The story is a bit like walking through a maze. They were going to dismantle a major position, now not going to (b/c Dan Coats). They want more raw data and less analysis, but that was a Flynn initiative (so not clear.) The article make sense of the twists and turns.
Oh - buried about half way through - the current Nunes story shows up and buried in those paragraphs is a glimpse into the back stabbing, paranoia and innuendo that is playing out daily in Team Trump.
A U.S. official confirmed Cohen-Watnick had access to the kind of
intelligence materials, but maintained he did not play a role in helping
the congressman access the documents. The official pointed instead to
the other official named in the New York Times report, Michael Ellis, a
White House lawyer who previously worked for Nunes on the House
committee.
Cohen-Watnick has privately expressed suspicion to colleagues over
whether Ellis could have been responsible for some of the leaks that had
been troubling the new administration in its first few weeks in office,
according to an administration official.
The Trump WH played all of its face cards early on and now it’s reduced to tossing out threes and the occasional four.
@sanni It’s an AP article.
While I am new to TPM, I am new to the discussion boards here. Thanks for the heads up, I will edit. And recommend - it’s a great piece.
The story is actually pretty straightforward and it could be summed up by: “The Trump administration wants to see information that confirms its prejudices and supports the actions it wants to take. Everything else is secondary and can be discarded.”
The problems that this will cause are left as an exercise for the reader.
I am sure President Putin and Preshitident Trump and Mike Pence’s handlers in Russian intelligence would be happy to help with that. I am sure that Preshitident Trump and First Lady (Washington DC) Ivank Trump must be reaching out to their counterparts in Russia, President Putin and his mistress.
I rather appreciated the glimpses of what I consider a bit of organization chaos, and indecision/lack of clarity around what they are doing. Then again it is rather frightening as someone needs to understand what is going on inside the administration. Don’t love Coats (was my senator) but he’s smarter than Pence and pretty much an adult.
On edit - true - re: interpretation of possible repercussions.
“Officials have expressed an interest in having more raw intelligence sent to the president for his daily briefings instead of an analysis of information compiled by the agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.”
Winston Churchill insisted on seeing raw intelligence reports (not all of them, of course). But Churchill was a reader. Raw intelligence sent to Trump would be used for compost.
“chasm of ignorance” Best description for this scary bunch of crazies. I read this morning an intriguing argument about the list of intelligence documents that the Obama White House gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee. By giving them the index of every piece of Russian evidence, the committee will know what evidence the sleazebags in the current administration have destroyed after being told not to. They will get nailed with obstruction immediately.
This bears repeating:
Expect the military and CIA to chart their own courses owing to a white house vacuum. What that means??
For an administration so worried about leaks, it’s absurd that they want raw intelligence data floating around the White House, available to any staffer within arms’ reach. More troubling, is the suspicion that this may provide the Russians a direct source of raw intelligence, sources, and methods. I can’t believe I just typed that, but, considering that Trump’s business appears to be nothing more than an elaborate money laundering scheme for Russian oligarchs, I think it has to be put out there as a real possibility. Maybe, if he’s ever held responsible, Trump could get a supermax cell near Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames.
…and meanwhile they will be bringing in Cambridge Analytics, the go between / nexus of data flows to the Russians during the campaign, to do contract work in, oh, guess what, defense, intelligence…
…y’know, the Cambridge Analytics of the Mercers, Steve Bannon, Alfa Bank…
I’m still back connecting the dots from the report that Cohen-Watnick is also a friend/protege of Gaffney. Hiring him then puts Steele not merely in the islamophobe camp but in the crazy-clash-of-civilizations-worse-than-Bannon islamophobe camp. It sounds is if this guy is going to make Doug Feith look like a selfless Rhodes scholar.
That’s damn depressing. They are angry, but would still vote for him again.
Let’s just unpack this nugget from Nunes, roll it around in your mouth a bit, consider the subtle scents and flavors, before spitting it out in disgust and anger:
Nunes said the materials he saw showed the “troubling” extent to which information about Trump and his associates’ communications was spread around the government in the waning days of the Obama administration.
I think the “troubling” part of it is the extent to which information about Trump and his associates and their communications with various Dons, Oligarchs, and thugs of the New Russian Empire exists.
I’m dumfounded by the failure of the media, Hillary, Democrats, republicans, patriots et al, to bring out Trumps dependence on Russian money to keep his useless, vacant, no redeeming contribution to society empire afloat, how an unexceptional kid like Kushner can assume so much political power with so little knowledge, understanding, depth, savvy, comprehension of the world he’s operating in; how a two bit sociopath like Bannon can be so close to the levers of power in this country.
Even Rove knew you couldn’t eat all the seed corn.
Jeebus, what a mess, and it’s obvious, among many obvious things, that Devin Nunes needs removal, not from the Intelligence Committee, but from Congress entirely, and placement in a jail cell in Kansas.
Of all the oddities in all this is that now so called liberals are the CIA’s biggest fans and they are thinking that the agency and really all of the spook worlds is defending democracy. Mostly because they are all in on the demonization of Russia. That has been the project of the Democratic Party leadership since soon after Clinton arrived and as it just so happens, the neocons.
Why do you think the Neocons were 100% behind Hillary? Because Hillary put neocon royalty at the heart of Eastern European policy, in the person of Victoria Nuland ‘fuck the EU’ Kagan. Wife of one of those Kagan’s. And who can forget the 50 odd ‘diplomats’ letter to the NY Times urging unlimited war in Syria. Clinton supporters all of course.
Best get some backstory.
'And what was America’s response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia’s borders.
Yes, tell your children, and your children’s children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse."
Trump is 10% common sense and 90% common nonsense. The kernel of sense, that the endless soft war against Russia is nuts and that the narratives that surely dominate intelligence briefings are not the only ones. Of course Democrats and liberals will have none of it. So they are now the best buds of the CIA.
Down the rabbit hole we have gone.
Sure sure = let Putin regain all the old USSR territory he lost. Let him kill dozens more inconvenient people. Let him destroy the EU and the world’s economic base.
It’s nuts not to.