critical of the intelligence community for missing the signs of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber….ahem….what about Crimea and Ukraine? Oh yeah….ISIS the JV team? How was it too that his own personal emails were hacked and posted on Wikileaks in 2015? A British hacker, Kane Gamble posed as Brennan and hacked into Brennan’s private email and iCloud accounts as well as Brennan’s wife’s iPad.

A little over the top isn’t it?

Well meanwhile:

Congressman Goodlatte has a subpoena for Brennan and Comey. This is due to the released FISA document. One of the FISA applications was signed by Brennan and others also included Comey’s signature. Seems Goodlatte is gonna bring in Loretta Lynch as well. Let’s see about all that impartiality shall we?

***

The Trump-Russia sleuthers have been back in the news, again giving Americans cause to doubt their claims of nonpartisanship. Last week it was Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Peter Strzok testifying to Congress that he harbored no bias against a president he still describes as “horrible” and “disgusting.” This week it was former FBI Director Jim Comey tweet-lecturing Americans on their duty to vote Democratic in November.

But the man who deserves a belated bit of scrutiny is former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan. He’s accused President Trump of “venality, moral turpitude and political corruption,” and berated GOP investigations of the FBI. This week he claimed on Twitter that Mr. Trump’s press conference in Helsinki was “nothing short of treasonous.” This is rough stuff, even for an Obama partisan.

That’s what Mr. Brennan is—a partisan—and it is why his role in the 2016 scandal is in some ways more concerning than the FBI’s. Mr. Comey stands accused of flouting the rules, breaking the chain of command, abusing investigatory powers. Yet it seems far likelier that the FBI’s Trump investigation was a function of arrogance and overconfidence than some partisan plot. No such case can be made for Mr. Brennan. Before his nomination as CIA director, he served as a close Obama adviser. And the record shows he went on to use his position—as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world—to assist Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and keep his job).

Mr. Brennan has taken credit for launching the Trump investigation. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing in May 2017, he explained that he became “aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons.” The CIA can’t investigate U.S. citizens, but he made sure that “every information and bit of intelligence” was “shared with the bureau,” meaning the FBI. This information, he said, “served as the basis for the FBI investigation.” My sources suggest Mr. Brennan was overstating his initial role, but either way, by his own testimony, he as an Obama-Clinton partisan was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act.

Keep reading Kimberley Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal.

Under New Leadership, Cuba Moderating?

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

The constitutional reforms, which have not been approved but were broadly outlined in the official Granma newspaper, were prepared by a commission headed by former ruler Raúl Castro. They include creating the post of prime minister, who would be in charge of the Council of Ministers and the administration of the government, in collaboration with a president and vice president.

“The changes indicate they are splitting up the political control in order to improve the socialist system,” said Andy Gómez, an academic who recently retired from the University of Miami.

One of the key questions raised by the proposed reforms, as outlined in Granma, is how much power Miguel Díaz-Canel, recently selected as president of the Council of State and the Council of the Ministers, would retain in the new government configuration. More here.

A draft of Cuba’s new constitution backs away from a stated goal of furthering communism and opens the door for legal recognition of private businesses and gay marriage, according to a new report.

Cuba’s current constitution was drafted in 1976 and outlines a goal of building a communist society. Cuba’s national assembly is reportedly debating a draft of an updated constitution that seeks to redefine the role of communism in the country.

Among the changes is a recognition of private property, Homero Acosta, the secretary of the council of state, said, according to a Reuters report.

The addition marks a significant recognition of private businesses, which have taken off in recent years as the Cuban government sought to pull itself from the economic crisis prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The new draft constitution also defines marriage as a marriage between two people, according to Reuters – a marked change from the 1976 document, which discusses marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The change could pave the way for gay marriage in Cuba.

Despite the changes, the draft of the new constitution still places an emphasis on the role of the Communist Party of Cuba and the “socialist character” of the country, according to Granma, the party-controlled newspaper.

“This does not mean we are renouncing our ideas,” National Assembly Esteban Lazo said. “We believe in a socialist, sovereign, independent, prosperous and sustainable country.”

The draft constitution also calls for term limits on the president – an office that was held for decades by Fidel Castro and, later, his brother Raul. Raul Castro handed power to his protege, Miguel Diaz-Canal, in April.

Actually Montenegro is a Big Deal

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

A recent debate about Montenegro’s NATO membership has put the spotlight on this Western Balkan country. But it is not the first time that it has been at the centre of political debate and international attention. A recent study by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) focuses on the interest of the Kremlin in Montenegro, and on how several well-known influence tactics, among them disinformation, have been applied by Russia during the last couple of years in an attempt to gain influence in the country.

The report concludes that, despite the fact that Russian efforts to hinder Montenegro’s NATO accession ultimately failed, the attentions continue with a new strategy, specifically; “stoking political and ethnic divisions to destabilize Montenegro and preclude further Western integration.”

Related reading and historical perspective.

To this end, disinformation about NATO has been spread by Russian officials, narratives familiar to those regularly following Russian disinformation, namely describing Montenegro joining NATO as a provocation (a word often used in Russian disinformation narratives) against Russia as well as responding with threatening remarks, also something we have seen before.

With regard to Russian interference in Montenegro’s domestic decision-making, the study also reports how Russian agents are currently being tried in Montenegro by a Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime for their involvement in an attempted coup d’état in 2016. Both Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) and its Federal Security Service (FSB) are thought to have been behind the planning. The goal would have been to instigate political violence with the hope of triggering nationwide protests and toppling the government led by Milo Djukanovic. Montenegrin authorities, however, successfully prevented the coup attempt.

Montenegro is not the only country in the region where Russian influence techniques have recently been put under the spotlight. Recently, Greece expelled two Russian diplomats on the accusation of stirring up popular protests in order to stop the conclusion of a long awaited deal between Greece and its neighbour The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on the official name of the latter country. If the Western Balkan country changes its name in agreement with Greece to the Republic of North Macedonia, this facilitates a path towards both EU and NATO membership.

***

In his interview with US President Donald J. Trump, Tucker Carlson of Fox News asked why the United States should come to the defense of Montenegro, a tiny country in the Western Balkans with a population the size of Washington, D.C., that is a NATO ally.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question, with a good answer.

Montenegro is a proud nation with a proud people, who have proven strong and resilient throughout their difficult history. They will defend their nation and now our alliance. And we are all stronger – including the nations of the Balkans, including Americans – for having Montenegro in NATO.

Despite geopolitical pressures, Montenegro opted to anchor its future with the West. Its forces serve shoulder to shoulder with ours in Afghanistan. They have kept the peace in Liberia, Cyprus, and Somalia. As an ally, Montenegro aligns with the United States on tough issues whether sanctions against Russia, expelling a Russian diplomat after the Skripal case, or casting tough votes in the United Nations. Montenegro plays a stabilizing role in its region, getting along well with all of its neighbors.

We are proud to have Montenegro as an ally and we know our Alliance is stronger as a result.

A quarter century ago, the Western Balkans was a region defined by devastating war and brutal ethnic cleansing. The instability in that region threatened the wider European continent and spurred costly military action by NATO allies and the United States to stop the crisis. Today, thanks to the prospect of NATO and European Union membership, the region’s outlook has never been better.

Take for example the case of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), soon to be enshrined as the Republic of North Macedonia and the recipient of an invitation to start NATO accession talks just last week. After a nearly twenty-seven-year dispute over FYROM’s name, the Macedonian and Greek prime ministers reached an agreement in June that will normalize relations between the two countries and eliminate the risk of conflict between them as they become allies. The prospect of NATO membership and full integration into the Western community made this possible.

Just minutes after NATO’s invitation was announced, I interviewed Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev at NATO Engages, a conference co-hosted by the Atlantic Council on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Brussels on July 11. He said that the negotiations with Greece were tough, but that his citizens “believe so much in our integration in NATO and in parallel in the European Union, that we will have a new friend, our southern neighbor.”

The prospect of NATO enlargement to Montenegro and other Western Balkan nations helped to prevent further conflict in this region and contributed to the peaceful transition to independence for Montenegro in 2006 and its recognition of the Republic of Kosovo in 2008. This is the biggest benefit the United States gets from bringing Montenegro into the family—the promise that the United States will never again have to intervene to stop a regional conflict in the Balkans. Given where the region was just two decades ago, this is a tremendous achievement.

NATO’s eastern enlargement is also key to containing potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. In the Western Balkans, the Kremlin has used political intimidation, economic coercion, and covert operations as a means to sow chaos, disrupt political and economic reforms, and prevent NATO and EU enlargement. In 2014, NATO foreign ministers discussed potential enlargement to Montenegro, but decided to punt on the decision due to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and a desire not to provoke Moscow further. This ambivalence, rather than preventing further Russian aggression, gave Russia an opportunity to pounce.

In October 2016, Russian GRU intelligence agents orchestrated an attempted coup in Montenegro to try to install an anti-NATO government. They planned to pose as Montenegrin security officers, open fire on opposition supporters, and assassinate the prime minister. Although the plot failed, it demonstrated Moscow’s ability to reach its hand into the Balkans when NATO wasn’t looking. Despite Russian efforts, Montenegro officially joined NATO as the Alliance’s twenty-ninth member on June 5, 2017.

The Demand for Ortega to Step Down

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

In recent weeks, the Ortega regime has killed an estimated 350 innocent citizens. Anyone besides Senator Rubio paying attention?

OEA condena violaciones de derechos humanos en Nicaragua ...

.@AmbCTrujillo has been a strong voice of support at the @OAS for the Nicaraguan people. I am thankful for his commitment and leadership in defending democracy and freedom of speech in #Nicaragua. #SOSNicaragua

— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) July 20, 2018

Thousands of people marched yesterday in Nicaragua to demand that President Daniel Ortega step down. The demonstrations over proposed benefit cuts, which began three months ago, are expected to continue today.

Human rights groups say about 300 people have been killed during the protests, many by police.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has warned that deadly clashes in Managua could lead to civil war, and worsen the immigration crisis in the U.S.

CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports an eerie quiet during much of the day in the capital city of Managua, as people stay home and business owners close up shop for their own safety.

But after the calm, the sounds of protest pierce the air, and the fear of bloody confrontations returns.

Within minutes of arriving in the capital, Bojorquez encountered an anti-government protest and the sound of mortar fire.

Several young men – masked and holding homemade mortar launchers – told Bojorquez they fire the mortars to warn fellow demonstrators when pro-government forces are near.

They told Bojorquez that they were willing to risk their lives: “The fear is gone,” one said.

Masked protesters in Managua, Nicaragua.

CBS News

The fear was gone on April 19 – that’s the day protests started over proposed cuts to social security benefits. Government forces are accused of killing more than 40 people that week. Hundreds have been killed since then, some even attacked while hiding in a church.

The uprising continues to intensify against President Ortega, whom demonstrators say has turned into a dictator and should step down. But Ortega remains defiant, insisting the protesters are being influenced by outside forces and blaming them for initiating the violence.

Supporters of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega hold pictures of dead police officers, who lost their lives during recent protests, at a demonstration in Managua, Nicaragua July 21, 2018.

JORGE CABRERA/REUTERS

In the neighborhood of Monimbo, which had been a stronghold of the opposition, barricades built using cobblestones from the streets can still be seen. It was the site of a bloody confrontation with police last week. At this point, it’s still not clear how many people were killed.

One woman feared being identified on camera, but wanted to let Bojorquez know one thing: her neighborhood was not backing down – that Monimbo had lost the battle, but not the war.

Several international organizations have called on the Nicaraguan government to end the violent suppression of protests and for President Ortega to allow early elections next year. He refuses to back down, which means the protests are likely to continue.

*** Is Russia behind some of this? More Western hemisphere chaos coming to the United States? Let’s go back to 2016 and 2017:

The Russian government is building an electronic intelligence-gathering facility in Nicaragua as part of Moscow’s efforts to increase military and intelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere.

The signals intelligence site is part of a recent deal between Moscow and Managua involving the sale of 50 T-72 Russian tanks, said defense officials familiar with reports of the arrangement.

The tank deal and spy base have raised concerns among some officials in the Pentagon and nations in the region about a military buildup under leftist Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega.

Disclosure of the Russia-Nicaraguan spy base comes as three U.S. officials were expelled from Nicaragua last week. The three Department of Homeland Security officials were picked up by Nicaraguan authorities, driven to the airport, and sent to the United States without any belongings. More here.

Putin Must Bring the KGB Files when he Visits White House

Posted on July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 by Denise Simon

There is much anticipation of the repatriation of the POW/MIA from North Korea as a result of the Singapore Summit. As of the time of this post, still none have been returned yet coordination is still underway as stated by the U.S. State Department.

But, it must be understood, the KGB, now FSB maintains files on many American military that in fact ended up in Soviet military hospitals as well as various gulags. To date, Russia for the most part not only denies this but the evidence remains not only from the conflict of North Korea but Vietnam as well.

In June 1951, Lois got a telegram telling her Moore had been shot down while piloting an F-51 Mustang over the South China Sea, off the coast of North Korea. He was reported as missing in action.

On Dec. 31, 1953, the Air Force notified Lois that Harry was presumed dead and was listed as killed in action.

Lois decided she had to move on. She moved to California. She connected there with Harry’s brother, Bob. They reminisced about Harry and grew closer. In 1954, they married. Bob raised Jana as his own daughter, and he and Lois had a daughter of their own, Nancy. They owned a medical-manufacturing business, and in 1996 retired to Star, Idaho.

In August 2002, Lois received a Federal Express package from the Air Force.

In it, a July 19, 2002, memo to the Air Force Missing Persons Branch from the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office read: “(I)t is possible that Capt. Harry C. Moore survived his shoot-down incident and may have been interrogated by Soviet officials. His fate afterwards remains unknown.”

The Moores were shocked. “We thought, goodness gracious, there is still hope he could be alive,” said Bob Moore. “For 50 years we had closure. … Now we have uncertainty. He may have been suffering for all that time in some Russian prison.”

In March 1954, the U.S. Air Force asked the CIA for assistance in finding U.S. servicemen in Communist custody. More here.

***

Related reading: The ‘1205 Document’: A Story of American Prisoners, Vietnamese Agents, Soviet Archives, Washington Bureaucrats, and the Media

***

Mark Sauter began doing some lengthy research on his own for others.

Sauter, whose findings inspired him to co-author a book and start his own blog, was further inspired after the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the U.S.–Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs in 1992. For the first time, U.S. officials were given access to Russian archives and former Soviet military personnel, some of whom appeared to confirm that U.S. pilots had indeed been taken prisoner in Russia. While Harry Moore was never named specifically, the commission reportedly turned up potential clues.

One former Soviet airman recalled hearing of a captured U.S. pilot with a similar physical appearance to Harry Moore’s who went on to become an instructor for Soviet recruits. An Estonian witness said in 1993 he remembered a Captain “Harry or Gary Moore” who was shot down in the summer of 1951 and had been interrogated by the Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps. Perhaps the most shocking piece of evidence came in 1997, when U.S. representatives interviewed Aleksey Alekseevich Kalyuzhniy in Ukraine. Kalyuzhniy claimed to have piloted the MiG-15 that took down what may have been Harry Moore’s plane on June 1, 1951, and that he witnessed it land less than a hundred feet from shore.

“[T]he F-51 pilot appeared to be in complete control of the aircraft as it gently landed on the sea,” Kalyuzhniy said, adding that he believed the pilot could easily have survived the wreck. More here.

Going back to 1992, the LATimes reported that Stalin has executed some American prisoners after WWII. Russian investigators declared they have found no evidence including those POW/MIA’s from North Korea or Vietnam.

The Soviet Union under dictator Josef Stalin “summarily executed” some American prisoners after World War II and forced others, some of whom are still alive, to renounce their citizenship, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said in a letter to a Senate committee Wednesday.

But no evidence uncovered by Russian investigators so far indicates that American POWs from the Vietnam or the Korean wars were transferred to the Soviet Union, said Dmitri Volkogonov, the senior Russian emissary who read Yeltsin’s letter to the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs.

Yeltsin’s letter spoke only in general terms of newly discovered documents indicating “the shocking facts” of some prisoners being executed by the regime of Stalin “and in a number of cases being forced to renounce their U.S. citizenship.”

But the letter also said the rights of all surviving American POWs “are now fully guaranteed” and they are free to return to the United States if they choose. “There are no American citizens forcibly held on the territory of Russia,” Yeltsin said.

*** The CIA has files in addition to the known KGB files, yet as of this writing they are still classified. Question is why?

There are locations of particular question and they include Military Hospital 404 located in Novosysoyevka. Two American spy planes were shot down in the waters near Vladivostok during the Cold War. There were yet another up to as many as 30 planes shot down above Soviet borders between 1950 and 1970 with an estimated 252 American crew members. Other locations possibly include Tayshet, Vorkuta.

Vladimir Central Prison - Vladimir

Ул. Московская. | Mapio.net

Please note page 43, Americans in the Gulag in this document.

Perhaps the WRINGER program, which the collection is housed at the Library of Congress can shed some daylight to a few questions.

Following World War II, thousands of German and Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union. These POWs were forced to help rebuild the Soviet Union following the Second World War. Beginning in 1946, the Soviet Union began releasing thousands of these German and Japanese POWs to their homeland. U.S. Air Force officers quickly realized the tremendous political and military information these ex-POWs possessed, and initiated an intensive interview program. From 1947 through 1956, U.S. Air Force personnel in the U.S. Zone of Germany interviewed over 300,000 ex-POWs. A similar program was intiated by the U.S. Air Force in Japan upon the return of thousands of Japanese POWs.

WRINGER sources ranged from common laborers to highly skilled technicians. These men were detained in forced labor camps throughout the former Soviet Union. The fact that an ex-POW had no particular knowledge did not make the individual valueless. Almost all German and Japanese ex-POWs had the ability to remember at least the broad details of the places where they had worked. Most importantly, some of them remembered meeting, seeing, or hearing about U.S. and allied servicemen who were also detained in the forced labor camps.

Researchers from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Persons Office (DPMO), Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD) have initiated a concerted effort to review the WRINGER reports. They are specifically searching for reports that may shed light on the numerous eyewitness sightings of U.S. servicemen reportedly held in Soviet forced labor camps. The WRINGER reports are now declassified and stored in 1,350 boxes at the National Archives’ College Park repository.

In addition, the WRINGER reports have triggered considerable interest among many outside researchers. Scholars of the Soviet period have commented on the detail and accuracy contained in the reports, indicating the importance they have for their own inquiries into those individuals unaccounted-for in the Gulag.

Working under authority of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, the Joint Commission Support Division (JCSD) of the United States Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) makes available to the public those documents obtained from archives in the former Soviet Union that pertain to Americans who are unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Cold War, and the war in Southeast Asia. The documents have been translated from Russian into English.

The documents indexed in this database were retrieved from various official Soviet-era and Russian archives, and were redacted (edited) to remove personal information, as well as information regarding the location, condition, and treatment of the missing Americans. United States law requires redaction of such information in order to preserve privacy.

The archive folders often contain a large number of documents that relate to a particular event or subject. The documents offered to the public at this website were selected from those larger archival files according to their relevance to the actual cases of unaccounted-for Americans. Therefore, selected pages of often larger documents are included in this database. One archive subject heading may contain hundreds or thousands of pages of documents, only a few of which may cite information on the American(s) whose whereabouts is questioned. For example, the classification “TFR65-1” (designating “Task Force Russia”) refers to archive document number 65, page one (and, in some cases, additional following pages). The user may also find the designation “TFR65-23,” which indicates that the document being viewed is page 23 of document 65. Pages 2 through 22 may or may not have been translated and released to the public. This numbering system was established by the DPMO/JCSD personnel who actually examined and retrieved the documents.

The documents have been indexed in order to provide organized searching. The index includes the title of the document (or a statement concerning its subject if the document has no exact title), document date, the total number of pages, name(s) identified in the document, keywords, and comments giving the searcher additional information about the document. Once the search term(s) is entered in the search engine, a list of “hits” will appear. The searcher may click on each “hit” and then click on “view tiff image” link to view the image of the complete document.

More detail is here about the WRINGER program. The document was declassified in 2017. It is an interview, oral summary with Colonel Robert Work from the HQ Air Intelligence Agency.