Plus it’s actually really hard to set up a completely independent spy ring from scratch.
Now a cynic might say that letting private contractors take over part of the existing spy organisations’ activities overseas, say in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a good way of letting them have the time and experience building up that sort of capability…
H.R. McMaster, in coordination with a top official at the National Security Agency, authorized surveillance of Steven Bannon and Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
I think this would be illegal. NSA is tasked with collecting intelligence from foreign nationals. As part of its mission it is allowed in some circumstances to intercept conversations of U.S. citizens, but not to target them for surveillance.
As for CIA neutralizing members of the “deep state,” presumably also Americans: this sounds like an Alex Jones story. I tend to doubt it, without more evidence. Again, CIA has certainly done this sort of thing, rather recently even, but there is a big difference between spiriting away a foreign national and a U.S. citizen. The CIA has mostly escaped legal accountability for doing the former. But if U.S. citizens are targeted in this way, I believe this would be a criminal act, and would add another set of legal liabilities to the ones the President is probably on the hook for already.
Addition: it is worth remembering that one of the things that got Nixon in trouble was using ex-CIA guys (the Watergate burglers) to target political enemies.
Worth pointing out that the founder of Blackwater, Eric Prince, is the brother of Betsy DeVos.
We all know how Trump likes to keep things in the family.
“Deep state” here means experienced civil servants who are too professional to bring politics into their work. You think the real Illuminati just call up Donald Trump and identify themselves?
What is this going to be, a right wing fascist version of Hasbro’s GI Joe?
The good news for you is that they will most likely just pick a few people seemingly at random to make an example of. They need New York and California to keep functioning.
Well it was a good run dear old USA… Every day the news makes me think it is going to be so so long to dig out of this mess.
Ah, but what Trump may not realize is that he could only pardon US federal convictions. A lot of shenanigans are crimes in other jurisdictions. Murder would be a local charge in most cases, for example. It seems like Mueller is setting things up so that even if Trump starts waving his pardon wand, most of his crew would still be on the hook for state charges in New York, home of finance, meetings, and odd servers. I think that the US Attorney for New York had long been investigating Trump-related financial dealings that got him (and all the other US Attorneys) fired; I’d be astonished if those records hadn’t ended up in the hands of Mueller and the NY State Attorney General.
Can you clarify which members of Trump’s administration or the various Bush/Obama era mercenary groups they’ve met with you are talking about?
In many conservative circles, North is regarded as a hero that followed orders and helped to rid Central America of commie influencers.
I wonder how many people have caused trump some kind of displeasure and then disappeared or died unexpectedly. It isn’t at all hard to believe that trump would have people killed for getting in his way. There isn’t the first shred of human decency or moral restraint in him. His survivor instinct will make certain that nothing messy will lead back to him for a while longer but once he’s comfortable in his power, watch out. He’ll change from the restraint of, “lock her up” to kill her, or him. He is the epitome of evil incarnate and running unchecked. Perhaps his only weakness is his pathetic need for praise and adoration. I fear for us, we have loosened our own destruction.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Trump would be trying to roll out Deathsquads.
I doubt it. They’re lazy, they lack imagination, and they already have their liberal Jew billionaire with an accent.
Erik Prince has already created his own private army, and is busy building a private air force. Why wouldn’t he set up parallel info ops in complement?
Jeremy Scahill is perhaps the foremost expert reporter on Blackwater, and has been writing on Prince and his activities for over a decade (winning awards for that work in the process.)
So we have two scenarios here:
A) Crazy-Ass Turnip and his merry band of psychotic assholes create parallel spy org
or
B) Investigative journalist with a 15 year run of internationally recognized work trashes his reputation with some completely made up nonsense.
Call me nuts, but I’m going with A.
I read the article and it doesn’t seem far-fetched at all considering Erik Prince’s predilections… He desperately wants to unleash a private, extralegal mercenary force and Trumpkins is his best bet to date. Particularly interesting is the suggestion that these meetings were done under the cover of meeting to discuss privatizing the Afghanistan war.
The only skepticism I have is why sources with knowledge of any such meetings would want to talk to the Intercept, a publication that exists to destroy Prince (A worthy goal IMO)… Shit that dirty should be kept in the smallest circle, presumably of Prince/Trump loyalists… Incompetence is the only way it makes sense, else there’s someone with a super-active imagination looking to discredit the Intercept. I doubt that angle though, because this isn’t the type of story that can easily and neatly be debunked and thrown back in their face to score a point against “fake news”…
That argument work so well for Richard Nixon.
And he did the same thing.
Remind me, how did that work out for Nixon?
Star Trek: Discovery
During the campaign he was asked about Putin’s habit for same. Instead of responding with something like “I don’t believe those allegations” or “we Americans must strive to uphold the rule of law even when others don’t,” his answer was “You think our country is so innocent?”
While we’d have to be naive to believe that the Executive branch hasn’t engaged in clandestine extrajudicial killings, this may be the first President who publicly embraced the idea of murdering one’s political enemies before he even took office.
wikipedia:
"The Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893 (5 U.S.C. § 3108) forbade the U.S. government from using Pinkerton National Detective Agency employees, or similar private police companies. In 1977, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit interpreted this statute as forbidding the U.S. government from employing companies offering “mercenary, quasi-military forces” for hire (United States ex rel. Weinberger v. Equifax, 557 F.2d 456, 462 (5th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1035 (1978)). There is a disagreement over whether or not this proscription is limited to the use of such forces as strikebreakers, because it is stated thus:
The purpose of the Act and the legislative history reveal that an organization
was “similar” to the Pinkerton Detective Agency only if it offered for hire mercenary,
quasi-military forces as strikebreakers and armed guards. It had the secondary
effect of deterring any other organization from providing such services lest it be
branded a “similar organization.” The legislative history supports this view
and no other."
