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Full article posted with the permission of Newsweek - DonBY JEFF STEIN ON 12/21/17 AT 10:16 AM
Last May, a top White House national security official met in Washington with senior Russian officials and handed over details of a secret operation Israel had shared with its U.S. counterparts. The meeting shocked veteran U.S. counterspies. The American official was not arrested, and he continues to work in the White House today, albeit under close scrutiny.
That official, of course, was Donald Trump. The presidents Oval Office meeting with Russias foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyakwhich only Russian photographers were permitted to recordsparked a media brushfire that was quickly overtaken by more revelations of secret contacts between Trump associates and Kremlin agents. But the incident was not forgotten by American and Israeli security officials, or by longtime foreign intelligence allies of the U.S., who now wonder if the president can be trusted to protect their most guarded secrets.
For over a year, the question of collusion has driven various investigations into whats become known as Russiagate. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been pursuing questions of whether Team Trump, which included the presidents son Donald Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, actively coordinated the Trump campaign with the Kremlin to hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That suspicion was bad enough, but now a far more grim consensus is developing in the topmost circles of the U.S. national security establishment: The president has become a pawn of Americas adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its a nightmare scenario even the writers of House of Cards would have discarded as implausible.
Until now. In a December 18 interview on CNN, retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, virtually called Trump a Putin puppet. The Russian president, Clapper noted, is a former KGB case officer, or spy recruiter, who "knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president. Thats the appearance to me." (Pressed to clarify his asset comment, Clapper said, Im saying this figuratively.)
Wow, tweeted former CIA Russian hand John Sipher. The rest of us try to find other clever ways to say the same thing. Good on him for having the courage to call out Putin's behavior. Our president shouldn't have fallen for it.
Veteran spy handlers have judged Trump an easy mark for Putin, who spent years in the KGB sizing up and exploiting a targets vulnerabilities. They note how easily he falls for praise, as when Putin thanked him and the CIA for helping him thwart a bomb attack plot in St. Petersburg. POTUS is a [spy] handlers' dream, Asha Rangappa, a former special agent in the FBIs counterintelligence division, said. He responds, without fail, to praise and flattery and telegraphs his day-to-day thoughts on Twitter. Likewise, said Harry Skip Brandon, a former FBI deputy assistant director of national security and counterterrorism. He often very publicly states he goes by his instincts. If that is accurate, he may be the ultimate unwitting asset of Russia.
And so on. The steady drip of revelations emerging from multiple Trump investigationshis business deals with Russian investors, his associates many undeclared meetings with Kremlin agents, his resistance to accepting evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his indiscretion with Israeli intelligencedraws a far darker picture.
Some veteran intelligence operators think its well past time to shift the narrative on Trumps disturbing affinity for Putin, which the president insists is innocent and good for world peace. Everyone continues to dance around a clear assessment of what's going on, says Glenn Carle, a former CIA national intelligence officer responsible for evaluating foreign threats. My assessment, he tells Newsweek, is that Trump is actually working directly for the Russians.
The Israelis cant say they werent warned. In January 2017, a few weeks before Trumps inauguration, top U.S. intelligence officials welcomed a delegation of their Israeli counterparts to Washington. The meeting proceeded uneventfully, according to veteran Israeli intelligence journalist Ronen Bergman, although the Americans vented their dismay over a president who had loudly disparaged their past work. Just as their meeting was wrapping up, according to Bergman and a later report in Vanity Fair, an American spymaster solemnly announced there was one more thing: [that] they believed that Putin had leverages of pressure over Trump. His advice: Be careful.
Five months later, the Israelis came to rue what they had shared with Trumps new CIA director, former Republican Representative Mike Pompeo. They were astonished to read media reports that Trump had told the Russian foreign minister and ambassador about their top secret operation in Syria to penetrate a cell of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). U.S. intelligence experts assumed the Russians had shared the information with their allies in Iran, Israels mortal enemy .
Clapper, now writing a book about his intelligence career, told Newsweek by email that the Israelis were/are upset about it, since it proves once again we cant be trusted to keep the secrets we share with them.
Some of Americas closest intelligence allies were also upset by Trumps leak, a top former national security official tells Newsweek, on the condition he not be identified when discussing such sensitive issues. I hear the Brits are reluctant to share intelligence on Russian subversion, he says, not as much for security reasons as for politicalthey dont wish to get crosswise with [Trump].
Another analyst, Joseph Fitsanakis, co-editor of the Intel News blog, said relations between the U.K.s spy chiefs and the Trump administration are extremely tense. During the 2016 campaign, he recalled, Trump riled London with an unsubstantiated claim that its version of the National Security Agency, the Government Communication Headquarters (better known as GCHQ), had eavesdropped on his communications. He refused to apologize.
Lower-level U.S. and foreign intelligence officials customarily find ways to deal with such high-level friction. But Trumps repeated attacks on NATO have not only frustrated Washingtons closest allies but also raised questions as to whether the president has been duped into facilitating Putins long-range objective of undermining the European Union. Some Western European colleagues are saying that sharing has been strictly limited to [counterterrorism] and some maritime [intelligence], Fitsanakis says. There's almost no sharing on Russia.
How Trumps attacks on radical Islamic terrorism will play out in the CIAs relations with the spy services of Arab, African and Asian nations is not known. Historically, Langley has relied on such local partners to share its insights and intelligence on militant groups, sometimes to its regret when double agents wormed their way into their ranks.
Israeli officials uncharacteristically howled publicly about Trumps betrayal in May and have only recently calmed down. Still, their anger could be detected months later, when a former Mossad deputy director, Ram Ben Barak, did an interview with The Cipher Briefs Kim Dozier. The rule is, if I give you information to help you, you do not give this information to another side without my permission, Ben Barak said. I am sure he will not do it again because, you know, it hurts the relationship.
But all signs point to Trump not caring who gets hurt if it serves his interestsand vanity. Despite constant evidence of Russian interference throughout the summer of 2016, culminating in a January report by Clapper and Jeh Johnson, his Department of Homeland Security counterpart, saying the Kremlin had worked to put Trump in office, the president evidently permitted his incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to intrigue with the Russians over lifting sanctionsand apparently didn't care enough to fire him after learning Flynn had lied about it to the FBI. Flynns later indictment and plea deal, Trump tweeted, was a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
All this was going on, despite an explicit warning from the FBI to Trump soon after his nomination about potential espionage threats from Russia, according to NBC News. FBI agents also visited longtime Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks only days after the inauguration, saying that certain named Russian agents were trying to penetrate the new administration. Hicks, who says she forwarded the warning to White House counsel Donald McGahn, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Continually jousting with Trump over his denial that any of this amounted to collusion with the Russians is a distraction, say veteran intelligence hands. It amounts to looking for an explicit quid pro quo that may not exist. It misses, moreover, what is right under our noses, wrote Rangappa, the former FBI counterintelligence agent, along with Sipher, the onetime CIA Moscow station chief, and Alex Finley, a former CIA operations officer, in a joint piece for the Just Security website. There is no question that Russia made multiple, unprecedented attempts to penetrate a U.S. presidential campaign, that its approaches were not rebuffed, and that its contacts were sensitive enough that everyone, to a person, has concealed them.
These facts might never be adjudicated inside a courtroom, they added. They may not even be illegalbut they present a clear and present national security threat that we cannot ignore.
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http://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-man-white-house-russia-investigation-scandal-moscow-kremlin-755321
spanone
(135,832 posts)dalton99a
(81,488 posts)Great article
LiberalLovinLug
(14,173 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,592 posts)Someone left the DVD outside of my supermarket and I took it and re-did the graphics with Hillary, Trump and Putin. I gave it to my sister and she thought it was the original at first (I was an illustrator).
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,693 posts)unblock
(52,227 posts)2naSalit
(86,612 posts)if not already there after this horrid week.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)In year's past, if someone had told me that in my lifetime a Russian asset would be elected President of the United States, I would have spit out my coffee laughing. Yet here we are.
HOLY FUCK.
K&R This article should be required reading for EVERYONE in the country!
renate
(13,776 posts)... and this couldn't be ignored, even by the GOP. But because it all happened so gradually, it's just become the new normal.
I've got to hand it to him... Putin is really good at what he does. (Although it's also true that Trump is a puppet master's dream.)
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)It's like we're the frogs in the pot and the heat has slowly been turned up.
Can we escape and jump out in time? Is it too late? I seriously don't know and I'm scared out of my mind.
SergeStorms
(19,201 posts)You hit the nail on the head. Trump's narcissism plays right into Putin's hands. All he has to do is stroke Trump's ego, tell him what a great economy he's produced ( ) and what a mighty warrior leader he is for the U.S. Voila! Trump will hand over the nation's secrets, just like a playful pup - getting his belly rubbed - will lick your hands until they're raw. He'll do anything to please his master. It really is a sickening thing to behold.
IluvPitties
(3,181 posts)Romney warned us in 2012 (3rd debate) and he was mocked... I guess the bastard knew what was going on behind the scenes in the GOP...
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)Little did most of us know at the time!
Now that we're seeing what treasonous bastards like Nunes and his pals are up to (attacking the FBI and Mueller), I'm REALLY concerned!
And remember, EVERYTHING that these rat-fuckers do is with Paul Ryan's blessing.
No Re-Thug in the House so much as takes a pee without Ryan saying it's OK.
We are in deep, deep shit.
iluvtennis
(19,858 posts)start impeachment to get Traitor Trump out of the white house. He is there to tear down American institutions and thereby American democracy. And the GOP thugs can't see the forest for the trees cause they are being enriched.
CrispyQ
(36,464 posts)If they do have the votes in the Senate, the dem party will say that for the sake of healing the nation, they will work with the GOP. The democratic party has been milquetoast for decades now & yet everyone thinks they are going to be bulldogs if they win back any influence, when they just kicked one of their best bulldogs to the curb.
The dems are still too fucking nice. We will lose our country if they don't get in the ring ready to draw blood with the intent to pull off a KO.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)where people like Don Jr, Eric, Kush-Kush and others testify live on TV, it can swing public opinion even more strongly against Team Trump - these guys are not exactly rocket scientists.
erronis
(15,257 posts)The repuglicans (and their soviet handlers) have learned to play it keenly.
For the perps, it's called blackmail and possibly drugs.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)I hope you're wrong but something tells me we'll want to look forward.
Sigh.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)If he is indeed found guilty of espionage against the very country he's supposed to lead.
There's no precedent for this in terms of an ill-gotten presidency; what are our options, if any, to get any of his EOs, signed legislation, and Judicial picks, voided? If he obtained the presidency illegally, then wouldn't it follow that all subsequent actions he's taken are illegal and not valid? I realize it's a pipe dream, but there's no precedent for this.
What do you think?
maddiemom
(5,106 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,592 posts)The Russians took control of our government.
It clearly appears to be a coup. How convenient that Fox claims that Mueller's investigation is a coup, but it is always opposite world at Fox News.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)AmericanActivist
(1,019 posts)dalton99a
(81,488 posts)czarjak
(11,277 posts)They react to having their strings pulled.
Response to DonViejo (Original post)
Javaman This message was self-deleted by its author.
Girard442
(6,072 posts)Not finding it.
AmericanActivist
(1,019 posts)VOX
(22,976 posts)That obscene splooge-fest was as if Repugs know something, and are afraid to cross Putin, not his fucking puppet Donny.
Putin actually disappears dissidents, Donnys trying but that pesky free press (aka Fake News) keeps flanking him.
For now.
Fascism has arrived in America, hang on.
BadgerMom
(2,771 posts)triron
(22,003 posts)ATL Ebony
(1,097 posts)Blue_Roses
(12,894 posts)Now what are we going to do about this.
disalitervisum
(470 posts)kentuck
(111,095 posts)It's too obvious to be true, we tell ourselves.
Blue Owl
(50,374 posts)n/t
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)From the last paragraph.
Crash2Parties
(6,017 posts)They are not as easily manipulated by flattery, yet they too have strong ties to Putin.