Trump Plans to Have an Ally Review the U.S. Spy Agencies

[spanone]

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials, an effort that members of the intelligence community fear could curtail their independence and reduce the flow of information that contradicts the president’s worldview.

The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for the departure of Michael T. Flynn, his national security adviser, whose resignation he requested.

There has been no announcement of Mr. Feinberg’s job, which would be based in the White House, but he recently told his company’s shareholders that he is in discussions to join the Trump administration. He is a member of Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council.

Mr. Feinberg, who has close ties to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, declined to comment on his possible position. The White House, which is still working out the details of the intelligence review, also would not comment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/trump-intelligence-agencies-stephen-feinberg.html

[Stinky The Clown]

1. THAT is frightening

[spanone]

8. HE is frightening...

[Cha]

2. Please Proceed blotus

[Historic NY]

3. Yeah okay, an outsider buddy...or Bannon crony

that won't go far. The faucet is about to open.

[ksoze]

4. Here we go...

The crushing of whistleblowers is one more step to a new and dangerous world for us. Very concerning.

[bdamomma]

5. I hope the Intelligence Agencies

are ready for this. I still think 45 is on very thin ice with these Intelligence agencies.

[The Blue Flower]

6. Under threat of a purge, the agencies aren't going to passively

This won't end well for the admin.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Only A Metaphor

But, going mano a mano with folks who fill their pens with sarin is a pretty dumb idea.

[JTFrog]

9. One of his advisers? The CEO of the corrupt neocon controlled wall street hedge fund criminals?

The men of the private equity generation want no such thing. "We try to hide religiously," explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. "If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person," Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. "We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829?page=4

Old DU has lots of info about their ties to the Bush family, KBR, Rumsfeld and many, many crimes.

If anyone belongs in jail it's him and his boss.

[dalton99a]

11. Feinberg is a street thug.

[JTFrog]

12. Donny has been purposely stacking the deck for a while now. nt

[angstlessk]

10. Would he need some sort of classified determination?

Investigating our spy agencies without classification?

[sunonmars]

13. What the hell would this guy know of spywork or intelligence, they would eat him alive.

[Tanuki]

14. A must-read about Feinberg:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/a-billionaires-dreams-of-creating-a-guns-empire.html

[MineralMan]

15. How would this "ally" do that?

He'll never get in the door at any of the intelligence agencies. It's a cosmically stupid idea.

[Kentonio]

16. It's strange though, although obviously in this case it would be a horrible idea

Having one of Trump's puppets trying to neuter internal dissent, it does worry me that I don't trust any elected President would be able to reign in the intelligence agencies. That's scary.

[MineralMan]

17. Well, the agencies to tend to operate almost independently.

However, the information they gather is important in many cases. Presidents need to make friends in those agencies, rather than enemies. The accuracy and completeness of the information Presidents need is crucial.

An intelligence agency can provide or withhold classified information as they choose. Most intelligence information used by Presidents is in the form of analyses of a great deal of raw information. What is revealed in an analysis isn't the raw information but an overview of what information has been gathered.

No other strategy would be useful to a President, who needs to make decisions based on judgment. Analysis of raw intelligence information is fairly complicated, really, since information is never complete. The analysis is based on lots of partial information and is done by people who have been studying intelligence data about a particular target for a long time.

Assembling fragmentary information into a report that can be understood by someone without much knowledge isn't easy. It's also subject to some level of error. No President has the capability of gathering and evaluating information and understanding what that information means.

That's why we have intelligence agencies. Decisions are made based on their analyses of situation. Presidents need to develop good relationships with those agencies and earn their trust. If a President doesn't do that, the quality of the information he or she will receive will be limited.

Is that how things should be? Maybe not, but it's how things are.

[Kentonio]

18. It's certainly how things are.

But things like 'An intelligence agency can provide or withhold classified information as they choose' should be absolutely unacceptable in a democratic society. They are supposed to be public servants, not kings of their own secretive realms.

[MineralMan]

19. Here's the thing:

Intelligence agencies have lots of secrets. That's the nature of what they do. So, transparency and public accountability are not compatible with the mission they have. Most people really have no idea of what intelligence agencies actually do, how they operate, or what resources they use. That information, if publicly available, would make their work impossible.

That's why things are as they are. Do those agencies overstep their boundaries? No doubt they do. Do they keep information secret, even from government leadership? Yes they do, at times. For example, Donald Trump has a weird, dependent relationship with Vladimir Putin. Since intelligence agencies think beyond individual administrations, they may well conceal sources, etc. from Trump, to protect their own assets.

Surprising as it seems, even the appointed leaders of those intelligence agencies often do not have complete knowledge of what the agencies are doing and how they are acquiring information. Appointed leaders are short-term directors. Often, they have political aspirations and allegiances that are short-term and not necessarily trustworthy. So, they often don't actually have access to intelligence collection details and other information.

Yes, they are working in the public interest, or are supposed to be, but that public interest depends on factors that may not be compatible with collecting intelligence information. The "public interest" is quite variable and the public is not uniform. Intelligence gathering is a continuing thing, and is not effective if methods and sources are known.

Do we need this kind of intelligence operations? Yes, at least to some degree. We do need to know what is going on behind the scenes internationally, since not all nations are allies, nor are our allies always focused on our particular best interests. Do we need to know, for example, what percentage of military aircraft at a particular base in some country are capable of operation? Yes, in fact, we do need to know that information, often even about our allies. So, we have intelligence gathering, both about our enemies and our allies.

In international diplomacy, everyone pretends not to have an interest in such details about other nations. However, all nations collect intelligence about other nations. That's the balance that is maintained, known, and understood. Inteliigence agencies keep many things to themselves. They could not operate if they did otherwise.

It's a complicated world out there. That world needs information. So, there are intelligence agencies collecting it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

20. Falls in with Trump logic

He has a brain surgeon run a housing authority. After all he lives in a house.

An Education Secretary who's anti-public education.

An EPA director who's okay with lessening environmental protections.

So to have a billionaire with no intelligence experience review intelligence agencies is standard operating procedure for Trump.