What? "Intelligence Community" Leaks Existence of "Top Secret" Mole in Putin's Inner Circle, Just To Throw a Minor Jibe at Trump?

Either one of two things is true:

Either the "Intelligence" community is lying, again, to advance its sectarian interests, or the "intelligence" community, which claims it is forced to violate its oaths and protocols to contain the traitor Trump, has just outed the existence of a top-level spy in the Kremlin to make minor hay about Trump.

So which is it?

The NYT piece continues:

The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Now we truly have a scandal on our hands. Someone in the intelligence community (or a former intelligence official) has apparently now revealed that the United States has a "top-secret source close to Mr. Putin." The apparent disclosure of incredibly sensitive intelligence information like this could surely put clandestine operatives' lives in jeopardy. This also sows doubt in the narrative being promulgated by the media that we must blindly trust the intelligence community's findings. If the information is to be believed, such a leak has come from someone (or multiple people) in the intelligence community who prioritized taking shots at the president over the safety and security of the American people -- and their own operatives.

Sometimes spies will lie about the nature of their information so that they can reveal the information without revealing anything about the source. There's an old story, which I think is actually true, about the US chain of command lying to air base commanders about how they knew that the Luftwaffe would be attacking this or that target this or that day.

The truth was that we had broken their codes and were simply decoding the Luftwaffe's signals traffic.

But we didn't want to expose that to base commanders, so we claimed to lower-level commanders that we had an Italian spy near a Luftwaffe air field who would peek over the fence and note when planes were leaving the base and in what direction.

The funny bit of this story is that the higher-ups were flummoxed when a base commander asked them to have the spy take a look at the Nazis' fuel stores and record how often they were filled.

So anyway, it could be that the American services have some kind of surveillance capacity that lets them know what the Russians are up to, and they're lying about having a "top-secret source close to Putin."

And yeah, that could still be inexcusable lying to the public rather than the excusable type. Because a top-secret source close to Putin sure sounds conclusive. What if the true source of the information, which is being concealed, relies upon more inferences and deductions, all subject to doubt and questioning, than a "top secret source to Putin" does?

What if, as is the wont of people who don't like having their judgment questioned, they're claiming a higher level of confidence than they really have in order to shut pesky citizens (or Presidents) up with their insolent questions?

The media spins false narratives every day, and they seem, psychologically, to be close cousins of the "intelligence" community.

So either the "intelligence" community is now burning actual highest-level codeword-clearance spies just to leak some ammunition against Trump, or, more likely, they're lying about the source of their information.

And they're not necessarily lying on the square, even. They may be once again lying in a fashion that suits their own sectarian interests.

But you should trust them because College Guys With Guns.

While the New York Times, leftist media, and NeverTrump continues insisting that it's wrong for Trump or any American citizen to ever question the "intelligence" community, former acting head of the CIA Mike Morrell, a Hillary crony and Benghazi talking points editor, actually disagrees. And he's An Expert, right?

The former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, decided last year that it was time to get political. Concerned about the possibility that Donald Trump would become commander in chief, Morell wrote an August 2016 New York Times op-ed endorsing Hillary Clinton and calling Trump a "threat to our national security."

It sounds like he regrets it -- at least somewhat.

In a very worthwhile Q&A with Politico's Susan Glasser, Morell reflects upon the decisions made by himself and other previously nonpolitical top intelligence officials to weigh in against Trump. And he suggests that it was counterproductive in one key way.

Below is a lengthy excerpt, but it's all worth reading:

GLASSER: Okay, so, flash-forward a year [after the op-ed]. Was that a mistake?

MORELL: So, I don't think it was a mistake. I think there were downsides to it that I didn't think about at the time. I was concerned about what is the impact it would have on the agency, right? Very concerned about that, thought that through. But I don’t think I fully thought through the implications.

And one of the ways I’ve thought about that, Susan, is -- okay, how did Donald Trump see this? Right? And from -- it's very important -- one of the things we do as intelligence analysts is make sure that our guy --the president -- understands the other guy. Right?

So let's put ourselves here in Donald Trump’s shoes. So, what does he see? Right? He sees a former director of CIA and a former director of NSA, Mike Hayden, who I have the greatest respect for, criticizing him and his policies. Right? And he could rightfully have said, "Huh, what's going on with these intelligence guys?" Right?

GLASSER: It embroiders his narrative.

MORELL: Exactly. And then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent. And then he gets his first intelligence briefing, after becoming the Republican nominee, and within 24 to 48 hours, there are leaks out of that that are critical of him and his then-national security adviser, Mike Flynn.

And so this stuff starts to build, right? And he must have said to himself, "What is it with these intelligence guys? Are they political?"

...

Then he becomes president, and he's supposed to be getting a daily brief from the moment he becomes the president-elect. Right? And he doesn't. And within a few days, there's leaks about how he’s not taking his briefing. So, he must have thought -- right? --that, "Who are these guys? Are these guys out to get me? Is this a political organization? Can I think about them as a political organization when I become president?"

So, I think there was a significant downside to those of us who became political in that moment. So, if I could have thought of that, would I have ended up in a different place? I don’t know. But it's something I didn't think about.

He might also have noted that before Trump took the oath of office, Comey, Clapper, Brennan, and other leave-behinds at the DOJ undertook a conspiracy to hide from the president the nature and existence of the probe into the alleged Trump-Russia conspiracy, and lie to him about it, resulting in Comey telling him three times that there was no investigation into Trump-Russia conspiracy, while the same people would simulataneously leak to the Times and Post that there was.

Why would Trump trust what these guys told him?

Even Mike Morrell, again, former acting head of the CIA, thinks that from Trump's point of view, it's perfectly understandable why Trump wouldn't trust them.

He's The Expert, right?

And yet the people who tell us every day to Trust the Experts also tell us to ignore this Expert's thoughts on the matter.

Almost as if they're selectively toggling the Trust the Experts light on and off as it suits their political agenda for the day.

So, to recap: NYT just exposed the existence of a source in Putin's inner circle to prove that...Trump has seen evidence of Russian meddling but continues to publicly question it, because he thinks it undermines his legitimacy?

Literally everyone already knew that. https://t.co/WTSfbxrXs1

— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) July 19, 2018

Less interested in NYT publishing it than that our Intel community—which the groupthink of the day says Trump (and all Americans) must have undying fealty toward—leaked it to attempt to hurt him. https://t.co/7CJHLoHZn3

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 19, 2018

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:52 PM

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