Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-17?

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Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-17?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 18, 2016 2:50 pm

So here we have

President-Elect Donald Trump Taps Michael Flynn for National Security Adviser

who wrote a lovely book with Michael LEDEEN!

Run, Run for Your Lives!


Image


ByJOSH MARSHALL
JULY 11, 2016, 7:53 PM EDT

In recent editions of the Trump for President Dumpster Fire reality show, we've been seeing the name of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was forced out in 2014 over policy clashes with Obama administration officials and went on to become a top Obama critic since leaving the military. He has reportedly been an informal campaign foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump for some time now. Now he's rapidly emerged as a leading vice presidential contender. It seems so serious that after yesterday saying that he was pro-choice and creating a instant firestorm on the right, he today 'clarified' that he's actually pro-life.

But enough of all that, stop the presses: I've just uncovered information that almost certainly proves that Flynn is completely nuts.

You may have seen mention that Flynn is the author of a book called Field of Fight about ISIS and the war on terror. So far, so good. But wait. Look at the highlighted portion of the cover here!


He cowrote this book with Michael Ledeen!

If you know who Michael Ledeen is, I probably don't have to say anymore.

If you don't, Michael Ledeen he is a PhD in history and philosophy who's been kicking around DC for decades, playing a minor but significant role in the Iran-Contra scandal but generally remaining on the fringes of the neoconservative foreign policy movement because his ideas are too dark, too cynical and too fascistic.

In case you think I'm using the word loosely, not at all. Ledeen is genuinely a man of ideas and letters. It's just that the ideas tend to be a bit evil or post-moral in a functionally equivalent way. Ledeen's key intellectual influence was the Italian fascism or neo-fascism he came into contact with during his time in Italy during the 1970s. Without getting too deep into the story, Ledeen was part of a movement to distinguish 'fascism' as a set of ideas, an intellectual movement from the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. A bit further afield this was an effort to distinguish between Mussolini's fascist movement from the national socialist movement of Adolf Hitler to the north - an argument that is not without some true merit.

Ledeen's mission was to salvage what he took to be the revolutionary and liberationist core of fascism from the historiographical and ideological disgrace to which it has largely been consigned for decades. If you're interested in more you can look up names like Giovanni Gentile, Gabriele D'Annunzio and a whole list of others, some genuine thinkers, others craven lickspittles. In any case, without putting too fine a point on it or being too arch, much of Ledeen's life's work has been dedicated to creating what lefty historians sometimes call a 'usable past' for fascism.

Of course, people are interested in a lot of things and there are some interesting poets and philosophers on the fringes of the early fascist movement. Mussolini himself is a fascinating figure - brilliant in many ways though I think fundamentally an opportunist and frequently a charlatan. If these were mere intellectual pursuits it would be one thing. But Ledeen's signature qualities during almost four decades in Washington have been the profoundest cynicism, arcane conspiracy theory creation and a generalized desire to embroil the US in foreign wars. Through much of the aughts he was most memorably known as the author of a wild conspiracy theory that held that basically all terrorism, across all sectarian, national and ideological divides was run by a series of interconnected 'terrorism families' on the model of the 1950s era La Cosa Nostra.

He was, as I mentioned, a key player in the Iraq-Contra scandal, a major advocate of the Iraq War who managed to end up arranging secret meetings in Rome in late 2001 between Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar and Bush administration officials looking for evidence against Saddam Hussein. That whole latter episode is still too little explained or understood.

In a fascinating touch, back in May Ledeen was attacking critics like Robert Kagan who were calling Trump 'fascist' but, in a notable and predictable twist, on the theory that Trump wasn't really good enough for the fascist label. "For Mr. Kagan (surprisingly and disappointingly praised by Bret Stephens)," writes Ledeen, "fascism is little more than any political movement led by a charismatic strong man ... Mr. Kagan doesn’t discuss the revolutionary aspect of fascism. Italian fascists claimed to be able to unleash the creative powers of a “new fascist man,” while the Nazis advocated the superiority of the Aryan race. Neither concept is to be found anywhere in Trumpism either in theory or practice."

Basically, if you see an idea and it looks sensible but find out Ledeen is involved, it's definitely not sensible and is in fact probably some harebrained plan half crazy, half evil that you want nothing to do with. When Ledeen's involved, there's always trouble.

I haven't read Flynn's book. But the fact that he co-wrote the book with Ledeen - and since Flynn is a retired general and Ledeen an accomplished writer I figure it's largely Ledeen's work - he must either be in the thrall of various wild and dangerous ideas or under the malign influence of someone who is the generator of various wild and dangerous ideas.

Seriously, if Flynn's in with Ledeen, he's trouble.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/run ... your-lives


Yes that Michael Ledeen


The report names four men as the likely forgers of the documents (Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes) and suggests that the forgeries may have been planned at December 2001 gathering in Rome involving Ledeen and SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. Also in attendance at that meeting: Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Antonio Martino and others including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. Here is a true rogues' gallery.

Michael Ledeen: neocon columnist, National Review Online contributing editor, specialist on the thought of Machiavelli and on Italian fascism, former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council, was involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair. Active in the American Enterprise Institute, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and Center for Democracy in Iran (CDI). Advocates regime change by force in Iran and Syria.

Nicolò Pollari: Author of many publications on legal and economic matters, investigation techniques and intelligence. Tax law Professor at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria. SISMI head since October 2001.

Dewey Clarridge: former CIA operative, famous in mid-1980s for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair. Head of CIA's Latin America division 1981-84, directed the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and helped organize the Contras. Indicted in November 1991 on seven counts of perjury and false statements, pardoned by first president Bush Christmas Eve 1992.

Ahmad Chalabi: convicted swindler, leader of U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, neocon ally, presently one of two deputy prime ministers in Iraqi government.

Francis Brookes: member of the "Rendon Group," a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.

Larry Franklin: colonel in USAF reserve, subordinate to Douglas Feith in Defense Department, Middle East specialist, under arrest for espionage for Israel.

Harold Rhode: Pentagon official, Middle East specialist, Ledeen protégé, American Enterprise Institute, heavy neocon.

Manucher Ghorbanifar: Iranian exile, arms dealer, one-time CIA operative distrusted by CIA since 1980s. Key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Antonio Martino: Founding member of Forza Italiano (Berlusconi's political party), Professor of Economics, adjunct scholar with the Heritage Foundation, Italian Defense Minister.


best buds with Ghorbanifar

passion for a campaign of serial "regime-change"

A veteran of the Iran-Contra "arms for hostages" scandal

Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972.

that's correct one of the Niger uranium forgerers has one of his best buds back in the White House ....

Ledeens main obsession seemed to be the overthrow of Iran.

a neo-conservative who has close ties to one of America’s leading “Christian” Dominionists

April 7, 2005
This nation is in grave danger. Ledeen belongs to a group of men, including Harry Jaffa, Pat Robertson, Willmoore Kendall to Allan Bloom, who, according to Shadia Drury, scholar and author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, share “the view that America is too liberal and pluralistic and that what it needs is a single orthodoxy that governs the public and private lives of its citizens


he's was never been called to account for the Niger uranium forgeries....so now are we to look forward to some faked docs leading us to war with Iran?

Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor was Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist.

Will anyone stand up this time and make sure they know what they are voting on before they decide to start a war with Iran?


Will Congress even get a chance to this time?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby tapitsbo » Fri Nov 18, 2016 3:09 pm

I don't trust these people for a second SLAD, but it's at least interesting that Flynn was on RT, which I'm sure you've shared your fair share of here, arguing for American co-operation with Assad and against the support for Nusra, if I remember right

People like Michael Weiss and Charles Lister were salivating over a Clinton win
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 18, 2016 10:47 pm

In other words, we must wage global war for global peace. What could possibly go wrong?



Flynn Has It In For Iran

by Jim Lobe

On the news that Donald Trump has asked Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser, I decided to look up Flynn’s testimony on Iran before the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa on June 10, 2015. That was just a month beforethe P5+1 and Iran concluded the the Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). What I found was pretty shocking and deserves wide dissemination. I knew that Flynn was pretty much of an Islamophobe, but I didn’t know to what extent he appears also to be an Iranophobe as well. The testimony is 16 pages long, so I will confine this post to selected excerpts. But one really has to read the whole thing to get the full flavor of this man’s state of mind on the subject.

After listing five developments in the region, beginning with the “negative behavior and expanding influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote:
Not only do these impact our security at home, but they also impact our allies and friends in the region, most important, the State of Israel—Israel lives under the threat of total annihilation from Iran and other Islamic radical elements in the region—something the United States must never allow, nor should we deal equally with those who spew this type of hatred and bigotry (we would not stand for it here in this country and we should not stand for it elsewhere in the world where our closest friends are at risk).
“Ideas about other ways of waging war are ignored because they do not fit the closed Second Generation paradigm. Meanwhile, Washington cannot consider alternatives to our current foreign policy or grand strategy because anyone who proposes one is immediately exiled from the establishment.”
“2. Iran has every intention to build a nuclear weapon. They have stated it many times, they have attempted well over a decade to move rapidly to nuclearizing its capability, and their enrichment to twenty percent and their rapid move to develop a ballistic missile program, are examples of their continued preparedness to weaponize a missile for nuclear delivery.”
“Iran’s stated desire to destroy Israel is very real. Iran has not once (not once) contributed to the greater good of the security of the region. Nor has Iran contributed to the protection of security for the people of the region. Instead, and for decades, they have contributed to the severe insecurity and instability of the region, especially the sub-region of the Levant surrounding Israel (i.e, Southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the Border region along the Golan Heights on the Syrian side of the border).”
”9. It is clear that the nuclear deal is not a permanent fix but merely a placeholder. The ten year timeframe only makes sense if the Administration truly believes that it is possible for a wider reconciliation with Iran that is likely to occur, which will make the Iranian regime change its’ strategic course. That’s wishful thinking.”
“12. I believe that Iran represents a clear and present danger to the region, and eventually to the world—they are still a U.S. State Department designated Islamic state sponsor of terrorism, they have and they continue to violate international sanctions, and they continue to spew hatred in their rhetoric coming from senior members of their government—to include their top Mullahs.”
“15. What we don’t know is the full scope of Iran’s nuclear effort itself. The intelligence community does not have complete “eyes on” the totality of the Iranian nuclear program, nor can it guarantee that we have identified all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and processes. Moreover, given the history of the nuclear age, it is prudent to conclude that there are elements of Iran’s nuclear program that still remain hidden from view (Iran has demonstrated in their own actions, they cannot be trusted).”
“17. I believe that Iran’s overarching strategic goals of enhancing its security, prestige, and regional influence have led it to pursue capabilities to meet its civilian goals and give it the ability to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons, if it chooses to do so. We do not know whether Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” [Editor’s note: Contrast this last sentence with the opening sentence in 2. above.]
“As the Washington Post editorialists have said, regime change in Tehran is the best way to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The same applies to their missile arsenal, which is of high quality and growing.”
“Just look at the cooperation with North Korea, China and Russia. Connect those dots, and you get the outline of a global alliance aimed at the U.S., our friends, and our allies.”
“The North Korean cooperation is also very significant, as the two countries (North Korea and Iran) have long traded expertise, not least regarding nuclear and possibly EMP weapons.”\
“There are a number of things that the international community can do however, to level the playing field with Iran and further reduce the chances of its violating its Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty obligations.
“Immediately direct Iran to open up all of its facilities, scientific, military, and current nuclear facilities, for international inspections.”
“The U.S. must take a more active role in the region for what will be a race for “nuclearization” preferring energy development over weaponization.”
“Provide greater authorities to all elements of U.S. National power to defeat the Islamic radicals we now call the Islamic State—put them out of business.”
“Immediately recognize, fully support, help organize, and assist those regional partners create an “Arab NATO-like” structure and framework. Build an Arab Army that is able to secure their regional responsibilities.”
“Clearly define and recognize that we face a very radicalized enemy in the likes of Islamic extremism. The administration’s refusal to state what we can plainly see is beyond being irresponsible and ranges on being dangerous for the long-term security of the United States. Seek and appoint leaders (regionally, internationally or right here at home), give them the right and appropriate authorities that can actually accomplish the strategic objectives we seek.”
“We should expect a far more aggressive Iran as it relates to the Gulf (both overtly and covertly) and one that will remain militarily engaged in the Levant for the foreseeable future even if Assad is overthrown. To the extent that Iranian support to the Huthis is regarded as successful we should expect to see it emulated in Bahrain [!-Editor’s note] and possibly eastern Saudi Arabia.”
“What does a more proliferated region mean for US security? Pretty much, what Prime Minister Netanyahu predicted to Congress, which was we would see the end of the Non Proliferation Treaty for all intents and purposes. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the nations of Egypt, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, and Turkey will all attempt their own missile and nuclear programs with varying degrees of success and competence, and the best-case scenario is that we have our current relationship with Pakistan duplicated five fold in a region where we have seen a significant government turnover from at least 2011 to present.”
“And as I stated above, we, the United States of America must comprehend that evil doesn’t recognize diplomacy and nations such as Iran will still maintain the intent of achieving nuclear weapon status.”
“What does this mean for Israel? The worst-case scenario is a reversion to a pre-Yom Kippur War security environment, except with less restraint. While the sectarian angle may limit impact against Israel in the near-term, they are likely to be targeted by jihadists of either flavor (Sunni or Shia) and any Egyptian WMD efforts have to be of serious concern because the government has changed three times since 2011 and it won’t be clear who is going to be on top the next time it occurs (my strongest recommendation is for the U.S. to pick President Al-Sisi as a partner and get on with assisting him fight the Islamic radicals trying to take over Egypt).”
“It’s difficult to overestimate the risks manifest in an Iran armed with ballistic and / or nuclear weapons. Certainly the ambitions of those who have advocated for this capability for 30 years would be vindicated. That many of the same harbor genuine beliefs which include the responsibility of the faithful to prepare for a return of the Imamate and the end of times, often seen as concurrent with “exporting the revolution” (or the reason for being of the IRGC-QF), all of which should provide us little comfort.”
“The most dramatic impact would be the virtual elimination of coercion and persuasion; in nuclear deterrence there remains only warfare by proxy and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).”
“Beyond the unbridled use of a full spectrum of surrogate forces, they would have an inordinate and immediate ability to incur deep and sustained economic costs that would alter global alliances with China as penultimate consumer, and Europe as fractured addict. The ripple effects of such control would be felt well before they were exercised, and reshape the balance of power. Confident without repercussions and satisfied behind a nuclear inventory, Iran would flex its newly acquired regional hegemony to extend the buffer well beyond its Arab neighbors and in the process neutralize internal opposition (i.e., Kurds, Ahvazis, Azeris, Baluchs) without regard to international opinion.”
“Sunni Arab opposition would be reflexive and likely result in an increased reliance on Russia for assistance (perhaps the real winner in the global shift in power as ally to both Iran and the only port for a listing Arab world desperately seeking military assistance). The conflict would expand, but it’s worth noting that we can expect a host of pernicious and unintended consequences as Arab states fund and support any and all opposition to Iran including but not limited to, ISIS and AQ and its Associated Movements (AQAM—yes, these latter groups still exist).”
Again, these are just excerpts and relatively coherent ones at that (at least compared to other parts of the testimony). To get the full sense of his thinking—if one can call it that—one really has to read the whole thing.

Now, it’s possible that he has since changed his views. After more than a full year of the JCPOA’s actual implementation, he sees that the agreement has effectively constrained what he thought was Iran’s nuclear weapons program so that the horrible scenarios he saw in 2015 may not be appear so realistic to him. But I wouldn’t count on it.
http://lobelog.com/lt-gen-michael-flynn ... -for-iran/


The Real Reason to Worry About Gen. Michael Flynn

It’s not his alleged ties to Russia so much as his plan to wage global war for global peace.
By James CardenTODAY 3:49 PM

Michael Flynn

Reports surfaced yesterday that President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the role of national security adviser to retired three-star Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn had been among a number of controversial advisers to the Trump campaign, including alt-right media mogul Steve Bannon, who will serve as chief strategist in the Trump White House. Nevertheless, the reaction inside the Beltway to Flynn’s appointment is revealing of the foreign-policy establishment’s preference to antagonize, contain, and demonize Russia, Syria, and Iran (for all intents and purposes the new and improved neocon Axis of Evil) rather than focus on the Salafist terror threat which has struck in as varied and far off places as Baghdad, Beirut, Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino.

Nevertheless, in Flynn, Trump has found someone who clearly shares his penchant for indulging in dog-whistle rhetoric. He once infamously tweeted “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” No surprise, he also boasts ties to some of the more unhinged elements of the neoconservative movement like the author Michael Leeden. A neoconservative polemicist who is currently “Freedom Scholar” at the rabidly neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Leeden was Flynn’s co-author on book Field of Flight, which was praised by none other than former Senator Joe Lieberman as a “strategic plan by General Flynn of how to win the global war against radical Islam and its big power supporters. The leaders of the next American administration would benefit from reading The Field of Fight.” In an op-ed in (where else?) the New York Post promoting the book, Flynn stated his belief that the United States is in “a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela. Along the way, the alliance picks up radical Muslim countries and organizations such as Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State.”

In other words, we must wage global war for global peace. What could possibly go wrong?

In addition to Flynn’s manifest militarism and his controversial comments on Muslims, his alleged ties to Russia have also been the focus of much speculation. In July, Clinton campaign mouthpiece Vox explained, “There’s one other important thing to know about Flynn: He is weirdly, strangely friendly with Vladimir Putin’s regime.” The proof Vox trotted out for this assertion was a December 2015 dinner Flynn attended in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the state-run media outlet RT. Still more damning, Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, “sat at the head table, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and had delivered a talk on his view of foreign affairs today beforehand.” Fans of Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein may remember that so-called “liberal” media outlets like MSNBC made similar play over Dr. Stein’s attendance at the same dinner.

Flynn came under fire for his “pro-Russia” stance by Politico’s Michael Crowley, who sneered, “Flynn now makes semi-regular appearances on RT as an analyst, in which he often argues that the U.S. and Russia should be working more closely together on issues like fighting [ISIS] and ending Syria’s civil war.”

Yet despite the braying of the Beltway media class, Flynn’s Russian connections are likely nonexistent; yet there are other very real reasons to be concerned with his appointment. One often overlooked contradiction at the heart of the Flynn’s alleged pro-Russian bias is his repeated condemnation of the Iran nuclear deal, behind which Russia was a driving force. After the deal was signed, Flynn observed, “Russia is the big winner in this deal as they are backing an Iranian program knowing that they can also sell to the Iranian antagonists in the region and make double the money on arms and nuclear technology.” According to Flynn, with the Iranian nuclear deal “The U.S. gets nothing but grief.” In his view, “the U.S. and others were too anxious to get any deal. We gave up all our leverage.” Sounding a lot like candidate Trump, Flynn continued, “We got beat by a nation of expert negotiators who got everything they wanted and needed from the deal for only making promises of allowing future observations.”

In the end, Flynn’s appointment is yet another worrying sign that the administration of Donald J. Trump will, like the Obama administration, be held captive to the reigning foreign-policy orthodoxy of interventionism and militarism that has done such damage to America and the world over the past 15 years.
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-r ... ael-flynn/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Fake News Yellowcake

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:04 am


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzh9b_vo4vs


Flynn under fire for fake news
A shooting at a D.C. pizza restaurant is stoking criticism of the conspiracy theories being spread by Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser.
By BRYAN BENDER and ANDREW HANNA 12/05/16 07:13 PM EST

Michael Flynn has used social media to promote a series of outrageous conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and their inner circles in recent months.
By JACK SHAFER

As Donald Trump’s national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will have to advise the president of the veracity of foreign and domestic threats, separating those that require immediate policy action from propaganda or misinformation.

But Flynn himself has used social media to promote a series of outrageous conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and their inner circles in recent months — pushing dubious factoids at least 16 times since Aug. 9, according to a POLITICO review of his Twitter posts. Flynn, who has 106,000 Twitter followers, has used the platform to retweet accusations that Clinton is involved with child sex trafficking and has "secretly waged war” on the Catholic Church, as well as charges that Obama is a “jihadi” who “laundered” money for Muslim terrorists.

Now some say Flynn’s fondness for spreading fake news casts doubt on his fitness to serve as the White House’s national security adviser, suggesting that he either can’t spot a blatant falsehood or is just ideologically bent to believe the worst of his perceived enemies.

The flak began flying anew after Sunday’s shooting at a Washington pizza restaurant that had been targeted by false, internet-fed rumors accusing it of being the epicenter of a satanic child-trafficking conspiracy involving Clinton and her allies. Flynn had twice used Twitter to promote similar, only slightly less outrageous hoaxes in the past month, including a claim that Clinton’s campaign manager takes part in occult rituals in which bodily fluids are consumed.


Pizzeria assailant thought he was rescuing child sex slaves
By YOUSEF SABA

Those were far from isolated tweets for Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In the vast majority of instances in the past four months, he was passing along other people’s conspiratorial tweets instead of casting them in his own voice. In one example, he retweeted a post about a Fox News story claiming that the Army had identified Clinton as an “insider threat.” Another time, he reposted a tweet by someone named “Eagle Wings” about an alleged United Nations one-world-government plot called Agenda 21.

Trump himself has faced criticism for his use of social media to spread misinformation, including his evidence-free claim that “millions of people” had voted illegally in the Nov. 8 election. But this kind of rumor-mongering is especially beyond the pale for someone who will have the next president’s ear, said former State Department policy adviser Peter Singer, one of many people who publicly lambasted Flynn after Sunday's shooting.

"We are not talking about policy toward China or Russia," Singer, now a national security strategist at the think tank New America, said in an interview Monday. "We are talking about some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories out there. We are down the rabbit hole. How can you take him seriously when he is discussing people in D.C. drinking human blood? It is exasperating.”

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said late Monday that while nobody was injured in the shooting, the conspiracy theories spread on social media had "come close to having deadly results."

“It is incumbent on Trump, his nominee for national security adviser, Gen. Flynn, and his entire team to disavow these falsehoods and conspiracy theories," Schiff said in a statement. "They will soon have a country to run, and God help us if they conduct the nation's affairs like their transition — without the willingness or ability to separate fact from fiction.”

Singer and others stressed that the position of national security adviser, which does not require Senate confirmation, "is one of, if not the, most important national security roles."

"It is a role that has been occupied by a history of thoughtful and sober thinkers, whether you are right or left," he said.

The adviser serves as the primary counselor to the president on defense and foreign matters, running a 400-person staff in the White House that acts as the filter for the Pentagon, the State Department and intelligence and other security agencies, as well as the implementer of the president's policy. Well-known individuals who have held the post include Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Even one of Flynn’s former military colleagues expressed puzzlement Monday at the dark turn his pronouncements on social media have taken.

"That is not typically the behavior of someone who needs the necessary sobriety to advise the president on the most critical matters facing the nation," said the former military official, who worked with Flynn every day for more than a year in Afghanistan.


"This is not the Mike Flynn I once knew," added the former military official, who asked not to be identified because he currently holds a government position. "While he was given to reacting on a gut, rather than fact, this represents a departure from the intellectual rigor he demanded of those around him."

Flynn did not respond to several requests to be interviewed for this story. The Trump transition office also did not respond to requests for comment.

But Graham Plaster, a retired Navy officer and one of Flynn's acolytes in military intelligence, defended the general's social media habits, contending that sharing false information doesn't necessarily mean he believes it.

"Anything that gets retweeted or shared is done casually," he said in an interview. "Anyone who assumed more than that is walking on ice. Twitter is a different context than reading a speech and in some cases things are taken out of context based on how limited the character count is. There is no opportunity to explain yourself."

Still, calls grew on Monday for Trump to rethink his choice following the shooting at Comet Ping Pong, a family eatery and concert space that has been the center of the child sex ring hysteria. The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, is a former romantic partner of pro-Clinton political activist David Brock, a longtime lightning rod for the right, according to The New York Times.

"While deserving respect for the time he has served our country in uniform, we feel General Flynn is unfit for serving in this critical post,” a collection of 53 organizations representing Muslim and other religious and human rights group wrote to Trump on Monday. “His appointment will damage America’s standing in the world and pose a threat to our national security."

While not referring specifically to the pizza conspiracy theory, the groups asserted that “General Flynn has repeatedly made Islamophobic statements and peddled anti-Muslim conspiracy theories,” including his much-noted comment early this year that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” The groups also pointed to a “blatantly anti-Semitic tweet” that Flynn apologized for in July, after he retweeted a post critical of CNN that included the words: “Not anymore, Jews.”

The Obama White House took a swipe Monday at the traffic in conspiracy theories, without referring to Flynn by name.

"We all hold a responsibility, regardless of whether or not we are planning to serve in a government position or if one of our family members is planning to serve in a government position, that we shouldn't be propagating false things that could inspire violence," press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters when asked about the incident at the pizza restaurant. "There's probably some overlap with the golden rule there, I think somewhere, that may be worth considering."

Flynn didn't specifically promote the Comet Ping Pong rumors on Twitter, although he promoted related conspiracy theories that were nearly as lurid.

In one tweet Nov. 2, Flynn promoted a "MUST READ!" post from a website called True Pundit alleging that emails found on a laptop owned by former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) — the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin — contained enough evidence "to put Hillary [Clinton] and her crew away for life” for crimes including "child exploitation" and "sex crimes with minors."

"U decide," Flynn wrote. But no such emails have ever surfaced.


Two days later, Flynn posed a tweet containing the hashtag "#spiritcooking," a reference to a bizarre rumor alleging that Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, took part in occult rituals in which people consume blood and other bodily fluids. That rumor, based on a wild reading of some Podesta emails that had been released by WikiLeaks, also took off on websites such as the Drudge Report and InfoWars, run by Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.


The "#spiritcooking" rumor soon morphed into the "#pizzagate" conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong, which alleges that virtually the entire D.C. establishment — including the Clintons, Obama, law enforcement and the media — is involved with or covering up a satanic plot to traffic in, sexually abuse and murder children. The debunked allegations have led to death threats and harassment against the restaurant and others associated with Comet, including owners of neighboring businesses and indie musicians who play concerts in the pizzeria’s back room.

While Flynn never promoted the pizza rumors himself, his son Michael Flynn Jr. has done so directly, including Sunday night.

"Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story," tweeted the younger Flynn, who has been working for his father's international consulting firm. "The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it."


While the Flynns are in the fake-news spotlight now, one author on the topic says the influence of conspiracy series in U.S. politics dates back to the American Revolution.

"We have had many leaders in American history that have been conspiratorial in their thinking," said Joseph Uscinski, author of "American Conspiracy Theories" and a political science professor at the University Miami. "But we just don't know about it because they didn't have Twitter accounts."

Nonetheless, he said the trend can go too far, especially given Trump's own track record.

"If you have a conspiracy theorist in the White House, you probably don't need any more in the inner circle," Uscinski said.

The former military officer who knows Flynn well suggested that his former boss may have a proclivity for misinformation because of his long career in secret intelligence. "He also fancies himself as someone who is skilled as manipulation of actual fact in order to affect movement downstream," the ex-officer said, recalling that the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan included spreading false information through the media to see how it might affect the enemy.

"If this is another example of his willingness to manipulate information in order to have a specific end goal it would not be a complete departure, I suppose," the former officer said.

What is most disconcerting to some is the influence Flynn will soon have in the White House.

The national security adviser "is the nexus where all the tools of foreign and national security policy come together," said David Rothkopf, editor of Foreign Policy magazine and author of "Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power."

"This is the least experienced president in American history," Rothkopf added. "That means that his advisers are more important than they have ever been. Getting balanced advice to the president is more important than ever."
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/m ... ump-232227


It’s Not Just Pizzagate. Son of Trump’s National Security Adviser Believes Other Vile Things Too.

By Josh Voorhees

The sign of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria is seen on Connecticut Avenue on Monday in D.C.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

On Sunday, Edgar Maddison Welch walked into a popular pizzeria in Washington, D.C., carrying an assault rifle and opened fire, according to police. His reason? Authorities say the 28-year-old man from North Carolina claims he was there to “self-investigate” a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the back of the neighborhood restaurant.

Josh Voorhees
JOSH VOORHEES
Josh Voorhees is a Slate senior writer. He lives in Iowa City.

First thing’s first: There is absolutely no credible evidence—zero—that Clinton or anyone else is running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The establishment’s owner, James Alefantis, is friends with a few prominent Democrats and was a Clinton supporter, but as the New York Times reported last month, “he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims.”

That, however, hasn’t stopped the fact-free “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory from gaining purchase in the more extreme corners of the internet, and Alefantis and his employees have increasingly been the subject of harassment online and off in recent weeks, culminating in Sunday’s shooting. Thankfully, no one was physically injured during that incident, but the fact it happened at all would hopefully be enough to convince people to stop spreading the spurious story. Of course that’s not the world we live in these days.

Exhibit A: Michael G. Flynn, the son of retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. Flynn Jr. sent this out after the attack:


Flynn subsequently retweeted a message from a Trump supporter suggesting that he was simply urging the news media to fully debunk the story, though he quickly abandoned any such pretense when he spent part of Sunday retweeting other Pizzagate peddlers. He also shared direct messages purportedly from CNN’s Jake Tapper, who appears to have admirably taken Flynn to task.* Tapper, according to the shared screenshots, privately told Flynn “spreading this nonsense is dangerous”; Flynn responded publicly by claiming Tapper was “trolling” his family.

Junior is more than just his father’s son. He’s also served as his dad’s chief of staff, an employee at his consulting firm, and an editor of his books. This is the man who will advise the man who will advise Donald Trump on issues of national security. What he thinks—and, sadly, what he tweets—matters. It’s worth noting, then, that his foray into Pizzagate was hardly an isolated trip into the land of dangerous speculation and hate.

The younger Flynn’s social feeds are a hot bed of conspiracy theories along with homophobic and/or racially charged missives, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott documented on Monday:

Flynn frequently shares unfounded conspiracy theories, like ones claiming Hillary Clinton and President Obama would be tried for treason if Trump is elected. He also posted a unfounded story claiming hackers would release a video of former President Bill Clinton raping a teenage girl. In one post, he called alt-right social commentator Mike Cernovich, who frequently shares unfounded news stories, "a source I trust."
In a Facebook post from October, Flynn shared a fake news story claiming Obama flaunted an erection to female reporters in 2008. Flynn tweeted multiple times unfounded claims about Sen. Marco Rubio's "coke house, gayish dance troupe, and foam parties." These tweets included a baseless article about Rubio being a homosexual who lived in a drug house and went to "foam parties" where "mutual masturbation is an occasional component, generally beneath the cover of foam."
None of that is grounded in anything resembling reality. But it’s stuff Flynn Jr. thinks the world, and presumably his father, should know about.

The younger Flynn often peppers his Twitter timeline and Facebook page with references and links to InfoWars, an online clearinghouse of conspiracy theories, and CNN captured screenshots of since-deleted tweets from him that were racially charged. One replied to a Vox story about whites-only dating sites with this rejoinder in January 2016: "soooo African Americans can have B.E.T. but whites can't have their own dating site? Hmmm.” The other, posted the day after the 2012 Election Day, claimed that “the only reason minorities voted for [Barack Obama] is the color of his skin and NOT for the issues.”

The elder Flynn will not need Senate confirmation to become Trump’s national security adviser. Flynn Jr., according to CNN, already has a presidential transition email address. It seems both will fit in just fine with their new boss.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... thing.html



I worked at Flynn's DIA, and I fear that he will put us on the road to war with Iran
Foreign Policy (blog)-10 hours ago
By Thomas E. RicksThomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. He can be reached at ...
https://www.google.com/search?client=sa ... ..&start=0


THE DISRUPTIVE CAREER OF MICHAEL FLYNN, TRUMP’S NATIONAL-SECURITY ADVISER
By Dana Priest November 23, 2016
Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, shown here at Trump Tower, was tapped by Donald Trump last week to serve as national-security adviser.
Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, shown here at Trump Tower, was tapped by Donald Trump last week to serve as national-security adviser.
Photograph By Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
The first time I met Michael Flynn, whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped last week to be his national-security adviser, he was wearing the Army’s weekend uniform—a baggy polo shirt and khaki pants—and swinging his Blackberry around like a cowboy would his revolver. It was the late summer of 2008, at a Washington cocktail party hosted by Flynn’s boss, Admiral Michael Mullen, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Flynn was Mullen’s top intelligence guy.

“Look at this!” Flynn said, holding up his phone so that I could see the screen. At his request, his communications staff would send him the daily dispatches published by tribal media outlets in Pakistan’s troublesome northwest region. These articles chronicled skirmishes, feuds, and revenge killings—it was unfiltered information that any decent Western news stringer would know how to read, but that, seven years into the war in Afghanistan, the American military was still far from absorbing. Flynn got it, though. He was drawn to the little flecks of truth scattered on the ground.

A lot of reporters and other civilians found Mike, as everyone called him, refreshing. A plucky Irish Catholic kid from Rhode Island, he wasn’t impressed by rank. He told his junior officers to challenge him in briefings. “You’d hear them say, ‘Boss, that’s nuts,’ ” one former colleague said. The colleague asked not to be named, as did others I talked to for this story, either because they wanted to maintain a positive relationship with Flynn or because they did not want to criticize the incoming Administration. “When he would walk in a room, they would look up like little dogs. They just loved him.”

Flynn broke rules he thought were stupid. He once told me about a period he spent assigned to a C.I.A. station in Iraq, when he would sometimes sneak out of the compound without the “insane” required approval from C.I.A. headquarters, in Langley, Virginia. He had technicians secretly install an Internet connection in his Pentagon office, even though it was forbidden. There was also the time he gave classified information to nato allies without approval, an incident which prompted an investigation, and a warning from superiors. During his stint as Mullen’s intelligence chief, Flynn would often write “This is bullshit!” in the margins of classified papers he was obliged to pass on to his boss, someone who saw these papers told me.

The greatest accomplishment of Flynn’s military career was revolutionizing the way that the clandestine arm of the military, the Joint Special Operations Command (jsoc), undertook the killing and capture of suspected terrorists and insurgents in war zones. Stanley McChrystal, Flynn’s mentor, had tapped him for the job. They were both part of the self-described “Irish mafia” of officers at the Fort Bragg Army base, in North Carolina. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Flynn ordered jsoc commandos to collect and catalogue data from interrogations, captured electronic equipment, pocket trash—anything that could yield useful information. By analyzing these disparate scraps of intelligence, they were able to discover that Al Qaeda was not a hierarchical group after all but a dynamic network of cells and relationships. As I learned while doing research for my book “Top Secret America,” Flynn and McChrystal dramatically increased the pace of jsoc attacks on enemy hideouts by devising a system in which commandos on missions transferred promising data—cell-phone numbers, meeting locations—to analysts, who could then quickly point them to additional targets to hit. Multiple raids a night became common.

McChrystal, who was appointed to run jsoc in 2003, brought Flynn in as his intelligence chief to help him shake up the organization. Flynn was one of the few high-ranking officers who disdained the Army’s culture of conformity. But McChrystal also knew he had to protect Flynn from that same culture. He “boxed him in,” someone who had worked with both men told me last week, by encouraging Flynn to keep his outbursts in check and surrounding him with subordinates who would challenge the unsubstantiated theories he tended to indulge.

In mid-2007, Flynn returned home with three years of jsoc secrets in his head. He had witnessed close-quarters combat and killings. He had helped load the bodies of dead and wounded Seal Team 6 and Delta Force warriors into evacuation helicopters. Like his comrades, he had spent twenty hours a day, seven days a week, focussed on killing the enemy. Sometimes women and children were killed, too. He wouldn’t even take a break to attend his son’s wedding, a moment of personal sacrifice he mentions often when reflecting on those days.

In 2012, Flynn became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in charge of all military attachés and defense-intelligence collection around the world. He ran into serious trouble almost immediately. I’ve spoken with some two dozen former colleagues who were close to Flynn then, members of the D.I.A. and the military, and some who worked with him in civilian roles. They all like Flynn personally. But they described how he lurched from one priority to another and had trouble building a loyal team. “He made a lot of changes,” one close observer of Flynn’s time at the D.I.A. told me. “Not in a strategic way—A to Z—but back and forth.”

Flynn also began to seek the Washington spotlight. But, without loyal junior officers at his side to vet his facts, he found even more trouble. His subordinates started a list of what they called “Flynn facts,” things he would say that weren’t true, like when he asserted that three-quarters of all new cell phones were bought by Africans or, later, that Iran had killed more Americans than Al Qaeda. In private, his staff tried to dissuade him from repeating these lines.

Flynn’s temper also flared. He berated people in front of colleagues. Soon, according to former associates, a parallel power structure developed within the D.I.A. to fence him in, and to keep the nearly seventeen-thousand-person agency working. “He created massive antibodies in the building,” the former colleague said.

Flynn had been on the job just eighteen months when James Clapper told him he had to go. Clapper said that he could stay for another nine months, until his successor was vetted and confirmed, according to two people familiar with their conversation. Flynn was livid.

After he left government, Flynn followed the path of many other retired generals and got on the television and speaking circuit. He wrote a book with Michael Ledeen, a controversial neoconservative foreign-policy analyst, about defeating terrorism. Islam is not a religion, Flynn and Ledeen wrote, but a political ideology bent on destroying Judeo-Christian civilization. Flynn began saying that he had been fired because President Obama disagreed with his views on terrorism and wanted to hide the growth of isis. I haven’t found anyone yet who heard him say this while he was still in the military. In the past, I’ve asked Flynn directly about this claim; he has told me that he doesn’t have any proof—it’s just something he feels was true. (Flynn did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

As Flynn’s public comments became more and more shrill, McChrystal, Mullen, and others called Flynn to urge him to “tone it down,” a person familiar with each attempt told me. But Flynn had found a new boss, Trump, who enlisted him in the fight against the Republican and Democratic Party establishments. Flynn was ready. At the Republican National Convention, Flynn boiled over in front of an audience of millions. He led the crowd in chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!” His former colleagues say they were shocked by what they saw.

What Flynn saw was corruption: Clinton, the media, the Justice Department, the intelligence community—they are all corrupt. I spoke to Flynn three months ago, while working on a profile of him for the Washington Post. “Is this some kind of hatchet job!” he roared into the phone when I asked why, exactly, he thought Clinton should be in jail.

The lifelong intelligence officer, who once valued tips gleaned from tribal reporters, has become a ready tweeter of hackneyed conspiracy theories. He reposts the vitriol of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim commentators. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he tweeted in February, linking to a false claim that Islam wants eighty per cent of humanity enslaved or exterminated. “U decide,” he posted one week before the election, along with the headline from a linked story that appeared on a Web site called True Pundit: “NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w/Children, etc. . . . MUST READ!”

Last week, Trump announced that Flynn would be his national-security adviser, a job that requires strategic vision and consensus-seeking among competing big-dog agencies. Mullen, this week, suggested to me that Flynn would need to change in order to succeed in his new role. “Mike Flynn was a terrific intel officer when he worked for me as a two-star and was both dynamic and often contrarian,” Mullen said. “Those qualities need to be tempered as national-security adviser in order to serve the next President as a thoughtful and strategic adviser.” Whether Flynn now learns to bottle his rage, whether he reëmbraces fact over fiction, whether he’s capable of playing the role of a contemplative counsellor, will determine the outcome of his most difficult and important mission yet.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... ty-adviser


China Pushes Back on Michael Flynn’s ‘Radical Islamist’ Remarks

By EDWARD WONG DEC. 7, 2016

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the choice of President-elect Donald J. Trump for national security adviser, speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman pushed back on Wednesday against assertions by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, that China was allied with “radical Islamists.”

The spokesman, Lu Kang, was asked at a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing about Mr. Flynn’s accusations, which were made in a book released in July that he wrote with a co-author, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies.”

“I hope everyone who takes a responsible attitude and is devoted to safeguarding China-U.S. relations and boosting China-U.S. cooperation can base their opinions on facts when taking a position,” Mr. Lu said. “Only in this way can mutual trust be enhanced.”

Mr. Flynn has said the United States must lead a global campaign against “radical Islam.” He has on occasion pushed conspiracy theories. For example, after the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, he kept asking intelligence officers working under him at the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Pentagon to look for involvement by Iran in the assault. There was no evidence of any ties to Iran.

In his book, Mr. Flynn mentions China and North Korea a half-dozen times.

In one passage, he wrote, “The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS and countless other terrorist groups.”

In another, he said, “No surprise that we are facing an alliance between radical Islamists and regimes in Havana, Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing. Both believe that history, and/or Allah, blesses their efforts, and so both want to ensure that this glorious story is carefully told.”

Mr. Flynn did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

China is a secular Communist nation that has expressed concern about the spread of Islamic extremist ideas within its borders. It has said religious extremists are responsible for violence in Muslim areas of the western region of Xinjiang, and it has asked the United States for cooperation in counterterrorism operations there. American officials say they are reluctant to enter into close cooperation on Xinjiang matters, as some ethnic Uighurs and human rights groups say Chinese officials are violating human rights in Xinjiang.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, from his transition team after the younger Mr. Flynn used Twitter to support a conspiracy theory involving a pizza parlor in Washington, which was the subject of fake news stories. This week, a man citing that theory was arrested after firing a rifle in the restaurant, the police said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world ... mists.html


Flynn Clueless on Syrian Nukes

by Jim Lobe

As part of a continuing inquiry into Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser-Designate Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), here’s a passage in his book co-authored by Michael Ledeen, on the alleged nuclear plant at Al Kibar in Syria that Israeli air strikes presumably destroyed in 2007. The passage illustrates his analytical skills, the acuity of his argumentation, the precision of his language, and the reliability of his sourcing (as more recently illustrated by his tweeting about Clinton and child pornography). The passage, which is all too typical in its opacity, speculation, and questionable sourcing, comes in the context of his discussion of alleged Iranian-North Korean nuclear collaboration:

[i]n early September 2007, Israeli forces allegedly destroyed a potential nuclear weapons site in Syria that was under Iranian operation and had benefited from North Korean technological assistance.
At the time, I was the senior intelligence officer at the United States Central Command. We spent many sleepless nights planning a series of operations to strike these facilities. The more I studied the extensive construction, the number of sites, the connections between North Korea and Iran as well as the operations security that kept these facilities hidden for nearly ten years right under our noses, I grew more irritated and angry than being simply disappointed in our intelligence system. Missing this site was beyond an intelligence failure, it could have caused a nuclear war in the Middle East.
And according to the German press at the time—Der Spiegel—there were at least two other nuclear weapons facilities in Syria as a result of Iranian-North Korean efforts. One was an underground location near the Lebanese border. The other was said to be at a “secret location.” In the end, we were lucky the Israelis decided to attack and destroy Al-Kibar—today, the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) owns that territory and would likely own a nuclear weapon.
Hardly an expert on nuclear issues myself, I asked Robert Kelley, who has done considerable research on the alleged Syrian nuclear program, to comment. Kelley is a bona fide expert on things nuclear, particularly in deciphering signals of nuclear-related activity from satellite photos. He has been the leader of a foreign intelligence analysis group at Los Alamos and a chief inspector of Iraqi nuclear programs at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Along the way, he has been a research reactor supervisor, a plutonium facility manager, and a director of the DOE Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base. He currently writes on non-proliferation for a number of publications and is an associate research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

With regard to Flynn’s first sentence, Kelley explained that he had at least one major problem: “There is simply no evidence that Iran was involved with the Syrian Al Kibar facility, let alone supervising it. This is pure, unsubstantiated speculation,” he said.

As for the second paragraph, it not only is just plain confusing from a grammatical point of view, but also provoked considerable consternation on Kelley’s part for substantive reasons.

On the grammatical side, you’ll note that in the previous paragraph, he refers to one “site” in Syria. But that one site is suddenly transformed into “these facilities.” He then refers to a “number of sites”—again using the plural—without clarifying what sites he is talking about. Even the most intuitive of intelligence analysts would find this antecedent disagreement confusing, to say the least.

On the substantive side, Kelley challenges the various assertions contained in the second paragraph:

There was no “extensive construction” at the al Kibar site, nor were there “multiple sites” there or in the vicinity. It is an area of coal mines, and IAEA found coal particles on the site. It consisted of one building and a nearby shed that had been under construction for years and that was identified by the US and bombed by Israel. It had some similarities to a reactor facility in North Korea although it differed in both size and shape. The building had almost no supporting services (unlike its supposed DPRK analog) and no security, which is quite remarkable given its alleged strategic importance! Perhaps Flynn is referring in his plural “sites” to one identified by the press near Damascus at Marj al Sultan. That site has been mistakenly confused with nuclear activities but is not a nuclear site. It is a military vehicle depot lacking nuclear industrial satellite imagery signatures. Another military truck depot in the north, which has been touted in the press as a nuclear site, has also lacked any supporting evidence. Nothing else has been identified by any reputable source.
As to the assertion that the Al Kibar facility had been “kept …hidden for nearly ten years right under our noses,” there is publicly available satellite imagery of the site going back to 2001 or 2002. It had been noted as an unusual building and was being monitored. The former Director General of IAEA says US intelligence community analysts were discussing the site at least a year before it was bombed (without alerting IAEA.) It is astounding that the senior intelligence officer at U.S. Central Command at the time—and subsequently head of the Defense Intelligence Agency—was not aware of the fact that the site had been subject to satellite scrutiny for years and now brags about his ignorance in this book.
As to the third paragraph, the one that cites the Spiegel article, it, too, suffers from serious problems beginning with ambiguity about when the article was actually published. (The book contains no footnotes.) When Flynn writes that the article came out “at the time,” the obvious suggestion, based on the two preceding two paragraphs, is that it was published when he was the senior intelligence officer at CENTCOM; that is, back in 2007 when the Israelis carried out their attack. In fact, according to Kelley, the only Spiegel article to which the assertions in this paragraph could be referring is one that was published in January 2015, when Flynn had already retired. (In addition to footnotes, the book could have used a decent proofreader.)

But there are other problems with this paragraph, as Kelley points out, not least the fact that the sources are entirely anonymous and that such explosive assertions have appeared nowhere else since its publication, not even in IAEA reports that continue to cover Syrian activities.

But the notion that the Syrian government, in the middle of a bloody civil war and—subject to repeated attacks by Israeli missiles and aircraft targeting suspected sensitive weapons facilities and shipments that might enhance Hezbollah’s arsenal—would build a strategic facility such as a nuclear reactor in a tongue of land almost entirely surrounded by Lebanon defies any common sense. Moreover, there is not a single indicator in satellite imagery of the alleged site that this is a nuclear plant. On the contrary, the imagery strongly suggests it is not a reactor. Indeed, every material factual assertion made by the author in the Der Spiegel article was thoroughly rebutted in the January 21, 2015, issue of Jane’s Defense Weekly. That Flynn prefers unknown German writers citing completely anonymous sources over a publication with well-established expertise on nuclear weapons and extensive contacts with the relevant intelligence agencies tends to confirm that his biases outweigh any respect for true intelligence professionals who know the field.
As to the assertion that “If Israel had not bombed the site [at al Kibar] ISIS would own a nuclear weapon today,” Flynn appears unaware that a functioning nuclear weapon requires a huge infrastructure far in excess of what was found at Al Kibar, according to Kelley.

An (unfinished) reactor requires support facilities such as fuel supply and fabrication. There were none. Extracting plutonium requires a chemical reprocessing plant for handling highly radioactive materials. There was none to be found. The weapons program itself would be extensive with many intelligence signatures but there were none. ISIS would in no way own a nuclear weapon today, and the claim that they would is utterly irresponsible and highly inflammatory.
In short, Gen. Flynn may have been highly effective at coordinating operations to speedily track down and kill or apprehend suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban cells in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in assessing nuclear weapons programs and in separating actual facts from sheer speculation or prejudice—let alone in presenting information and context clearly and logically (or chronologically)—he is sorely lacking. Caveat emptor.

http://lobelog.com/flynn-clueless-on-syrian-nukes/


WAKE UP AND SMELL THE YELLOWCAKE

PAIN FOR THE FAKERS FAME CAN'T BE MAINTAIN



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIT4URJr7dE

Freakin' me out you wear a mask called counterfeit

You're freakin' me out you wear a mask

Freakin' me out you wear a mask called counterfeit
You're freakin' me out you wear a... fake
Hey man wake up and smell the concrete

Strange to see you've changed like the LB

Could be identity crisis but I can't buy this
Reality bites but that's what life is
Pitiful you, your hideous behavior
Hate what God gave ya, fakin all the flava

Artificial minds seekin out the new trends
Get in where you fit in
Quit thinkin like a has-been diggin in my culture

Let me let your punks know I'm an old school soldier
With the funk flow
A damn shame you want to change yourself

Because you're sick of yourself
Well I'm sick of you too, fake
You're a, a counterfeit, fake
You know we figured you out
Well I'm sick of you too, fake
You're a, a counterfeit, fake


I wonder, I wonder
I wonder what it's like to be a clone
Doin' nothin, nothin' on my own
Alone in your misery, you're bitin on my new style

Filed as a counterfeit, going down in history as nothin but a copy cat (copy cat)
So if your fakin that you're phat you need a ballbat
Right where your head is at
All your desperation causes separation

Now I grab the mic to intimidate
Your weakness screams from the limb on your siren
Phonies get the hint quick smacked with funk flick
Pain for the fakers fame can't maintain

All these phonies
You disregarded your life (disregaurded your life)
You disrespected your friends (you disrespected your friends)
You've even stolen your appearance (stolen) from hangin out with my family

But I should have never dropped my guard (shoulda never dropped my gaurd)
So you could stab me in the back (stab me in the back)
But you were faking me out (you were faking me out)
Just faking me out you wear a mask (you wear a mask)

Freaking me out you wear a mask called counterfeit, you're freaking me out you

Wear a mask called counterfeit

Freaking me out you wear a mask called counterfeit
Now you're steadily startin to change
You want to rearrange your lifestyle with live like the wild child
With the vibe alive you could lie to try and be so fly
A lie but you deny you're a fake

You know we figured you're a phony (fake)
You know we figured you out (fake)
You know we figured you out, figured you out, figured you out
Fake

You're probably freaking me out

Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby 82_28 » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:38 am

I have told this story here before, but I'll just repeat like I always do. . .

I had a regular customer who was a higher up in the military. Since I don't know jack shit about how the chain of command works, as I could never tell the difference between a lieutenant or colonel or anything. But he was higher up in the navy. He was around about these character's ages as well.

He said something along the lines of Afghanistan is breakfast, Iraq is lunch and Iran is dinner. He explained to me that, with no compunction or irony that it is a long held obsession (my words) to topple Iran within the "ranks". In these days back then, it was just me arguing about my opposition to the bombardment of Iraq and him arguing with me and explaining how wrong I was. But he made it abundantly known that that level of people want nothing more than a war with Iran. Or rather, wipe what we know of it off the face of the Earth. It's been sittin' around in their heads for decades. The controllers want to destroy it and they all just follow along, in step. He was so rigid that it chilled me to the bone. All of the innocent questions I asked of him, such as "why would you want to do that? People live there." was met with basically "they asked for it and we have been planning to do this for decades". . .

So, I suppose Iran has been expecting it themselves if this guy would reveal it to some bartender in the US itself. By that, I mean, it is common knowledge.

There will be a "new" war, I think.

I hate using the term World War III, but this will begin what could be it -- all these disgusting, malicious generals being named to the trump cabinet and shit led by a petulant maniac. All I can do is nod my head back and forth.

Not pretty. . .
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby NeonLX » Thu Dec 08, 2016 3:57 pm

See, I don't "get" that kind of thinking. I'm not sure if it's unfamiliarity, or if it's something actually wired into my head. I've never understood the need to dominate somebody else. When we were kids, this one friend of mine wanted to play "army" all of the time. He had all of these plastic soldiers, tanks, weapons and shit that he would arrange in painstaking detail around his basement. And we were supposed to play by his rules, as he issued commands. We were 2nd and 3rd graders, for chrissakes. I'd simply refuse to play and the commander kid would starting barking orders at me, working himself into a rage. I'd simply go up the stairs and walk home. Later, if he saw me outside, he'd try to shove me. I'd shove back and that was that.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Dec 09, 2016 7:59 pm

It's the eternal mindset of the conqueror.

He was probably an officer in a past war, now reincarnated, and powerless to do more than bully.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 05, 2017 8:51 am

Top 4 Ways Bush even more Outrageously Dissed the Intelligence Community
By Juan Cole | Jan. 5, 2017 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Philip Mudd, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorist center and FBI National Security Branch, has been on CNN maintaining that there was a big difference between how the intelligence agencies were treated by the Bush administration and how the PEOTUS is treating them. He said that he was grilled on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction by the Republican congress, but that he was treated with respect. He complains that Donald J. Trump is being disrespectful to intelligence professionals.
With all due respect to Mr. Mudd (and I sincerely mean that), what he is saying makes no sense. Everyone knows that the Bush cabinet hated the CIA for not going along with its phony allegations of Iraqi biological and nuclear weapons. (The one lapse was a hastily assembled NIE produced under pressure from then vice president and unindicted felon Richard Bruce Cheney). Iraq didn’t have such weapons and in 2002 when the press for war was made, did not even have programs.
The main point is that while Bush and his cohort had a rule that they did not trash talk people in public, they displayed the utmost disrespect for intelligence professionals who would not turn weasel and tell them (and the public) what they wanted to hear. How could you disrespect intelligence professionals more than to set aside their analysis in favor of the talking points of Neoconservative hacks or to out them, putting their lives and those of their contacts in danger? And what more dangerous course than to go to war against the grain of the analysis of the trained professionals? The difference between Trump and Bush is only a matter of rhetorical style, and Trump hasn’t had the opportunity yet to endanger America the way Bush and the Neoconservatives did.
Here are four egregious examples of the Bush-Cheney (and especially Cheney) attack on CIA professionals:
1.
A fraudulent document was circulated by former Italian and French intelligence officer with a businessman cover, Rocco Martino, purporting to be a purchase statement by the Niger government regarding an alleged buy of uranium by Saddam Hussein of Iraq. It was apparently taken seriously by British intelligence, but it was an obvious fraud, since the officials who allegedly signed it were not any longer in office on the date of the document. The whole thing may have been a project of Italian military intelligence, which has strong connections to surviving fascist circles in Italy, and is also connected to Michael Ledeen, Washington poobah who is now close to the Trumpies. (H/t to Josh Marshall who researched all this). My guess is that US Neoconservatives used Ledeen as a conduit to the Italian intelligence Neofascists, and put in an order for such a hoax.
American CIA analysts looked at the document and quickly concluded that it was a fraud. Despite enormous pressure from Bush-Cheney officials, the Neoconservatives, the State Department and the CIA refused to go along with Bush’s desire to include a reference to the forgery in his 2003 State of the Union Address. Bush (or David Frum?) therefore put it this way: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
This way of lying while seeming to tell the truth. What Bush really did was to disregard the State Department’s Intelligence and Research department and the CIA analysts and to find any alternative to this homegrown Washington expertise. In other words, Bush appealed to MI6 in just the way that Trump is appealing to Julian Assange. Both over-ruled their own intelligence professions.
2. In late 2005, Bush closed the Alec Station, the unit within the CIA that was tasked with finding Bin Laden. Bush directed intelligence resources instead toward Iraq, which he had illegally invaded and occupied under false pretenses. The CIA was not happy. The former head of the unit reacted, “This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda . . . These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals.” And of course al-Qaeda did experience a resurgence. Indeed, the Iraq al-Qaeda affiliate morphed into Daesh (ISIS, ISIL).
3. In late 2005, someone on the Bush National Security Agency attempted to enlist the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA in violating the Agency’s charter by having them investigate and smear a US citizen on American soil (me). A group of analysts who objected to the whole episode later blew the whistle on it, including Glenn L. Carle, the bravest man in Washington. They went public because they knew that what had been done, having the agency tasked to operate on US soil with regard to an innocent American, could have deeply damaged it. The irony is that in those days I was trying to help destroy al-Qaeda and frequently gave briefings and presentations to inter-agency audiences that included CIA analysts (and no, I was never an agent), attempting to help get them up to speed on the particulars of the challenge. And the Bushies stabbed us all in the back the same way they did Valerie Plame (see #4).
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4. Bush-Cheney even went so far as to deliberately out a serving CIA field officer with a non-official cover (a NOC, who would be disavowed if captured by the enemy; unfortunately she was captured by Bush-Cheney). Younger readers may not know the Valerie Plame story, so here is a reprint edition from February 10, 2006, of it. [Valerie’s later thrillers are well worth reading.]
.
Cheney Authorized Libby to Disclose Classified Documents
Once upon a time, a former agent of Italian military intelligence named
Rocco Martino, who had had some experience in the African country of Niger, came into possession of some forged, fraudulent documents.
rocco_martin
These alleged Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium in 1999. In fact, the signatures were of Nigerien officials who had been in power a decade earlier, in the late 1980s.

So they were clumsy forgeries. Martino passed them on to the Italian magazine Panorama, which passed them to the US embassy.
Tantalizingly, President George W. Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, has an indirect connection to Italian intelligence.

Rove’s chief adviser on Iran policy is Neoconservative wildman and notorious warmonger Michael Ledeen,

who has a longstanding connection to the darker corners of Italian intelligence.
Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney heard of the alleged uranium purchase.

Cheney asked George Tenet to look into the allegation.

The issue went to the Directorate of Operations secret unit on counter-proliferation. Among the field officers there was Valerie Plame Wilson, who had spent her life fighting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction under cover of a dummy corporation.
plame2
Valerie Plame Wilson was married to former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who had served bravely as acting ambassador in Iraq in 1990, and when threatened by Saddam he showed up to a press conference wearing a hanging noose instead of a necktie. President George H. W. Bush highly praised him.

Joe Wilson had not only served in Iraq, he also had been ambassador to the West African countries of Gabon and Sao Tome, and spoke fluent French. When Plame Wilson’s superiors brought up the possibility of sending him as a private citizen to look into the plausibility of the report that Saddam had bought Nigerien uranium, she was consulted and agreed (she was not part of the decision loop).
He went, and soon saw that the uranium industry in Niger was actually under the control of French companies and was strictly monitored.

There was no possibility of corrupt Nigerien officials selling it off under the table.
A separate military mission led by Marine General Carlton Fulford, Jr, deputy commander of the United States European Command (EUCOM), went to Niger the same month, February 2002.

Fulford quickly came to the same conclusion as Wilson, that it was implausible that al-Qaeda or anyone else could secretly buy uranium from Niger.
Wilson came back and was orally debriefed by people who wrote a report for Tenet, expecting that Tenet would pass it on to the high officials of the Bush administration.
Wilson was amazed when the Niger uranium story was put into Bush’s State of the Union address.
Then Libby

wanted Secretary of State Colin Powell to make allegations about Saddam and al-Qaeda before the United Nations Security Council. Powell was also pressed by someone to bring up the Niger uranium story.
Powell is said to have exclaimed, “I’m not reading this bullshit!”
Libby appears to have been a big influence on the speech Powell gave, almost every detail of which was inaccurate, and at which United Nations officials who heard it openly laughed.

After the war, Wilson wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he revealed his mission and again called into question the Bush administration assertion that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program.
Cheney was extremely upset by Wilson’s op-ed. He saw it as an allegation that he had personally sent Wilson and then ignored Wilson’s report. Or at least that was the spin. But Wilson had said no such thing in the article. He simply said that Cheney had asked Tenet to look into the story, which Cheney probably did.
Cheney was afraid that if the American public became convinced that there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war effort would collapse, along with all those billions of no-bid uncompetitive contracts for Halliburton.
Cheney, it has now come out, then authorized Libby to leak the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to the press.

The NIE, which may have been produced under pressure from Cheney himself, had incorrectly suggested that Iraq was only a few years from having a nuclear weapon. In fact, Iraq did not have an active weapons program at all after the early 1990s when it was dismantled by the UN inspectors. The pre-war NIE in any case was just old bad intelligence, which was contradicted by David Kay’s team on the ground in post-war Iraq, which just wasn’t finding much.

Libby now began telling reporters that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative, itself classified information, since she was an undercover operative.

Karl Rove engaged in the same routine. Apparently Cheney, Rove and Libby (and Bush?) believed that Wilson’s credibility would be undermined if the Washington press corps could have it intimated to them that his story was a CIA plant.

Robert Novak used the information given him by the White House staff to out Valerie Plame Wilson as an undercover operative. Her career was ruined. All her contacts in the global South were burned, and their lives put in danger. The CIA’s careful project combating weapons of mass destruction collapsed.

The same administration that alleges it should be able to listen to our phone calls at will for national security purposes deliberately undermined US security for petty political purposes, making us all much less safe.
The likelihood is that the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Libby and Rove so far revealed are only the tip of the iceberg.

——
*The iceberg artwork, signed “Monk,” is mirrored on several sites on the internet; I can’t find any that seems the original but am glad to give credit if it is sought. It easily comes up on a google.images search. See Inflatable Dartboard.
http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/outrage ... unity.html



Report: Trump plans to shrink top intelligence agencies, including CIA

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ov ... dni-2017-1


Trump Reportedly Now Wants to Cut Back the CIA Because He Thinks Intelligence Is Too Politicized

Donald Trump, who famously does not use email or speak a foreign language or apparently travel much outside the Trump-themed hotel circuit, has some ideas. This should end well.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... cized.html



Trump Sells America Out To Putin With Plan To Cut The CIA
By Jason Easley on Wed, Jan 4th, 2017 at 6:51 pm
President-elect Trump is planning on cutting the nation's intelligence agencies in another move that is a direct sellout designed to empower Russia and Putin.



Neocons, War Criminals & White Nationalists: Jeremy Scahill on Trump's Incoming Advisers & Cabinet

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/11/21 ... sts_jeremy



The Time May Have Come - The Iran We Cannot Avoid - Michael Ledeen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 64x3047465




Iraq/Niger documents used to justify invasion BAD forgeries.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... =385x18724


"La Repubblica POLLARI GAVE FORGERIES TO HADLEY" and MORE

seemslikeadream
Sun Dec-04-05 12:12 PM
http://upload.democraticunderground.com ... 02x1965396



don't forget the CIA did NOT create the Niger Forgeries



Michael Flynn Is Harsh Judge of C.I.A.’s Role
By MATTHEW ROSENBERGDEC. 12, 2016

Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Monday. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Long before Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn became Donald J. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, he believed that the Central Intelligence Agency had become a political tool of the Obama administration — a view now echoed by the president-elect in his mocking dismissals of C.I.A. assessments that Russia sought to tip the election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

“They’ve lost sight of who they actually work for,” Mr. Flynn said in an interview with The New York Times in October 2015. “They work for the American people. They don’t work for the president of the United States.” He added, speaking of the agency’s leadership: “Frankly, it’s become a very political organization.”

Mr. Flynn’s assessment that the C.I.A. is a political arm of the Obama administration is not widely shared by Republicans or Democrats in Washington. But it has appeared to have been internalized by the one person who matters most right now: Mr. Trump.

In the past few days, Mr. Trump has sought to portray reports of the agency’s assessments that Russia actively tried to interfere in the election as a desperate attempt by sore losers to taint his presidency before it begins. His denigration of C.I.A. officials as “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction” has opened up an extraordinary rift between the president-elect and the nation’s intelligence community that is unlikely to be bridged anytime soon.

Although it is unclear how much Mr. Flynn, 57, is responsible for Mr. Trump’s response to the C.I.A. assessment, during the presidential campaign he had substantial influence on the president-elect. He brought to the campaign views on Muslims and national security that tended to hew far closer to the right-wing fringes than the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Mr. Flynn also appears to have helped set the tone for Mr. Trump’s testy relationship with the intelligence community. In August, when the Trump campaign received its first intelligence briefing, Mr. Flynn was so combative with the briefers that another person in the room had to urge him to settle down, according to a person familiar with the episode who was told about it in confidence.

On any number of issues — from the Obama administration’s failure to foresee the rise of the Islamic State to Mr. Flynn’s ouster as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the Defense Department — he has made it clear in recent years that he sees the political hand of the C.I.A. at work.

As director of the D.I.A. from 2012 to 2014, he pushed hard for his agency, long treated as second-rate by the C.I.A., to be given greater access to the trove of documents and other materials seized during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. The C.I.A. controlled the material, and Mr. Flynn became convinced that the agency was refusing to share or declassify much of it because of fears that it would undermine the administration’s narrative about Al Qaeda’s waning strength at the time Bin Laden was killed.

“It’s all political with” the C.I.A. leadership, Mr. Flynn said in the 2015 interview, which focused on the rise of the Islamic State and American national security.

“If they put out what we knew, then the president could have not said, in a national election, ‘Al Qaeda’s on the run and we’ve killed Bin Laden,’” he said, referring to Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. “Even today, he talks about Bin Laden as though that was a stroke of genius.”

Mr. Flynn also questioned the decision to kill Bin Laden. “Killing Bin Laden was the wrong thing to do,” he said. “They could have captured him.”

In killing Bin Laden, he said, “we created a new version of Allah.”

“What we should have done is shown him to be a decrepit old guy, put him in a freaking cage, in a cell, and put him on trial,” Mr. Flynn added. “Make it a big messy trial, make it global.”

Mr. Flynn has also said that the C.I.A., at the urging of the White House, was playing down warnings from the D.I.A. about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which would later become the Islamic State. “I’m telling you, the C.I.A. has a lot to reflect on because of this,” he said.

A number of current and former officials dispute Mr. Flynn’s account, saying concerns about the resurgence of Islamist militants in the midst of Syria’s civil war were widespread in the intelligence community.

Mr. Flynn, who was fired from the D.I.A. after serving only two years of a three-year appointment, has described his dismissal as an act of political retribution by the C.I.A. and Obama administration officials who did not want to hear what he was saying.

Other officials, including some with direct knowledge of the decision to dismiss Mr. Flynn, said he was forced out for a more straightforward reason: He was not a good manager, and his efforts to reform the agency left it in chaos.

It was not Mr. Flynn’s first run-in with the civilian intelligence community. The ill will stretches back years, current and former officials said, and it transformed into open hostility when Mr. Flynn was running military intelligence under Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in Afghanistan.

In January 2010, after less than a year on the job, Mr. Flynn released a paper, “Fixing Intel,” that was highly critical of American intelligence work in Afghanistan. It bluntly stated that “the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” and said that it had only itself to blame because it had failed to understand Afghanistan’s cultural complexities.

The paper was widely praised in defense circles as insightful. But at the C.I.A., officials were furious at what they saw as a direct attack on the aptitude and professionalism of the roughly 1,000 agency personnel who were serving in Afghanistan at the time.

They were also incensed at the timing of the paper, which became public five days after a suicide attack that killed seven C.I.A. officers at a base in eastern Afghanistan. Mr. Flynn’s searing critique was seen at the agency as the height of insensitivity.

Mr. Flynn has been unapologetic about his views of not only the C.I.A. but other national security agencies, including the D.I.A. under his leadership.

“They’ve really been lying to the American public,” he said in the interview, referring to the Obama administration and much of the national security and intelligence establishment. “The Department of Defense and those of us that have allowed this sort of a happy talk — ‘We’re moving in the right direction, things are working.’ It’s not. The Taliban are going to come back into power, or ISIS is going to come back into power.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/po ... .html?_r=0



Michael Flynn had role in firm co-led by man who tried to sell material to the KGB

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for national security adviser, listens as Trump speaks to members of the media at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016. (Andrew Harnik / AP)
Jerry Markon
The Washington Post
President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for national security adviser partnered in recent months with a technology company co-led by a businessman who pleaded guilty to trying to sell stolen scientific material in the 1980s to the KGB, the former Soviet intelligence service.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn joined the advisory board of Brainwave Science in February, company documents show. The Massachusetts firm develops controversial "brain fingerprinting" technology designed to assess whether people under interrogation are being truthful by measuring their brain waves. The firm offers training in how to use the technology, in partnership with Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, according to Brainwave's website.

One of Brainwave's two-member board of directors was Sabu Kota, an Indian-born software engineer who pleaded guilty in 1996 to selling stolen biotech material to an FBI agent posing as a Soviet spy. Prosecutors said the sale stemmed from what they called Kota's involvement in a spy ring that passed sensitive defense technology to the KGB between 1985 and 1990, according to a Defense Department summary of the case.

Trump's national security adviser shared secrets without permission, files show

Brainwave Science removed Kota's name from the company website sometime between Thursday and Friday, when Bloomberg News published a report about Flynn's ties to the firm, according to a search of archived Google data. Company officials and officials from Trump's transition team did not respond to requests for comment on Friday, and Kota did not respond to messages left at his home.

Kota's lawyer denied that he had any connection to spying when he was charged in 1995, and Kota told Bloomberg that the criminal charges were a misunderstanding and stemmed from a patent dispute, not espionage.

Bloomberg also quoted a Trump transition official as saying that Flynn had no dealings with Kota during his time working with Brainwave and that he has ended his association with the firm.

The connection between Flynn - a decorated military intelligence officer and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency - and the company is the latest controversy involving relations between Russia and Trump or members of his team. Trump has faced criticism for expressing his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on Friday the president-elect released what he called "a very nice letter" from the Russian leader.

Flynn stunned former colleagues when he traveled to Moscow last year to appear alongside Putin at a lavish gala for the state-run channel RT, a trip Flynn admitted he was paid to make. Former U.S. officials said Flynn, seen dining next to Putin in photos published by Russian outlets, was used as a prop by the autocratic leader.

Flynn defended the trip, saying he saw no distinction between RT and U.S. news channels such as CNN, and that he had pressed Putin's government to behave more responsibly in international affairs.

Trump's pick for national security adviser brings with him military intelligence experience, harsh criticism
Trump's pick for national security adviser brings with him military intelligence experience, harsh criticism
The length and precise nature of Flynn's contacts with the Brainwave firm could not be determined on Friday. Bloomberg reported that Flynn was supposed to help drum up new business for the firm with U.S. agencies, and that he has met with company officials at least 10 times. The meetings reportedly were held as late as September, when Flynn helped pitch Brainwave's services to officials from the Bangladeshi defense forces.

Independent scientists have disputed the accuracy and reliability of brain fingerprinting, and Brainwave has not released research supporting its claims that the tool is highly effective.

But Bloomberg quoted Brainwave President Krishna Ika as saying that Flynn had tested the device himself, donning a helmet-like headpiece fitted with sensors. "He found it very convincing," Ika told the news service.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... story.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 06, 2017 6:33 pm

FRIDAY, JAN 6, 2017 07:15 AM CST
Why is Donald Trump resisting the Russian hack findings? Michael Flynn may hold the answer
Trump doesn't want to know about Russia. The unhinged alt-right views of Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon may be why
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Why is Donald Trump resisting the Russian hack findings? Michael Flynn may hold the answer
(Credit: AP/Gerald Herbert/Evan Vucci/J. Scott Applewhite)

In anticipation of the release of a report commissioned by President Barack Obama, the top brass of the United States intelligence community appeared before Congress on Thursday to testify that the Russian government had interfered in last year’s election. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, declared, “This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news . . . whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it.” It’s pretty dramatic stuff.

The report will be provided to President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend, and members of Congress will be briefed next week. An unclassified version is slated for release to the public as well, but details are already being leaked to the news media. Trump was not amused by the media’s access as he indicated in a tweet:


Apparently, he is unfamiliar with the time-honored Washington practice of leaking, but he had better get used to it.

There is plenty of skepticism about the intelligence community’s conclusions along all sides of the political spectrum. Trump is dismissing it out of hand. Most of the Republicans are keeping their powder dry, although hawkish Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem convinced, as do most Democrats. And after witnessing the weapons of mass destruction analysis prior to the invasion of Iraq in the past decade, many people on the left are naturally suspicious of the intelligence agencies.

Now is probably a good time to revisit that episode and remind ourselves of how it unfolded. Seymour Hersh’s original New Yorker article, “The Stovepipe,” exploring the way it all went down, still holds up today. The intelligence agencies got it wrong, for sure. But, as he explained, there was a specific reason:

What the Bush people did was dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

This was why members of the left championed truth tellers deeply enmeshed in the Republican establishment and the intelligence community, like former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, when they boldly stepped up.

As I wrote for Salon earlier, this episode wasn’t the first time some players on the right were unhappy that the intelligence didn’t show them what they wanted. The pattern goes back decades.

Concerning last year’s allegations nobody has yet made a decent case explaining why the intelligence community would make a claim about a Russian attempt to undermine our election if they didn’t have good evidence for it. The intelligence agencies are concerned with cyberattacks, to be sure, and like all bureaucracies they undoubtedly want more money and power to tackle the challenges. But they don’t need to make this be about Russia to make a case, and it is certainly not in their interest to make an enemy of Donald Trump. They could be wrong, of course. But they have no rational reason to make this up, which suggests that they are genuinely convinced by their evidence.

It’s easy to understand why Trump is reluctant to accept that the Russian government might have interfered in the election on his behalf. It just doesn’t look right for a super-tough, macho candidate to be the favorite of a country that many people consider a rival to ours. Needless to say, a man with his ego cannot admit that anything but his own personal greatness brought him victory. (Yes, for all we know, Trump is in hock to Russian banks up to his eyeballs or just loves Vladimir Putin for his strength and manliness. Trump’s stance on this issue is a enigma for sure.)

But there is a factor that looms large in this story that may simply explain some of Trump’s behavior: former general Michael Flynn. When it comes to the intelligence community, Flynn serves as Trump’s eyes and ears. The president-elect literally knows nothing about the workings of matters of intelligence, and there’s is no evidence that he’s spent any time trying to bone up. He has said he doesn’t need daily briefings and seems to have outsourced taking in these updates to his trusted aide Flynn. And Flynn is an angry man with a major ax to grind.

Dana Priest has written for The New Yorker of Flynn’s brief checkered career as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in charge of all military attachés and defense-intelligence collection around the world. He had come into the job after some years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, having success as a clandestine officer and creating new ways of using disparate pieces of information to target suspected terrorists. He was seen as undisciplined and somewhat reckless, but his mentor, former general Stanley McChrystal, had understood how to keep his quirkier personality traits under control.

Then Flynn got the big promotion and made a hash of it almost immediately, creating irrational and impractical changes and behaving erratically on the job. He sought out the Washington spotlight but apparently became lured into the right-wing fever swamps and started spouting outrageous falsehoods in public — including Islamophobic conspiracy theories— which his subordinates called “Flynn facts.” And Flynn started to manifest a serious anger management problem. The agency had to create what Priest called a “parallel power structure” to keep the place running properly. After 18 months of this, Flynn was fired — by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who is now leading the charge on the Russian hacking story. According to Priest, Flynn was “livid.”

When Trump started getting classified briefings, Flynn accompanied him. It has been reported that four different sources say he became unruly and repeatedly interrupted the briefers, challenging their facts to the point where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was also at the meeting, had to tell him to calm down. Flynn’s response when asked about it was that the story was “total bullshit. . . . They’re lying.” He is apparently is still angry and convinced that his “Flynn facts” are correct.

Flynn may have an ally in another important Trump administration figure, Steve Bannon, who is associated with the “alt-right” movement, for which Russia has become increasingly important and its president, Vladimir Putin, is often seen as a sympathetic figure. Bannon has a special affiliation with Russian history, however superficial and insincere. It’s entirely possible he would back Flynn’s denunciation of intelligence analyses for his own purposes, lending Flynn even more credibility with Trump.

All of this is “Kremlinology,” of course — meaning that a certain amount of guesswork is involved, since trying to sort out what’s really going on requires reading between the lines. But there’s a reason why Trump is so adamant that the intelligence agencies are wrong and that he knows things they don’t know. And there’s really only one person in his close circle who would be telling him such things. If ever there was a president who needed a steady hand to guide him on these important, delicate matters, it’s Donald Trump. Too bad the man he’s leaning on is Michael Flynn.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/06/why-is- ... he-answer/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:46 am

Flynn’s communications with Russia investigated: report
BY CYRA MASTER - 01/22/17 09:31 PM EST 1,095


Flynn’s communications with Russia investigated: report
© Getty
U.S. counterintelligence agents investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night.

Flynn is the first person inside President Trump’s White House whose communications are known to have been combed as part of a multiagency investigation by the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, among others, into whether Russia’s government secretly helped elect Trump.

The WSJ said it’s unclear when the inquiry began or whether it produced any incriminating evidence. Its unknown if the matter is closer or ongoing. The report came hours after Flynn was sworn in Sunday, along with other senior advisers.
The key focus is a series of calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, the WSJ reported, the day the Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia.

The goal of the probe is to determine the nature of Flynn’s contact with Russian officials and whether it may have violated the law, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ.

But the White House denied the investigation on Sunday.

“We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement to the paper.

The report follows a similar one from the New York Times published Thursday that said intelligence and law enforcement agencies are looking at intercepted communications and financial transactions from former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign advisers Carter Page and Roger Stone.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/31558 ... ted-report


U.S. Investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia Ties
By Margaret Hartmann

Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn at the White House for his swearing in ceremony. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Just hours after retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was sworn in as Donald Trump’s national security adviser on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. counterintelligence agents have investigated Flynn’s communication with Russian officials.

McClatchy reported last week that the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Justice Department, and the Treasury Department, and the office of the director of national intelligence have been collaborating for months on an investigation into Russia’s alleged attempts influence the U.S. election. The probe looked at intercepted communications and financial transactions from several former Trump campaign aides, including Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger Stone, according to the New York Times. Flynn is the first person working in the Trump White House to be linked to the probe.

The Journal notes it’s unclear if the investigation into Flynn produced any incriminating evidence, when it began, or if it’s continuing. A key point is said to be phone calls Flynn placed to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., on December 29, the same day President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and imposed other sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s election hacking. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported, the calls could constitute a violation of the Logan Act of 1799, which bars U.S. citizens from attempting to influence a foreign government involved in “disputes” with the U.S. (thought the law is never enforced).

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier this month that Flynn was speaking with Kislyak because they were trying to arrange a conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Sunday night White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said, “We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation.”

WSJ
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Mike Flynn Reportedly Called Russian Ambassador As Obama Expelled Diplomats

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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 01, 2017 2:50 pm

Democrats ask Pentagon to explain Russian payment to Flynn
By Tom Hamburger February 1 at 12:21 PM
The ranking Democrats of six House congressional committees asked the Pentagon on Wednesday for information about President Trump’s national security adviser, suggesting that he may have violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting a fee for speaking at a 2015 Moscow dinner.

Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, sat with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin during the event, a celebration for Russian Television.

The lawmakers suggest that the fee he received may have violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits top officials from receiving payments from foreign governments.

“It is extremely concerning that General Flynn chose to accept payment for appearing at a gala hosted by the propaganda arm of the Russian government, which attacked the United States in an effort to undermine our election,” the members wrote in the letter sent today .

The letter, signed by the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence, Oversight, Armed Services, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees, requested any information the Pentagon had about “how much General Flynn was paid for his dinner with Vladi­mir Putin, whether he received additional payment from Russian or other foreign sources, and whether he sought the approval of the Department of Defense or Congress to accept these payments.” The speech was made during a celebration dinner for Russian Television.

National security adviser Mike Flynn, center, listens to President Trump during a session with cybersecurity experts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The White House and the Defense Department did not respond to requests for comment on the congressional letter. But a former White House ethics counsel, Norman Eisen, said the questions are “troubling and important.”

“Concern about the alleged ties between the Trump administration and Russia, and its effect on our national security, is precisely the kind of worry that led the Founders to include this prohibition in the Constitution,” said Eisen, who served as ethics adviser to President Barack Obama and who has emerged as a sharp critic of Trump administration ethics policy.

In the past, the Pentagon has advised retiring officers that, because they are subject to recall to military service, they may be subject to the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

“If Lt. Gen. Flynn is subject to recall [by the Defense Department], and accepted foreign government funds without congressional consent then that is a foreign emolument and so a violation of the Constitution,” Eisen said, adding: “Nor would it be a merely technical one.’’ The Department of Defense has warned retired officers against accepting “indirect payments, including from pass-through companies in the U.S.” in retirement, the congressional letter said.

Flynn has been among the more controversial of Trump’s appointees not only for his trip to Russia but because he has made inflammatory statements in previously published tweets. In November, for example, he tweeted that fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions …”

He was removed from his command of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 because of concerns over his leadership style. While working for the campaign, his firm was also paid as a lobbyist for a consultancy founded by a Turkish businessman.

The permission may be important, the members wrote, because the Constitution prohibits any person “holding any Office of Profit or Trust” from accepting gifts or payments from any foreign country. The Department of Defense has made clear this restriction applies to retired military officers, who continue to hold offices of trust.

The letter, signed by Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and others, quotes a Defense Department instructions to retired officers that says that permission is required. “Significantly, retired regular military officers are also subject to the Emoluments Clause because they are subject to recall, and, therefore, hold an ‘Office of Profit or Trust’ under the Emoluments Clause,” the letter notes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... eb005f62ce
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 01, 2017 7:47 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 02, 2017 12:10 am

Flynn: White House blames Iran for attack on Saudi ship
By: David B. Larter, February 1, 2017
The White House has officially put Iran “on notice” following an attack on a Saudi frigate that may have been carried out by Iranian-backed Houhti militants, said National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

Flynn issued a statement on Wednesday condemning the Jan. 31 attack on the Saudi vessel and a “provocative ballistic missile launch,” which he said are part of a pattern of Iranian behavior.

The Obama administration “failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions;” while President Trump has called previous agreements made with the U.S. and United Nations “weak and ineffective,” Flynn said.

“Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened,” he said. “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”
https://www.navytimes.com/articles/risi ... vy-on-edge


Trump is on the brink as U.S. warns Iran over missile tests

http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/artic ... rylink=cpy
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 02, 2017 5:46 pm

trumpty dumbty planning additional sanctions on Iran

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/politics/ ... s-on-iran/
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Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:18 pm

Trump’s Amateurish White House Thinks Poland Invaded Belarus

There is a very real threat here. Keep in mind that Hitler used a staged Polish incursion into Germany – the infamous Gleiwitz incident – as his casus belli in invading Poland in 1939. If Putin is looking for an excuse to invade Belarus as well as Ukraine, Trump, whether intentionally or in his role as a useful idiot, seems eager to lend a hand.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/02/04/ ... larus.html


Deeply Disturbing

ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedFEBRUARY 4, 2017, 5:27 PM EDT

Buried down in the AP story is the rather startling news that National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and his aides have been asking the national security agencies for ideas for how to improve relations with Russia and for evidence of "Polish incursions in Belarus."

Senior officials have been soliciting guidance from national security agencies on how to improve relations with Russia, asking what Washington could offer Moscow and what Trump should seek from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tillerson requested a briefing on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of Trump's campaign promises.
According to one U.S. official, national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities appears to exist. Poland is among the Eastern European nations worried about Trump's friendlier tone on Russia.

I don't patrol the Poland/Belarus border myself. But I have not heard and I don't think anyone has heard that such is happening. It is however the kind of thing you would expect to hear from Russian propaganda sources, a hostile Poland menacing its neighbors to the east.

Late Update: As you can see, the text of the AP article doesn't explicitly point to Flynn. But this tweet from the reporter Julie Pace, the author of the article, suggests that that's who we're talking about - Flynn, or those asking questions on his behalf.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dee ... turbing--2


On Foreign Policy, Team Trump Still Speaking Campaign Language
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/on-fo ... n-language
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