The CIA Director’s Secret Meeting With Kim Jong-Un: What You Need to Know

(ANTIMEDIA) — Mike Pompeo, current CIA director and U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, reportedly met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over the Easter weekend, further indicating that the two countries are becoming increasingly serious about meeting later this year. The Washington Post broke the story about what was supposedly a top-secret meeting late Tuesday night. The Post noted […]

Pompeo Openly Brags About US Killing Hundreds of Russians in Syria

(ANTIMEDIA) — U.S. President Trump’s nominee to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state confirmed on Thursday that “a couple hundred Russians were killed by U.S. forces in Syria not too long ago,” TIME reports. Mike Pompeo, currently still serving as director of the CIA, offered this confirmation in response to questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about […]

The World According to John Bolton… in His Own Words

(MEE) — John Bolton is set to replace HR McMaster as Donald Trump’s national security advisor in a Lazarus-like resurrection for a man regarded as among the most hawkish of American politicians. The US president announced the move on Thursday afternoon. Bolton will become Trump’s third national security advisor in less than 15 months. Last year, Michael […]

Was Tillerson Sacked to Abandon the Iran Nuclear Deal?

[image: AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB]

Tillerson supported Washington remaining on board with the JCPOA nuclear deal – along with other P5+1 countries Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Trump wants it unacceptably changed or abandoned. On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted:

“Mr Trump has made habit of being unpredictable and thus unreliable for anybody to engage with. Nobody will be interested in reaching any agreement with the White House if US signature only good for 4-8 yrs.”

Replacing Tillerson with militantly anti-Iran hardliner Pompeo smoothes things for Trump to pursue greater hostility toward the Islamic Republic with a key administration official on board with his reckless agenda.

Like the president, secretary of state designee Pompeo opposes the nuclear deal. Tillerson’s sacking likely signals Trump’s intention to abandon the JCPOA ahead.

According to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, “Americans are determined to leave the JCPOA, and changes at the country’s State Department were made in line with this goal, or at least it was one of the reasons,” adding:

“Europeans are walking on the razor’s edge because if they incline towards Trump, they will lose Iran.”

Days earlier, IAEA head Yukiya Amano said “I can state that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments…If the JCPOA were to fail, it would be a great loss for nuclear verification and for multilateralism.”

Things are heading in this direction, especially with Pompeo succeeding Tillerson at State.

Things pursued by Washington should terrify everyone. Trump escalated rogue policies his predecessors began – notably waging political, economic and hot wars against multiple countries.

Will Iran be his next target for regime change, beginning by abandoning the JCPOA nuclear deal? What took years of negotiations to conclude, he could scrap with a signature taking moments.

Replacing Tillerson with Pompeo signals likely escalated wars of aggression, stepped up hostility toward Russia and China, perhaps scuttling a Trump/Kim Jong-un summit or structuring it to fail, along with abandoning the Iran nuclear deal and targeting the country for regime change.

Trump won’t re-certify the JCPOA in May unless Britain, France and Germany agree to major changes Iran won’t accept.

According to an unnamed White House official, “(i)f the Europeans make it clear that what we are asking for is going too far, then we’ll know, but as soon as they say that, Europe is signing the deal’s death warrant,” adding:

“Tillerson wasn’t faithful to the intent of the president. (He) didn’t agree with breaking the Iran deal.”

“Every time the president’s been persuaded to sign these waivers he’s done so begrudgingly. (I)n January he said, ‘this is absolutely the last time.’ Either we fix it or he won’t sign another waiver. ‘I’m not going to sign it unless Iran agrees.’ ”

Changes he demands Tehran finds unacceptable, including:

• unlimited inspections of Iranian sites, including military ones no countries would tolerate;

• the international community on board, ensuring Iran never develops nuclear weapons it abhors, doesn’t want, and calls for eliminating;

• removing the JCPOA’s sunset clause, effective after 10 years;

• restricting Iranian development and testing of ballistic missiles not part of the JCPOA; and

• reimposing nuclear-related sanctions if Tehran fails to fully comply with the above demands.

Clearly they’re unacceptable. Six countries and Iran spent years negotiating the JCPOA.

Tehran won’t tolerate Trump unilaterally demanding changes during the life of the agreement.

As things now stand, Washington will likely walk away, destroying the deal by illegally reimposing nuclear related sanctions.

Along with other US Middle East policies, abandoning the JCPOA risks greater regional turbulence and instability instead of responsibly stepping back from the brink.

Lunatics infesting Washington threaten everyone. Paul Craig Roberts asked “Will Humanity Survive Crazed Washington?”

We’re all threatened with possible extinction by Washington’s megalomaniacal rage for unchallenged hegemony.

I agree with Roberts, saying “(y)ou can expect the worst” ahead.

Nothing gives me cause for optimism!

The post Was Tillerson Sacked to Abandon the Iran Nuclear Deal? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel Are Symptoms of a Much Deeper Problem

(RPI Op-ed) — President Trump’s recent cabinet shake-up looks to be a real boost to hard-line militarism and neo-conservatism. If his nominees to head the State Department and CIA are confirmed, we may well have moved closer to war. Before being chosen by Trump to head up the CIA, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo was one of […]

With the CIA’s Mike Pompeo Now in Charge of US Foreign Policy, Anything Is Possible

(MEMO Op-ed) — The appointment of Mike Pompeo as the new US Secretary of State by Donald Trump will not signal a change in Washington’s Middle East policy. It doesn’t mean that America will no longer endorse the alliance between the Saudi and Israeli governments. Nor does it, despite Donald Trump’s admiration, mean that America will switch […]

Rand Paul to Oppose Trump’s CIA and State Department Nominees

(TIM) — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced on Wednesday that he would oppose President Trump’s nominees to head the State Department and CIA, potentially impeding their path to Senate confirmation. “I will oppose both Pompeo’s nomination and Haspel’s nomination,” Paul said. Senator Paul Press Conference on Secretary of State and CIA […]

Rand Paul Blasts Trump for Appointing “War Loving” Neocons, Threatens to Filibuster Nominees

 “I’m perplexed by the nomination of people who love the Iraq War so much that they would advocate for a war with Iran next,” Rand Paul said.

The post Rand Paul Blasts Trump for Appointing “War Loving” Neocons, Threatens to Filibuster Nominees appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

NSA Whistleblower Says Trump Pushed Meeting With Pompeo

As we reported yesterday, President Donald Trump is receiving flack from hysterical liberals for reportedly advising CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with former senior NSA official Bill Binney, whom the media has labeled a conspiracy theorist for his belief that Russia wasn’t responsible for hacking the DNC - or at least, if it was, it was the work of a deep-cover agent - because the files, according to Binney, were manually loaded onto a thumb drive, meaning the theft was likely the work of a disgruntled insider.

Binney discussed the meeting during an appearance on NBC, where he confirmed that Trump was probably made aware of his theory by watching one of his appearances on Fox News.

"He"s trying to find some factual evidence," said Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the National Security Agency.

Binney, a widely respected NSA whistleblower, left the agency in 2000 and has made claims that the NSA is capturing and storing nearly every US communication.

Binney told NBC News that Pompeo informed him that the CIA director took the meeting at the urging of the president.

Mike Pompeo

In a statement, a CIA spokeswoman did not dispute that, but declined to comment.

“The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment," on Russian election interference, spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said.

She added, “The director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor."

The intelligence community released a multilateral report in January 2017 concluding that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 election, which was won by Trump in a historic upset. One of the tactics, the intelligence community alleged, was the hack of the DNC, which was a massive public relations embarrassment for Clinton and eventually led to the resignation of former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the intelligence community and claimed its conclusion is unfounded. And Pompeo, a former Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate who gives Trump his intelligence briefing nearly every day, is suspected of kowtowing to Trump in his tepid approach to the issue.

Last month, the CIA had to correct Pompeo"s erroneous statement that the intelligence assessment found that the Russian interference campaign did not alter the outcome of the election. No such conclusion was made.

NBC pointed out that it is extremely unusual for a CIA director to meet with someone like Binney, who for years has accused US intelligence agencies of subverting the constitution and violating the civil rights of Americans. However, Binney - while a controversial figure in the US - has been praised abroad as a whistle blower and truth teller.

However, the meeting to discuss the narrative that directly contravenes the findings of the US intelligence community was so productive that Pompeo is already arranging further meetings between NSA and FBI officials and Binney to discuss his analysis. Binney said two unnamed CIA analysts accompanied Pompeo during the meeting at CIA headquarters.

Binney reportedly also raised the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich as a suspicious, given its proximity to the release of the hacked documents. There has been speculation that Rich was the one who leaked the emails.

Binney said he did not discuss with Pompeo his longstanding allegations that U.S. intelligence agencies have been acting illegally. Binney said he voted for Trump, because he considered Democrat Hillary Clinton "a war monger.

Deep State Trump

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) Any remnants of the notion that Donald Trump is an enemy of the Deep State and ruling establishment were put to rest over the last two weeks as CIA Director Mike Pompeo echoed the Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric and proudly bragged about having the president’s support, passionately advocating the use of “aggressive” and “vicious” tactics.

On Thursday, Pompeo spoke at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies forum, sounding the alarm on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Though he distinguished between the county’s capacity to produce a single weapon versus an entire arsenal, he stressed the need to halt the country’s weapons’ ambitions altogether (like Trump and the media, he ignored the reality the North Korea has expressed its openness to negotiation).

Pompeo also stressed the need for Pakistan to aid in the fight against the Taliban, which has thrived in Afghanistan despite the U.S.’ military presence there for sixteen years and previous troop increases.

More telling, however, were Pompeo’s remarks at the University of Texas-Austin last week when he spoke bluntly about the aggressive power he believes the CIA should wield.

The CIA published the prepared remarks in full.

Opening with the topic of “espionage,” which Pompeo described as “the art and science of running assets and stealing secrets,” he stressed that this was the core of the agency’s activities and asserted it was all done in the name “of collecting foreign intelligence to keep America safe. Period. Full stop.”

After establishing the necessity of espionage (a practice the CIA has bungled in the past), he shared his particularly disturbing perspective on the CIA’s approach to ‘keeping America safe’:

“The second thing you must know is that the CIA, to be successful, must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless — you pick the word. We must every minute be focused on crushing our enemies and providing unfair advantage for our diplomats, our military and our president.”

Pompeo not only insisted that the CIA’s success depends on aggression and viciousness but he also openly advocated American exceptionalism to the extent that he was willing to create an unfair advantage, which implies breaking rules or subverting justice to get ahead. This statement came in a speech where he also claimed the CIA adheres to the constitution, plays by the rules, and serves a country rooted in “deeply moral” values.

Despite these platitudes, on Thursday, Pompeo expressed his intention to further radicalize the CIA:

CIA Director Mike Pompeo: "We"re going to become a much more vicious agency" @FDD pic.twitter.com/KZl6vBb98g

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) October 19, 2017

“We’re going to become a much more vicious agency,” he said.

It is not immediately clear how the CIA could possibly be more vicious than it has since its inception, toppling democratically elected governments; installing brutal dictators; imposing ‘vicious’ torture techniques against captives not charged with crimes; infiltrating the news media to manipulate the American public’s perception of reality; forcing mind-altering drugs on innocent people to learn how to control them; infiltrating domestic activist movements (including black rights and anti-war groups); importing Nazi scientists; and arming radicals in schemes that ultimately put the United States in more danger.

Pompeo appeared to  justify his opinion that the CIA must be more ruthless with his perception that the agency acts “with a sense of duty, purpose, and righteous resolve,” claiming last week “we’re a lot more effective because of it.”

While speaking in Texas, he also focused in on a longstanding CIA tradition — demonizing Iran.

In keeping with the CIA’s subversion of the Iranian government — its very first mission was toppling the country’s democratically elected leader and reinstalling an autocratic monarch — Pompeo attempted to demonstrate the agency’s moral righteousness by calling out the Middle Eastern country’s Revolutionary Guard. Claiming their purpose is to “perpetuate tyranny,” Pompeo claimed Iran is the largest state-sponsor of terrorism in the world.

In 2017, there is little debate over whether Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, is repressive (as Pompeo claims Iran is) and a source of radical, extremist ideology that contributes to the spread of terrorism. There is also evidence to suggest the Arab government funds ISIS. Though Iran’s oppressive regime undoubtedly supports some terror groups, these practices are eclipsed by the Saudis’. Further, in addition to supporting the Saudis’ radical, autocratic regime, the U.S. (the CIA in particular) is directly responsible for the Iranian government it claims supports terrorism; that government rose to power amid the 1979 revolution that rejected the CIA-installed Shah.

Nevertheless, Pompeo’s vilification of Iran served to justify his belief that “[W]hen espionage is done right—when it’s most successful—it’s inherently aggressive, relentless, and risky,” he also claimed.

He also enthusiastically praised Donald Trump, boasting that “whenever we’ve discussed the challenges the Agency is facing, he has given us what we need, whether it’s funding, authorities, or policy guidance.”

Despite some Trump supporters’ misguided beliefs he would be an “anti-war” president, he has continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of civilians, saber rattled against North Korea and Iran (to his ‘credit,’ he has long-criticized Iran), advocated regime change in Syria, and given free reign to the military to conduct its operations.

Though Trump expressed brief opposition to the agency when it circulated narratives about Russia’s role in the election, it is clear the president amounts to nothing more than a cog in the establishment’s machine — like every other president before him.

In fact, in the Trump era, it appears the CIA will continue its longstanding business as usual, wielding brutal tactics and selling them to the public as vital to keeping them safe.

Tellingly, for all of Pompeo’s talk of American principle and morality, he never once mentioned freedom — opting instead to fearmonger and offer security.

Op-ed / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Senate Declares War On Assange

An angry Julian Assange slammed efforts to officially classify his whistleblowing organization as a "non-state hostile intelligence service", decrying it as an attempt to put the "Pompeo Doctrine" into law. In its annual "intelligence authorization", the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed to effectively declare WikiLeaks a terrorist media organization.

“It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States,” the bill states. Published on Friday, the Senate committee passed the bill late last month on a 14-1 vote, with only Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon voting against the measure, citing “legal, constitutional and policy implications” that the WikiLeaks provision may entail.

.@RonWyden announces he voted against Intel Authorization Act due to concerns that language targeting @WikiLeaks could chill journalism pic.twitter.com/Ey3zBSTupt

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 22, 2017

In response, Assange tweeted a statement slamming the “absurd” decision to brand a media organizations in such a way.

“It is equivalent to suggesting that the CIA is a media organization. Publishers publish what they obtain. Intelligence agencies do not.”

My statement responding to the U.S. Senate Intel Committee"s attempt to place the "Pompeo doctrine" into law.

More: https://t.co/ZmZenqzh7k pic.twitter.com/Kra0T7jSID

— Julian Assange ???? (@JulianAssange) August 23, 2017

Realizing the gravity of the situation of becoming a persona non grata to the US government (and CIA), Assange then siad that “it is an interesting thought experiment to consider where other media outlets lay on this spectrum. It is clear that if the "Pompeo doctrine" applies to WikiLeaks then it applies equally if not more so to other serious outlets."

Assange became one of the most visible targets of the liberal media and Democrats, following the DNC hacking (which led to Debbis Wasserman Schultz" resgination after it emerged that the DNC had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders), and the leak of John Podesta"s emails, which were then sent to WikiLeaks for publication. According to the subsequent narrative, Assange was nothing but a Russian agent, intent on destroying Hillary"s candidacy and making Trump president. Which is ironic because after praising Assange during his campaign, Trump has since abandoned the controversial Australian to his fate.

In April, CIA Director Mike Pompeo branded WikiLeaks a "hostile non-state intelligence agency" which should not be afforded the protections of the First Amendment under the constitution.

CIA Dir Pompeo claims "Assange has no 1st Amendment freedoms" after Washington Post Op Ed https://t.co/bhqFcXTzze https://t.co/1zZWAjJUVY

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 14, 2017

Assange made even more friends at Langley in March, when WikiLeaks began publishing a series of leaks titled ‘Vault 7’ which revealed the spy agency’s arsenal of hacking tools. Putin has yet to be blamed for hacking the CIA.

Five Weird Conspiracy Theories From CIA Director Mike Pompeo

Authored by Adam Garrie via The Duran,

Mike Pompeo sounds increasingly unhinged when talking about Russia, Wikileaks and the media.

In a tirade against Russia based news outlets RT and Sputnik, Donald Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo blasted Russia for interfering not only in the 2016 US Presidential election but “the one before that and the one before that”. This would imply that Russia helped install Barack Obama in the White House even after his severely anti-Russian foreign policy became well known.

These statements are blasted by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the following way:

If (Pompeo’s) statements mean that we interfered in the elections in 2008 and 2012 that means that President Obama owes us his victories. I’ll refrain from comment. In my opinion, this crosses the lines of what is reasonable.

Pompeo’s assertion came after a tirade in which he said that Russia’s current Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov helped develop a ‘propaganda’ strategy which underlies RT and Sputnik’s alleged purpose. Pompeo further asserted that Gerasimov did this in the early 1970s. According to Pompeo:

His (Gerasimov’s) idea was that you can win wars without firing a single shot, with firing a very few shots in ways that are decidedly not militaristic. And that’s what happened

What changes is the cost to effectuate change through cyber and through RT and Sputnik, the news outlets and through other soft means has just really been lowered. It used to be expensive to run an ad on a television station. Now you simply go online and propagate your message, so they have found an effective tool, an easy way to go reach into our systems and into our culture to achieve the outcome they are looking for.

The ludicrousness of this claim can be easily debunked when one learns that General Gerasimov was born in 1955. If one can conservatively say that 1973 was the ‘early 1970s’, this means that Gerasimov developed a communications strategy that relied on the internet being up to 2017 standards when he was 18 years of age. There is simply no logic in Pompeo’s assertions.

This is the same Mike Pompeo who has told some rather strange tall-tales about Wikileak’s founder Julian Assange while simultaneously calming that RT is part of Wikileaks.

In April of 2017, Pompeo stated:

It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.

He then stated:

No, I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history.

So to recap, the following are Mike Pompeo’s most ludicrous conspiracy theories:

1. Russia’s current Chief of the General Staff invented the concept of RT and Sputnik, one which relies on the power of the internet in 2017, in the early 1970s when he was in his late teens and still in the equivalent of high school.

2. Russia interfered in the US elections in 2008, 2012 and 2016, meaning that Russia supported Barack Obama who was the most anti-Russian US President in modern memory, but no one noticed this Russian interference at the time.

3. RT collaborates with Wikileaks which is a hostile intelligence agency rather than an on-line publisher.

4. Julian Assange, a self-styled free speech advocate and anti-war activist would have supported Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s.

5. RT and Sputnik are supported by Russia because they are cheaper than going to war. This is ostensibly a bad thing in Pompeo’s view.

Mike Pompeo seems like less of an intelligence chief than a simplistic conspiracy theories.

North Korean Nuclear Threat “Top Priority” For Donald Trump

The imminent nuclear threat from North Korea was addressed by CIA director Mike Pompeo during an interview with MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt which aired Saturday.  Pompeo said that the topic was “at the top” of President Donald Trump’s mind.

Trump is concerned about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities daily.  The rogue nation has made many threats, and through tightening sanctions, have continued to test ballistic missiles and work toward obtaining a nuclear weapon. But Donald Trump is taking the threat of a nuclear-capable North Korea very seriously.

Pompeo said he and Trump talk for almost an hour every day, and that “I hardly ever escape a day at the White House without the President asking me about North Korea and how it is that the United States is responding to that threat.”  Pompeo added, “For 20 years, America has whistled past the graveyard, hoping on hope, that North Korea would turn colors and become part of the Western civilization. There’s no evidence that that’s going to take place, absent a very real, very concrete set of policies that put pressure on the North Koreans to denuclearize. I think that’s what you see Secretary Tillerson trying to do around the world.” Pompeo was referring to the State Department’s continued efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear program.

“They are ever-closer to having the capacity to hold America at risk with a nuclear weapon,” Pompeo added.  Though the US and China have agreed on the urgency and goal of possible talks with North Korea, the topic of denuclearization remains completely off the table for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Under Kim, North Korea has rewritten its constitution to include nuclear weapons as a guarantor of its safety, and the threat of nuclear North Korea is growing.

In the meantime, the dictator of North Korea is living in fear that South Korea is working with Donald Trump on a plan to take North Korea’s tyrant down.  And South Korean intelligence services claim that the coordination between the US and South Korean forces have made Kim “extremely nervous,” according to the Korea Herald. Apparently, Kim has been riding in his subordinates’ cars and making fewer public appearances.

Trump is not the only person in the United States government taking a nuclear North Korea seriously. Although the Pentagon maintains that the US does not train for decapitation strikes of any kind, the threat from North Korea growing hotter every day.  Civilian casualties like Otto Warmbier may also signify that the US is preparing a quick strike option in case of an untenable provocation from the Kim regime.

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Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 667 people
Date: June 25th, 2017
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CIA Director Mike Pompeo: Trump's "An Avid Consumer" Of Intel, Will "Punish Leakers"

In his first interview since becoming the head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo pushed back against accusations that President Donald Trump doesn’t read his daily intelligence briefings, claiming that the president is “very interested” in what’s happening at the intelligence communities and that his daily in-person briefings with the president typically run longer than their allotted time.

Pompeo tells MSNBC that Trump is a demanding boss who asks “great questions” and is trying to enable the CIA to take a more active “operational” role in countering threats posed by the US’s enemies.

Pompeo began by responding to criticism that some say Trump is "uninterested in facts":

“I cannot imagine a statement that is any more false than one that would attribute President Trump of not being interested in the intelligence community. He is an avid consumer of the products the CIA provides he thinks about them and comes back and asks great questions and perhaps most importantly relies on them.”

As the Hill pointed out, Pompeo acknowledged that the CIA has been harmed by information leaks in recent years, but said that he and Trump are focused on shutting down the leakers.

“There have been failures,” he said. “You have not only nation states trying to steal our stuff but ... folks like Wikileaks.”

He went on to say that he believes under Trump, the intelligence community will be able to both stop and punish leaking.

“We and all of President Trump’s government are focused on stopping leaks," he said, "and I think we"ll have some successes both on the deterrence side, that is stopping them from happening, as well as on punishing those who we catch who have done it."

When asked about cooperation within the intelligence community, Pompeo said he suspects it has improved since the pre-9/11 era, though imperfections remain.

“I think we’re in a much better place today whether we’ve connected them all or not I suspect perfection cannot be achieved. The intelligence community have taken answers to today’s problems and applied them in really interesting ways.”

As Pompeo’s interviewer, NBC’s Hugh Hewitt, noted, the intelligence community almost universally assumed that Clinton was going to win November’s election.

But now that Trump is in power, how is the administration triaging the US’s enemies? Pompeo says he and the president spend the most time discussing the threat posed by North Korea. Trump scored a major foreign policy victory this week after Chinese state media reported that the Communist Party has agreed with the US that the Korean peninsula needs to undergo “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization.

Chinese state media described the talks, the first of their kind with the Trump administration, as an upgrade in dialogue mechanisms between China and the United States, following on from President Xi Jinping"s meeting with Trump in Florida in April.

“North Korea is a very real danger. I hardly escape a day at the White House without the president asking me about North Korea and how the US is responding to that threat. For the past 20 years, the US has whistled past the graveyard hoping on hope that North Korea would see a change of color."

"They have the capacity to put America at risk with a nuclear weapon.”

Countering Iran, ISIS and Hezbollah also rank highly on the president’s list of priorities. When comparing Hezbollah to Iran, Pompeo said that the latter’s resources increase its capability to threaten the US.

“Iran is a powerful nation state with wealth and resources an organized government and an established piece of real estate of which they have complete control…I would say Iran poses the larger challenge, though I hesitate to rank them. ISIS is an enormous risk to the US today and we need to do everything to defeat them.”

In a sudden, unexpected turn, Hewitt asked Pompeo about Saudi Arabia and the allegations that radical elements within the kingdom’s government helped aid and abet the 9/11 hijackers. While Pompeo wouldn’t comment on these claims, he offered something almost as telling.

Pompeo said he believes the Saudi Arabian government values the cooperation and friendship of the US, and that the kingdom has made “a fundamental decision” not to condone acts of terror, or terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.  

“They welcomed an American who wasn’t on the side of the Iranians for coming to visit with them. They’ve come to understand that America will support them when pushing back against enemies that we share and support them to expand their economies as well."

"The Saudis have made a fundamental decision not to engage in that kind of activity that has led to all kinds of trouble in past decades…I think they understand that it’s not in Saudi Arabia’s best interest to not support terrorism.”

Of course, Pompeo’s response carefully sidestepped any acknowledgment of whether Saudi Arabia once collaborated with Al Qaeda to launch acts of terror against the US. Maybe Pompeo was trying to reassure executives at Saudi Aramco, who have argued against bringing the impending IPO of a 5% stake in the state-owned oil giant to New York City, fearing a lawsuit. Don’t worry, he seemed to suggest: All has been forgiven.
 

Ron Paul Rages At Trump: "Assange Is A Hero... Don't Declare War On The Truth"

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Candidate Trump: "I Love Wikileaks."

President Trump: "Arrest Assange!"

“I love Wikileaks,” candidate Donald Trump said on October 10th on the campaign trail. He praised the organization for reporting on the darker side of the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was information likely leaked by a whistleblower from within the Clinton campaign to Wikileaks.

Back then he praised Wikileaks for promoting transparency, but candidate Trump looks less like President Trump every day. The candidate praised whistleblowers and Wikileaks often on the campaign trail. In fact, candidate Trump loved Wikileaks so much he mentioned the organization more than 140 times in the final month of the campaign alone! Now, as President, it seems Trump wants Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sent to prison.

Last week CNN reported, citing anonymous “intelligence community” sources, that the Trump Administration’s Justice Department was seeking the arrest of Assange and had found a way to charge the Wikileaks founder for publishing classified information without charging other media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post for publishing the same information.

It might have been tempting to write off the CNN report as “fake news,” as is much of their reporting, but for the fact President Trump said in an interview on Friday that issuing an arrest warrant for Julian Assange would be, “OK with me.”

Trump’s condemnation of Wikileaks came just a day after his CIA Director, Michael Pompeo, attacked Wikileaks as a “hostile intelligence service.” Pompeo accused Assange of being “a fraud — a coward hiding behind a screen.”

Pompeo’s word choice was no accident. By accusing Wikileaks of being a “hostile intelligence service” rather than a publisher of information on illegal and abusive government practices leaked by whistleblowers, he signaled that the organization has no First Amendment rights. Like many in Washington, he does not understand that the First Amendment is a limitation on government rather than a granting of rights to citizens. Pompeo was declaring war on Wikileaks.

But not that long ago Pompeo also cited Wikileaks as an important source of information. In July he drew attention to the Wikileaks release of information damaging to the Clinton campaign, writing, “Need further proof that the fix was in from President Obama on down?”

There is a word for this sudden about-face on Wikileaks and the transparency it provides us into the operations of the prominent and powerful: hypocrisy.

The Trump Administration’s declaration of war on whistleblowers and Wikileaks is one of the greatest disappointments in these first 100 days. Donald Trump rode into the White House with promises that he would “drain the swamp,” meaning that he would overturn the apple carts of Washington’s vested interests. By unleashing those same vested interests on those who hold them in check – the whistleblowers and those who publish their revelations – he has turned his back on those who elected him.

Julian Assange, along with the whistleblowers who reveal to us the evil that is being done in our name, are heroes. They deserve our respect and admiration, not a prison cell. If we allow this president to declare war on those who tell the truth, we have only ourselves to blame.

CIA Launches Manhunt for ‘Traitor’ Who Showed the World They Spy on EVERYONE

CBS News first reported a manhunt inside the Central Intelligence Agency in search of the source who provided thousands of top secret documents to Wikileaks, published in its “Vault 7” — which revealed the clandestine agency’s hacking tools and surveillance practices.

“Sources familiar with the investigation say it is looking for an insider — either a CIA employee or contractor — who had physical access to the material,” CBS reported Wednesday evening. “The agency has not said publicly when the material was taken or how it was stolen.

“Much of the material was classified and stored in a highly secure section of the intelligence agency, but sources say hundreds of people would have had access to the material. Investigators are going through those names.”

Investigators surmise the source of the massive leak was either an agent of the CIA or a contractor with the agency — someone with physical access — rather than an outside hacker.

In a statement coinciding with the Vault 7 release, Wikileaks announced,

“The archive appears to have been circulated among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive […]

“In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

Unnamed sources from inside the U.S. Intelligence Community told Reuters less than 24 hours after Wikileaks published the first selection of the damning cache of documents the agency had expected their public disclosure since 2016.

Officials from the CIA and FBI quickly reviewed the case and, within one day, initiated a joint investigation of the release — including the internal manhunt in question.

Wikileaks — itself, fraught by rumors of enemy State collusion and political opportunism — was lambasted by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who also had choice words for the pro-transparency organization’s founder, Julian Assange, in his first public comments since taking that role:

“It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange — incidentally deemed a “demon” by Pompeo — responded to the wholly unproven accusation, stating,

“In fact, the reason Pompeo is launching this attack is because he understands we are exposing in this series all sorts of illegal actions by the CIA, so he’s trying to get ahead of the publicity curve and create a preemptive defense.”

Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell claimed within days of the Vault 7 disclosure it had to be an ‘inside job.’

“This data is not shared outside CIA,” Morell said. “It’s only inside CIA. It’s on CIA’s top secret network, which is not connected to any other network. So, this has to be an inside job.”

Investigators continue to pour over the hundreds of names of hundreds of contractors and agents who would have had physical access to the high-security area, urgently seeking the unknown person or persons who could have managed such a devastating theft of information.

Given the nature and scope of Wikileaks’ trove — estimated of greater impact than spying practices revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — whoever was behind the breach is likely to become a transparency and anti-surveillance folk hero.

Thus far, the CIA has not commented on the ongoing probe — nor on the authenticity of documents in the Wikileaks trove.

Assange, in the same statement released in tandem with Vault 7, noted the content of the cache,

“The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

CIA Director Smears Wikileaks After Tweeting Them During 2016 Election

CIA Director Mike Pompeo blasted Wikileaks during an event held by the Center for Strategic & International Studies today, despite having promoted the publisher"s leaks in 2016 to attack political opponents during the U.S. Presidential elections.

Pompeo took an extremely hard line with the publishing giant, labelling them a "non-state hostile intelligence service" before repeating the baseless contention that Wikileaks was abetted by the Russian Federation, despite FBI Director James Comey"s assertion in late March that Wikileaks has never dealt directly with the Russian government.

Pompeo further stated that the Russian media outlet Russia Today (RT) had actively collaborated with Wikileaks, and that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was a narcissist and a fraud "hiding behind a computer screen." Mr. Assange is currently residing in Ecuador’s London Embassy, where he has been held in de-facto captivity since August 2012 after being granted asylum by Ecuador. On April 6, 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Assange’s detention was unlawful. They ordered that he be released immediately and compensated by Sweden and the United Kingdom for the roles these states played in his captivity.

Director Pompeo"s comments are ironic given that during the 2016 election, he was happy to publicize Wikileaks" release of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails which proved that the DNC had been committing election fraud during the Democratic primary race and improperly communicating with members of the American media. Pompeo tweeted about about the release and accused then President Barack Obama of being complicit in the primary fraud and collusion with the press.

Wikileaks highlighting a tweet from Mike Pompeo during the he was serving as a United States Representative promoting Wikileaks releases

The apparent policy flip by Pompeo comes after Wikileaks began to release their Vault 7 series of leaks, showing that the CIA has been improperly accessing the personal electronic devices of Americans, was concealing known exploits from product manufacturers, utilizes false attribution techniques allowing them to conceal their hacking attacks by portraying them as coming from another country and uses tools which appear to have been developed by Russian criminal organizations.

Blacksites, Torture, and Death: New CIA Deputy Director Has Done It All

(ANTIMEDIA) Washington — As neoconservatives celebrate Donald Trump’s selection of General H.R. McMaster to replace Michael Flynn as national security advisor, the Department of Justice on Wednesday sought to block the deposition of the president’s choice for deputy director of the CIA

Gina Haspel, a career CIA officer, was selected by Trump and appointed as deputy director by the agency’s head, Mike Pompeo, on February 2. That same day, however, it was revealed that Haspel, during the post-9/11 Bush era, at one point ran a black site in Thailand where prisoners were waterboarded.

It was also reported that under orders, Haspel aided in the destruction of video tapes capturing the torture taking place at the black site. This allegation was recently confirmed by former CIA Director Michael Morell.

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These revelations about Haspel’s past prompted two former CIA contract psychologists to involve the now-deputy director in their own case. The psychologists, who designed “enhanced interrogation” programs for the CIA, are fighting a lawsuit from men seeking to hold them accountable for torture they experienced at black sites.

One of the men, Gul Rahman, died as result of the torture and is being represented in the lawsuit by someone else.

In a court filing in Washington state last week, an attorney for the two former contractors, Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, contended that:

“Ms. Haspel was centrally involved in the events alleged in plaintiffs Sulaiman Abdulla Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and Obaid Ullah, on behalf of Gul Rahman’s…suit against Defendants for actions they purportedly took while contractors for the CIA”

The court filing was an attempt to get the judge to directly compel Haspel, as well as another unidentified man who’s alleged to have headed up the CIA’s Renditions Group, to give testimony. The day before the filing, the attorneys claim, the government informed them it would not authorize the depositions.

The former contractors, Jessen and Mitchell, are seeking to claim that since they were under the employ of the United States government, they should be immunized against legal consequences.

The judge in the case has already granted requests to depose other former CIA officials, such as Counterterrorism Center Chief Jose Rodriguez and Chief Attorney John Rizzo. But those men have publicly discussed their roles in U.S. torture programs through memoirs that were screened by the CIA

The agency, in other words, has had a chance to sift through the information those officials intended to reveal. It’s had no such opportunity with Haspel, however, and on Wednesday the government used this as reasoning to block the deputy director’s deposition.

In the filing, U.S. attorneys and Justice Department officials said the government “anticipates asserting the state secret privilege” to prevent Haspel from testifying.

Speaking of Haspel and the other unnamed man, the brief claimed the U.S. government “has never officially acknowledged whether either witness had any role in the former detention and interrogation program. To confirm or deny that fact would itself disclose classified information.”

The government is set to officially present its state secrets argument to the court on March 8. Former CIA officials John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez are set to give their depositions in March, as well.

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CIA Publicly Honors Massive Terrorist State — Proving Whose Side They’re On

In a move that would make Orwell spin in his grave, the CIA presented to the heir to the throne in Saudi Arabia — one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism on the planet — an award for ‘counter-terrorism.’

Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia to award Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef the George Tenet Medal in recognition of his “excellent intelligence performance, in the domain of counter-terrorism and his unbound contribution to realise world security and peace.”

In a statement paraphrased by Arab News, “the crown prince said the award represents international recognition of the Kingdom’s anti terrorism efforts under the directives of King Salman.”

The irony of any Saudi winning an award for combating terrorism is staggering — particularly given revelations found last year in emails leaked by Wikileaks showing the U.S. political establishment has been well aware Saudi Arabia funds and supports the Islamic State.

“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” Hillary Clinton to John Podesta in an email dated August 17, 2014.

“This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the [Kurdish Regional Government]. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure.”

Perhaps bin Nayef couldn’t have been better poised to win this award from the CIA, given its namesake’s role in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — two failed military endeavors undertaken due to fabricated and false claims. Tenet served

According to Al Jazeera, “Bin Nayef, 57, has been interior minister since 2012 and has years of experience in intelligence work.

“He oversaw a crackdown on al-Qaeda, a group that killed security officers and foreigners in the kingdom between 2003 and 2007.”

Bin Nayef vowed Saudi Arabia would continue to fight terrorism, and noted the Kingdom has thwarted a number of terrorist attacks, even against ally nations — though he didn’t elaborate on the nature of these alleged attacks.

“We are surrounded by areas of conflict, and we were the first affected by terrorism from various sources, but we are equipped to combat terror in any place and under any circumstances,” the crown prince claimed.

“The Kingdom has been keen to combat terrorism based on its conviction that terrorism has no identity and no religion, and from its belief that the terrorists are committing these acts stemming from their deviant ideologies and evil thought,” bin Nayef asserted. “All negative religious, political and social ideologies that use religion as a tool throughout human history, do not reflect the absolute truth about religion.”

While his statement certainly sounds legitimate, for the crown prince to dismiss Saudi Arabia’s support for the world’s enemy number one, Islamic State terrorists — not to mention the Kingdom’s horrendous human rights record, thanks to Wahhabist Islam — is the epitome of hypocrisy.

Hypocritical, but not surprising — and certainly far from shocking on the part of the of the CIA.

If the United States government were actually fighting the terrorism it claims to be, Saudi Arabia should not have received a dime of support in funds or arms once its ties to the Islamic State became common knowledge among the political powers-that-be. Of course, Washington already ignores the exacting human rights abuses the Saudis commit against their own people under a twisted amalgamation of monarchy, government, and religion.

Nevertheless, the pantomiming continues — the U.S. pretends to fight terrorism while arming and funding terrorists, and the Saudis do the same — each turning blind eyes to the other’s indiscretion and hypocrisy.

As bin Nayef stated,

“Combating terrorism requires a joint international effort at all levels; financially, intellectually, militarily and through the media. This should be coordinated and conducted in accordance with the UN’s covenants and laws including particularly the principle of sovereign equality.”

Riyadh had grown somewhat disillusioned with the administration of former President Barack Obama, which appeared hesitant to engage in the Syrian civil war. Relations chilled further upon a highly-criticized international deal to lift sanctions on Iran, which agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons — a deal Pompeo has denounced.

All hypocrisy on terrorism apparently aside, Bin Nayef seemed optimistic about the future shared goals of the two nations, saying,

“Our relationship with the United States is historical and will continue to succeed.”

Mike Pompeo Is Confirmed To Lead CIA

Just a day after President Trump visited Langley, 53-year-old Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo has been confirmed by the Senate as CIA Director amidst its most contentious relationship with the White House in decades. As voting continued, there were 67 "yes" votes, more than enough to confirm Pompeo, and 30 voted against. Almost all the opposition was from Democrats, but perhaps most notably Rand Paul voted against him.

As The Hill reports, White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday downplayed any friction between the CIA and the president.

He called talk of a rift at the agency a “myth” and noted attendees were “hooting and hollering” and gave Trump a standing ovation.

“That doesn’t sound like a huge feud. They were excited. They were clapping. They were cheering when he walked in,” he told reporters. “To see reports that made it sound like there was some fence-mending that needed to happen — that sure didn’t look that way when you walked in.”

But the performance drew fire from the CIA’s outgoing director, John Brennan, who said Trump “should be ashamed of himself.”

But it"s all over for him now, as Pompeo’s most vexing task may involve finding a way to establish a functional relationship between the CIA and President Trump.

As The Washington Post notes, Pompeo, 53, was a prominent member of the tea party in Congress, known for strident political views.

 He was a fierce critic of Clinton, a determined opponent of the Obama administration’s nuclear accord with Iran, and said at one point that he regarded the U.S. government’s conduct in the attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, a political scandal that was “worse in some ways” than Watergate.

But Pompeo has spent the post-election period seeking to reassure CIA officials and members of Congress that he is prepared to put aside that partisan persona and be an honest broker as director of the CIA.

“My job,” Pompeo said during his confirmation hearing, “if confirmed, will be to change roles.”

Pompeo easily surpassed the number of votes required, but most notably Rand Paul voted against him:

Protecting the entire Bill of Rights is one of the main reasons I ran for office. I"ll remain vigilant in that cause https://t.co/JTtXJEhBMP

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 24, 2017

So far so good for Trump"s nominations, but there is a long way to go...