[NAT. REVIEW] Revoking Brennan’s Security Clearance: The Right Thing, Even if for the Wrong Reason

well, I know it's not the Federalist, but I think this is sure to please

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/john-brennan-security-clearance-revocation-justified/

Revoking Brennan’s Security Clearance: The Right Thing, Even if for the Wrong Reason
By Andrew C. McCarthy
August 18, 2018 6:30 AM
It’s right because he is irresponsible and untrustworthy and has politicized intelligence.

I do not share my friend David French’s theoretical constitutional concerns about the president’s revocation of security clearances — at least when it comes to former government officials who become media commentators and have no demonstrable need for a security clearance. Like David and many other analysts, though, I think it’s a big mistake to politicize the revocation of security clearances.

Still, I am even less of a fan of the politicization of intelligence itself. And that justifies the revocation of former CIA director John Brennan’s clearance.

As is often the case with President Trump, the right thing has been done here for the wrong reason, namely, for vengeance against a political critic who is always zealous and often unhinged. That a decision amounts to political payback does not necessarily make it wrong on the merits, but its in-your-face pettiness is counterproductive, undermining its justification.

Brennan’s tweets about Trump are objectively outrageous. To compare, I think some of former CIA director Mike Hayden’s tweets are ill-advised — particularly this one, comparing Trump’s border-enforcement policy to Nazi concentration camps. But General Hayden is making anti-Trump political arguments, not intimating that he has knowledge of Trump corruption based on his (Hayden’s) privileged access to intelligence information (which he may or may not still have — I haven’t asked him). Hayden is absolutely entitled to speak out in that vein. Generally, he is a voice of reason even when one disagrees with him, and — let’s be real here — even his edgier tweets are pretty tame compared to the president’s.

Brennan, by contrast, speaks out in a nod-and-a-wink manner, the undercurrent of which is that if he could only tell you the secrets he knows, you’d demand Trump’s impeachment forthwith. (See, e.g., tweets here, here, and here.) Indeed, “undercurrent” is probably the wrong word: Brennan, after all, has expressly asserted that our “treasonous” president is “wholly in the pocket of Putin” and has “exceed[ed] the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’”

Such demagoguery would be beneath any former CIA director, but it is especially indecorous in Brennan’s situation. There are ongoing investigations and trials. Brennan’s own role in the investigation of the Trump campaign is currently under scrutiny, along with such questions as whether the Obama administration put the nation’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Clinton campaign, and why an unverified dossier (a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project) was presented to the FISA court in order to obtain surveillance warrants against an American citizen. Until these probes have run their course, Brennan should resist the urge to comment, especially in ways that implicate his knowledge of classified matters. (So should the president, but that’s another story.)

Quite apart from the ongoing investigations, there is considerable evidence that intelligence was rampantly politicized on Brennan’s watch as CIA director and, before that, Obama’s homeland-security adviser. For example, Obama-administration national-security officials deceptively downplayed weapons threats posed by Syria, Iran, and North Korea. As The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes notes, Brennan directed the CIA to keep under wraps the vast majority of documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, precisely because that information put the lie to Obama-administration narratives about a “decimated” al-Qaeda, the moderation of Iran, and general counterterrorism success. (Since this week’s craze is the Trump administration’s use of non-disclosure agreements, we should add Hayes’s reporting that Brennan’s CIA presented NDAs to survivors of the Benghazi terrorist attack — at a memorial service for those killed during the siege — in order to silence them while the Obama administration’s indefensible performance was being investigated.) In 2015, over 50 intelligence analysts complained that their reports on ISIS and al-Qaeda were being altered by senior officials in order to support misleading Obama-administration storylines. Brennan himself was instrumental in the administration’s submission to the demands of Islamist organizations that information about sharia-supremacist ideology be purged from the training of security officials.

That last decision flowed logically from Brennan’s absurd insistence that the Islamic concept of “jihad” refers merely to a “holy struggle” to “purify oneself or one’s community” (see my 2010 column, here). It’s as if there were no other conceivable interpretation of a tenet that, as the late, great Bernard Lewis observed, is doctrinally rooted in the imperative of forcible conquest — which is exactly how millions and millions of fundamentalist Muslims, including those who threaten the United States, understand it. Airbrushing sharia-supremacist ideology in order to appease an administration’s Islamist allies may be fit work for political consultants; it ill suits a director of central intelligence.

Brennan, moreover, has proved himself irresponsible and untrustworthy. In 2014, when it first surfaced that his CIA had hacked into the computer system of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff investigating the agency’s enhanced-interrogation program, Brennan indignantly denied the allegation. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he insisted. “I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

Of course, it was the truth. An inspector-general probe established that the hacking had, in fact, occurred. And not just that; as the New York Times reported, CIA officials who were involved in spying on the Senate committee maintained that their actions “were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan.” Brennan eventually apologized to senior committee senators. Then he handpicked an “accountability board” to investigate the matter. As I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn, Brennan used the pendency of the accountability board’s examination as a pretext to avoid answering Congress’s questions; then the board dutifully whitewashed the matter, recommending that no one be disciplined.

The yanking of Brennan’s security clearance is not only warranted, it is way overdue.

Yet, by singling out the former CIA director, in unconcealed retribution for his anti-Trump political diatribes, the president undermines the legitimacy of his decision. This is important. Let’s put Brennan aside. There are 5.1 million people in this country with security clearances. That is insane. It is undoubtedly true that too much information in government is classified. Still, a great deal of it constitutes defense secrets that are classified because they need to be. If we’ve learned anything from the Snowden debacle, it is that we are extremely vulnerable because intelligence access has been given to people who don’t need it and/or shouldn’t have it.
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more at the link

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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...d-bless-the-deep-state-if-its-people-who-care

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara spoke out in favor of members of the “Deep State,” suggesting the theory is really a description of career professionals who try to uphold the law and “just do what’s right.”

“By Deep State, if you mean professionals who are consummate professionals, who understand what continuity means, who understand what the constitution is. Who don’t care about party, who don’t care about politics, who just do what’s right and honor the law and honor the Constitution,” Bharara told Bill Maher on his HBO show, and added in jest: “Then God bless the Deep State.”

Bharara, who was fired by President Trump last year after refusing to resign, said that while it “would not be great” to lose top officials in agencies like the FBI and CIA, he believed the existing staff would be able to continue its work.

Trump and conservative lawmakers have slammed the so-called Deep State, alleging that officials in the Department of Justice are biased against Trump and are attempting to undermine his presidency.

Bharara also offered some praise to FBI Director Christopher Wray, saying the country “accidentally got a great person” to head the agency, but added that Wray could do more to defend the institution.

“They’re sort of walking the line, trying to defend their institution and doing what’s right,” Bhrara said of Department of Justice officials like Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“And also placating a guy who gets angry and upset and could fire them on a whim,” he added of the president.
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"Our signatures below do not necessarily mean that we concur with the opinions expressed by former Director Brennan or the way in which he expressed them."