MICHAEL MORELL
FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CIAOnce the Democratic and Republican parties officially nominate their Presidential candidates at their political conventions this summer, the nominees will be offered intelligence briefings before the general election. We asked Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, to explain how these briefings work.The Cipher Brief: Can you tell us why the sitting President offers those briefings to the nominee from each party?Michael Morell: There is a great deal of confusion about these briefings in the media. After a candidate has been formally nominated by her/his national convention, she/he is offered a one-time intelligence briefing (sometimes over multiple days if there are time constraints or if a candidate wants to go deeper on a particular topic). They do not receive a daily briefing. They do not receive regular update briefings during the campaign. They do not receive the President’s Daily Briefing. Those only come for the president-elect, after the election in November.There is also confusion in the media as to why every post-war president has offered these one-time, post-convention briefings to the candidates. The objective is not to start preparing the candidate to deal with the myriad national security issues that they will face six months down the road, if they win the election. The objective is to protect national security during the campaign by giving the candidates a deep sense of the national security landscape. Let me explain: both our adversaries and our allies and partners will be listening closely, extremely closely, to what the candidates say about the issues during the campaign, and saying the wrong thing could damage our national security. The briefings are meant to help prevent that.Let me be clear, though: during the initial, one-time briefing, the candidates are not advised on what to say or what not to say about national security issues on the campaign trail. The hope is that by simply giving them an objective, unbiased understanding of the issues, the dialogue on those issues during the campaign will be carried out in a way that does not undermine U.S. interests.TCB: Who is actually involved in the briefings?MM: On the government side, the briefing teams are usually composed of senior leaders from the analytic arms of the Intelligence Community agencies, along with senior analysts who, on a day-to-day basis, cover the issues to be discussed. I played the former role in a number of briefings for candidates over the years.On the candidate’s side, they are permitted to bring their closest national security aides. In my experience, that has ranged from just one person to two-to-three people. But there is no just showing up. The IC (Intelligence Community) must approve in advance all of the attendees.TCB: Are there any limits to what the nominees can be told? For instance, will they be provided with classified information or details of ongoing operations? Are the candidates in essence given security clearances?MM: Absolutely, there are limits on what candidates are told. The briefings are classified Top Secret, but the candidates are only provided the analytic judgments of the IC and the information used to support those judgments. They are not provided with the details of how that information was collected-what the IC calls sources and methods. They are not provided with any information on any ongoing covert actions programs related to the issue being discussed. They are not provided with any operational information. Those only come after a candidate wins the election.TCB: How does the IC prepare for the briefings? Will the briefings be the same for each candidate? What issues would you emphasize in the briefings?MM: The leadership of the IC, most likely the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), will decide on the topics, perhaps to be approved by the White House. If I were putting the list together, I would include the threat to the U.S. Homeland and to U.S. interests abroad posed by ISIS and al Qaeda; the threat posed by a variety of actors in cyber space; the political and military situation in Iraq and Syria; the situation in Afghanistan; as well as national security issues related to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China.The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.TCB: Any personal observations about a nominee’s response to a briefing you provided? Without getting into names, has a nominee seemed surprised by the information? Has it altered a position on an issue or impacted how the nominee publically presented a view?MM: In general, candidates who have not been involved in national security are surprised by the number of threats facing the U.S., by the seriousness of those threats, by the complexity of the threats, and by just how difficult they are to mitigate. They quickly realize that there are not simple solutions. They quickly realize that their sound bites on the campaign simply don’t fit realty. And, they quickly realize just how important intelligence is going to be keeping the country safe.Not surprisingly, the briefing team will get a sense of a candidate. Does the candidate know what they don’t know, are they trying to understand the issue, do they want to learn, are they open-minded, are they able to grasp complexity, do they ask good questions? Or do they try to convince the analysts of their point of view, are they just trying to find facts to fit their world view or their policy views, do they look at the issues through the lens of national security or through the lens of politics?The IC knows the Secretary well, and its expectation will be that she will fall into the first category because that is what she demonstrated as Secretary of State. I’m sure the analysts will be very interested to see where Donald Trump falls – largely because they will want to know what he would be like if he were to become their “First Customer,” as some analysts at CIA like to call the president. And they will be interested simply because of the nature of the campaign so far, the nature of the candidate so far.
Category Archives: Treasury
Examples of POTUS Power Over Agencies
Primer: CFPB Director: PHH Corp. took kickbacks for mortgage insurance referrals
Requires firm to pay $109M to the CFPB
FAS: Congressional authority to establish federal agencies with independence from political control is under scrutiny in a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit). At issue in PHH Corp. v. CFPB is whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) structure violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. The CFPB is headed by a single director who enjoys a certain amount of protection from removal by the President, and the agency is funded outside of the annual appropriations process. As elaborated below, PHH claims that the restrictions on the President’s power to remove the Director improperly encroach on the executive power vested in the President under Article II of the Constitution, and that the combination of insulation from executive control and independence from yearly congressional appropriations violates separation of powers by shielding the agency from “democratic accountability.”
The Constitution divides the power of the federal government among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. While the text does not contain a “separation of powers” provision, the Supreme Court has recognized a separation of powers principle that underlies the constitutional division of the federal government’s authority. Among other things, this doctrine prevents one branch of government from impermissibly encroaching on the powers of another or inappropriately delegating its own authority to another branch of government. These limits, in turn, shape the structure of federal agencies that exercise governmental power.
For example, a recurring theme in separation of powers cases is the extent to which Congress may impose restrictions on the President’s power to remove executive officers. Article II of the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, and the President is authorized to keep executive officers accountable by removing them. However, the Supreme Court has recognized that this power is not absolute. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Court held that Congress could establish independent agencies overseen by officers whom the President could only remove for “good cause.” The Court upheld similar restrictions on the President’s authority to remove lower-level officials in Morrison v. Olson. In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Oversight Board, however, it invalidated the combination of these two otherwise permissible features – removal restrictions on both the principal and certain inferior officers within a single agency – as violating Article II’s vesting of executive power in the President because it improperly impeded his “constitutional obligation to ensure the faithful execution of the laws.”
Another constitutional provision that informs separation of powers is Article I’s prohibition on drawing money from the Treasury unless authorized by “Appropriations made by Law.” Congress thus has the “power of the purse” and controls the funding of executive branch agencies. While the Court has not faced a challenge to an independent agency receiving funds outside of the annual appropriations process, various federal entities, such as the Federal Reserve Board, are currently funded through their own earnings, rather than through the appropriations process.
The CFPB was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act, which consolidated and expanded federal regulation of consumer financial products. Broadly, the Act gave the CFPB rulemaking, supervisory, and enforcement power over certain financial institutions. It also bestowed rulemaking and enforcement power under various consumer financial protection statutes, and more generally the authority to deter unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by regulated entities. In this case, the Director of the CFPB concluded that a mortgage lender, PHH, violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, imposed injunctive relief to prevent further violations, and required PHH to disgorge “kickback payments” it had received in violation of the Act. PHH appealed the decision to the D.C. Circuit, claiming that, among other things, the agency’s structure violates separation of powers.
The legislation establishing the CFPB provided the agency with a structure intended to ensure independence from the political influence of Congress and the President. The CFPB is headed by a single Director who is appointed by the President to a five-year term and removable by the President only for cause. Although established within the Federal Reserve System, the agency is considerably independent from the Federal Reserve Board’s authority, and the Federal Reserve Board is barred from intervening in the CFPB’s decisions or directing its employees. However, a supermajority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council—of which the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a voting member—may veto CFPB regulations that would put the safety of the banking system or the financial system’s stability at risk.
Finally, the agency is funded via a transfer from the Federal Reserve System’s earnings, rather than through annual appropriations.
PHH argues that the combination of these features insulates the agency from “democratic accountability” and violates separation of powers. First, PHH claims that while Humphrey’s Executor upheld removal restrictions for nonpartisan, multi-member expert boards, its logic does not support upholding the restrictions here because the CFPB is headed by a single director and is not intended to be “non-partisan.” Further, PHH argues that just as the combination of two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions in Free Enterprise violated separation of powers, the marriage of removal restrictions with an independent funding stream is entirely unprecedented and grants the agency novel freedom from both presidential and congressional control. In response, the CFPB disputes PHH’s reading of Humphrey’s Executor, arguing that the Court upheld removal restrictions for agency heads because of the functions the officers performed, which mirror the duties of the CFPB Director. In addition, the CFPB distinguishes the principles announced in Free Enterprise – in that case, two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions combined to impede the President’s power under Article II. Here, in contrast, “each branch retains its constitutional powers” because the removal restriction does not reduce Congress’s authority over appropriations under Article I, and the independent funding mechanism does not hamper the President’s Article II duty to execute the law.
At oral arguments before a panel of the D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh, who has articulated a broad reading of Free Enterprise in the past, questioned CFPB’s counsel about the nature of the agency’s independence. In particular, he focused on whether restrictions on the President’s removal power were permissible for agencies headed by a single director. He noted that historically, most removal restrictions for independent agencies applied to multi-member commissions, rather than agencies with a single head. The justification being, he noted, that while typical agency heads must be subject to presidential control, removal restrictions are appropriate for a multi-member board because it is nonpartisan or bipartisan.
Resolution of the case may have important implications for the structure of the executive branch and the scope of presidential control over “independent” agencies. Several other agencies, whose principal officers enjoy removal protection, are also headed by a single director, including the Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Further, given the D.C. Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction to hear challenges to a variety of federal agency actions, the court’s reading of Free Enterprise will be an important guidepost concerning future challenges to agency structural features.
At the DC Airport? I thought this was a Joke
Hat tip to CNN… and it seems that airport security and TSA may have bigger issues than we know or they will admit.
CNN Finds Somali War Criminal Working Security at DC Area Airport
FreeBeacon: CNN has found an alleged war criminal from Somalia now working in the United States as an airport security guard.
Yusuf Abdi Ali was a commander during the Somali Civil War during the 1980s and has been accused of ordering the torture and executions of civilians in what has been called a genocide.
When CNN found out that he was living and working in the United States, they sent a crew to his workplace, Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia, just minutes from Washington, D.C. The film crew found a man matching Ali’s description working security and began asking him questions.
“What’s your name?” a CNN producer asked.
“Ali,” the guard responded.
“Yusuf Ali,” the producer said.
“Yeah,” Ali said.
“Where are you originally from?” the producer asked.
“Somalia,” Ali said.
CNN correspondent Kyra Phillips reported that Ali came to the United States from Canada with the assistance of his wife who helped him secure a visa into the United States. Ali was deported from Canada due to his past, but that did not prevent him from being able to get into the United States.
Phillips also reported that Ali has been removed from his position as a security guard and that his past did not come up during a background check.
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In 2014:
One of the two Americans killed while fighting for the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization in Syria had worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport cleaning planes before he went overseas to become a jihadist, an investigation has revealed.
Abdirahmaan Muhumed, 29, who died in the same battle as Minnesota native Douglas McCain, was employed by Delta Global Services, a cleaning company owned by Delta Airlines. Two former employees confirmed they’d worked with Muhumed, who had been married three times and was the father of nine children. While earlier this year, the airport’s cleaning contract was taken over by Airserv, another contractor, Muhumed would have had to had security clearance to work for Delta. More here from NewsMax.
ClarionProject: Brussels airport is partially reopening today for the first time since it was hit by twin suicide bombs on March 22 in attacks that killed 35 people.
The airport reopening was delayed by a strike called by police officers who de3maqnded extra security measures. Specifically they requested checks at the main entrance to the departure lounge. Authorities feared this could create bottlenecks going into the airport.
A group of police officers wrote an open letter to the press criticizing alleged security failings at Zaventem airport. They alleged that 50 ISIS supporters are still working at the airport.
Some people suspected of having fought in Syria came to the airport as “false tourists”. We reported their presence but we do not know if anything was done with that information, the letter read according to the Daily Mail.
The officers complained about people who worked at the airport whom they allege celebrated the Paris attacks.
“When we checked these people, we were surprised more than once. It was men with a radical ideology and a long police history,’ they said.
‘Even today, there are at least 50 supporters of the Islamic state who work at the airport. They have a security badge and have access to the cockpit of a plane”
Hillary’s People Bracing For Impact
For months and months we have been hearing snippets of the Hillary Clinton server/email saga. We cant begin to put it all in chronological order yet much less can we know all the players involved. We do know there are countless investigations and the most recent State Department Inspector General report is the most damning of all summaries so far. Curiously, Hillary and some in her inner circle refused to be interviewed or cooperate with the IG.
Furthermore, there are more testimonies yet to be recorded where Judicial Watch has been granted judge’s authority to move forward with key Hillary people as the judge is experienced with the Hillary email matter, going back to 1998 Filegate.
So, personally, I would like to see some questioned posed to Hillary and her entire team and they include:
- If Hillary did not send or receive classified material in her only email address and server, since she never had a dot gov email address, then exactly where did she received or interact on classified material? As noted by this particular email, she asked that items be printed out and delivered to her in hardcopy.
- So, we have hardcopies, okay then, well, where is that paper and did she shred the hardcopies? Remember in the case of David Petraeus, he had a hardcopy bound note book, a personal journal that Paula Broadwell got access to.
- Two part question: So, now we know that Hillary did not have any password protected mobile device. Did anyone tell her to apply password protections to her Blackberry, iPad or iPhone? When Hillary was asked if she wiped the server and her response was you mean with a cloth? I stood alone responding she does not know how any of this works. Appears to now be quite accurate and further, did not one person in her inner circle teach her the fundamentals?
- Did Hillary ever get any briefings in a classified setting like a SCIF? Hillary has never mentioned using a SCIF much less has there been reference to having access to a SCIF in any emails that have been published.
- Has anyone asked Hillary or her team if she had other email addresses outside of those listed on her server like at any time like Lavabit or Silent Circle or even Reagan dot com, not that the last one she would even consider? Hillary was using a Blackberry going back to when she was a senator, and Lavabit was the encrypted service of choice at the time.
- Barack Obama issued an Executive Order #13526 which further tightened regulations of classified material and interaction of classified material, did Hillary and her team bother to take this seriously and if so how? Did they make the mandated adjustments in this regard?
- Did Hillary or any on her team sign a separation document upon leaving the State Department? The answer is not that anyone can find. So, what is the procedure on that with regard further turning over all government material and correspondence?
- A top Hillary aid said he wanted to avoid FOIA (Freedom of Information Act Requests) and this is curious as he would likely not care unless it was an edict put out by Hillary herself? So, is this a criminal act in and of itself?
So, Judicial Watch is still busy interviewing the Hillary team. The testimony of Ambassador Lukens is here. Cheryl Mills along with her attorney Beth Wilkinson filed a recent motion to block the public release of the video tape of her testimony with Judicial Watch.
There is still the matter of the investigation of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation. My buddy Charles Ortel has given up all other matters to take the deep dive and continue the investigation. He has uncovered some remarkable facts that are beyond dispute. On May 19, 2016, I interviewed Charles. He gave a chilling summary of facts to date.
Tech, One Extreme to Another
Does anyone remember the floppy disk? How about Windows Me or COBOL?
Sheesh….
Gov’t report: Feds spend billions to run ancient technology
In a report to be released Wednesday, nonpartisan congressional investigators say the increasing cost of maintaining museum-ready equipment devours money better spent on modernization.
Despite a White House push to replace aging workhorse systems, the budget for modernization has fallen, and will be $7 billion less in 2017 than in 2010, said the Government Accountability Office. The report was provided to The Associated Press ahead of a House oversight committee hearing.
GAO said it found problems across the government, not just in a few agencies. Among those highlighted in the report:
— The Defense Department’s Strategic Automated Command and Control System, which is used to send and receive emergency action messages to U.S. nuclear forces. The system is running on a 1970s IBM computing platform, and still uses 8-inch floppy disks to store data. “Replacement parts for the system are difficult to find because they are now obsolete,” GAO said. The Pentagon is initiating a full replacement and says the floppy disks should be gone by the end of next year. The entire upgrade will take longer.
— Treasury’s individual and business master files, the authoritative data sources for taxpayer information. The systems are about 56 years old, and use an outdated computer language that is difficult to write and maintain. Treasury plans to replace the systems, but has no firm dates.
— Social Security systems that are used to determine eligibility and estimate benefits, about 31 years old. Some use a programming language called COBOL, dating to the late 1950s and early 1960s. “Most of the employees who developed these systems are ready to retire and the agency will lose their collective knowledge,” the report said. “Training new employees to maintain the older systems takes a lot of time.” Social Security has no plans to replace the entire system, but is eliminating and upgrading older and costlier components. It is also rehiring retirees who know the technology.
— Medicare’s Appeals System, which is only 11 years old, but facing challenges keeping up with a growing number of appeals, as well as questions from congressional offices following up on constituent concerns. The report says the agency has general plans to keep updating the system, depending on the availability of funds.
— The Transportation Department’s Hazardous Materials Information System, used to track incidents and keep information relied on by regulators. The system is about 41 years old, and some of its software is no longer supported by vendors, which can create security risks. The department plans to complete its modernization program in 2018.
GAO estimates that the government spent at least $80 billion on information technology, or IT, in 2015. However, the total could be significantly higher. Not counted in the report are certain Pentagon systems, as well as those run by independent agencies, among them the CIA. Major systems are known as “IT investments” in government jargon. More here from WashingtonPost.
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Smarter than Google?
This new search engine could be way smarter than Google
Search engines that aren’t Google rarely have much that’s interesting to offer to the average consumer. But Omnity, a new search engine aimed at researchers — or even just students doing their homework — offers some glimmers of something new that make it worth taking notice.
Search, as we know it, is ripe for some sort of change, after all. Google is certainly working to bake search more fully into our cars, phones and other devices. Specialized search engines — for flights, places to stay, even .gifs — are going strong. And then there are those AI bots being promised by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. What are they but high-powered, repackaged search engines?
Omnity stands out by offering results that best match for any given search term and also how those results relate to each other. So if you’re about to start a research project on a topic you know little about, you can quickly see who is getting cited the most, whose research is the most influential or which university is leading the pack on that subject. It draws from a number of data sets, including SEC filings, public news organization reports, scientific journals, financial reports and legal histories.
You can also drag and drop documents into the search engine to get an analysis of the “rare words” in it — Omnity obviously strips out the little words like “he,” “she,” “it” and “but,” yet also looks for words that are more unique to any given document to get a better idea of what it’s about. For example, I dragged in a legal filing from a case I’m researching for another article. Omnity turned up links to other cases that were relevant but not directly cited in the filing, as well as the names of some experts that I may now end up calling. More from WashingtonPost.