02/14/17

The Catholic Conspiracy

By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival

Catholic activist Elizabeth Yore talks to ASI President Cliff Kincaid about a letter to President Trump seeking an investigation of the Obama Administration, the Vatican, and George Soros-funded “progressive” forces. But can Trump survive? What role are the intelligence agencies playing in the assault on theTrump Administration. “This is a battle for the soul of the United States of America,” Yore says.

02/14/17

Cruz Nails It… Revoke Citizenship of Americans Who Join ISIS

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

I simply adore Ted Cruz. He’s absolutely right here. If an American citizen tries to join ISIS or any other terrorist group, they should have their citizenship stripped. That means for those who go overseas to wage Jihad, the door will no longer be open to them to return here. And before the left starts screeching over this, Hillary Clinton supported very similar legislation. Cruz supports President Trump’s embattled plan to temporarily ban refugees from seven Middle Eastern countries. So do I. He just thinks it only addresses half the problem and he has a point. We don’t want trained, battle hardened Jihadists returning to the US after going on a killing spree.

When previous versions of this bill were submitted, some civil libertarians threw a fit. They claim it would give the federal government expanded powers to revoke citizenship without due process. That’s rich considering they never decried Obama’s extension of federal powers. Under Cruz’s bill, anyone who lost their citizenship over alleged terrorist ties would have 60 days to request a due process hearing to challenge the decision. “The awesome and horrible power of being able to take away the citizenship of an American citizen would be turned over to an unnamed bureaucrat,” claimed Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office. It is not unconstitutional and I contend it would indeed stand if it went to the Supreme Court.

From the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is renewing a push for Congress to pass legislation that would revoke the citizenship of any American who tries to join the Islamic State or other terrorist groups.

Cruz thinks that banning people from terrorist-stricken countries from entering the U.S. only deals with half of the problem, and that the federal government also needs to worry about U.S. citizens who may try the same thing.

“If an American citizen travels abroad and joins a terrorist group waging jihad on America, attempting to murder innocent Americans, this legislation would strip that individual of their U.S. citizenship, so that we would not have terrorists returning to America using U.S. passports,” Cruz told the Washington Examiner.

Hundreds of Americans have tried to join the Islamic State in recent years, according to Cruz. He said another 124 U.S. citizens or green card holders have traveled overseas to join other jihadist groups in the years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “This should be an idea that even Senate Democrats can support given that Hillary Clinton, when she was in the Senate, supported very similar legislation,” he said.

Ted Cruz steadfastly stands by his bill. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa has introduced it for consideration. Cruz says it uses the same process to revoke citizenship from terrorists that the government has used since 1926 to revoke citizenship from Americans who join foreign armies at war with the United States. That’s exactly right. “This legislation is a common sense step to recognize that people can [wage] war against America in more ways than one,” he said. “You don’t need to be a member of a nation-state military to be a terrorist at war with America.”

There is a good chance that the bill will pass in Congress considering the Trump administration’s agreement with its pretext. Additionally, a former Cruz staffer, Victoria Coates, now works for the White House National Security Council. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota in the House joins Senator Cruz in support for the bill. It is entitled the Expatriate Terrorists Act. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Republicans Bachmann and Ted Poe of Texas also introduced bills that call for the United States to revoke the passports of Americans involved with groups like ISIS.

Bachmann puts it perfectly: “Those who have joined a foreign terrorist organization have taken up arms against the United States and our very way of life. By turning against their country, their passports should be revoked and if they’re naturalized citizens, they should lose their citizenship.”

02/14/17

Kellyanne Conway Reveals The Reason That Michael Flynn Finally Had To Go [VIDEO]

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

I am sure you have heard that Michael Flynn resigned as National Security Adviser last night amidst allegations that he spoke of sanctions with the Russians before Trump took office. I have never cared for Michael Flynn. I gave him a clean slate when he came in. But after hearing what transpired, resigning was the right thing to do. I don’t know whether he resigned of his own volition or at the behest of President Trump, but he had to go. He spoke to the Russian ambassador five separate times. You can bet the intelligence agencies have that on tape. When Mike Pence asked him if he had discussed sanctions, he lied to him and Pence went forth and looked like a fool over it. The word out there is Pence was furious. Kellyanne Conway came right out and said that lying to Pence was the deciding factor here.

Michael Flynn was originally fired by Obama after serving a couple of months under him. He only lasted a couple of weeks with Trump and he probably would have been gone sooner, but Trump remained loyal to him. As recently as 2014, Flynn had gone to Russia before Trump came into the picture. The Department of Justice warned the White House that Flynn was susceptible to blackmail from the Russians. Just before Trump came into office, Obama levied sanctions on Russia. Normally, the Russians would have struck back, but did not, saying they would wait for the Trump presidency. That was after calls from Flynn, who most likely assured them that sanctions would be lifted. This whole mess is complicated. You have nine leakers involved that went to the media. These are probably a mix of White House insiders (leftovers from the Obama administration) and intelligence people.

From NBC’s Today Show:

“In the end, it was misleading the vice president that made the situation unsustainable,” Conway told TODAY’s Matt Lauer.

The incomplete information or the inability to completely recall what did or did not happen as reflected in his debriefing of particular phone calls — that really is what happened here,” she said.

Flynn’s departure comes less than a month into the job and follows revelations about information he shared with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak over American sanctions against Russia in late December, weeks before Trump took office.

“He knew he had become a lightening rod and he made that decision,” Conway said.

On TODAY, Conway was asked repeatedly why, despite reports that the Justice Department told the White House last month that Flynn had misled them and even put himself at risk for blackmail, he continued to retain the president’s full trust.

Conway said Flynn continued to be a part of daily presidential briefings as recently as Monday but “as time wore on, obviously, the situation had become unsustainable.”

She said that the president accepted Flynn’s resignation and “wishes him well, and we’re moving on,” noting three “very strong candidates” the administration is considering to replace him.

Arguably, Flynn was the worst pick of those chosen for Trump’s cabinet. I am not sad to see him go as I feel he was compromised by the Russians. I’m also not happy about it as it hurts the Trump administration deeply and exposes a very dangerous rift between Trump and the intelligence agencies. The left will also use this to accuse Trump of further connections with Russia. Trump needs to aggressively clean house in the White House and intel agencies and get rid of everyone who was ever even remotely connected to Obama. If I were him, I’d have Pompeo in my office this morning, reaming him a new one over this.

There appears to be chaos in the People’s House right now and that just can’t be allowed. The Democrats won’t care about the truth, just nailing Trump every way they can. They also don’t care that it hurts the country and puts us at risk. The media is celebrating this today and that is just despicable. Thankfully, Trump has three solid contenders to replace Flynn. Kellogg would be my choice at this point. It doesn’t matter how I feel about Flynn personally… this is a massively bad thing to happen so shortly after Trump takes office. Time to get serious and perhaps try some of that extreme vetting within our own leadership.

02/14/17

FINANCIAL STOCKS DOMINATED YESTERDAY

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Financial stocks led the markets higher as the reflation trade continues to dominate activity. The averages are now at the highest valuation since 2004 according to Bloomberg, partially the result of economic optimism via the Trump victory. I think it is noteworthy that to date there are no policies implemented much less proposed, only statements of decreased regulation and taxes.

Is the “Mother” of “buy on rumor and sell on fact” trade on hand? What happens if the Trump proposals become stalled, lacking any significant legation, the result of the hyper partisanship in Washington?

Bloomberg writes volume is anemic, thus suggesting this is a convictionless advance, thus suggesting it can be prone to a sharp pull back.

All must remember nothing is ever linear and there will be ebbing and flowing.

Today, FRB Chair Yellen testifies on Capitol Hill. Will her remarks alter the monetary time table? As noted above, the recent advance has been led by the financials predicated upon a strengthening economy and higher interest rates.

How will her remarks be interpreted?

Last night the foreign markets were mixed. London was up 0.07%, Paris up 0.09% and Frankfurt up 0.01%. China was up 0.03%, Japan down 1.13% and Hang Sang down 0.03%.

The Dow should open flat ahead of Yellen’s testimony; a testimony which is expected to be oblique, defined as no one knows the possible implications and ramifications of a Trump presidency which is challenging the established world order of globalism. The 10-year is off 2/32 to yield 2.45%.

02/14/17

Why the CIA Wants to Destroy Flynn

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The media have figured out they can’t bring down or impeach President Trump. So they are targeting his Cabinet officials and top advisers one by one. In the case of Michael T. Flynn, the media think they have hit pay dirt. The Washington Post has led the charge, using top-secret surveillance intercepts of communications between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. It’s more evidence that the CIA, and perhaps the National Security Agency (NSA), are out to destroy Trump’s national security adviser.

“The knives are out for Flynn,” said one administration official quoted in the paper. The knives are computer keyboards in the hands of scribblers for a paper whose owner, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has a business relationship with the CIA. The Post is wielding the knives provided by anonymous intelligence officials.

Nobody knows this better than the Post’s Watergate reporter, Bob Woodward, who said on Fox News that the CIA was using unverified “garbage” allegations in a campaign to destroy Trump himself. Since Trump has survived, the campaign has taken a new form against Flynn, a close adviser to Trump on foreign policy who had campaigned with him and by his side.

At the heart of the story are secret surveillance intercepts of conversations whose disclosure is itself a violation of the law. In fact, these illegal disclosures to the press are far more serious than anything Flynn is accused of doing. But don’t think the media are going to investigate themselves for these illegalities. If they bring down Flynn, they will have wounded Trump. The sharks will smell blood in the water.

Remember that the FBI is said to have reviewed the intercepts and determined there was nothing illicit in what was discussed. That finding hasn’t stopped the CIA and the Post from continuing a campaign to sink Flynn. The so-called sensational news angle is that Flynn forgot what he told the Russian Ambassador and Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

The real explanation for the assault, as we have explained in several columns, is that Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and a retired Lieutenant General, doesn’t trust the CIA. And the CIA clearly doesn’t trust him.

Meanwhile, in a newsworthy development that went mostly unreported here in the United States, Trump’s new director of the CIA, former Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), traveled to Saudi Arabia to give a top Saudi official a CIA award for “counter-terrorism” named after a discredited former CIA director. The Saudi official was given the “George Tenet Medal” in recognition of his “excellent intelligence performance, in the domain of counter-terrorism and his unbound contribution to realize world security and peace.” Tenet is known for his embarrassing and false “slam dunk” comments about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

Pompeo’s tribute to the Saudi official, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, is astounding considering the evidence of the Saudi role in facilitating jihadist terrorism in Syria, a debacle that has helped to produce 500,000 dead and refugees streaming into Europe and the United States. Bin Nayef serves as Minister of Interior.

Rather than focus on Flynn, the media should be asking what Pompeo is doing paying tribute to a Saudi official whose regime is neck-deep in a conflict that has produced a major humanitarian catastrophe. And why is the CIA giving an award named after a director who failed in the intelligence mission of the agency he led?

Under these circumstances, if President Trump fires or forces the resignation of Flynn, it will be a huge victory for the CIA’s failed policies in the Middle East. These are policies Trump promised to reverse.

The assault on Flynn began on January 12, when Post columnist David Ignatius reported, “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?”

With subsequent stories and various Trump administration comments, a “scandal” has been created, with Flynn’s fate hanging in the balance.

Despite the FBI clearing Flynn, the issue is now whether Flynn talked about sanctions and to whom. He apparently first denied this, and later acknowledged that the subject may have come up. With multiple Obama-created foreign policy problems on his plate, it may be the case that he gave some misleading information to Vice President Mike Pence.

The real issue, as Flynn has talked about publicly since he left the DIA in 2014, is the evidence of a U.S. role under Barack Obama and his CIA director John Brennan in facilitating an increase of radical Islam in the Middle East. He has cited the evidence contained in a DIA document, declassified and publicly released by Judicial Watch.

While Flynn has been critical of the agency for carrying out the Obama/Brennan policy of supporting Islamists in the Middle East, he writes in his book, The Field of Fight, about how the Russian intelligence services have also been involved in supporting radical Islam. This proxy war has damaged mostly Europe and the United States, and lies behind President Trump’s desire to curb immigration from Middle Eastern countries racked by Islamist violence.

Rather than clean house at the agency, Pompeo reportedly jumped on the bandwagon against Flynn, with the CIA or some other anonymous intelligence community insider leaking information that the agency had denied a security clearance for one of Flynn’s associates on the National Security Council. “One of the sources said the rejection was approved by Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s CIA director, and that it infuriated Flynn and his allies,” Politico reported.

This is truly amazing since Obama’s CIA director himself should never have received a security clearance, and his policies were incompetent, if not anti-American. Brennan was a close friend and confidant to George Tenet and had served as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, where he reportedly converted to Islam. As CIA director, Brennan told a congressional forum that even voting communist, as he once did, was not a bar to employment at the agency. Brennan admitted voting communist when attending Catholic Fordham University in 1976. He was also involved  in the cover-up of the Benghazi massacre of four Americans.

In his new book, iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, Bill Gertz explains how the CIA has become “politicized,” dominated by a “liberal culture,” and resistant to probes of communist moles within.

Having had a pro-communist with Muslim sympathies once reach the top position of CIA director, it’s no wonder that the agency wants to get rid of Flynn. The CIA has a lot of baggage that needs to be exposed and swept away. The real mystery is why Pompeo decided to continue with the business-as-usual mentality and has not followed through on the President’s pledge to “drain the swamp.”


Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.