SECURITY CLEARANCES REVOKED vs FAKE RUSSIA RUINED 2016 ELECTION THEORIES

SECURITY CLEARANCES REVOKED vs FAKE RUSSIA RUINED 2016 ELECTION THEORIES:

WHY DO YOU STILL NEED A TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCE IF YOU ARE NO LONGER A DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE OR NO LONGER AN FBI DIRECTOR??

WHY DO FORMER FED GOVT OFFICIALS WHO ARE NOW PRIVATE CITIZENS, STILL NEED TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCES?

SECURITY CLEARANCES SHOULD NOT BE USED TO SPY ON POLITICIANS, PRIVATE CITIZENS OR FEDERAL EMPLOYEES.

SECURITY CLEARANCE PRIVILEGES SHOULD NOT BE SOLD FOR PARTISAN POLITICS.

SECURITY CLEARANCES SHOULD NOT BE USED TO CORRUPT THE U.S. GOVT VIA FALSE INFORMATION.

REVOKING SECURITY CLEARANCES DOES NOT VIOLATE FIRST AMENDMENT, IT’S PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE.

EACH ELECTED U.S. PRESIDENT HAS LEGAL DISCRETION TO GRANT OR REVOKE SECURITY CLEARANCES.


Post Sources: Washington Times, Politico, Fox News, Youtube


****** Trump threatens to revoke Obama officials' security clearances


President Trump threatened Monday to revoke security clearance from top Obama administration officials who have fanned the flames of Russian collusion conspiracy theories, a retaliation by the White House that legal scholars said would be unprecedented but not illegal.

On the president’s security clearance hit list are former CIA Director John O. Brennan, former Director of National Security James R. Clapper, former FBI Director James B. Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice and National Security Agency Director Michael V. Hayden, said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“They’ve politicized and in some cases actually monetized their public service security clearances,” she said. “Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russiaagainst the president is extremely inappropriate.”

Former intelligence officials typically keep their high-level security clearances after leaving government jobs and sometimes provide informal advice to current officials.

These six officials publicly leveled accusations of criminal wrongdoing — including treason — against Mr. Trump in frequent TV news appearances.

Several also pocket paychecks for doing it.

‌
Mr. Brennan is a paid analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Mr. Clapper and Mr. Hayden are paid analysts for CNN.

Mr. Clapper also is suspected of leaking to CNN in January 2017 information about the anti-Trump dossier that helped spur the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation.

Mr. Brennan took several jabs at the president last week after his meeting in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???” he tweeted.

Mrs. Sanders said the president thinks top-security clearance for former officials who make “these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.”

Sean M. Bigley, a lawyer specializing in security clearance cases, said the president was in uncharted territory but as commander in chief had carte blanche authority to revoke security clearances.

“There is nothing legally that would preclude the president from taking that action,” he said.

What’s more, the only recourse to challenge a security clearance revocation is through an administrative appeal process that the president could deny, said Mr. Bigley.

The president’s opponents in Washington quickly accused him of politicizing security clearances.

Mr. Clapper responded on CNN, “It’s kind of a sad commentary, where for political reasons, this is kind of a petty way of retribution, I suppose, for speaking out against the president.”

He said all of the former officials have been speaking “out of genuine concerns about President Trump.”

Others called it an attack on free speech.


Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who has spearheaded accusations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia, said the president had set “a terrible new precedent.”

“An enemies list is ugly, undemocratic and un-American. Is there no length Trump will not go to stifle opposition? Wake up GOP,” Mr. Schiff tweeted.

“This is what totalitarianism looks like,” tweeted Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, raised the idea of targeting Mr. Brennan’s security clearance in a tweet early Monday and later presented the suggestion to Mr. Trump in a meeting at the White House.

Mr. Paul has been one of the most vocal defenders of Mr. Trump’s performance at the Helsinki meeting, and Mr. Brennan has been one of the loudest critics.

“Public officials should not use their security clearances to leverage speaking fees or network talking head fees,” Mr. Paul tweeted.

The White House announcement followed Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Paul.

The unusual circumstances engulfing Mr. Trump’s presidency made the scrutiny clearance threat “very appropriate,” said David K. Rehr, a scholar of Washington politics at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

He said that all of the Obama intelligence officials on the list had their fingers in the Trump collusion conspiracy and now had a financial incentive to promote the conspiracy theories.

“People need to know that if they are public servants that they are public servants and not servants of political campaigns,” he said.

Mrs. Sanders rejected the accusation that the president was seeking to punish the former officials for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

“The president doesn’t like the fact that people are politicizing agencies and departments that are specifically meant to not be political and not meant to be monetized off of security clearances,” she said. “When you’re the person that holds the nation’s deepest, most-sacred secrets at your hands, and you go out and you make false accusations against the president of the United States, he thinks that is something to be very concerned with, and we’re exploring what those options are and what that looks like.”

The politicizing of security clearances and the security clearance process is not entirely new to Washington.

Democrats pounced on the Trump White House for the slow pace of security clearance approval for top aides such as Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced legislation to strip Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton of her security clearance over use of a secret email account and email server for official business as secretary of state.


Mrs. Clinton also came under fire from Republicans for arranging top-secret security clearance for her attorney David Kendall amid the email scandal.

Mr. McCabe lost his security clearance when he was fired as FBI deputy director in January.

“You would think the White House would check with the FBI before trying to throw shiny objects to the press corps,” said McCabe spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz.

Mr. Comey has been engaged in an escalating war of words with Mr. Trumpsince the president fired him in May 2017.

Ms. Rice said Sunday on a talk show that she didn’t know Mr. Trump’s motivations for seeking a better relationship with Russia, but “I think that’s a legitimate question.”

She called Mr. Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin “a historic mistake.”

As national security adviser under Mr. Obama, Ms. Rice was widely criticized for initially explaining the terrorist attack on U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. The performance prevented her from being nominated as secretary of state.

Mr. Clapper raised questions last August on CNN about Mr. Trump’s “ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office. I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it. Maybe he is looking for a way out.”

Mr. Hayden has published a book this year titled “The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies.” He said on CBS this spring of Mr. Trump, “We’ve had presidents who disagree with us; we’ve had presidents who lie. We’ve not had presidents for whom objective reality doesn’t seem to be compelling.”

Former House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican, called Mr. Trump’s action petty.

“It’s certainly below the stature of the office of the president of the United States,” he said on CNN. “I just wish that the president would be bigger than that.”

He said of Mr. Brennan, “It’s also not customary for the former CIA director to be off the reservation where he is, either. I don’t think John Brennan should do it.”

SUSAN RICE'S MATA HARI SPYING ON TRUMP TEAM DETAILED & POLITICAL

SUSAN RICE'S SPYING ON TRUMP TEAM WAS EXTREMELY DETAILED & POLITICAL: (MATA HARI)

SPYING ON TRUMP IN 2016 HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH RUSSIA.

GOOGLE IS TRYING TO HIDE THIS STORY.

MANY AMERICANS & US SOLDIERS WERE SPIED ON UNDER OBAMA WHILE ISIL OPERATIVES HAD FREE REIGN.

IS CONGRESS AFRAID TO INVESTIGATE RICE BECAUSE SHE IS A BLACK WOMAN??

LET THE CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS BEGIN.


Sources: Fox News, The Federalist, Alex Jones, PBS, YouTube


****** Reports in unmasking controversy were detailed, had info about 'everyday lives'



The intelligence reports at the center of the Susan Rice unmasking controversy were detailed, and almost resembled a private investigator’s file, according to a Republican congressman familiar with the documents.


This is information about their everyday lives," Rep. Peter King of New York, a member of the House Intelligence committee said. "Sort of like in a divorce case where lawyers are hired, investigators are hired just to find out what the other person is doing from morning until night and then you try to piece it together later on.”

On the House Intelligence Committee, only the Republican chairman, Devin Nunes of California, and the ranking Democrat Adam Schiff, also of California, have personally reviewed the intelligence reports. Some members were given broad outlines.

Nunes has consistently stated that the files caused him deep concern because the unmasking went beyond the former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and the information was not related to Moscow.

Schiff said in a statement, “I cannot comment on the content of these materials or any other classified documents, and nothing should be inferred from the fact that I am treating classified materials the way they should be treated - by refusing to comment on them. Only the Administration has the power to declassify the information and make it available to the public."

Former National Security Adviser Rice is under scrutiny after allegations she sought to unmask the identities of Trump associates caught up in surveillance - such as phone calls between foreign intelligence targets. Rice denies ever having sought such information for political purposes and has defended her requests as routine.

But the most recent government data shows that unmasking or identifying Americans happens in a limited number of cases. The Office for the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the 17 intelligence agencies, said "...in 2015, NSA disseminated 4,290 FAA Section 702 intelligence reports that included U.S. person information. Of those 4,290 reports, the U.S. person information was masked in 3,168 reports and unmasked in 1,122 reports."

The report said "NSA is allowed to unmask the identity for the specific requesting recipient only under certain conditions and where specific additional controls are in place" and those conditions were met for "654 U.S. person identities" in 2015.

That means Americans were identified in 26 percent of the cases, or roughly one in four intelligence reports.

During his March 20 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers said only 20 individuals within the agency are authorized to approve those requests.

“They receive specific training, there are specific controls put in place in terms of our ability to disseminate information out of the databases associated with U.S. persons,” Rogers said at the time. What it appears to suggest is that the NSA itself agreed that the instances in which Rice requested unmasking warranted that action.

FBI Director James Comey was less direct. "I don't know for sure. As I sit here, surely more, given the nature of the FBI's work," he testified.

"It would be nice to know the universe of people who have the power to unmask a U.S. citizen's name," South Carolina Republican congressman Trey Gowdy pressed. "Because that might provide something of a roadmap to investigate who might've actually disseminated a masked U.S. citizen's name."

Rice told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that the reports were requested by the Obama administration, which announced a probe into the Russian election hacking in early December. Two months earlier in October, before the election, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department put out a joint statement about Moscow's interference.

Rice told Mitchell, "Fulfilling the president's request for such a report, they went back and scrubbed more reports. They began to provide more such reports to American officials, including myself."

Given the late fall timeline, it is not clear the intelligence reports Rice discussed during the NBC interview, are the same files reviewed by Nunes and Schiff.

Speaking to Fox News Wednesday, President Trump said he believed the former national security adviser may have committed a crime when she sought the identities of the Trump team members. The allegation was first reported by the New York Times.

While not commenting on the individual case, a former senior intelligence official explained the request must be approved by the NSA. Rice would have understood that there is an extensive government paper trail, that can be audited within the NSA, that shows who requested the unmasking, on what basis, and whether it was granted. This raises more questions about Rice, her motivation and whether it was authorized higher up, offering cover.

If approved, the former senior intelligence official said, only the requester, in this case Rice, would receive the information. Based on Fox News’ reporting, the information was shared beyond Rice, but it is not clear if those who received it had a “need to know.”

A spokeswoman for Rice, Erin Pelton, said in an email to the New York Times on Wednesday, “I’m not going to dignify the president’s ludicrous charge with a comment.” Pelton works for Mercury LLC, a crisis management firm.

At the height of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack fallout, and questions about whether Rice and a former senior intelligence official had misled Congress about the role of an internet video in the deaths of four Americans, Mercury LLC was also tasked with handling the Fox News media inquiries.

SUSAN RICE: OBAMA'S #1 TRUMP INTEL SPY (UNMASKING)

SUSAN RICE WAS OBAMA'S #1 TRUMP INTEL SPY (UNMASKING):

OTHER OBAMA ADMIN EXECUTIVE CABINET LEADERS WERE ALSO INVOLVED.

THEY SHOULD ALL BE INVESTIGATED & JAILED FOR TREASON.


Sources: Fox News, Bloomberg News, Alex Jones, YouTube


**** Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say


Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.

The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.

The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.

It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday.

"What I know is this ... If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests," former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News' Martha MacCallum on "The First 100 Days." "And we have seen no evidence ... that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives.

“I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links.

When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not.

This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas’ television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”

Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging wiretapping.

Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources said “the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.”

As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies.

Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration's later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video.

Rice also told ABC News in 2014 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that he "wasn't simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield."

Bergdahl is currently facing court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan.