FBI fires suspected leaker and Comey ally James Baker

Just hours after FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe delivered private testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, his boss, FBI Director Christopher Wray, announced that the bureau’s top lawyer would be leaving his post, an attempt to bring in “new blood” to an agency whose reputation has been hopelessly compromised by revelations that agents’ partisan bias may have influenced two high-profile investigations involving President Donald Trump and his former campaign rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As the Washington Post reported, the FBI’s top lawyer, James Baker, is being reassigned. WaPo says Baker’s removal is part of Wray’s effort to assemble his own team of senior advisers while he tries to defuse allegations of partisanship that have plagued the bureau in recent months.

But reports published over the summer said Baker was “the top suspect” in an interagency leak investigation, as we reported back in July

Three sources, with knowledge of the investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.

A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of ongoing internal investigations in the bureau told Circa, “the bureau is scouring for leakers and there’s been a lot of investigations.”

The revelation comes as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to contain leaks both within the White House and within its own national security apparatus.

The news of the staff shakeup comes as Trump and his political allies have promised to “rebuild” the FBI to make it “bigger and better than ever” following its “disgraceful” conduct over the Trump probe. Baker played a key role in the agency’s handling of major cases and policy debates in recent years, including the FBI’s unsuccessful battle with Apple over the growing use of encryption in cellphones.

Wray has, of course, resisted Congress’s push to learn more about senior agent Peter Strzok, who was a key player in both the Clinton investigation and the Trump probe. Strzok was exposed last month for exchanging anti-Trump texts with FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. Strzok played important roles with both investigations. Later, it was revealed that his edits to Clinton’s exoneration letter went further than had been previously disclosed.

According to WaPo, Baker told colleagues he will be taking on other duties at the FBI. Unsurprisingly, the Jeff Bezos-owned paper describes Baker as “one of the most trusted, longest-serving national security officials in the US. He has served as the head of the FBI’s Office of General Counsel for several years.”

Of course, WaPo says Baker’s reassignment has nothing to do with the leak investigation, which ended without any publicly disclosed findings. It’s also unclear what, exactly, Baker was suspected of leaking.

Baker is reportedly a very close to former FBI director James B. Comey, who asked Baker to be his general counsel. The two men were colleagues at the Justice Department and when they were out of government at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm.

It’s notable that Baker’s departure comes six months after the leaking scandal, and just days after AG Jeff Sessions reportedly asked DOJ prosecutors to begin asking FBI agents about the details of the Uranium One investigation. A sign that the bureau is finally moving to address concerns expressed by Republican lawmakers about bias that may have favored Clinton.

Baker’s head is the third to roll in the “housecleaning” that saw the FBI sanction Strzok and Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who reportedly concealed his wife’s ties to opposition research firm Fusion GPS – the firm that supervised the creation of the infamous “Trump dossier.”

It was also revealed recently that Baker’s name is on a list of DOJ officials who are expected to receive a subpoena to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. Strzok and Ohr’s names are also on that list.

If that’s any indication of what’s to come, we doubt this will be the last time we hear Baker’s name.

Via Zero Hedge

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Featured Image: Dave Newman/Flickr

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Edward Snowden May Have Info That Would TAKE DOWN The Deep State

A new report by the YouTube channel X22 Report claims that the deep state may want NSA leaker, Edward Snowden.  Apparently, Snowden may have information that could take them all down.

Dave from the X22 Report begins by stating the obvious: big tech giants such as YouTube have been taking down news channels that don’t align with the deep state’s brand of tyranny. But he says to watch for people to dump stocks as the Internet Bill of Rights (IBOR) becomes more widely accepted (the regulation of tech giants to stop censorship). Because once freedom is speech is allowed online again, all of the information can come out, and Snowden may have more that will cripple the deep state.

Christopher Steele, who was responsible for the infamous Trump dossier, was connected with the Russian double-agent and ex-spy who was poisoned along with his daughter, with a nerve agent. (The British government is blaming Moscow for the attempted assassination. Or “wet works” as Dave put it.)

Dave also says the media hasn’t the slightest idea of what to do with the news that Donald Trump has reached out to North Korea in an attempt to discuss denuclearization.  But Trump continues to circumvent the deep state and the mainstream media.

“The corporate media doesn’t know what to do with all this. They’re out there saying ‘Trump is a madman, he’s gonna bring us to war. Trump is a madman, these peace talks are gonna bring us to war.’  They really don’t want to admit that we might have peace with North Korea because this is not part of their agenda. Their agenda is to go to war. That’s what they wanted all along. The thing that the corporate media doesn’t know, is that Trump has already met with Kim Jong-Un. The meeting already took place. The deal is already set. Everything is already done. How do we know this? Trump was in China at the Forbidden City. Met with Kim Jong-Un there; with China, Russia, and the rest. Already agreed that North Korea will disarm and discussed reunification.”

But one of the biggest revelations is about NSA leaker Edward Snowden.  “CIA intelligence operatives want Snowden badly,” says Dave.

“They know where Snowden is…if they really wanted to arrest him, they would just go in and take him…Why are the clowns, CIA intelligence agencies after Snowden? Well, most likely, I think he has evidence on the deep state; certain individuals within the deep state.  And maybe even information on 9/11. They’re saying there’s and 85% probability the Snowden has the Hillary Rodham Clinton video, the raw video. And people are speculating that this video is Hillary having sex with a child.”

There is a lot of speculation in this particular report, but it’s important to look at things from an alternative view.  We could not verify that Trump has already made a deal with Kim Jong-Un, nor could we (obviously) verify what information Edward Snowden has that he hasn’t made public yet.

But what we can agree with Dave on is: “We’ve been lied to all this time, and they’re still lying to us.”

American Leaker Warns: The US Is ‘Close To Nuclear Armageddon’

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers which exposed the government’s lies during the Vietnam war is vocalizing a warning. He says the United States is really close to a nuclear Armageddon.

Ellsberg, now 86-years-old, leaked the Pentagon papers back in 1969 and he’s now got a new book out which serves a warning to those who care to listen. According to the Daily Mail, Ellsberg’s 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon’s presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that was supposed to advance press freedom.

In his new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Ellsberg details how easy nuclear bombs can be triggered and shot off on a false alarm – and that the president isn’t the only who can launch the nukes, as we are often told.  Low-level military commanders are capable of launching nuclear weapons too.

“All out-nuclear war — an irreversible, unprecedented and almost unimaginable calamity for civilization and most life on earth — has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War I, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these,” writes Ellsberg in his new book.

Adding to fears of a nuclear armageddon is North Korea’s insistence on building a nuclear weapon.  This has created a mass panic in nations all around the globe.  Not to mention, last month, President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the US to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

North Korea then denounced Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move a “serious provocation and violent infringement,” as the rogue nation sentenced the US president to death, saying he “hurt the dignity” of the “supreme leadership.” All of this is alarming, according to Ellsberg, who believes a nuclear war can be started simply by a false alarm.

Nuclear bombs “are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch or a desperate decision to escalate,” Ellsberg wrote in his book. “They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth. This is true even though the Cold War that rationalized their existence and hair-trigger status — and their supposed necessity to national security — ended 30 years ago.”

Many US citizens falsely believe that only the US president, in this case, Donald Trump can order the use of nuclear weapons. But Trump isn’t the only military commander authorized to launch nuclear weapons, according to the New York Post. “There has to be a delegation of authority and capability to launch retaliatory strikes, not only to officials outside the Oval Office but outside Washington too,” Ellsberg wrote.

Ellsberg says that the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust is full disarmament by the United States and Russia. “The risk that one city will be destroyed by a single (perhaps terrorist) weapon in the next year or the next decade cannot, unfortunately, be reduced to zero,” Ellsberg writes. “But the danger of near-extinction of humanity — a continuous possibility for the past 65 years — can be reduced to zero by the dismantlement of most existing weapons in both the United States and Russia.”