Tag: national security council
 Laura Loomer

National Security Agency Chief Fired At Conspiracy Theorist's Urging

On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump had a visitor in the White House Oval Office: far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a self-described "proud Islamophobe" who is controversial even among fellow Trump supporters.

During that April 2 meeting, as reported by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Ken Bensinger, Loomer "pressed for him to fire National Security Council staff members whom she deemed disloyal to him."

One day later, Trump fired Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, along with other top national security staff members identified by Loomer as "disloyal," according to Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.The move stunned intelligence officials, who had clue that it was coming.

But a U.S. official told the Times that Loomer, a far-right activist and close confidante of Trump, called for Gen. Haugh’s removal during her Oval Office meeting on Thursday. The official said Trump then ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to fire the cyber defense chief.

In statements to the Times, both Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut condemned the ouster of Gen. Haugh.

Loomer seemed to take credit for Haugh's firing, writing in a post on X that he “had no place” serving in the administration because he had been chosen for the job by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who became a sharp critic of Trump.

“Why would we want an NSA Director who was referred to Biden after being hand selected by Milley,” Loomer posted. “Why would we want Milley’s hand picked choice for NSA DIRECTOR? We do not! And he was referred for firing.”

The Times journalists reported, that"Ms. Loomer's rhetoric and actions have been so extreme that she has alienated others even on the far right. She has shared a conspiracy theory on social media calling the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks an 'inside job.' During the 2024 campaign, Ms. Loomer said that 'the White House will smell like curry' if Kamala Harris were elected — a jab at her Indian heritage…. But on Wednesday afternoon, she sat with the president in the Oval Office, plying him with claims about staff members whom she insisted he should dismiss."

Trump's meeting with Loomer elicited strong reactions on social media.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted, "The National Security Adviser had to go to the Oval Office to defend his own staff from being fired by the president, because a woman who said 9/11 was an inside job was in the Oval personally briefing the president. Trump's America, folks. Insane."

CNN's Jake Tapper posted, "As she meets with President Trump and advises firings in the National Security Council, a brief reminder of who Laura Loomer is, in her own words." And Tapper's "reminder" included Loomer's 9/11 conspiracy theories and racist comments attacking former Vice President Harris.

The firings "are a sharp break with precedent," as the Times reported.Presidents normally maintain top military officers in their posts even when they were nominated by a president of a different party.

Sen. Warner praised Gen. Haugh and said firing him wouldn't make the country safer. He tweaked the Trump White House for sharing national security secrets on a consumer messaging application and ousting National Security Council staff because Loomer urged it.

The Virginia senator Warner said the firing of a “nonpartisan, experienced leader” like Gen. Haugh was “astonishing.”


US Sending Urgently Needed Vaccine Components And Medical Gear To India

US Sending Urgently Needed Vaccine Components And Medical Gear To India

By Andrea Shalal WILMINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will immediately provide raw materials for COVID-19 vaccines, medical equipment and protective gear to help India respond to a massive surge in COVID-19 infections, a White House spokeswoman said on Sunday. "The United States is working around the clock to deploy available resources and supplies," National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement. Horne said the materials would help India manufacture the Covishield vaccine. The United States would also send therapeutics, rapid diagnostic test kits and ventilators. Was...

How Biden Can Curtail Terrorism, Tax Evasion, And Money Laundering

How Biden Can Curtail Terrorism, Tax Evasion, And Money Laundering

Reprinted with permission from DC Report

Money laundering, both for terrorist finance and tax evasion, threatens national security. Now a private group that watches the quality of anti-money laundering efforts has put forth a smart plan to modernize and upgrade our government's capacity to track illicit cross-border financial transactions.

This is news you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

Global Financial Integrity has a plan, and it's a good one, to better America's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. FinCEN, as it's known, is a critical government agency housed at Treasury and staffed heavily with IRS financial sleuths. It doesn't get nearly the respect or budget it deserves.

Global Financial Integrity is itself an under-appreciated Washington nonprofit funded by a host of sources including the Ford Foundation and five governments, though not the United States. On a budget of not much more than $1 million per year, it has done solid work calling attention to the growing problem of illicit finance.

Jim Henry, DCReport's economics correspondent, has spent decades documenting the flow of illicit money. He estimates from analysis of official banking and trade documents that at least $40 trillion of illicit money sloshes around the globe. The total may be $50 trillion.

To get an idea of the gigantic size of that bag of corrupt money consider this: Henry's lower-end estimate almost equals the combined annual economic output of the world's two largest economies, America and China.

Global Financial Integrity, in a report titled "Enhancing National Security by Re-imagining FinCEN," makes these recommendations:

  1. Give the FinCEN director a seat on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council (NSC) to raise the agency's stature within the national security community.
  2. Create within FinCEN a National Anti-Money Laundering Data Center for advanced data collection, synthesis, analysis, and distribution to law enforcement for AML activity.
  3. Establish a "Manhattan Project" to identify, develop, and use state-of-the-art technologies needed to fulfill the technology for that data center.
  4. Launch within FinCEN a National Anti-Money Laundering Training Center which will be an anti-money laundering knowledge and education hub for FinCEN staff, financial institution regulators, law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels and for both state and federal prosecutors.
  5. Create a Strategic Analysis Team to examine emerging and long-term trends in money laundering methods and computer technologies to counter those threats.

Those are superb ideas all. But will Congress care?

A core problem with hunting for terrorist finance is that the tools used to sift through billions of transactions involving trillions of dollars are the financial equivalent of trawling the ocean bottom for cod. Trawlers catch plenty of cod, but they also drag in many unwanted species.

Tax Cheats Off The Hook

The George W. Bush administration was averse to a serious hunt for big-league tax cheats. It disconnected from a nascent movement by major countries to coordinate their tax policies, a boon to tax cheats. It even refused to hire 80 more IRS investigators to hunt for transactions by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the wake of 9/11.

Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime

The official excuse was that taxpayers couldn't afford an extra $12 million in spending. That is an absurdity when trillions were being spent on the wars in Afghanistan, still underway, and Iraq. But the funding denial made perfect sense if you knew that anti-money laundering nets catch tax cheats along with terrorists. And since the political donor class is rife with tax cheating, catching tax cheats can be inconvenient for politicians in power, and fellow party members, as a Congressional staffer recently reminded me.

In writing about money laundering in casinos since 1988, in my coverage of taxes since 1995, and on terrorist finance after 9/11, I developed a deep appreciation for the unsung work of FinCEN – and recognition of its weaknesses.

More People, Better Tech

What is needed now to strengthen FinCEN: more staff, super-sophisticated computers on par with the National Security Agency, and, most of all, adding a seat for FinCEN at White House National Security Council meetings.

A FinCEN director once told me that given enough time and resources his staff could find a single $19.99 credit card transaction anywhere in the world. The 9/11 attacks were cheap, costing only about $100,000. We shouldn't forget that relatively small expenditures can be used to cause enormous harm.

To find the little transactions behind big attacks in the future FinCEN needs enormous computer power to separate golden nuggets of fact from the massive overburden of routine financial transactions. FinCEN also needs to be set free to find not just terrorists, but tax cheats.

With trillions of dollars of illicit money in the hands of criminals, kleptocrats, and terrorists, and hundreds of billions of dollars of federal income taxes evaded each year, it's long past time to upgrade FinCEN.

Donald Trump

Inside Trump’s Decision To Leave The World Health Organization

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Right before President Donald Trump unveiled punitive measures against China on May 29, he inserted a surprise into his prepared text.

“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization," he announced during a press conference in the Rose Garden.

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