Tag: cia
Trump and MBS Saudi

One Thousand And One Nights Of Trump Grift

For generations, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been crafted with willful ignorance by people who see the region through the lens of Israel and oil. From the CIA coup in Iran in the 1950s to Cheney and Rumsfeld’s Iraq war folly – arguably the event that destabilized the entire planet by creating tens of millions of refugees, leading to rising fascism in Europe and the U.S – our history in the region is one of murder, mayhem, fecklessness and greed. Major and deadly decisions are routinely made without any appreciation of the history or understanding of the many, heterogeneous communities that live there. Ay-rabs, Eye-rack. In the 1990s, a purge of the “Arabists” in the State Department was even underway. It took 9/11 for the DOD and State to bring back a few Arabic speakers.

However, in the last few weeks, it’s started to become clear that the U.S. is taking a strange new tack.

During Trump One, the grift was mostly on in Ukraine and Russia. Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Rudy Giuliani reeking of duty-free cologne in first-class seats out of Eastern European airports, hauling suitcases of oligarchy pelf. Now, Trump Two has located far greater pots of gold. The Mother of all Piles, the trillions of dollars controlled by a tiny clan of Gulf oil potentates – wealth, which, it must be said, our gas addiction created.

Ever since Mohammed bin Salman, the millennial de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had his henchmen chop off a Washington Post writer’s fingers and then murder him within earshot of Turkish audio surveillance, it has been clear that the men who control trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds can do whatever the hell they want to any man, woman, child, or beast on planet Earth.

This week, Trump is being feted by that very finger chopper. He is very much in his element, sipping Diet Cokes under “tank size chandeliers” and parking himself on gilded chairs to talk business with the leaders of the three major Gulf oil fiefdoms. In Trump Twos’s pay-to-play, even Israel is out in the cold. Miriam Adelson’s $100 million campaign donation, reportedly handed over to make sure Trump would not object to Israel seizing the West Bank? Sorry, chump change! Trump blew past Jerusalem on his way to sword dances with the sheiks -- causing intense but veiled terror among the Israeli leaders accustomed to carte blanche in the halls of American power.

In the last few weeks, Don Junior has been on a business tour around Europe, and Eric has also preened around the Middle East. The boys are riding on the U.S. Presidency, raking in tens of millions for the family business with hotel projects and condos in Dubai, Jeddah, and Qatar, where one project’s motto is “Challenge Everything Stop at Nothing.” The bros are not the first presidential relatives to cash in on Dad’s position, but they are the first to openly rake in money that directly benefits the Man in the White House.

Besides the projects, they are road-testing Dad’s meme coin and the family crypto bank, World Liberty Financial. WLF, created just weeks before the election, is an untraceable intake valve for influence buying. And WLF is now humming away, having reportedly sucked in $2 billion from the emirs of Abu Dhabi and the crypto firm Binance, which has been linked to money laundering for terrorism and sex traffickers. Few MAGAs understand what WLF does, and neither do most elected officials, who have been asleep at the wheel while the now even less regulated crypto industry runs amok.

The speed with which the Trump family is enriching itself in Trump Two is dizzying. At this point, metaphors, like satire, are increasingly out of reach for your poor Freakshow scribe. A swarming of termites, hogs at the trough, Coney Island hot dog eating contest? “Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest,” wrote the New York Times reporter dispatched to cover Zach Witkoff’s and Eric Trump’s press conference in Dubai. “There’s nothing like it,” said Douglas Brinkley, historian and author of books about U.S. presidents, of the Trump Two family financial windfalls.

And that was before the Qatari royal family offered Trump a Boeing 747-8 refitted as a flying palace, a gift that, according to the President, only a “stupid” person would turn down. In the Middle East, gifting is a common form of corruption known as baksheesh. Most U.S. ethics experts consider it illegal.

The gilded plane, though, seems to have woke the gag reflex of some leading MAGAs: Ben Shapiro, Loomer, and a few Republican Senators are making disgusted noises, and the commentariat from

Jennifer Rubin to Rick Wilson predicts that this gift could be the grift that breaks the camel’s back. But will it?

Could it be that a nearly half-billion dollar offering from an Arab potentate is what it takes to cure the so-far incurable Obama Derangement Syndrome, the racist Brown people are coming to get my stuff mind-virus behind the MAGA fever that turns Trump into a hallucination of white Jesus? There seems to be something about the plane, more than the crypto grift and Trump sons raking it in under their dad’s name, that might even get some action from a third branch of government in Washington.

But, so far, no hint of outrage ruffles the alabaster brow of the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Pam Bondi. In Trumpworld, there’s no PR stain that a blonde with a conspicuous crucifix can’t wash away.

Pam was a Tallahassee nobody when she first tangled with Trump, taking a $25,000 donation that she personally solicited in 2013 and then backing off a Trump University civil fraud case her office had filed.

Bondi went on to bigger fry. Besides representing Trump in his first impeachment, and eventually parroting the election Big Lie repeatedly in the media, she signed on as a lobbyist for Qatar with the Trump-connected Ballard firm, pulling down $115,000 a month. That job was public knowledge months ago, but it didn’t bother Republican Senators as they rubber stamped her along with one after another of the wackos, conspiracy theorists, and extremist flotsam and jetsam Trump nominated in nose-thumbing gestures to his civil society enemies. Now, though, it’s treated like big news. Hmmm…

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Reprinted with permission from COURIER's American Freakshow.

John Ratcliffe

Hostile Powers Rejoice As CIA Offers Reckless 'Buyout' To Entire Staff

The scorched earth approach of President Donald Trump and billionaire DOGE bro Elon Musk to dismantle the federal government in their image has reached the desks of America’s most-coveted national security operatives.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journalbroke the news that the administration sent a buyout offer to the entire workforce of the Central Intelligence Agency, asking employees to leave their jobs and receive eight months' severance. The CIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates information on economic, military, and political developments abroad to protect national security.

The offer was corroborated by a CNN report on Wednesday. Trump’s offer, up until Tuesday, had “not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation.” This is a stark departure from the other severance offers made to federal workers in January, which had sensibly excluded employees in crucial national security roles.

Later on Wednesday, the CIA sent the White House an unclassified email list of all the CIA employees hired in the past two years. The list, according to reporting by The New York Times, included first names and the first initial of their last name. The list reportedly focused on young analysts and operatives who were hired to hone in on China. It requested that the spy agency comply with Trump’s executive order to shrink the federal government.

The agency is also freezing hiring for potential employees who were already given conditional offers, and CIA aides say some offers to recruits will also be rescinded.

A CIA spokeswoman told the Journal that the buyout was meant to “infuse the agency with renewed energy.” Meanwhile, an aide, who spoke anonymously, said to The New York Times that “the effort was meant to encourage some of the large group of officers who joined in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to take an early retirement.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, advised his constituents not to accept Trump’s buyout offer. In his Senate floor speech on Tuesday, he said his constituents represent 140,000 government workers in Arlington and Langley, Virginia, where the CIA and Pentagon are located.

“There’s no statutory authority that I can see for the president making this offer,” Kaine said in an interview with the Journal. “You should not raise your hand.”

Director John Ratcliffe of the CIA was appointed by Trump and sworn in to lead the agency on Jan. 23. He has remained radio silent about the gutting so far.

When Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, asked about political “litmus” and “loyalty” tests during his January confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe promised to keep this kind of favor out of the agency he sought to lead.

So much for that.

This comes as foreign adversaries in Russia are rejoicing that unelected co-president Musk took over the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, infiltrating its offices and locking employees out of their computers. On Monday, Democratic lawmakers sent letters to the judiciary over “alarming reports” of Trump’s FBI pick, Kash Patel, calling for political retribution and for “grave concerns” over Trump’s removal from their posts of FBI and DOJ officials who investigated January 6.

The implications are chilling. Trump’s moves aren’t just reckless, they’re potentially catastrophic for America’s national security at a time when its global security is becoming increasingly more fragile. As the CIA thins out its ranks, U.S. enemies are undoubtedly watching and celebrating.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Prodded By GOP Senator, Trump Rejects RFK Jr. Daughter-In-Law For CIA Post

Prodded By GOP Senator, Trump Rejects RFK Jr. Daughter-In-Law For CIA Post

Robert F. Kennedy Jr's daughter-in-law and ex-undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, was top of Donald Trump's list to become the agency's next director — until Monday.

The Washington Post's John Hudson reported via X that Donald Trump dropped his "consideration of RFK Jr.'s daughter-in-law for No. 2 job at CIA following campaign by Sen. Tom Cotton who lobbied Susie Wiles and others to oppose her."

Hudson noted that while "Cotton, one of the most hawkish senators, opposed her over counterterrorism issues," the ex-Trump pick has a "different" story.

The national security reporter posted a screenshot from his own Post report, which reads:

'A person close to Cotton said the senator's concerns pertained to comments Fox Kennedy made years ago to Al Jazeera noting the importance of understanding America's adversaries. 'The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them,' Fox Kennedy told the news network. Cotton likened such remarks as sympathizing with terrorists, this person said.

Fox Kennedy has told others that the process of establishing commonalities with adversaries is a foundation of CIA's field tradecraft training, and that those efforts to recruit enemies as information sources are not sympathizing but at the core of basic spy craft, according to a person familiar with her private conversations.

Although Fox Kennedy — who's married to RFK Jr.'s son, Bobby Kennedy III — will no longer be considered for the deputy director position, "Trump has told others that he wanted a national security position for Fox Kennedy and that the CIA post was not the only option, said people familiar with the matter who suspect she is likely to be tapped for a position at the White House National Security Council or within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

RFK Jr.

RFK Jr. Gives Fawning Interview To 'Repulsive' QAnon-Linked Magazine

The QAnon-affiliated revival of the late John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine George interviewed independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said that his cousin would “really like” the magazine’s revival.

George was originally established in 1995 by John F. Kennedy Jr. and went defunct in 2001 following its founder’s 1999 death in a plane crash. The magazine was revived last year by Gene Ho, a photographer for former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign who has promoted the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory.

Ho has appeared at QAnon events and reportedly “stressed to attendees that he believed that the Q movement ‘is all about blood.’” John F. Kennedy Jr. himself has a special place in QAnon lore, with some in the community falsely claiming that he is still alive and will team up with Trump as his running mate. As noted byMother Jones, Ho “used to sell T-shirts online emblazoned with ‘Trump/Kennedy 2020.’”

On October 7 — just two days before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would be running as an independent instead of continuing in the Democratic primary — Kennedy sat down for an interview with “Rachel Writeside Blonde,” the executive managing editor of George. Writeside Blonde is a QAnon supporter who has associated with QAnon influencers Tom Sidney Bushnell (known online as “Tom Numbers”) and Wayne Willott, known online as “Juan O. Savin.” (Some have falsely claimed that Savin is John F. Kennedy Jr.)

During the interview, Kennedy promised to give Americans “good information” and attacked the media, accusing intelligence agencies of “manipulating the American press for many, many years” and media outlets of being “CIA assets” in response to a question from Writeside Blonde about a “coordinated effort between big tech and government.”

The two praised each other throughout the interview. Writeside Blonde said Kennedy’s answers were “so great,” and Kennedy wished the magazine “the best of luck” and said that his late cousin would “really like this.” (A staffer of the original version of the magazine and a friend of John F. Kennedy Jr. both appear to disagree, telling Mother Jones last year that the QAnon revival of the magazine “makes me sick” and was “repulsive,” respectively.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interview with this QAnon-linked outlet comes as he and his anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense have promoted and partnered with multiple QAnon conspiracy theorists over the years, and Kennedy has built alliances with and promoted misinformation from anti-vaccine and far-right figures in general.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

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