TIR 2/16/17: Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns
Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns
Web Publication: WSJ, by Shane Harris
Spooks rule
What a pickle when the FBI and the intelligence community may be acting as a controlling branch of government. In the article, Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns, Shane Harris describes what amounts to a serious tactical flaw by the Trump administration, a situation where mistrust is possibly escalated beyond insubordination to activism. Of course there are denials and caveats, but given how public accounts in Washington intrigue are typically candy-coated, we should be concerned.
I’ll take Harris’s thought a step further. What if the mistrust is as bad or worse than reported and the intelligence community is building files (real or planted) on administration personnel that can be ‘detonated’ at any time, such as what seems to have occurred with Flynn? Isn’t that essentially more power than the courts, congress, or the American people? The closest comparison that I can think of is the KGB who ultimately installed their own-man, Putin, in perpetual rule of Russia. Well, that’s a long way off here, but slowly deposing someone not of your own is right up there with it. It doesn’t help that Trump and his folks are arrogant and stupid enough to play right into their hands.
While I am generally on the side of ‘do no wrong and you won’t get caught’, and I have no sympathy for Trump, ‘wrong’ in Washington can be a very slippery shadowy concept, especially when it involves spooks. I think its time to be just as concerned about the constitutional boundaries of the intelligence community.
