Wow: Pentagon Analyst Stripped of His Security Clearances After Questioning Exorbitant Contracts for Trump-Campaign Spy Stefan Halper

The people currently all worked up about John Brennan losing his security clearance will have nothing to say about this case.

Via JackStraw. Big news.

A Trump-supporting Pentagon analyst was stripped of his security clearance by Obama-appointed officials after he complained of questionable government contracts to Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who spied on the Trump presidential campaign.

Adam Lovinger, a 12-year strategist in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, complained to his bosses about Halper contracts in the fall of 2016, his attorney, Sean M. Bigley, told The Washington Times.

On May 1, 2017, his superiors yanked his security clearance and relegated him to clerical chores.

Mr. Bigley filed a complaint July 18 with the Pentagon's senior ethics official, charging that Mr. Lovinger’s superiors misused the security clearance process to punish him. He said his client complained about excessive "sweetheart" deals for Mr. Halper and for a "best friend" of Chelsea Clinton.

"As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper," Mr. Bigley wrote in his ethics complaint, which called the contracts "cronyism and corruption."

Mr. Lovinger filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint in May with the Defense Department inspector general against James Baker, director of the Office of Net Assessment. The complaint also singles out Washington Headquarters Services, a Pentagon support agency that awarded the Halper contracts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A friend tells me that the James Baker mentioned there is James H. Baker, head of the ONA, and not, as you might guess, the James Baker who resigned from the FBI under suspicions of leaking out the "Steele" oppo report.

There was previous reporting on this story last year, but absent the information about Stefan Halper.

James Baker is an Obama holdover who Richard Perle calls "shallow and manipulative."

Baker is an Obama holdover appointed by Secretary Ashton Carter in May 2015, who remains the ONA director 11 months into the Trump administration.

Lovinger specifically protested $11.2 million in ONA contracts awarded over a decade to the Long Term Strategic Group (LTSG), a company owned by Jacqueline Newmyer, a childhood friend of Chelsea Clinton. Clinton and Newmyer first met each other while attending Sidwell Friends School, an exclusive private Quaker school in the nation’s capital. They were in each other’s weddings, and in 2011 Chelsea referred to Newmyer as her "best friend."

Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, accuses Baker of continuing the LTSG contract in the hopes it could help him in a Clinton presidency.

...

The IG's decision to launch a preliminary investigation occurred as former high-profile national security officials are beginning to publicly weigh in about Baker’s allegedly retaliatory actions.

Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan’s former Assistant Secretary of Defense, told TheDCNF of Lovinger, "He's been treated so badly. It's a disgrace."

Perle called Baker, "a shallow and manipulative character that should have gone with the change in administration."

Across the Atlantic, Richard Kemp, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, who worked for four years at 10 Downing Street for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, also denounced Baker's alleged act of retaliation.

"He is a highly respected analyst across the board," Kemp told TheDCNF referring to Lovinger. "The way he has been treated is deeply troubling."

Lovinger, a GS-15 attorney and strategic foreign affairs analyst, successfully served at ONA for 12 years and each year received the highest possible "E" rating in his performance review. The "E" means "exceptional" performance.

Lovinger was also the 2006 recipient of the "Secretary of Defense Exceptional Civilian Service Award," the highest career award for civil servants in Office of Secretary of Defense.

But Baker poorly rated Lovinger in 2017, after he raised issues about the ONA's reliance on outside contractors, including LTSG.

And also the outside contractor Stefan Halper, as it turns out.

A friend points out that charges were levied against Lovinger two days after CNN reported on the dossier, having been assisted in this -- delivered the "news hook" they'd told James Comey they needed -- by Comey, Brennnan, and Clapper.

posted by Ace of Spades at 08:08 PM

| Access Comments