John Schindler, a former NSA analyst, has become one of my go-to reads for takes on the intelligence community’s stance in regards to President Trump and his Russian connections. From Schindler, we learned – before it was confirmed by others – that the Intelligence Community (IC) was withholding information from the Trump White House, out of fear that the Kremlin had ears in the Situation Room. This was later confirmed by other sources, just as several of Schindler’s other early takes have been.
On Wednesday, Schindler dropped another tasty seed on the Trump Russia trail. “Rebellion is brewing in Washington,” Schindler warned of the spy war on the Trump administration.
Contrary to Trump’s claims that this is a partisan war, no, it’s partly about his repeated insults to their work but also, “Behind closed doors, plenty of American intelligence experts believe that President Trump is the pawn of the Kremlin, wittingly or not…”
“The Russia angle is most troubling to the IC. Behind closed doors, plenty of American intelligence experts believe that President Trump is the pawn of the Kremlin, wittingly or not, and assess that it’s only a matter of time before unseemly Moscow ties are exposed and the White House enters unsurvivable political crisis,” Schindler writes.
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“Rebellion is brewing in Washington. The resignation of the CIA’s spokesman, a career intelligence analyst, is a sign of how fragile IC morale has gotten under the new administration.”
Schindler seems to be referring to former intelligence analyst and National Security Council spokesman Edward Price, a man who has worked in the Central Intelligence Agency for more than a decade under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who quit the agency because of Donald Trump. This troubles people who aren’t knee-jerk Trump defenders, because a careerist is not a partisan position. It would be a relief if this were a partisan issue, but instead, it is a deeply threatening issue that has already undermined our democracy and made us a laughing stock around the globe.
“If President Trump keeps upping the ante in his war on the spies, he can expect more damaging leaks to reach the media,” Schindler writes menacingly. “Leaks happen in every administration, and Nixon’s ignominious fall ought to serve as a cautionary tale to any president who thinks he can find the right ‘plumbers’ to fix the leaky faucet.”
Schindler warned of more leaks when Trump first took office and refused to back down on his denials about his connections to Russia. And the leaks came.
Aside from the Russia issue, what we have here is a President who is so ignorant about diplomacy and relations with various factions of power that he thinks he can win a war with the intelligence community by insulting them and trying to remove all of their power to do their job.
“When spies in Washington leak to the media, they do so not out of any ideology, much less overt partisanship, but to protect bureaucratic turf and to settle personal scores,” Schindler penned images of dark ominous clouds ahead.
President Trump keeps lying about Russia and slamming the intelligence community while he’s at it, because this has worked for him all of his life until now. Trump has always had the biggest, baddest, meanest lawyers and deepest pockets. He was able to thug his way out of most troubles, and if that didn’t work, money did.
But now Trump has met a thug who can’t be bought off and isn’t afraid of Trump lawyer thugs. A thug that collectively has more power than Trump can imagine, even as President.
This isn’t to suggest the Intelligence Community is really the thug here, but to put things in terms Trump can understand, they are the BMOC and Trump is the freshman with a huge ego and no reason for it. They will keep leaking if Trump keeps lying.
They will rebel, and as Schindler notes, the result of an IC rebellion can be seen during the Nixon Administration.
Trump’s problem, in addition to his ignorance, is that he hasn’t the courage to come clean and he is probably being held to his current denials by a Russian spy ship off of the coast of Connecticut. Or something.
So there will be more leaks and more leaks, if this report is to be believed.
Republicans in Congress will continue to ignore the warnings to jump ship, and soon enough, the Trump administration’s unseemly ties to Russia just might explode in a very ugly way. A Nixonian way. A way that will not go away.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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