Tag Archives: CIA

Last night Rachel Maddow called Donald Trump an outright liar over and over again. It was a beautiful thing. Mediaite recaps: What really got the MSNBC host’s blood boiling is that it was apparent that “our new president will flat out lie to us.” Her basis for that statement was over Trump’s declaration following the meeting that Russian efforts to …

The Hill reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a widespread influence campaign intended to help elect Donald Trump, the Intelligence Community (IC) said in a declassified report released Friday afternoon. “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian …

The Hill reports: A lawsuit has been filed against the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking records pertaining to Russia’s interference in the presidential election. Journalist Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro, a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District …

The Washington Post reports: FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. have backed a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials. Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement …

From Michael Moore’s Facebook page: A week has gone by since Donald Trump admitted he’s only been to “two or three” of his daily presidential national security briefings. There have been 36 of them since the day he secured enough electoral college votes to be appointed president next Monday when the Electoral College meets. Most would agree the #1 job …

The Hill reports: Russia interfered in the U.S. elections to get revenge against Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. ambassador to the Kremlin said Sunday. Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Donald Trump win the presidency to hurt Clinton. “Let’s remember that Vladimir …

The Hill reports: Donald Trump aide Kellyanne Conway on Sunday said the president-elect “absolutely respects” the intelligence community. “He’s made very clear he’s going to put his own people in there as well,” she added on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” Conway noted that Trump has said the notion that Russia intervened in the election to help him win the presidency …

Politico reports: President-elect Donald Trump called reports that the Russian government endeavored to help him win last month’s presidential election “ridiculous” and “just another excuse” in an interview that aired Sunday morning, once again questioning the intelligence community he will take charge of when he is inaugurated next month. Trump told “Fox News Sunday” that he suspected that Democrats are …

The Washington Post reports: At some point, perhaps as early as next week, federal agents will sit down with Donald Trump and tell him classified information about the government and our foreign-policy efforts. For Democrats, this is a point of both anguish and political calculation. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid has suggested that Trump’s murky ties to foreign interests …

NBC News reports: CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News in an exclusive interview that his agency will not engage in harsh “enhanced interrogation” practices, including waterboarding, which critics call torture — even if ordered to by a future president. “I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I’ve heard bandied about because this institution …

Fox News terrorism analyst Wayne Simmons has been charged with fraud for falsely claiming to be a former CIA agent. Via the Daily Mail: Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, pretended to be an ‘Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer’ for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 2000, the US Attorney’s Office for Virginia’s Eastern District said in a statement released …

From the editorial board of the New York Times: Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could …

In other words, Fischer endorses “rectal feeding.”

From the New York Times: The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible decision President Obama made at the outset of his administration to close the books on this chapter in our history, even as he repudiated the use of torture. The C.I.A. officials who destroyed videotapes of waterboarding were left …

Via the New York Times: A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to …