U.S President Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.
Good. It is probably the best thing Trump has ever done. Brennan is one of the most despicable former U.S. officials alive. He should rot in hell instead of making money off his former status.
Besides that there is no sound reason why anyone who does not work for the government, directly or indirectly, should have a clearance and thereby access to state secrets. ACLU and others are wrong in this. Revoking or keeping a security clearance has nothing to do with free speech or first amendment rights.
Abu Jihad Brennan was the CIA’s station chief in Saudi Arabia. Some assert he went native, i.e. converted to Wahhabism. Brennan was in Riyadh when the Khobar Towers were bombed. Al-Qaeda did it, but Brennan was helpful in blaming the attack on Hizbullah and Iran. He was deputy executive director of the CIA on 9/11. That 9/11 happened was an intelligence failure or, as some have it, an incident arranged by the deep state. Brennan was CIA chief of staff while the agency concocted false stories about Iraqi WMD. He was within the line of command that ran the CIA torture program. It was Brennan who conspired with the Gulf dictators to hire Jihadis to destroy Libya and to attempt the same in Syria. In short – the man was always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest.
When Obama became president he wanted to make Brennan Director of the CIA. The Democrats in Congress were opposed to that. Obama then made him his high priest of targeted killings. After Obama’s reelection, Brennan finally became director. He ordered the CIA to spy on the Congress committee investigating CIA torture. He lied to Congress under oath when he denied that it had happened. When it was proven that the CIA did what it did, he had to apologize.
At that time a Washington Post editorial headlined Obama should fire John Brennan. Today the Post calls the revocation of a security clearance of a former official, who -it had opined- should have long been fired, a “political vendetta against a career intelligence officer”. Hypocrites.
Most important was “Brennan’s ringleader role in the so-far unsuccessful attempts to derail Trump, both before and after the 2016 election. As far as we can tell it was Brennan who concocted and launched the conspiracy to insinuate that Trump is connected with alleged Russian influence. Brennan bet that Hillary Clinton would win the election. He lost his bet and is now out in the cold. He fears that his role, especially his conspiring with British security services and with the Steele dossier, will come to light.
Since Trump became president Brennan publicly opposed him. That was a huge mistake. He is no match for Trump. By revoking Brennan’s clearance Trump is now elevating him to ‘hero’ of the so called ‘resistance’ against him which he connects to the deep state. This is the Trump playbook:
[R]unning against the deep state provides Trump a rhetorical crutch. It’s a built-in excuse for failing to deliver on his 2016 campaign promises. Sitting presidents usually have to run as incumbents. Trump can try to run for re-election as an outsider. And is there a better poster boy for the alleged deep state than Brennan?
The idiots who express solidarity with Brennan by offering up their security clearances confirm, simply by doing so, that there IS a deep state cabal that is opposed to Trump. Attacking Brennan and them will help Trump to get reelected.
Trump uses the same playbook when he attacks the “fake news media” for opposing him. He is right in that nearly all U.S. and international editors favored Hillary Clinton over Trump. This week 200 U.S. papers united to write editorials against Trump’s attacks against the “freedom of the press”. They fell for his trick:
Most journalists agree that there’s a great need for Trump rebuttals. I’ve written my share. But this [Boston] Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him. When the editorials roll off the press on Thursday, all singing from the same script, Trump will reap enough fresh material to whale on the media for at least a month. His forthcoming speeches almost write themselves: By colluding against me, the fake media proved once and for all, that they are in cahoots with the Democrats and have declared themselves to be my true political opposition …
Trump is excellent in playing his domestic opponents. Brennan made a huge mistake in publicly opposing him. He is now standing in the limelight and people will only dig further into his role in the “Russian collusion” campaign. Yesterday Brennan authored a New York Times Op Ed headlined President Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash. It does not provide any evidence for the “hogwash” claim. Brennan can not show that there was a Trump campaign collusion with Russia or anyone else.
Richard Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, gave a somewhat salty and fitting response:
“Director Brennan’s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power. If Director Brennan’s statement is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn’t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017? If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times.
“If, however, Director Brennan’s statement is purely political and based on conjecture, the president has full authority to revoke his security clearance as head of the Executive Branch.”
In short: “Nut up or shut up.”
It is doubtful that Trump will let go of the issue. Brennan is a too juicy target to stop shooting at it. Currently Brennan is still too valuable as an enemy for Trump to destroy him. But once that is over Brennan’s day of judgment will come. Here are high hopes that Brennan will finally have to pay for at least one of his many crimes.