Bearing in mind that John Brennan was the guiding hand behind President Barack Obama’s kill lists of Americans who were marked for death by drone it is difficult to understand what moral high ground he seeks to occupy in the slaying of Fakhrizadeh. Brennan, who was a leading critic of Trump and who may have led the clandestine effort to undermine his election and term in office, subsequently found himself in an exchange of tweets with Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz which degenerated into a trading of insults. Cruz responded “It’s bizarre to see a former head of the CIA consistently side with Iranian zealots who chant ‘Death to America.’ And reflexively condemn Israel. Does Joe Biden agree?” This produced a riposte by Brennan that “It is typical for you to mischaracterize my comment. Your lawless attitude & simple-minded approach to serious national security matters demonstrate that you are unworthy to represent the good people of Texas.”

The assassination of Fakhrizadeh, the “father of Iran’s nuclear program,” took place on a road near the town of Absard to the east of Tehran. According to initial accounts, the Iranian scientist, who has long been targeted by name and in public fora by Israel, was traveling in an SUV together with his wife plus bodyguards and a driver. Initial reports suggested that there was a Nissan truck parked on the opposite side of the road loaded with what appeared to be wood, though it may have turned out that the wood was concealing a bomb which may have been triggered by a signal from a surveillance satellite. The bomb was detonated to disable Fakhrizadeh’s vehicle before an attack on the car by five or six gunmen with automatic weapons who had emerged from a vehicle following the SUV began, again according to initial reports, including reporting by eye witnesses. The Iranian official news agency FARS is now claiming, however, that the attack was carried out by a remote controlled machine gun concealed on the truck, which subsequently exploded, and no human attackers were involved. It is presumed that the bodyguards and driver were killed in the exchange. Fakhrizadeh was badly wounded and died in hospital shortly thereafter. Photos of the SUV reveal shattered windows, blood streaks, and numerous bullet holes as well as other damage from what may have been the bomb.

Iranian news agencies are now reporting that at least one of the attackers has been arrested, and if that is true he will surely be made to talk regarding what he knows. They are also reporting that two of the assailants were killed in the exchange with the bodyguards, which, if true, means they will possibly be identified. Clearly, the attack was well planned, was able to employ considerable resources, and was based on intelligence that would be very hard to obtain, particularly as the Iranian government was taking steps to protect Fakhrizadeh, to include details of his travels.

The killing comes just two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was shot dead together with his daughter by alleged Israeli supplied assassins on a motorcycle on August 7^th. The hit was reportedly carried out at the request of the United States based on Abdullah’s claimed involvement in the 1998 deadly attacks on two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The claim that Iran has been harboring al-Qaeda is already being used by the Trump White House to justify increased pressure on Iran and it might possibly even serve as part of a casus belli.

The two assassinations are not linked except perhaps in terms of sending a message to high level Iranians that they are not safe even in their own country even when they are given bodyguards. The claim that Fakhrizadeh was in charge of a secret Iranian weapons program, made regularly by Israel and the U.S., is not generally believed by most authorities. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which nuclear armed Israel is not, and its facilities are subject to regular unannounced inspections.

Likewise, the killing of Qods Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January in a U.S. drone attack was intended more regarding sending a message concerning possible consequences of reckless behavior than it was about actually killing one man. Whatever programs Fakrizadeh and Soleimani were involved in will continue without them. Nevertheless, assassination of Iranians linked to the country’s former and current nuclear program has been Israeli policy since 2010. As many as a dozen Iranian scientists and technicians reportedly have been killed. So-called “targeted killings” have been a regular feature of Israel’s “national defense” strategy. In addition to the Iranians, at least seventy Palestinians have been assassinated.

Though Israel has clearly ordered the assassinations, it is generally believed that the actual preparation for the attacks have been carried out by Mojahedin e Khalq or MEK, a Marxist cult that came into prominence at the time of the Iranian revolution against the Shah. It is generally regarded as a terrorist group that once was virulently anti-American and killed a number of U.S. officials. MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. At the same time, it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to western and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern-day equivalent of slavery. The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84-acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

MEK, which is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, stages events in the United States in Europe where it generously pays politicians like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Elaine Chao to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s paying of inside the Beltway power brokers proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s. MEK also finds favor in Washington because it is used by Israel as a resource for anti-Iranian terrorism acts currently, including assassinations carried out in Tehran. Israel, in fact, directs most terrorist acts carried out by MEK inside Iran.

So those are the players and, at first glance, one might reasonably come to the Ockham’s razor conclusion, i.e. that Israel ordered MEK to kill Fakhrizadeh, an order which was then executed. But that would be to ignore some of the politics currently playing out in Washington. First of all, Israel would not have carried out the high-level assassination without the consent of the White House. Indeed, U.S. intelligence resources might well have played a key role in locating the Iranian scientist. Second, the Trump Administration has clearly adopted a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, which has included strangling the country’s economy through sanctions, condoning Israeli attacks in Syria and elsewhere, and destabilizing moves, to include assassinations, designed to make the nation’s leadership both vulnerable and nervous. It is the application of an Israeli strategic doctrine referred to as “Campaigns Between Wars,” meaning constant aggression to erode an enemy’s ability to fight without actually crossing a line that would start a shooting war.

A direct role by the Trump Administration in the assassination should not be ruled out as it is clearly seeking to harden Iranian antipathy towards any new comprehensive arms control or nuclear agreement with the incoming Biden team. Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of bombing Iran earlier this month, though he was talked out of it by his national security team, but the Israeli Army meanwhile is on alert in case of an American attack. There are confirmed reports that B-52 bombers, capable of deploying the 30,000 pound penetrator bombs that can destroy targets deep underground, have been sent to the Middle East, presumably to Qatar where the U.S. has its principal airbase in the region. They would presumably be used against Iran’s main nuclear development site at Natanz.

Israel is in a strong position right now. Iran has significant military resources to respond to the killing, including the drones and missiles it developed and used in September 2019 to devastate the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia. But if it does react robustly to the assassination and sparks a conflict that inevitably would include the United States, it would be a war that Bibi Netanyahu has long sought, destroying Iran at what he hopes would be minimal cost to Israel. If Iran does not respond, Israel will no doubt push the White House to be even more aggressive in its remaining time in office while hardliners within Iran will also demand an end to any agreements with western powers. Taken together, that would make sure that any attempt by the Biden administration to engage diplomatically with Iran would fail. The ultimate provocation by the United States would, of course, be to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unthinkable? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is already reporting that “U.S. President Donald Trump has more than a month before he leaves the White House, and on his way out he could set the world on fire. In starting this conflagration, it seems as though he plans to strike every match in the box. Standing beside him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be more than happy to lend him a lighter.”

A security clearance is granted to a person but it is also linked to “need to know” in terms of what kind of information should or could be accessed, which means that when you are no longer working as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency you don’t necessarily need to know anything about China’s spying on the United States. Or do you? If you transition into a directorship or staff position of a major intelligence or security contractor, which many retirees do, you might need to retain the qualification for your job, which makes the clearance an essential component in the notorious revolving door whereby government officials transit to the private sector and then directly lobby their former colleagues to keep the flow of cash coming.

At top levels among the beltway bandit companies, where little work is actually done, some make the case that you have to remain “well informed” to function properly. The fact is that many top-level bureaucrats do retain their clearances for those nebulous reasons and also sometimes as a courtesy. Some have even received regular briefings from the CIA and the office of the Director of National intelligence even though they hold no government positions. A few very senior ex-officials have also been recalled by congress or the White House to provide testimony on particular areas of expertise or on past operations, which can legitimately require a clearance, though it such cases one can be granted on a temporary basis to cover a specific issue.

The problem arises when former officials use their clearances as bona fides to enhance their marketability for non-clearance jobs in the media or corporate world, particularly when those individuals are criticizing current government policies and behaving in a partisan fashion regarding specific candidates for office. Donald Trump was especially assailed by former officials John Brennan, James Clapper, Michael Hayden and Michael Morell before the 2016 election, all of whom continue to attack him currently, most particularly for the recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the 2016 campaign, Morell, who openly supported Hillary Clinton and is the designated intelligence on-air contributor for CBS news, deliberately linked the fact that he was ex-CIA Acting Director to his assertion that Trump was somehow an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation” to establish his credibility. That type of activity should be considered abusive and an exploitation of one’s former office.

Morell left CIA in June 2013 and by November was a senior counselor with Beacon Global Strategies. According to the firm's website, Beacon Global Strategies is a government and private sector consulting group that specializes in matters of international policy, foreign affairs, national defense, cyber, intelligence, and homeland security. Morell may know little about those issues as they have evolved in the past five years, but citing his clearance gives him credibility for knowledge that he might not really possess and also gives him direct access to former colleagues that he can lobby to obtain government contracts.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, who famously voted for the Communist Party candidate for US president in 1976, has also profited greatly from his government service, becoming rich from his board memberships. He sits on the board of directors of SecureAuth + CORE Security and also on the board of The Analysis Corporation. More important in terms of his public profile, he is the “Intelligence Consultant” for NBC News and MSNBC and appears regularly.

Last week Senator Rand Paul met with President Trump and recommended that Brennan’s security clearance be revoked. He argued that Brennan, Trump’s most aggressive critic, has been using his credentials to provide credibility when he calls meeting with Russia’s president “treasonous” and describes the president as “wholly in the pocket of Putin.” Clearance holders also more generally use their privileged access to “secret information” to leverage speaking and television network pundit fees. In other words, Brennan and the others are using their security clearances to enhance their incomes, monetizing their access to classified information to enhance their value.

It is by no means clear whether Trump will revoke the clearances of Clapper, Brennan, Morell and Hayden. As he is the legal source of all government clearances he has the power to do so. An equitable solution on the clearance issue more generally speaking would be to cancel all security clearances on the day when one leaves government service unless there is a direct and immediate transition to a private sector position that absolutely requires such a qualification. That would be fair to lower level employees seeking a second source of income and it would also eliminate many of those who are merely cashing in on their presumed access. As it is a rational solution it is very unlikely that it will be entertained by either the White House or by Congress.

It isn’t a pretty face, but one scarred from a dark past, repackaged now by the frenzy of “resistance.” Accusing Donald Trump recklessly, implying he knows more than he lets on, promising redemption: John Brennan is the face of American politics in 2018.

But before all that, Brennan lived in a hole about as far down into the deep state as one can dwell while still having eyes that work in the sunlight. He was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, helping the president decide who to kill every week, including American citizens. He spent 25 years at the CIA, and helped shape the violent policies of the post-9/11 Bush era. He was a fan of torture and extrajudicial killing to the point that a 2012 profile of him was entitled, “The Seven Deadly Sins of John Brennan.” Another writer called Brennan “the most lethal bureaucrat of all time, or at least since Henry Kissinger.” Today, however, a New York Times puff piece sweeps all that away as a “troubling inheritance.”

On Twitter this week, Brennan cartoonishly declaimed, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Because it is 2018, Brennan was never asked to explain exactly how a press conference exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution sets for impeachment, nor was he asked to lay a few cards on the table showing what Putin has on Trump. No, Brennan is a man of his times, all bluster and noise, knowing that so long as he says what a significant part of the country apparently believes—that the president of the United States is under the control of the Kremlin—he will never be challenged.

Brennan slithers alongside those like Nancy Pelosi and Cory Booker who said Trump is controlled by Russia, columnists in the New York Times who called him a traitor, an article (which is fast becoming the Zapruder film of Russiagate) in New York Magazine echoing former counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke in speculating that Trump met Putin as his handler, and another former intelligence officer warning that “we’re on the cusp of losing the constitutional republic forever.”

Brennan’s bleating has the interesting side effect of directing attention away from who was watching the front door as the Russians walked in to cause what one MSNBC analyst described as a mix of Pearl Harbor and Kristallnacht. During the 2016 election, Brennan was head of the CIA. His evil twin, James Clapper, who also coughs up Trump attacks for nickels these days, was director of national intelligence. James Comey headed the FBI, following Robert Mueller into the job. Yet the noise from that crowd has become so loud as to drown out any questions about where they were when they had the duty to stop the Russians in the first place.

The excuse that “everybody believed Hillary would win” is in itself an example of collusion: things that now rise to treason, if not acts of war, didn’t matter then because Clinton’s victory would sweep them all under the rug. Only after Clinton lost did it become necessary to create a crisis that might yet be inflated (it wasn’t just the Russians, as originally thought, it was Trump working with them) to justify impeachment. Absent that need, Brennan would have disappeared alongside other former CIA directors into academia or the lucrative consulting industry. Instead he’s a public figure with a big mouth because he has to be. That mouth has to cover his ass.

Brennan is part of the whole-of-government effort to overturn the election. Remember how recounts were called for amid (fake) allegations of vote tampering? Constitutional scholars proposed various Hail Mary Electoral College scenarios to unseat Trump. Lawsuits claimed the Emoluments Clause made it illegal for Trump to even assume office. The media set itself the goal of impeaching the president. On cue, leaks poured out implying the Trump campaign worked with the Russian government. It is now a rare day when the top stories are not apocalyptic, rocketed from Raw Story to the Huffington Post to the New York Times. Brennan, meanwhile, fans the media’s flames with a knowing wink that says “You wait and see. Soon it’s Mueller time.”

Yet despite all the hard evidence of treason that only Brennan and his supine journalists seem to see, everyone appears resigned to have a colluding Russian agent running the United States. You’d think it would be urgent to close this case. Instead, Brennan admonishes us to wait out an investigative process that’s been underway now through two administrations.

The IRS, meanwhile, has watched Trump for decades (they’ve seen the tax docs), as have Democratic and Republican opposition researchers, the New Jersey Gaming Commission, and various New York City real estate bodies. Multiple KGB/FSB agents have defected and not said a word. The whole Soviet Union has collapsed since the day that some claim Trump first became a Russian asset. Why haven’t the FBI, CIA, and NSA cottoned to anything in the intervening years? Why are we waiting on Mueller Year Two?

If Trump is under Russian influence, he is the most dangerous man in American history. So why isn’t Washington on fire? Why hasn’t Mueller indicted someone for treason? If this is Pearl Harbor, why is the investigation moving at the pace of a mortgage application? Why is everyone allowing a Russian asset placed in charge of the American nuclear arsenal to stay in power even one more minute?

You’d think Brennan would be saying it is time to postpone chasing the indictments of Russian military officers that will never see the inside of a courtroom, stop wasting months on decades-old financial crimes unconnected to the Trump campaign, and quit delaying the real stuff over a clumsy series of perjury cases. “Patriots: Where are you???” Brennan asked in a recent tweet. Where indeed?

Is Brennan signaling that there is one step darker to consider? A Reuters commentary observes that “Trump is haunted by the fear that a cabal of national-security officers is conspiring in secret to overthrow him…. Trump has made real enemies in the realm of American national security. He has struck blows against their empire. One way or another, the empire will strike back.” James Clapper is confirming reports that Trump was shown evidence of Putin’s election attacks and did nothing. Congressman Steve Cohen asked, “Where are our military folks? The Commander-in-Chief is in the hands of our enemy!”

Treason, traitor, coup, the empire striking back—those are just words, Third World stuff, clickbait, right? So the more pedestrian answer must then be correct. The lessons of Whitewater and Benghazi learned, maybe the point is not to build an atmosphere of crisis leading to something undemocratic, but just to have a perpetual investigation, tickled to life as needed politically.

Because, maybe, deep down, Brennan (Clapper, Hayden, Comey, and Mueller) really do know that this is all like flying saucers and cell phone cameras. At some point, the whole alien conspiracy meme fell apart because somehow when everyone had a camera with them 24/7/365, there were no more sightings and we had to admit that our fears had gotten the best of us. The threat was inside us all along. It is now, too.

theamericanconservative.com

The Caucus made no mention of Brennan’s having spoken there, nor did the CIA include in its public archives any indication that he had spoken there, though, for example, they did include the complete transcript of “Director Brennan Delivers Keynote at Miles College” on 13 September 2016, in Birmingham Alabama, at which event he said nothing at all that was newsworthy. (The Miles College event was mentioned by CBS, in this brief video.)

Furthermore — though there is online a webpage devoted to, and covering each day of, the 2017 Annual Legislative Conference, on 20-24 September of last year — the webpage for the 2016 Conference, on September 14th-18th, mentions events only on September 14th and September 17th, as if Brennan hadn’t even appeared there at all. The entire day’s events on September 15th are missing. So: both the Caucus, and the CIA, blacked-out his 15 September 2016 presentation, and the transcript of it isn’t publicly available (nor is any video or audio of it available publicly). 

However, a little coverage of Brennan’s remarkable statement did appear in the press, first, as a sparse and poorly written news-report on CNN that didn’t even mention where Brennan had made the remark (nor in which year he had voted that way), and, then, finally a week later, in a professionally competent news-report, at Buzzfeed, titled “Congress Doesn't Really Care That The CIA Chief Once Voted Communist”, and reporting, on September 22nd, that, “Brennan copped to the vote in little-noticed remarks last week [September 15th] at the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual conference. The spy chief spoke of his stomach-turning fear while undergoing the vetting process to be employed at the CIA in 1980 — strapped to a polygraph during the height of the Cold War,” and “Brennan said he came clean about the his 1976 ballot during the polygraph, expecting it to disqualify him from a clearance. But to the director’s surprise, he was offered admission to the agency, and, nearly 40 years later, landed in the top office.” Furthermore, when Buzzfeed’s reporter, Ali Watkins, asked some US Senators what they thought about Obama’s having selected to run the CIA a man who only a few years prior to joining the CIA had voted for the communist candidate, Gus Hall, none seemed to care. Whereas the war against communism had ended, the war against Russia still has not, and so Senators from both Parties didn’t want to talk about the matter — didn’t want to draw the public’s attention to the clear fact now, that the ideological excuse for the Cold War had been merely a fake, a rationalization, all along, on the American-NATO side; that the Cold War was never really about communism at all, but about conquest, on the American side — that Soviet, and then Russian, leaders had been conned into thinking that abandonment of communism and ending the Warsaw Pact mirror to America’s NATO military alliance, would bring peace with The West. Increasingly since 1991, it has been made clear that Russian leaders had been swindled. 

In 2013, when the Obama Administration was intensifying its efforts, in conjunction with the Sauds, to replace Russia-allied Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, the Wall Street Journal reported that "Mr. Brennan has been in periodic contact by phone with Prince Bandar”, who until 9/11 had been personally financing at least two of the 15 Saudis who were among the 19 hijackers/pilots; and, moreover, Bandar and his brothers were the main funders of Al Qaeda throughout the period leading up to 9/11. And, furthermore, Bandar had worked with the US Government before Al Qaeda even existed, so as to help Osama bin Laden to set up Al Qaeda, originally against the Soviet Union. (And, now, Al Qaeda is America’s key organization leading Syria’s jihadists to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government.)

On 29 November 2015, Andrew Emett of Activist Post bannered “Obama Accepted $1.3M In Gifts Last Year From A Country Who Beheads More People Than ISIS” and he reported and documented that, “Although the State Department listed several gifts to CIA Director John Brennan and multiple anonymous agency employees, the donors’ names have been redacted because ‘such information could adversely affect United States intelligence sources or methods.’ Besides receiving a $10,000 Omega men’s watch, Brennan was also given a $7,500 decorative rug.” And, “the Saudi king gave President Obama and his family roughly $1.35 million in gifts last year.” 

Then, on 28 September 2016, Eli Yokley at Morning Consult headlined "Congress Overrides Obama’s Veto of 9/11 Bill” and reported that: 

"Congress on Wednesday forcibly voted to override President Obama’s veto of legislation that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, despite Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan’s warning of “grave” risks to American national security if it becomes law. Despite his late plea, the Senate voted 97-1 to override Obama’s veto… In the House, the override attempt passed in similar fashion, 348 to 77.”

Those Senators and Representatives of the Sauds needed to display public support for the victims of 9/11, but Obama wasn’t running again, so didn’t need to worry. Anyway, the entire 9/11 case remains in legal limbo now under Trump.

Whereas the Sauds’ main strategic objective, in fulfillment of an agreement the royal Saud family had reached with the fundamentalist-Sunni Wahhab family in 1744, is to defeat Iran and Shia Muslims everywhere, and the Sauds’ secondary objective is ultimately to take over from Russia as being the main source of oil supplying the EU, which is the world’s largest energy-market; the US aristocracy’s main objective is simply to conquer Russia. (Conquering China would then be next, and would complete their plan.)

So, on many levels now, it is clear that for the American aristocracy (the people who control America’s Deep State), defeating communism, which had served as its ideological excuse for the Cold War, was just a cover-story. The reality, on America’s side, was always about conquest, which is why the CIA, even at the start, took in and protected so many Nazis. 

FDR would turn over in his grave, if he knew what came after him.

But the relative respectability of America’s national security agencies largely vanished in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist incidents. It was learned that both the CIA and FBI had made fatal mistakes in their investigations of the al-Qaeda group, putting in question their effectiveness, and the leaders of both organizations began to focus on pleasing their political masters. The appearance of CIA Director George Tenet at the United Nations supporting lies promoted by Secretary of State Colin Powell was a low point, but there were many more to follow.

The 2016 election brought out the worst in the CIA’s leadership, with its Director John Brennan lining up behind Hillary Clinton together with former Acting Director Michael Morell and former Director Michael Hayden. Morell even claimed that Trump was a Russian agent. Indeed, there has been remarkably little speculation regarding the possible roles of some senior intelligence officials, most notably CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both of whom were in office during the electoral campaign. In September 2016, the two men reportedly were involved in obtaining information on Page and it has also been suggested that Brennan sought and obtained raw intelligence from British, Polish, Dutch and Estonian intelligence services, which might have motivated FBI’s James Comey to investigate the Trump associates. Brennan and Clapper, drawing on intelligence resources and connections, might have helped the FBI build a fabricated case against Trump.

Currently the senior officials who were so hostile to Donald Trump have decided against going quietly into their generously rewarded retirements. Morell has long been a paid contributing “expert” for CBS news, Hayden has had the same role at CNN, and they are are now being joined by John Brennan at NBC. Brennan, an NBC “senior national security and intelligence analyst,” is an Obama-Clinton loyalist who can be relied upon to oppose policies and actions undertaken by the Trump Administration, admittedly not a bad thing, but he will be doing so from a strictly partisan perspective. And the danger is that his tag as former DCI will give him a certainly credibility, which, depending on the issue, might not be deserved or warranted. To be sure CIA interests will be protected, but they will be secondary to commentary from a partisan and revenge seeking John Brennan who is out to burnish his own sorry reputation. He looks perpetually angry when he is on television because he is.

Brennan has behaved predictably in his new role. In his first appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday he said that the Steele dossier did “not play any role whatsoever in the intelligence community assessment that was presented to President Obama…” which is a lie.  He denounced the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” by the House Intelligence Committee because it was “exceptionally partisan,” which is true, and because it exposes secrets, which it does not. Brennan is also a leader of the blame Russia movement. He has claimed without providing any evidence that Russia “brazenly interfered” in the 2016 election and he can be counted upon to be yet one more anti-Russian voice on the mainstream media.

Brennan, who was hated by much of the CIA’s rank-and-file during his tenure as director, does not have much of a reputation for truth-telling. He lied  about how the Agency under his leadership tried to spy on and disrupt the Senate’s investigation into CIA torture. He was also the driving force behind the Obama administration “kill list” of U.S. citizens selected for assassination. Concerns that Brennan will represent the Agency’s viewpoint on NBC News are largely irrelevant as the network should have instead considered his credibility and judgment before hiring him.

When the presstitute media first published unverifired, unsourced leaks attributed to unnamed CIA officials, both the FBI and the Director of Homeland Security said that they did not embrace the accusation that Trump’s election was a result of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

Now suddenly we have a report from the Washington Post, a rag whose integrity is in doubt and a mainstay of anti-Trump propaganda suspected of being a CIA asset, that the FBI and Homeland Security are in agreement with the anonymous leaks to the presstitutes:

“FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed Friday, as President Obama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation.

New revelations about Comey’s position could put to rest suggestions by some lawmakers that the CIA and the FBI weren’t on the same page on Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s intentions.”

“The positions of Comey and Clapper were revealed in a message that CIA Director John Brennan sent to the agency’s workforce Friday. ‘Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,’ Brennan said, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.”

Note, that this claim comes from the CIA. It has not been verified at this time of writing by the FBI and Homeland Security. Indeed, please note that the Washington Post, which is hyping this story of intelligence agency consensus, reports:

“The CIA and the FBI declined to comment on Brennan’s message or on the classified intelligence assessment that CIA officials shared with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, setting off a political firestorm”. In other words, the CIA might be putting words in the mouths of the other intelligence officials.

Note also that Hillary says that Putin interfered against her because he has a grudge against her for her interference in his reelection by fomenting protests against him with the Western-financed Russian NGOs. If what Hillary claims is correct, then any Russian interference, for which proof remains absent, was directed against Hillary in order to settle a score and has nothing to do with any Russian influence over Trump or 200 Internet sites as falsely and maliciously reported by the Washington Post.

All the CIA officials making claims of Russian interference, according to the Washington Post, continue to speak “on the condition of anonymity”.

So we have a coup against the president-elect based solely on unverified, unsourced, anonymous assertions made by the public knows not who.

Rep. Davin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which has oversight over the CIA, has said that neither he nor the committee have seen any evidence from the CIA in support of the claims he reads in the media. He has asked the agency to brief the Intelligence Committee on the alleged evidence but has had no response.

According to the Washington Post, “Nunes said: ‘We have not received any information from Intelligence Community (IC) agencies indicating that they have developed new assessments on this issue. I am alarmed that supposedly new information continues to leak to the media but has not been provided to Congress.’”

Rep. Nunes statement makes it completely clear that the CIA is using the presstitute media to launch a coup against president-elect Trump.

CIA director John Brennan’s audacity suggests that he expects the coup to succeed. Otherwise, he is dead meat along with Bezos, The Washington Post and the rest of the presstitute media.

Trump’s critics on the left and right and among the liberals and progressives have stupidly played into the CIA’s hands. I tried to warn them not to judge Trump by the past associations of his appointees as no change was possible without strong knowledgeable appointees. Those who romanticize Bernie Sanders are out to lunch. A person as weak as Sanders proved to be, completely collapsing in the face of his stolen presidential nomination by Hillary, could not possibly have prevailed over the powerful oligarchic groups that rule America. When we finally get a president-elect strong enough to bring change from the top down, the leftwing-liberal-progressive elements join the CIA in denouncing him!

If the generals Trump has announced as his appointees have been too marginalized within the military by the neoconservatives to be able to provide US military protection against the CIA’s coup against the president-elect, do not expect Donald Trump to be inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20.

We are at the point that only a countercoup against the CIA and the Hillary forces can save American democracy.

High treason is alive and well in the United States, and it is operating against American democracy and president-elect Trump.

paulcraigroberts.org

“CIA may revamp how it is organized” announced a front-page Washington Post headline leading into an article based on remarks by unnamed “U.S intelligence officials” to the Post’s Greg Miller. The anonymous officials were authorized to share some of the contents of a Sept. 24 letter from CIA Director John Brennan to CIA staff, in which Brennan says, “The time has come to take a fresh look at how we are organized as an agency.”

On Brennan’s orders, senior agency officials were put to work on what Miller reported would be “among the most ambitious [reorganizations] in CIA history.” But Miller’s sources emphasized that the activity was in its preliminary stages and that no final decisions had been made; the proposed changes might be scaled back or even discarded.

A New York Times article on Friday by Mark Mazzetti and Carl Hulse described a Donnybrook at the White House on Thursday, with Senate Democrats accusing White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough of acquiescing in CIA attempts to redact the report so thoroughly that its conclusions would be undermined.

The Democratic members of the Senate intelligence Committee are said to be in high dungeon. But some may have mixed feelings about release of the report because it would surely reflect poorly on their own failures as congressional “overseers” of the CIA.

Recent press reporting would have us believe that the main bone of contention revolves around if and how to use pseudonyms of CIA officers involved in torture, though that seems implausible since there are obvious workarounds to that concern. In past cases, for instance the Iran-Contra report, numbers were used to conceal actual identities of entities that were deemed to need protection.

Ex-CIA General Counsel Spilled the Beans

Hat tip to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who took the trouble to read the play-by-play of testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by former CIA General Counsel (2009-2013) Stephen W. Preston, nominated (and now confirmed) to be general counsel at the Department of Defense.

Under questioning by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, Preston admitted outright that, contrary to the CIA’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the committee included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.”

That “inaccurate information” apparently is thoroughly documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, which, largely because of the CIA’s imaginative foot-dragging, cost taxpayers $40 million. Udall has revealed that the report (which includes 35,000 footnotes) contains a very long section titled “C.I.A. Representations on the C.I.A. Interrogation Program and the Effectiveness of the C.I.A.’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to Congress.”

Preston also acknowledged that the CIA inadequately informed the Justice Department on interrogation and detention. He said, “CIA’s efforts fell well short of our current practices when it comes to providing information relevant to [the Office of Legal Counsel]’s legal analysis.”

As Katherine Hawkins, the senior investigator for last April’s bipartisan, independent report by the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, noted in an Oct. 18, 2013 posting, the memos from acting OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, relied very heavily on now-discredited CIA claims that “enhanced interrogation” saved lives, and that the sessions were carefully monitored by medical and psychological personnel to ensure that detainees’ suffering would not rise to the level of torture.

There’s more. According to the Constitution Project’s Hawkins, Udall complained – and Preston admitted – that, in providing the materials requested by the committee, “the CIA removed several thousand CIA documents that the agency thought could be subjected to executive privilege claims by the President, without any decision by [Barack] Obama to invoke the privilege.”

Worse still for the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee report apparently destroys the agency’s argument justifying torture on the grounds that there was no other way to acquire the needed information save through brutalization. In his answers to Udall, Preston concedes that, contrary to what the agency has argued, it can and has been established that legal methods of
interrogation would have yielded the same intelligence.

Sen. Udall has been persistent in trying to elicit the truth about CIA torture, but has failed. Now that he has lost his Senate seat in the November elections, he has the opportunity to do what Sen. Feinstein is too afraid to do – invoke a senator’s Constitutional right to immunity by taking advantage of the “speech or debate clause” to read the torture report findings into the record, a tactic used most famously by Sen. Mike Gravel in 1971 when he publicly read portions of the Pentagon Papers.

Sen. Udall has said he would consider doing something along those lines with the torture report, and that is precisely what is needed at this point. It remains to be seen whether Udall will rise to the occasion or yield to the fear of ostracism from the Establishment.

A Terrible Idea

One of the issues to be addressed by the reorganization group that Brennan has set up reportedly is whether or not the agency should be restructured into subject matter divisions in which analysts and clandestine operators work together.

There are far more minuses than plusses in that kind of structure. Greg Miller cites the concerns expressed by his sources over the potential for analysts’ judgments to be clouded by working too closely with the operators. Miller quotes one officer who worked in the Counter-Terrorism Center, which is being cited as the template for reorganizing the rest of the CIA.

The former CTC officer – speaking from personal experience – said, “The potential for corruption is much greater if you have analysts directly involved in helping to guide operations. There is the possibility for them to get too close to the issue and to be too focused on trying to achieve a certain outcome.” Like targeting/killing suspected “militants” by Hellfire missiles from drones, rather than pausing long enough to try to discern what has made them “militants” in the first place – and whether killing them is a major fillip to recruitment of more and more “militants.”

Or take Iran, for example. If the leaders of a new Iran “issues center” are focused on sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear development program, how much visibility will be given to analysts who are trying to discern whether there is enough evidence to conclude that Iran is actually working toward a nuclear weapon.

As some may recall, in November 2007 an honest National Intelligence Estimate concluded unanimously and “with high confidence” that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier – in the fall of 2003 – and had not resumed work on a nuclear warhead.

The importance of such independent analysis cannot be overestimated. In that particular case, the Estimate played a huge role in preventing the war with Iran planned by Bush and Cheney for their last year in office. Read what Bush himself writes in his Decision Points about how that “eye-popping” NIE deprived him of the military option:

“But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?” (Decision Points, p. 419)

Split the CIA in Two

There are examples galore of the important value of keeping analysts free from leaders and pressures more in favor of operations than cogent intelligence analysis. Indeed, there is a strong argument to split the CIA in half and let the covert operations part, which President Harry Truman said he never intended to be joined with the analysis part of the agency, go its own way

The Defense Department and Air Force can surely find extra chairs for those CIA killing-by-drone aficionados not already at the Pentagon. And “regime change” specialists could likely find space with others engaged in similar work at the National Endowment for Democracy or the State Department.

It is of transcendent importance to insulate the serious analysts from politically motivated managers and directors or other easy-to-manipulate bureaucrats who are enmeshed in covert operations. Harry Truman, who established the CIA, had very strong thoughts about this – for very good reason.

Truman’s Edict

On Dec. 22, 1963, exactly one month after President John Kennedy was assassinated, former President Truman published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The timing was no coincidence. Documents in the Truman library show that nine days after Kennedy was murdered, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say.

The op-ed itself reflected Truman’s concern that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster, lamenting that the agency had “become removed from its intended role. … It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.” Truman complained that the CIA was shaping policy through its control of intelligence and “cloak and dagger” operations.

Truman appealed for the agency to be “restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President … and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.”

Five days after Truman’s op-ed appeared, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman has appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter blaming former CIA Director Allen Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than the one I tried to set up for you.”

Souers was particularly sour on Dulles’s attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ by invading Cuba with a handful of men and no air cover.” He also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into arranging “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” adding, “With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”

Souers and Truman both felt that the CIA’s operational tail had been wagging the analytical dog – a serious problem that persists today.

Five years ago, on the anniversary of Truman’s Washington Post op-ed, I posted a piece titled “Break the CIA in Two,” demonstrating that it is indeed time that the agency’s operational duties be, as Truman had suggested, “terminated or properly used elsewhere.” In another piece, posted on the 50th anniversary of Truman’s prescient op-ed, I went into more detail not only on Truman’s article, but also on fresh signs of corruption and lying to Congress on the part of senior CIA officials.

The coin of the realm in intelligence analysis is truth and the trust that comes of consistently speaking truth to power. For intelligence analysts to have a decent chance at being taken seriously, there has to be some space between them and the self-licking ice cream cone of covert action.

Surely, there is no better way to create a steadily increasing supply of jihadists than by ignoring clear-headed analysis about why young Muslims are angry enough to strap bombs to themselves and instead dreaming up new covert operations that will have that inevitable effect of creating more jihadists.

consortiumnews.com

It is not without good reason that Brennan is known unofficially as Obama’s «assassination and torture tsar». The 58-year-old spymaster is the embodiment of how Washington has itself become a secret, unaccountable government that has set itself above the law in the running of torture and assassination programs by presidential command. Brennan is the «éminence grise» of the White House’s covert world of state terrorism.  

Following disclosure of Brennan’s weekend visit to the Ukrainian capital, the White House was evidently caught on the back foot. The Oval Office made the somewhat unconvincing attempt to portray it as a perfunctory meeting between security officials. Well, if it was merely a routine itinerary then why was the fact of the meeting such a closely guarded secret – up until the matter was leaked by parliamentary sources in Kiev?

The timing of Brennan’s sojourn in Kiev comes at a crucial juncture. The unelected Western-backed junta in Kiev is threatening a violent crackdown on pro-Russian protesters in the east and south of the country… 

So far, the protesters have taken over government and police buildings in the major cities of Donetz, Karkhov, Lugansk, Slavyansk and Horlivka. The takeovers have been carried out with notably little violence – in contrast to the Western-backed street violence that occurred in Kiev from the end of November. The eastern Ukraine protests have met minimal resistance from local police and other security forces, and indeed the latter seem to have willingly joined in the defense of the demonstrations.

The leaders of the self-appointed regime in Kiev are struggling to contain the protesters in the east and south of Ukraine. The chaotic situation is a pointed reminder that the fascists and neo-Nazis who seized power in Kiev at the end of February – after nearly three months of Western-backed street subversion – do not have a democratic mandate to rule over the whole country. The protesters in the eastern cities view the Kiev junta as having come to power illegally. As one woman told media: «They are just a gang of criminals». 

That view would seem to be substantiated by the tacit revolt among police and security forces in the east of Ukraine against the orders for a crackdown given from Kiev. Such clear lack of command over a basic institution of the state indicates that the Kiev cabal has lost control, or more accurately, never had control in the first place – apart from precipitating the illegal coup in Kiev against the incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych.

The vacuum of central authority in Ukraine is evident from the ineffective deadlines issued by the office occupiers in Kiev. Ironically, this supports Moscow’s position that any political solution will have to be based on a federal settlement among the regions of Ukraine. American, European and Russian officials are to meet in Geneva this week, but there is little sign that the Western parties can admit to the reckless folly of their efforts at forcing regime change across Ukraine on the back of the Kiev cabal. 

Kiev’s first ultimatum for the protesters in the eastern cities to relinquish their occupation of public buildings expired last Friday. Kiev had given demonstrators 48 hours last week to disperse otherwise it was sending in «anti-terror» military forces to do so. That deadline was defiantly ignored by armed protesters behind their barricades. So too was a second deadline, which expired on Monday morning. 

This is the context for the secret visit by CIA chief John Brennan to Kiev at the weekend. The Washington-backed regime is floundering to cope with the nationwide crisis it has helped to provoke, and it needs a steadying hand from Uncle Sam. 

The CIA’s covert involvement in destabilizing Ukraine goes all the way back to the end of the Cold War, when the country was targeted for regime change from the early 1990s as a calculated pressure point to exert on Russia. The admission at the end of last year by US state department official Victoria Nuland that the US had funneled some $5 billion into Ukraine for subversive activities under the guise of myriad CIA front organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the Heritage Foundation, is testimony to this strategic gambit.

The question might be asked: why did Brennan have to visit Kiev in person? Surely, a lesser dignitary bearing a sealed letter would have sufficed? The fact that Brennan was obliged to press the flesh with leaders of the Kiev junta suggests two things. Firstly, the junta is way out of its depth in maintaining a façade of «governance» over a population of 45 million, many of which are armed and implacably opposed to its Western-infiltrated rule. Given Brennan’s top ranking as Washington’s éminence grise, his meeting in Kiev was probably designed at shoring up the shaky US-backed regime in the face of growing dissent. 

Secondly, and more sinisterly, Brennan was letting his hosts in Kiev know – in the most authoritative unspoken way – that they could rely on the full panoply of Washington’s state terrorist expertise. 

The CIA director is a holdover from the Bush administration in which he was a formative figure in drawing up the torture and extraordinary rendition practices during the 2000s. Brennan’s rise through the ranks of the American national security apparatus is in tandem with the rise of American government lawlessness around the world. 

In 2008, he had to withdraw his nomination for the top CIA post under public pressure then from his known involvement in and support for torture. The Obama administration circumvented that glitch by appointing Brennan as the president’s «chief counterterrorism advisor» – a career appointment that did not require Congressional oversight. 

Last year, the Obama administration finally appointed Brennan as head of the CIA with minimal controversy. The promotion was viewed as reward for Brennan’s legal streamlining of the American killer drone program, which has given the White House control of selecting targets in the weekly meetings known as «Terror Tuesdays», where suspects around the world, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia among other places, are nominated for assassination. This facility of extrajudicial murder in the hands of an American president – requiring no legal or public oversight – is the dubious deft work of John Owen Brennan. 

The Kiev putschists came to power after covert snipers shot dead up to 100 people in the Maidan Square, including protesters and police, during late February. The Western mainstream news media quickly blamed the deaths on the Ukrainian security services and the public outcry led partly to the ouster of President Yanukovych on February 22-23. It has since been disclosed that the snipers were actually working for the coup organizers, and there is evidence that the CIA was involved in orchestrating that atrocity, as it had done for the general street protests leading up to it.

In the present standoff between the US-backed regime in Kiev and the cities of eastern Ukraine, the rent-a-mobsters in Kiev led by the so-called Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk are in danger of buckling from the trenchant popular opposition to their illegal power grab. Washington’s $5 billion covert investment in regime change is at stake. This is where Uncle Sam steps in to straighten up the rattled ranks. And who better to exude sinister authority than John O. Brennan – Obama’s right-hand man for state terrorism?

Brennan reportedly urged members of the «Council of National Security and Defense,» the supreme authority created by the leaders who ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in a February coup, to put down the rebellion by pro-Russian Ukrainians in the east with extreme force. Brennan and other U.S. government officials have also been responsible for identifying secessionists in the east as «terrorists,» which is part of a major U.S. and western intelligence propaganda war against eastern Ukrainian secessionist leaders and the Russian government. 

The intelligence on Brennan’s secret visit to Kiev primarily came from Yanukovych loyalists who remain embedded in the Ukrainian government, as well as Ukrainian Communist Party officials still serving as members of the Ukrainian parliament. Brennan has coordinated the CIA’s counter-Russian activities with the intelligence services of America’s NATO allies in eastern Europe, particularly those of the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. It is also significant that Brennan, who is the son of Irish immigrants, is married to Kathy Pokluda, a native of New Jersey who is of Czech descent. Brennan’s three children, Kyle, Kelly, and Jaclyn, are Czech-Irish. Pokludas are not only found in the Czech Republic but also in Slovakia and western Ukraine. Brennan’s ties to the Czech Republic, which has elected leaders who are virulently anti-Russian, may explain, in part, Brennan’s eagerness to ratchet up tensions with Moscow in eastern Ukraine.

The United States and Britain had called leaders of the violent rebellion that overthrew Yanukovych in February «freedom fighters» and «pro-democracy forces» even though armed right-wing nationalist militias fired on the crowd of protesters in Maidan Square from sniper nests in buildings around the protest venue. The West’s «freedom fighters» shot to death a number of protesters and police officers. The CIA, mainly using George Soros «civil society» front groups and media operations, issued talking points that the sniper fire came from Yanukovych government loyalists and even Russian special forces units. 

However, what the CIA accused Yanukovych and Russia of doing in Ukraine is exactly what is has been doing for the past several weeks: deploying special forces units, including CIA-directed private security forces from Academi (the infamous ex-Blackwater) to fire on pro-Russian protesters throughout eastern Ukraine.

Brennan, whose pro-Saudi feelings are so well-known he is nicknamed «Shaikh Brennan» by CIA insiders, reportedly helped craft a violent response by Ukrainian security forces in the eastern city of Slovyansk and other population centers, including Donetsk, Kharkov, and Lugansk. As is the normal routine for traveling CIA directors, Brennan would have been assisted in providing consultation to Ukrainian officials by a team from the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, including CIA field officers who have previously been posted in Ukraine and who speak fluent Ukrainian.

In reaction to Brennan’s presence in the Ukrainian capital, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded an explanation from Washington about what Brennan was doing in Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference, Lavrov said Russia has yet to receive a reasonable response from the United States about the purpose of Brennan’s clandestine trip to Kiev.

The CIA has a long history of taking over virtual command of foreign security services like the Ukrainian Security Service or Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny (SBU). During the reign of the Shah of Iran, the CIA gave orders to the dreaded Iranian SAVAK security service and after he stepped down as CIA director, Richard Helms became the U.S. ambassador in Tehran. As with Brennan’s recent activities in Ukraine, Helms gave the orders to the CIA-trained SAVAK in Iran. What followed Helms’s service in Tehran was the Islamic revolution that, in part, was in reaction to the CIA’s training of SAVAK agents in torture techniques and extrajudicial executions of Iranian opposition leaders.

The CIA also virtually ran the intelligence services of Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Dominican Republic caudillo Rafael Trujillo, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza. However, in what may cause some apprehension among the interim leaders of Kiev, it should be noted that when the CIA grew tired of these dictators, it quickly helped eject them from power. Mobutu died in exile in Morocco after being overthrown by forces aided by the CIA. Trujillo was assassinated in his chauffeured Chevrolet Bel Air by plotters trained by the CIA. Noriega was arrested while seeking asylum in the Vatican embassy in Panama City after a U.S. military invasion; he served prison sentences in Florida and France and is now rotting away in a Panamanian jungle prison; and Somoza was forced to flee Nicaragua after a cut-off in U.S. support; his car was later hit by an anti-tank rocket while he lived in exile in Paraguay. 

Ukrainian acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and other Ukrainian coup leaders have obviously not considered what the CIA does to its foreign «friends» after they become unneeded and disposable. 

Ukrainian Communist Party parliamentary deputy Vladimir Golub told RIA Novosti that the Ukrainian SBU had become a «unit of the CIA.»

CIA officials rejected the reports that Brennan was in Kiev as «an outright lie». However, Brennan has been known to lie in the past about CIA clandestine operations and the CIA issued its standard reply that it would «neither confirm nor deny» Brennan’s presence in Ukraine.

Brennan was less than truthful about his role with the Saudis and Qataris in a failed CIA operation in Benghazi, Libya that saw the U.S. ambassador to Libyan Christopher Stevens and three other America diplomatic personnel killed by Libyan Islamist rebels in an attempt to transfer weapons from the armories of ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to Salafist guerrillas in Syria. Brennan was the deputy national security adviser to President Obama at the time of the Benghazi disaster. After CIA director David Petraeus’s admission of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Brennan, a retired CIA National Clandestine Services officer with long ties to Saudi Arabia, was named as Petraeus’s replacement. 

Brennan helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s secret rendition and torture policy used against «Al Qaeda» suspects around the world. After his retirement in 2005, Brennan became the chief executive officer of The Analysis Corporation (TAC), a favorite CIA private contractor. 

During the outset of the 2008 presidential campaign, Brennan’s TAC employees in the State Department’s Passport Office ensured that certain information on Obama and his relatives were deleted from State Department files. The mini-scandal, which also involved the passport records of Obama’s opponents, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, were also deleted from the files. Brennan was rewarded for his work on behalf of the Obama campaign with the number two job on the National Security Council and, ultimately, the directorship of the CIA after Petraeus’s downfall. Brennan makes few decisions without first discussing them with Obama. Any decision to send CIA operatives, including private mercenaries, into eastern Ukraine would have Obama’s official consent, done by the signing of a «Presidential Finding,» or unofficially with a mere «wink and a nod» to Brennan.

Brennan, who has been called a «knuckle-dragging thug» by current and retired CIA officials who know him, is not the most welcomed figure in Ukraine if the Kiev authorities actually desire a peaceful outcome with its opponents…

Who is John Brennan? Why does he seem to be irreplaceable to Obama? I must note Brennan is a very reclusive person; he has become even more incommunicative while going through his CIA career path.. It’s hard to figure out what kind of man he is. Gone are the romantic years, when he carried out the missions to prove he was worth his salt. Defiantly long haired wearing a startling earring and a hippy-style shirt of many colors, he wanted to see the world. So he went to Indonesia, Bahrain and Egypt. His studies included a junior year abroad learning Arabic and taking Middle Eastern studies courses at the American University in Cairo. 

According to official biography, Brennan joined the CIA in 1980. His 25 years with the CIA included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst, work in the Middle East and a tenure as a director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton in 1994-1995. In 1996 he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He has always been focused on fighting terrorism. After all, Bin Laden, as well as other top Al Qaeda leaders, came from Saudi Arabia. Brennan managed to get the CIA operatives penetrate Al Qaeda and watch bin Laden’s activities and use some of the organization members in the CIA’s interest. The same type of activities were conducted by the CIA in the post-Soviet space, in Chechnya, for instance. 

In 1999 he was appointed chief of staff to George Tenet, then-Director of the CIA. Brennan became deputy executive director of the CIA in March 2001. He was director of the newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004, an office that sifted through and compiled information for President Bush's daily top secret intelligence briefings and employed the services of analysts from a dozen U.S. agencies and entities. The job was really challenging and required an ability to know your way in the corridors of power at the time the state structures functioned in emergency conditions. From the very start Brennan understood he should ignore some strange circumstances of the way Al Qaeda managed to enter the United Sates and act on its territory. Many facts did not match the general picture of the Al Qaeda’s large-scale attack against the country. Perhaps that was the reason he left government service in 2005. Brennan became Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and the CEO of The Analysis Corporation (TAC) now renamed as Sotera Defense Solutions. In 2009 he got back to the White House in the capacity of Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor. Brennan criticized some Bush-administration anti-terror policies, saying it went too far sometimes. Still he adhered to the same principles: shoot first and find out what is what afterwards. Brennan is the man who started using drones to kill terrorists abroad. Sometimes the drones are called a wonder weapon of the XXI. On May 2, 2011 Brennan represented a team that killed Osama Bin Laden in the Abbottabad suburbs (Pakistan). As a White House official, he oversaw the search activities and had a reason to say he deserved some merit for the success of operation. The use of drones and the elimination of Osama bin Laden served as arguments for his second nomination to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The protesters present at the confirmation hearings appeared to be members of the activist group Code Pink. They held signs reading «Drones Fly Children Die»; he was called a liar, a traitor, an enemy of democracy and a threat to national security. The pictures taken at the time show his face became a mask, the eyes narrowed, the lips frozen stiff before completing the sentence. The bodyguards loomed behind his back. 

The protesters were led out of the room. The questions asked by Senators were mainly revolving around two issues related to the Brennan’s past activities: third degree tortures during the interrogations practiced by the CIA and trying to conceal the number of civilians who lost lives during the drone attacks. Brennan didn’t sound very convincing while answering the questions related to tortures and secret jails. Being a deputy executive director of the CIA responsible for everyday activities, it’s hard to believe he was not aware of what was going on. Brennan says he saw some copies of documents on the interrogation techniques program (torture), but he had no relation to working it out. 

What the documents were copied for? To oversee the implementation of the program? No doubt about it. That’s why the argument that he had no authority to stop the program and keep operatives away from the interrogation process was just a subterfuge. Brennan was aware of everything and approved it, if not ordered the tortures. It never came to his head to stand up against the brutal practice. During the Bush Jr. tenure the law enforcement agencies officials risked their careers in case they displayed lack of will power or unwarrantedly humane treatment of potential enemy. The Brennan’s opponents found some of his interviews in which he praised interrogation torture techniques used by the CIA, including waterboarding. 

The man was an architect of the administration’s controversial escalation of drone strikes to take out suspected militants. He justified his stance during the hearings saying the country had a legal right to defend itself and the lives of Americans. The right is widely implemented without looking back at any moral standards or international law. Drones attacked targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and other countries. Brennan says there was no «collateral damage.» It’s an outright lie. It is a common knowledge drones hit the unidentified targets, the attacks resulted in the death of innocent people, including children. Only in Pakistan 176 children were killed from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, that is including President Obama’s first tenure. 

The Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda were included in the target list. A new wave of indignation was caused by the witch hunt. For instance, in September 2011 an unmanned aerial vehicle operating in Yemen killed Anwar al-Alwaki and Samir Khan, the US citizens. The two had never been accused of terrorism, had never been on the wanted list, still they were dead. A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be «senior operational leaders» of al-Qaida or «an associated force» – even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S. It’s enough to believe they have a relation to Al Qaeda to hand down a death verdict. The issue will certainly surface at the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearings on February 12. 

Today he does everything to curry favor with Senators: utmost transparency of the CIA activities, exhaustive information available to Congress, regular meetings with media etc. There is an opinion going around in press that Brennan’s assignment will help the CIA reputation tarnished by the excesses during the Bush Jr. tenure. It presupposes that numerous CIA employees suffered morally and psychologically being involved in tortures. Many operatives are concerned about the CIA fulfilling the functions it is not destined for in case the United States gets involved in hot wars, the quagmire the country seems to be frighteningly dragged into with certain feeling of doom. 

It won’t be a bed of roses for John Brennan. The thousands of CIA personnel will not only collect information but also be involved in combat actions in the conditions much worse than in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veteran Brennan will do what he is accustomed to: wars, third degree interrogation, spying, keeping information away from Congress, ordering drone strikes to kill Americans as a result of friendly fire, in case the victims become expendable or dangerous…