[American Greatness] he Justice Department’s inspector general this month reprimanded the FBI for the manner in which it recruits and supervises its "confidential human sources." To the layman, this seems about technicalities. In fact, it shows that one of the CIA’s deadliest dysfunctions now infects the FBI as well.
This disease consists of choosing and rejecting sources for the purpose of indulging the agencies’ and their leaders’ private agendas rather than to further intelligence work on the public’s behalf.
Necessarily, the language of the inspector general’s November 19 report is vague: "Ineffective management and oversight of confidential sources." This means the FBI has failed to use "adequate controls" in its validation of human sources, which has resulted in "jeopardizing FBI operations, and placing FBI agents, sources, subjects of investigation, and the public in harm’s way."
The inspector general’s concern with the FBI’s source management stems from the investigation into the FBI’s involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign, including by taking seriously the infamous Steele dossier that it knew was a fabrication as well as, likely, some Russian communication intercepts that also should have been rejected on strictly professional grounds. In short, the FBI departed from its tradition of professionalism and honesty in pursuit of domestic political influence.
Choosing and recruiting sources, validating and managing them, is the very heart of intelligence. Doing it badly, taking sources that come easy‐especially dispensing with due skepticism about the ones that contribute to one’s own agendas‐is professional corruption. But doing it right is hard. To the extent that intelligence agencies find it difficult to fulfill expectations, they are tempted to substitute such corruption for the competence they lack. The pursuit of agency interests or even personal agendas takes over.
CIA DISEASE
Soon after the Central Intelligence Agency’s founding in 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the New York Times’ legendary military correspondent, had already noticed that the agency was using perfunctorily vetted-sources, or the officers’ own opinions, to fill the gap between the few modest secrets of which it could be sure, and the many big questions on which it was pronouncing itself.
CIA case officers, ivy leaguers whose "cover" was a thin pretense, were never able to recruit Soviet officials and tore at each other over whether those who offered themselves were for real. They solved the problem by subordinating counterintelligence (i.e., quality control) to what they felt was the need to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
During my years on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff, CIA officials’ preference for their personal and corporate interests over professional standards continued to get worse. It turned out that every last one of the Cubans they thought were our agents were actually working for Cuban intelligence. In East Germany, the United States had not a single "good" agent. Not only had CIA never recruited even one high-level Soviet agent, but for a decade, Aldrich Ames, CIA’s own chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Union/Russia, the man who validated the Russians who offered their services and oversaw our operations in that country, worked for the KGB.
[Federalist] For twenty-somethings leaving a small town for the big city, the feeling of liberation and possibility can be exhilarating. Mom and dad, and their rules, are finally in the rearview mirror. But what’s up ahead is often worse‐the welcoming arms of an even stricter authority known as leftist city government.
Many millennials are discovering this the hard way and making a U-turn. New Census Bureau data shows millennials are increasingly trading in urban life for the suburbs and even switching states entirely.
My home city of Philadelphia is a prime example. Here, 60,000 residents leave per year, and half of them are 18 to 34 years old. The reason? Urban centers like Philadelphia are bent on destroying the very conveniences that drew millennials to the city in the first place.
Here, the combined effect of sky-high taxes and outdated regulations add up to an all-out war on millennials. Or at least a war on the things they love the most. Brunch, for example.
In Pennsylvania, where I live, the number of available liquor licenses is restricted by our state liquor monopoly. These restrictions and the fact that licenses are sold at auction (seriously!) make selling booze way too expensive for business owners. It can cost more than $100,000 to simply obtain the license to sell a mimosa.
The restaurateurs who either can’t get a license or can’t afford one are forced to offer the would-be boozy brunchers a BYOB policy. Okay, Boomer. You’re trying to sell this as a hip "Philly Phenomenon"? We’re not falling for it.
The war on brunch doesn’t end there. The state has free rein to mark up the price of alcohol, which it does constantly: average markups are 65 percent. Of course, the war on brunch is just one example of government overreach that has millennials fleeing cities.
#1
Are they learning that sky high taxes are bad? If they learn something their pain is well worth it to the rest of us. If they just bring those idiot voting policies back then it's criminal stupidity.
#2
In Pennsylvania, where I live, the number of available liquor licenses is restricted by our state liquor monopoly. These restrictions and the fact that licenses are sold at auction (seriously!) make selling booze way too expensive for business owners. It can cost more than $100,000 to simply obtain the license to sell a mimosa.
...but, but I was told ending Prohibition would end the associated graft and corruption! (It's a lie Herb)
[Townhall] The calls to remove Donald Trump from office began before Donald Trump assumed office. They’ve wanted him gone from pre-day one and remain determined to run him off Pennsylvania Avenue by hook, crook, or any other means necessary.
If not for firing James Comey, then go to Michael Flynn. If that peters out there’s Stormy and Avenatti. No traction? Russian collusion. Didn’t get him? Ukraine’s up next. The effort to oust Trump has been nonstop for three years and shows no signs of slowing.
Why? Why is the inside-the-beltway permanent political class so determined to send Trump packing? Because he’s not a member of "The Club."
Yes Trump is ruff, gruff, combative, and bombastic, but there’s lots of Club members who are all of those things, yet they’ve been around Washington for decades. Truth is that The Club has been effectively insulating itself from the American people, enriching itself and its family members by burying self-pay schemes in the largess of government, and Trump is a threat. There are dark corners inside The Club’s clubhouse, lots of them, and Trump is wandering around with a flashlight.
...Club members have at their direct disposal hundreds of billions of dollars and indirectly, multiple times more. There’s a reason they’re more concerned about Trump’s inquiry into Joe Biden’s dealings than they are with Biden’s dealings. Washington Club members have been money laundering taxpayer dollars guised up as "foreign aid," "military aid," and "humanitarian aid" back to themselves through family, friends, foreign nations and corporations for decades. Ukraine is not unique.
...Since forever, The Club has been cutting deals and running scams for themselves and their families through which they end up filthy rich, incredibly powerful, travel the world at no personal expense, and eat quail on crackers‐all not only behind their constituents’ backs, but with those constituents’ dollars.
In Trump there’s finally someone at the helm who is not a part of the cabal, not a part of The Club, who has his own money, whose children don't need shady, foreign board of directors’ side deals. And, he's a threat to blow the whole thing up. He's shining lights into corners that they prefer remain dark. They must get rid of him; they can't allow this outsider and his flashlight to run roughshod inside the clubhouse. Dark corners must remain dark, no candles allowed. So for three straight years, they’ve looked for something, anything to get his wick snuffed out.
#4
The Founders were not cynical enough to foresee such conspiracies. But they did give us the tool to deal with them. Second Amendment.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/29/2019 3:42 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The Founders were cynical enough. It's just that they lived in a pre-industrial agrarian environment in which wealth was measure by land not industrial output. It was also a group that had no desires to be the world's policeman. You see foreigners tripping over themselves trying to bribe the Swiss?
[SultanKnish] "It is important for me to emphasize that the only ones who determine who the prime minister will be are Israeli voters. That is the essence of democracy," Prime Minister Netanyahu recently said.
That is what’s at stake here.
Fake news and fake cases have been used by the media and by political operatives to mask a real coup.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/29/2019 15:04 Comments ||
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#4
yeah < I wonder where their playbook come from?
Posted by: chris ||
11/29/2019 17:56 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The weak link in this chain is the media. Franklin, Jefferson et al knew that the only way to prevent a modern-era democracy from devolving into tyranny was through an independent and vigorous press.
What we have now instead is an auxiliary wing, a shock troop corps, of the political process.
All the social media nonsense is nothing more than a higher-velocity version of the immemorial arts of slander, innuendo, half-truths, tall tales and outright lies.
We need to amend and update the libel laws for this new environment.
[Babylon Bee] VATICAN CITY‐After picking up a brand-new Pope hat at a Vatican City Lids retail shop, Pope Francis reportedly elected to leave the New Era 59FIFTY factory sticker on the rim of the cap, in order to garner street cred with local youths.
Rather than peeling off the sticker from his new, brand-name papal hat, Pope Francis made the fashionable decision to "leave that bad boy on there," according to sources.
"I’m making Catholicism hip and relatable again," Francis said in a homily while sporting the shiny factory decal. "The kids will know I’m ’dope with the times’ when they espy my New Era sticker and know that I’m the real deal, yo."
At publishing time, Pope Francis had invested in an expensive set of pre-torn, factory faded papal robes.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Leb is facing a combined political and economic crisis that has led to widespread bank closures, and semi-official capital controls limiting the amount of cash that individuals and businesses can access.
A sharp rise in demand for cash and a perilous drop in the value of the lira on the black market have also added to the country’s pressures.
But the country’s economic fallout has been a long time in the making. Below we take an in-depth look at the origins of the crisis:
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
Gee, Lebanon used to be a ritzy tourist destination. Then, something changed...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/29/2019 1:44 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Well, when I was growing up, Lebanese had this endless Civil War - with all the best atrocities.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[American Greatness] he Justice Department’s inspector general this month reprimanded the FBI for the manner in which it recruits and supervises its "confidential human sources." To the layman, this seems about technicalities. In fact, it shows that one of the CIA’s deadliest dysfunctions now infects the FBI as well.
It turned out that every last one of the Cubans they thought were our agents were actually working for Cuban intelligence.
[Federalist] For twenty-somethings leaving a small town for the big city, the feeling of liberation and possibility can be exhilarating. Mom and dad, and their rules, are finally in the rearview mirror. But what’s up ahead is often worse‐the welcoming arms of an even stricter authority known as leftist city government.
[Babylon Bee] VATICAN CITY‐After picking up a brand-new Pope hat at a Vatican City Lids retail shop, Pope Francis reportedly elected to leave the New Era 59FIFTY factory sticker on the rim of the cap, in order to garner street cred with local youths.
