[Free Beacon] The nomination of U.S. intelligence community's most senior counterintelligence official, under fire for overlooking major counterspy failures in the Obama administration, is on hold in the Senate.Obama administration candidate? Is there a need to read further ?
FBI Agent Bill Evanina, an Obama administration holdover and head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a DNI unit, has been awaiting Senate confirmation for two years.
Earlier this month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, placed a hold on Evanina's nomination for the second time to prevent him from being the first Senate-confirmed director of the counterintelligence center.
The hold is based on a dispute with the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Justice Department. It is the second time in two years the nomination has been blocked by Grassley who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The last hold on the nominee took place in June 2018.
"I continue to experience difficulties obtaining relevant documents and briefings from the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to 2016 election controversies," Grassley said in placing the hold March 5.
Can't get a straight answer from DOJ? Drop the SOB, go on to the next candidate.
The block on the nomination is not based on questioning Evanina's credentials, Grassley noted.
EVANINA ON AGENT LOSSES
However, Evanina recently raised concerns for stating that the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of scores of U.S. intelligence informants in China and Iran were a minor setback for American intelligence agencies.
"Counterintelligence efforts, like any intelligence discipline, suffer occasional setbacks, and we learn from these setbacks," Evanina told the Wall Street Journal.
Acceptable losses, cost of doing business... you know the deal.
The losses are among the most damaging human spying failures that cost lives and will make it more difficult for intelligence officers to recruit similar assets in the future.
The U.S. government has been keeping details about the disasters secret. Brief mention has been made in two court cases.
Evanina was responding to an earlier opinion article in the Journal that was critical of the American counterintelligence system for causing the loss of recruited agents that were linked to former Air Force counterintelligence agent Monica Witt, who defected to Iran in 2013.
Witt was indicted Feb. 8‐more than five years after fleeing to Iran‐and charged with compromising a program used to communicate secretly with recruited agents in Iran and the Middle East.
In May 2011, Iran's Intelligence Ministry announced the arrest of 42 people allegedly for spying for the CIA. U.S. officials believe the rolling up of the CIA network in Iran and other locations is related to Witt's treachery.