Yeah, the coup is gathering strength and starting to roll downhill. Here’s former Homeland Security & Counterterrorism Advisor to President Bush, Fran Townsend, making a Tweet about it.
Important read by @20committee about dangerous internal insurrection: The Spy Revolt Against @POTUS @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/EfFyEmxDPQ
— Frances Townsend (@FranTownsend) February 12, 2017
Many important aspects to the piece, but here are the two most important ones:
What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration…
…In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.
Of course, the new Director of Central Intelligence who was appointed by Donald Trump has just signed off on denying a security clearance to one of Michael Flynn’s top allies on the National Security Council.
I’d have more to say about all this but if it’s Sunday it means I have to go to a first grader’s birthday party.