Intel Community Takes Down First Casualty in Their Soft Coup Against Trump Administration

The resignation of Michael Flynn has given those on the left much of what they have longer for — an issue to lay hold of and to milk for all it is worth. If they were to direct their attention to the entirety of the incident as opposed to using it solely as a focus point for criticism of the president, they could actually get something productive done. Don’t expect that.

This is a classic “means versus ends” issue. There are those cheering for the take-down of General Flynn, who should be anything but happy about the way it was orchestrated.

Damon Linker of The Week is neither a Donald Trump nor a Michael Flynn supporter. He is happy to see Flynn out of office, and would be happier to see Mr. Trump’s initiatives defeated. But he is deeply disturbed by how this came about, and in that point we are in agreement. The following excerpt from Linker’s piece encapsulates the problem.

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.

The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America’s democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn’s ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn’t the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

Indeed it is not. When spy agencies can control or blackmail the president and his administration, you are no longer a democracy, you are a police-state.

Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. “Finally,” they say, “someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!” It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously.

President Trump makes an excellent point in one of his signature tweets.

The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2017

If individuals or groups want to criticize the president or any member of his staff, that is their right. But to use illegal leaks of classified data by intelligence operatives is no way to do to it. Winking at such behavior might be fun when it is used to attack your political enemies, but that can work both ways once such criminal behavior is legitimized. To put it bluntly, a corrupt deep state that can take down the administration of one party can take down the administration of another. In fact, it should be expected that it will do so.

No less than Democratic Senator Charles Schumer warned that President Trump was “being really dumb” for taking on the deep state as he has:

Senator Chuck Schumer, of all people, laid out on January 2 what was going to happen to the Trump administration if it dared take on the deep state – the permanent bureaucracy that has contempt for the will of the voters and feels entitled to run the government for its own benefit:

New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

—

Make no mistake: we have just witnessed an operation by members of the CIA to take out a high official of our own government.  An agency widely believed to have brought down democratically elected governments overseas is now practicing the same dark arts in domestic American politics.  Almost certainly, its new head, Mike Pompeo, was not consulted.

David P. Goldman (aka Spengler), writing on PJ Media, explains the level of hatred the CIA has for Flynn for daring to take on its spectacular failures:

… the CIA has gone out of its way to sandbag Flynn at the National Security Council. As Politico reports: “On Friday, one of Flynn’s closest deputies on the NSC, senior director for Africa Robin Townley, was informed that the Central Intelligence Agency had rejected his request for an elite security clearance required for service on the NSC, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.” Townley held precisely the same security clearance at the Department of Defense for seventeen years, yet he was blackballed without explanation. At DoD, Townley had a stellar reputation as a Middle East and Africa expert, and the denial of his clearance is hard to explain except as bureaucratic backstabbing.

… Gen. Flynn is the hardest of hardliners with respect to Russia within the Trump camp. In his 2016 book Field of Fight (co-authored with PJ Media’s Michael Ledeen), Flynn warned of “an international alliance of evil movements and countries that is working to destroy us[.] … The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.” The unsubstantiated allegation that he presides over a “leaky” National Security Council tilting towards Russia makes no sense. The only leaks of which we know are politically motivated reports coming from the intelligence community designed to disrupt the normal workings of a democratic government – something that raises grave constitutional issues.

Flynn is the one senior U.S. intelligence officer with the guts to blow the whistle on a series of catastrophic intelligence and operational failures. The available facts point to the conclusion that elements of the humiliated (and perhaps soon-to-be-unemployed) intelligence community is trying to exact vengeance against a principled and patriotic officer[.] … The present affair stinks like a dumpster full of dead rats.

 

Wikileaks has not been silent on this issue either:

Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigns after destabilization campaign by US spies, Democrats, press https://t.co/vKlX1Tqek1

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 14, 2017

This is serious. This is a successful coup. Well, it’s successful in that it accomplished its intended purpose. It was not successful in that it is being exposed for what it was. These are spies — intelligence operatives — so they naturally wish to function under the radar of scrutiny.

Regardless of your opinion of President Trump or General Flynn, the idea that buried within the intelligence community are those who can and will used classified information and their positions to stage take-downs of national leadership members they oppose should raise the hair on the back of your necks. When this happens, you cease to be a democracy. And everyone loses.

Flynn resignation letter for reference:

February 13, 2017

In the course of my duties as the Incoming National Security Advisor, I held numerous phone calls with foreign counterparts, ministers, and ambassadors. These calls were to facilitate a smooth transition and begin to build the necessary relationships between the President, his advisors and foreign leaders. Such calls are standard practice in any transition of this magnitude.

Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the president and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.

Throughout my over thirty three years of honorable military service, and my tenure as the National Security Advisor, I have always performed my duties with the utmost of integrity and honesty to those I have served, to include the President of the United States.

I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way.

I am also extremely honored to have served President Trump, who in just three weeks, has reprinted American foreign policy in fundamental ways to restore America’s leadership position in the world.

As I step away once again from serving my nation in this current capacity, I wish to thank President Trump for his personal loyalty, the friendship of those who I worked with throughout the hard fought campaign, the challenging period of transition, and during the early days of his presidency.

I know with the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the superb team they are assembling, this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in U.S history, and I firmly believe the american people will be well served as they all work together to help Make America Great Again.

Michael T. Flynn, LTG (Ret)
Assistant to the President/ National Security Advisor

Source: The Week

Source: American Thinker