Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Tue 04/16/2024 View Mon 04/15/2024 View Sun 04/14/2024 View Sat 04/13/2024 View Fri 04/12/2024 View Thu 04/11/2024 View Wed 04/10/2024
2019-06-04 -Lurid Crime Tales-
Who Ran Crossfire Hurricane? Barr's investigators should focus on John Brennan and Gina Haspel.
[American Spectator] Crossfire Hurricane" ‐ the melodramatic code name for the FBI/CIA spy operation on candidate Trump and his early presidency ‐ was run for the FBI by then-FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, Special Agent Peter Strzok, and a few others.

Then-CIA director John Brennan ran it for the CIA. Brennan had to have help, but who was it? A lot of evidence points to the CIA’s then-chief of station in London in 2016-2017, and now the Director of Central Intelligence, Gina Haspel.

President Trump claimed that the FBI and CIA’s spying on his campaign and early presidency was treason. Attorney General William Barr said that, legally, it wasn’t.

Continued from Page 6



Barr is correct. But note well that he didn’t say that crimes other than treason weren’t committed. On Friday, Barr said that since he became attorney general he had been asking why the counter-intelligence investigation was begun and hasn’t yet gotten a satisfactory answer.

The criminal investigation being conducted for Barr by U.S. Attorney John Durham is aimed at the intelligence community. As I wrote last week Trump’s recent executive order, which requires the intelligence agencies to cooperate with Barr and gives Barr the power to declassify anything he chooses, was probably necessitated by the stonewalling by the CIA and the NSA that Durham had already encountered.

There is every reason for the CIA to stonewall. Its current director, Gina Haspel, must have played a major role in conducting the CIA/FBI spy op on Trump.

One result of last week’s column was that one of my intelligence sources ‐ a longtime veteran of the U.S. intelligence community ‐ reappeared after about a year of silence. This person reminded me that he/she tried ‐ unsuccessfully ‐ to warn the White House against Haspel’s nomination to be DCI because of her longstanding close ties to Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan.

Many people who objected to Haspel’s confirmation, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), based their objections on the fact that Haspel had run a CIA site in Thailand in which terrorist suspects were reportedly waterboarded. The waterboarding charge was sufficient to get the Senate ‐ and apparently the White House ‐ to overlook the real problem with her: the fact that, as Paul once implied in a tweet, Haspel is Brennan’s acolyte and protégé.

Brennan was ‐ and still is ‐ a hyper-partisan anti-Trumper. He was a relentless promoter of the Steele dossier allegations against Trump. Either he or James Comey (the two are disputing which) insisted on including information from the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 2017, which said that the intelligence community had agreed that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump. We know that Brennan has lied to Congress on a host of topics, including events surrounding the spy op on Trump’s campaign and presidency.

Haspel’s longstanding loyalty to Brennan ranks her among the two or three worst personnel choices made by President Trump.

Her loyalty to Brennan is more than a little relevant to Durham’s investigation because, as noted above, Haspel was the CIA’s Chief of Station (COS) in London from 2014-2017. It was during the latter two years of her tenure there when all of the FBI/CIA spying operation on Trump and his campaign occurred.

I’m told that the most-coveted job in all of the CIA (second only to the directorship) is the COS-London job. Before her tenure there in 2014-2017, Haspel had already had that job from 2008 to 2011. It’s very unusual for anyone to have it twice. Brennan probably gave Haspel her second stint there as a reward for her loyalty.

COS-London sits in on weekly meetings of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) for the purpose of exchanging top-secret intelligence information. The JIC is made up of the heads of all the UK intelligence agencies ranging from MI6 to GCHQ, the UK’s equivalent of our National Security Agency.

During her 2008-2011 stint, Haspel would have made many close friends among the UK intelligence community. Those ties would have been renewed during her 2014-2017 time in the COS-London job.

During Haspel’s later time as COS-London, much of the action on CIA/FBI spy op on Trump took place in London.

The New York Times reported on May 16, 2018 that within hours of opening the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, two FBI agents were dispatched to London to interview Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer about his meeting with Trump advisor George Papadopoulos. One of those agents was Peter Strzok, the anti-Trump FBI agent who led the "Crossfire Hurricane" team.

As the CIA’s chief of station (COS), Haspel would not only have known about Strzok’s mission to London, but would had to have been briefed on it and approved it.

And that’s not the half of it. Haspel, as Brennan’s COS in London, must have run the UK end of the spy op on Trump for Brennan.

In addition to the Downer meeting, much of the Crossfire Hurricane action took place in London. Among the UK meetings that were part of the spy op in London were meetings between Stefan Halper, the Cambridge professor, and Carter Page, another minor Trump advisor. (Page also met with one of Halper’s employees who was operating undercover for the FBI.) Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic, also met with Carter Page in London and cooperated with the FBI’s investigation.

All of these meetings were parts of the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation. They had to have been overseen by the CIA’s London Chief of Station: Gina Haspel.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-06-04 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ]  Top

#1 Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic (amongst other "things")
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-06-04 02:35||   2019-06-04 02:35|| Front Page Top

#2 ...Cripes, and I thought the Russians ran convoluted ops...

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2019-06-04 04:26||   2019-06-04 04:26|| Front Page Top

#3 Ill go all Herb for a moment. Where might we be today if Boosh had just cleaned house at CIA (and DoS too, but that's crazy talk, I know) the day after his inauguration? No way it would have changed 9/11 but everything after that, especially Iraq would probably have been (not saying turned out different, too many cooks and all that) quite different. The permanent parade of professional poltroons inside the Beltway is 99.99997% of the problem.
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-06-04 06:14||   2019-06-04 06:14|| Front Page Top

#4 As DeGaulle said (paraphrased for the PC era): "The graveyards are full of indispensable people."
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-06-04 06:18||   2019-06-04 06:18|| Front Page Top

#5 Ref #3: Where might we be today if Boosh had just cleaned house at CIA (and DoS too, but that's crazy talk...

Yes, very difficult to fire the people who hired you.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-06-04 06:23||   2019-06-04 06:23|| Front Page Top

#6 Yeah, B. In retrospect the 2000 election looks interesting...
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-06-04 06:26||   2019-06-04 06:26|| Front Page Top

#7 President Trump claimed that the FBI and CIA’s spying on his campaign and early presidency was treason. Attorney General William Barr said that, legally, it wasn’t. Barr is correct.

It seems premature to say treason is off the table when the facts are not all in. Is conspiring with an ally rather than an enemy to nullify an election and duly-elected POTUS treasonous? Adam Yahiye Gadahn was charged with treason for conspiring with an enemy. IMO the ramifications of what was done in Spygate are more serious and far-reaching than the treasonous Gadahn's crimes...but then I'm not a lawyer.
Posted by JohnQC 2019-06-04 08:42||   2019-06-04 08:42|| Front Page Top

#8 The Constitution carefully defines what treason is. Mostly because Americans were tired of the King calling anything he didn't like "treason".

So, no, what the deep state/Democrats did was not treason.
Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2019-06-04 09:21||   2019-06-04 09:21|| Front Page Top

#9 As I recall, P2K posted a sedition definition not long ago that says it all.
Posted by NoMoreBS 2019-06-04 11:47||   2019-06-04 11:47|| Front Page Top

#10 It certainly is sedition.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-06-04 11:51||   2019-06-04 11:51|| Front Page Top

#11 and malfeasance
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-06-04 11:51||   2019-06-04 11:51|| Front Page Top

#12 Although I hope Barr gets to the bottom of this mess that was created, I vacillate between optimism and pessimism. Daylight and honesty, at some point, would be helpful to Americans in deciding for whom they should vote and who should govern. So far, we have seen little that has been done to drain the swamp and clean up the left-over corruption.

Presently, there is too much disinformation, fake news and B.S. from swamp denizens.
Posted by JohnQC 2019-06-04 15:54||   2019-06-04 15:54|| Front Page Top

#13 Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic

And Peter's Buttgag is Maltese too.

Maybe the Knights of Malta are the ones in charge
Posted by charger 2019-06-04 17:01||   2019-06-04 17:01|| Front Page Top

#14 Maybe the Knights of Malta are the ones in charge

I'd prefer the Knights of Pythias. More drinking.
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-06-04 17:20||   2019-06-04 17:20|| Front Page Top

#15 Trump should order Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF CONGRESS, yes even republicans. Just so it's fair. It's the only way to be sure.
Posted by Creting Uneang3721 2019-06-04 21:14||   2019-06-04 21:14|| Front Page Top

#16 Always thought there was a niche for a krewe of total milquetoasts...

"Before we vamoose, let us promise:
Dum vivimus, vatos, vivamus.
Go loco! Hot mamas
And vocative commas
Await, Caballeros de Domus!"
Posted by Uloling Grinesing3767 2019-06-04 23:48||   2019-06-04 23:48|| Front Page Top

13:02 NoMoreBS
13:01 mossomo
13:00 mossomo
12:54 mossomo
12:52 mossomo
12:50 mossomo
12:42 SteveS
12:31 Procopius2k
12:29 Grom the Reflective
12:24 swksvolFF
12:23 mossomo
12:21 mossomo
12:20 Beldar+Uneter3543
12:18 Skidmark
12:16 Grom the Reflective
12:14 Silentbrick
12:09 Procopius2k
12:04 Beldar+Uneter3543
11:59 Beldar+Uneter3543
11:59 Procopius2k
11:57 Procopius2k
11:55 Super Hose
11:55 Skidmark
11:54 Beldar+Uneter3543









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com