THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency.
The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.
“Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”
Look who’s back from the dead. Of course Ollie North is mixed up in this. FTA:
Oliver North, who appears frequently on Trump’s favorite TV network, Fox News, was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration. He was the “ideological leader” brought in to lend credibility, said the former senior intelligence official.
Also:
As with many arrangements in the world of CIA contracting and clandestine operations, details of who is in charge of various proposals are murky by design and change depending on which players are speaking. An Amyntor official said [Erik] Prince was not “formally linked to any contract proposal by Amyntor.” In an email, Prince rejected the suggestion that he was involved with the proposals. When asked if he has knowledge of this project, Prince replied: “I was/am not part of any of those alleged efforts.”
Is it even legal? Who pays for it? Wouldn’t Congress at least have to approve funding such proposals? Other than a propaganda arm, world evidence it collects even be admissible in the judicial branch?
Things gathered through covert actions aren’t normally used for legal proceedings.
The funding would most likely show up as an ambiguous item, and wouldn’t be specific at all about any of the activities taking place. This will be a very bad thing if they allow it to happen. The PMC shit was bad enough.
Just think a black op funded group, with zero oversight, and answering only to Pompeo and Trump, carrying out whatever dirty deeds they want done.
“In an illegal move, the president just reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments. This is the largest elimination of protected land in American history,” the site reads.
Visitors to the site are encouraged to support groups that advocate for the protection of legal lands.
“Climbers, hikers, hunters and anglers all agree that public lands are a critical part of our national heritage and these lands belong not just to us, but to future generations,” the site reads.
The outdoor retailer had threatened to sue Trump over his executive order mandating that the Interior Department review national monuments established during during Bill Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies.
They will support anything. If he created a new police force literally called “The Gestapo,” the very next day on Fox & Friends they’d be talking about how efficient German law enforcement used to be.
The spies will be like Mission Impossible, I suppose. We will disavow all knowledge of them if they are caught.
My take is this organization will feed garbage information to Trump to stroke his ego and bill the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.
What’s scary is Trump will believe anything they tell him because they are his guys. He can’t trust the CIA or the FBI because they tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, such as his people being complicit with the Russians. Trump is so easy to manipulate. Just feed his ego and he will wag his tail.
I asked a couple of my social media “friends” who were very vocal about the NFL players kneeling being “extremely disrespectful to veterans and their sacrifice” what they thought about the Trump comments during the presentation to the Navajo Code Talkers. I asked if they would agree that Trump was very disrespectful to the veterans right there in the White House, as he essentially made a racist remark to them while supposedly honoring them for their service.
Their response, “It’s not the same thing at all.”
They are right of course, it isn’t the same thing at all. Trump actually used a racial slur to disrespect veterans from a segment of the population that has a higher rate of military service than any other, and he did it directly to their face while standing in the White House. NFL players aren’t actually disrespecting or hurting anyone with their silent protest. The problem is, Conservatives will never see it that way, ever. How do we coexist in this country with people who think like that?
