The Robert Mueller Investigation

[jimmyjazz 47397]

4 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Far from insane.  But my training and exposure to serious mental illness has more than equipped me adequately for the cloak room. 

You've been trained how to spot your own mental illness?  That's interesting.

[Anastasis 23727]

3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

You've been trained how to spot your own mental illness?  That's interesting.

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Anastasis

[jimmyjazz 47397]

Can't see shit. What's your point?

[WhatTheBuck 28958]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

Anastasis reminds me of Blithe in Band of Brothers. Hiding in a ditch of FISA terror because he doesn’t realize he’s already dead. 

Blithe was also an incorrectly reported story. 

[Anastasis 23727]

7 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Can't see shit. What's your point?

 

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Anastasis

[Anastasis 23727]

  

On 12/12/2019 at 8:52 AM, Anastasis said:

I think this makes a point worth considering. If we grant the OIG his conclusion, that he could not establish political bias based on an evidentiary or testimonial basis, the problem may be in fact much much worse. Not for DJT of course, who's rhetoric on the topic is driven only by his pathological narcissism and has been counterproductive providing cover for people who only want to deflect. But for all the rest of us, it's a different story.  Because if this case does not represent an acute failure driven by the expression of political bias, it very likely represents an institutional bias, as John Goldsmith of Lawfare has put it. Not an institutional political bias, but a finger on the scale leading the process to systematically perverse results. In reality, political bias in the process would be a much easier problem to address.  What we may be (are likely, imo) looking at, rather, is a foundational and systematic problem not easily resolved without wholesale reform.  The audit proposed by the OIG will provide insight, if it actually ever sees light of day. 

More along this vein. 

 

https://www.cato.org/blog/diagnosing-fbi-failures-inspector-generals-fisa-report

Diagnosing the FBI Failures in the Inspector General’s FISA Report

By Julian Sanchez

 

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowtiz's long-awaited report on "Crossfire Hurricane"—the FBI's investigation of potential links between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign—has finally been released.

Like most news developments in our polarized age, the report is being spun in diametrically opposed ways by political partisans, as evidenced by the questions at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the report. Both of these narratives, unfortunately, get it wrong in fundamental ways.

For many Democrats and other Trump critics, the main takeaway from the Horowitz Report has been that, despite some "irregularities" or "missteps" by the FBI, the report doesn't support Trump or his allies' claims about a "Deep State Coup" that ginned up a phony investigation to damage the Trump administration. Former FBI Director James Comey even treated the report as a vindication of the Bureau's conduct during his tenure.

For many Republicans, the fact that some of the officials involved in a grossly flawed investigation of former Trump advisor Carter Page also had strongly negative views of Trump is all that's needed to validate the view that the myriad serious failures Horowitz documents show "political abuse" motivated by partisan bias and a desire to "get Trump" at any cost. Both of these reads, I think, fundamentally misunderstand the real problems Horowitz exposed.

I've already done a lengthy analysis of the report's central findings in a post over at Just Security, which I won't try to exhaustively replicate here, but here are the core problems with these two accounts.

The "vindication" narrative makes this story—like every other story these days, it seems—essentially Trump-centric, so that the most important fact about the report is whether it agrees with or contradicts various outlandish things Trump has said.

If that's your primary concern, then that narrative is mostly correct within its myopic domain: The report does not bear out, and in crucial respects is at odds with, Trump's conspiratorial account of the investigation as part of some elaborate coup plot.

But as Charlie Savage rightly notes, this focus sidelines and trivializes the central findings of the report seen on its own terms: An appalling, systematic series of failures by the FBI that led to intrusive surveillance of an American citizen for nearly a year, when it should have been amply been clear by the time the first of three renewal applications was submitted that the original grounds for that surveillance were profoundly flawed.

The "political bias" narrative, though, ultimately makes an inverted version of the same error, insisting on seeing the facts Horowitz documents primarily (or exclusively) through the lens of partisan conflict: Pro-Trump, or anti-Trump? While it's certainly possible that hostility to Trump played some role in misjudgments by individual officials, this doesn't fit the facts on the whole well either.

It may be part of the story, but it is unlikely to be the most important part. This misdiagnosis matters, because if you think the problems Horowitz identifies are the function of "a few bad actors" misusing the process for reasons specific to the politically sensitive nature of the investigation, then however egregious the problems documented in the report, they don't add up to a case for systemic reform:

You just need to fire (and maybe even prosecute) the specific bad actors, and perhaps add some more robust safeguards for the very tiny fraction of investigations that touch on domestic politics.  

Here, I think is a more accurate account of what the report shows us. In the summer of 2016, against the backdrop of an elaborate and multi-pronged campaign of election interference by the Russian government, the FBI gets (accurate) intelligence from an allied government, Australia's, suggesting that a Russian cutout has approached at least one Trump campaign staffer with what sounds like an offer of assistance.

They appropriately open a broad investigation into whether there are more extensive ties between the campaign and the Russian election operation. The probe quickly focuses on four campaign officials with links to Russia, among them foreign policy advisor Carter Page, who is already the subject of a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI's New York field office, for reasons unrelated to the presidential campaign.

FISA surveillance on two of the four is contemplated, but initially rejected for lack of more concrete evidence. Then investigators get wind of research by a former British intelligence officer suggesting Page is acting as a liaison between the campaign and the Russian government. This becomes the critical piece of additional evidence that justifies an initial FISA surveillance application filed in late October.

Horowitz identifies some omissions and questionable characterizations in that initial filing, but none that seem fatal to that first application given the relatively low bar "probable cause" establishes in practice and the limited information available to investigators at the time.

While it's impossible to know for certain, I believe an initial application free of those defects would still have been approved by the FISC. The Court had already authorized FISA surveillance of Page for reasons unrelated to presidential politics a few years earlier, and former FBI General Counsel. James Baker, who had been working FISA cases since the 1990s, told Horowitz he believed a warrant could have been obtained even without any of Steele's information. The most glaring problems, in short, come later.

As Horowitz explains, several features of that first application that many observers have understandably found shocking are, by the permissive standards of FISA, not inherently considered "problems" at all—they are how FISA routinely operates.

Most obviously, the application relied critically on a single source, and FBI's assessment that the source was credible, notwithstanding facts would suggest a potential bias or agenda—Steele had been indirectly commissioned by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump—and even though the FBI had not yet attempted to independently corroborate Steele's key claims.  

But as Horowitz observes, these are not unusual features of a counterintelligence investigation. Intelligence sources—who may include foreign spies or even terrorists—often have agendas, ulterior motives, or axes to grind, and often provide information there is no easy way to directly check. As numerous officials told Horowitz, "the fact that the source information in the FISA application had not yet been corroborated was not unusual in the FISA context."

Such information is usable as long as the FISC is provided with necessary context and caveats. Thus, at the urging of DOJ attorneys, the application includes an acknowledgement that Steele has been commissioned to conduct opposition research by opponents of the unnamed political candidate Page had been advising.

The "opponents" are not specifically identified as the Democratic National Committee, but this doesn't appear to have been known to investigators at the time, and the general practice in FISA applications is in any event to obfuscate the names of U.S. persons and groups that are not investigative targets. Trump is referenced only as "Candidate 1" and even the names news outlets in which published articles appeared are omitted. 

Similarly, Horowitz explains that nothing in the law or FBI policy requires independent corroboration of information presented in a FISA application. Since any such corroboration would itself have been included in the application, it would have been clear to the FISC that many of the FBI's crucial assertions hung entirely on their confidence in Steele.

It's with the renewals that—again, at least by the permissive standards of FISA surveillance—the FBI's lapses become truly egregious. During the 90 day span of the initial order, the FBI obtains a lot of additional information. They identify and interview Steele's "primary sub-source" and find that his account conflicts with Steele's reporting in some respects.

The source characterizes as gossip or rumor many of the claims Steele has reported without any such qualification. A formal source review finds that some of Steele's former intelligence colleagues question his judgment, and that while Steele had provided some useful information for previous investigations, much of it was never independently confirmed.

Review of Page's older electronic communications finds minimal contact with campaign chair Paul Manafort, though on Steele's account Page is supposedly acting as an intermediary between Manafort and the Russian government.

By January it should be clear that, at best, many critical claims at the heart of the initial FISA applications require context or qualification; others are simply wrong. None of this makes it into the subsequent renewal applications.

Perhaps the most egregious misconduct occurs in the summer of 2017, when an FBI attorney working on the third and final renewal application alters an e-mail from a CIA colleague, inserting a false denial that Page had been a CIA source as late as 2013, and provided the agency with information about his contacts with Russian intelligence officers.

The attorney had expressed dismay at the prospect of having to write a "terrible footnote" apprising the FISA Court that such a potentially salient fact was only at this late date being brought to their attention.  

By time of the final renewal in June, the FBI's submissions to the FISC are not merely flawed; they are profoundly misleading, an outrageous dereliction of the Bureau's duty of candor to the Court. Anyone who claims the Horowitz report as a vindication of the FBI is smoking something.

So what happened? The most conspiratorial version of the "political bias" explanation—the notion that the FBI's failures represented a conscious plot against Trump—seems fairly easy to dismiss.

Perhaps the most obvious problem with it is simply that there's just no coherent story on which the protracted surveillance of a peripheral former aide—almost all of it occurring after the presidential election—makes sense as part of a strategy to undermine the new administration.

Nor do the details fit this narrative well: The most serious defects in the renewal applications, for instance, are omissions by case agents that were unknown to the senior officials who reviewed them—a pattern inconsistent with the idea of a vendetta against Trump driven by the Obama-appointed leadership.  

Instead of dwelling on the countless ways the conspiracy version doesn't add up, let's consider the more plausible variant of a "political bias" explanation on which FBI and DOJ officials' hostility to Trump distorted their judgment, making them too eager to believe the worst of him and his associates, and too willing to overlook facts that contradicted their worst case scenario.  

Again, this can't be ruled out as at least a partial explanation, but there's very little in the report that suggests it, and a fair amount that cuts against it.  

The case for supposing political animus was a major factor rests largely on the now-notorious text messages in which Peter Strzok, who played a supervisory role in the early phases of the Page investigation, excoriates Trump and expresses a desire to "stop" him.  

But by the time the most egregious omissions and misrepresentations occurred, Strzok was no longer part of the investigation's chain of command, and even during the earlier phases, was not the one actually drafting FISA applications. Nor does the report depict him as determined to push the limits at any cost: He agreed with other attorneys, for example, that there were insufficient grounds to seek FISA monitoring of another campaign staffer, which the investigative team had proposed.  

In any event, as Horowitz explains, "Strzok was not the the primary or sole decision maker on any investigative step in Crossfire Hurricane," and doesn't seem to have been personally responsible for any of the individual problems Horowitz documents. 
 
Moreover, the initial Page FISA application, at least, was subject to scrutiny and review by an unusual number of attorneys. Strzok's bias, in other words, cannot explain the actions of all the other case agents and attorney involved in preparing the application.

Is there evidence that all of them—or at least enough of them—shared his attitude?  Horowitz reviewed an enormous number of e-mails, texts, and instant messages sent by team members and found very little.  

The attorney in the general counsel's office responsible for perhaps the most egregious violation Horowitz found—altering an e-mail to falsely say Page had not been a CIA source, which affected the final FISA renewal application—expressed extreme dismay at Trump's election and identified himself with the "resistance."  

Otherwise, however, while Horowitz notes that his office identified a "small number of text messages and instant messages...  in which FBI employees involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation discussed political issues and candidates," these "did not raise significant questions of potential bias or improper motivation." 

It's also worth noting that the counterintelligence investigation of Page was actually opened months prior to the launching of the Crossfire Hurricane probe, by the FBI's notoriously Trump-friendly New York Field Office, for reasons predating his involvement with the Trump campaign.

One reason the investigation focused so intently on Page even before the Steele information was that agents in the New York office had suspicions about his interactions with Russian intelligence officers before he was publicly identified as Trump advisor.  

In sum, the initial interest in Page can't have been motivated by political bias, because it predated Page's role with the Trump campaign. And if we turn to the later omissions and misrepresentations to the FISA Court, only in one instance do we find evidence of strong political bias against Trump by the person most directly responsible.  

That seems insufficient to account for the broader pattern Horowitz found.  While, again, it can't be ruled out as a factor, it's not an explanation that gets much support from Horowitz's findings.

Why does that matter?  Because if there's no reason to believe that the defects in the Carter Page FISA process were unique byproducts of anti-Trump bias by the officials involved, there's also no reason to believe failures of this sort are limited to this investigation.

Indeed, to the extent the Horowitz Report does suggest explanations, they point to more general features of FISA investigations.

For instance, consider what officials involved in reviewing some of the later applications told Horowitz about why they failed to identify problems.  At least one said that, in general, review of renewal applications was limited to new claims added since the last submission to the Court.  

Assertions from previous applications were, in other words, often copied and pasted without being revisited to determine whether they were still supported by the available information.  

Another reviewer explains that claims derived form source interviews were "checked" by searching for specific language included in the application to confirm a match—meaning reviewers would not be likely to notice when other portions of the interview contradicted claims in the application, or suggested a need for qualification.  

There are also indications in the report that the way agents thought about the justification of continuing FISA surveillance was disconnected from the initial showing to the court in a subtle but important way.  

In a criminal inquiry, the purpose of the investigation—obtaining evidence of a crime that can be prosecuted—aligns closely with the showing investigators must make to a court before obtaining a wiretap order: probable cause to believe the will obtain evidence of a crime.

For a FISA order, however, the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information is much less tightly connected to the showing that must be made to the court: That the target is (knowingly, in the case of U.S. persons) acting as an agent of a foreign power.

A FISA wiretap might well be regarded as "productive" or "successful" in the sense of yielding information that qualifies as useful foreign intelligence without in any way actually supporting the initial claim that the target is a foreign agent.  

After the initial approval, in other words, agents shift from thinking in terms of whether new information supports the original claim that the target is a foreign agent, and instead focus primarily on whether an intercept is producing foreign intelligence.  

The simplest explanation for what went wrong here, however, is probably also the most universal: Human beings are subject to confirmation bias. We form theories or beliefs, and then as we gather new information, we tend focus on the data points that support our original theory and ignore or explain away the data points that contradict it.

That's a primary reason we have warrants evaluated by independent magistrates in the first place: Investigators necessarily form hypotheses and then attempt to prove them, in the process becoming less able to assess whether they've done so successfully.

Prosecutors in criminal cases, at least, have a countervailing incentive to think about exculpatory evidence: They know it will count against them if they've failed to identify it when their target's defense attorney is given an opportunity to go over the record.  But foreign intelligence surveillance isn't supposed to yield criminal charges or trials in the vast majority of cases.

Which means intelligence investigations lack the corresponding prospect of getting your knuckles rapped for failing to identify exculpatory evidence. Those are perfect circumstances for confirmation bias to run amok, and that fits what happened here.  

Most of the serious defects in the Page application aren't instances of telling the court something clearly false, but of failing to identify and report information that doesn't fit the affiant's theory of the case.   

In one sense, a story where Horowitz's disturbing catalog of failures, omissions, and misrepresentations can be attributed to "political bias" is comforting. Very few FISA applications involve major political campaigns, so if these problems arose from partisan animosity, we can suppose we would not find a similarly dismaying catalogue in other cases.

If we don't assume the problems here must be symptoms of political bias—and on the evidence here, it really would have to be nothing more than an assumption—there's the obvious and disconcerting possibility that you'd find similar patterns in many cases if you began turning over rocks.

Yet as Horowitz himself noted at the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing, this is in fact the first time his office has delved so deeply into the progress of a specific FISA order.

In response to a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn about whether such mistakes were an unusual occurrence, Horowitz had to admit that he simply didn't know.  Perhaps we ought to find out.  

[wildcat09 29622]

6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

  

More along this vein. 

 

https://www.cato.org/blog/diagnosing-fbi-failures-inspector-generals-fisa-report

Diagnosing the FBI Failures in the Inspector General’s FISA Report

By Julian Sanchez

 

 

Enormous improvement on a WSJ op-ed. Post more like this and less "hearsay in a warrant application!" hysteria and your concerns would come across as genuine rather than a constant attempt to deflect from the fact that Trump is an obvious Russian asset and that his campaign was barely disguising its attempts to coordinate with Russia. None of us are OK with a FISA process that gives the FBI carte blanche to spy on Americans. It's just that we're much more concerned at the moment with the fact that the President is a Russian agent and a fascist who doesn't give even 1/10th of 1% of a fuck about respecting any rules or restraints on his power than the fact that the FBI did some shit that while shady is wholly ordinary for them while investigating his campaign.

Our point in this argument is pretty straightforward: who gives a fuck about FISA rules when the President is 90% done with his mission to replace everyone who cares about rules with toadies who will follow any order and actually took their jobs with the intention of abusing power to harm their political opponents? If you're hyperfocused on the former while you completely ignore the latter, well we're going to draw some reasonable conclusions from that fact. This is the national politics version of the planet being on fire while assholes only worry about what any impact to mitigate that will have on their beef supply.

[Anastasis 23727]

27 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Post more like this and less "hearsay in a warrant application!" hysteria

Oh, shocking. Wildcat09 is being intellectually dishonest.

We've already been around the block in terms of being able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. 

March 20 renewals come up for three FISA and Patriot related authorizations. We should rally a bipartisan effort to correct the problems while the iron is hot. Or we can just do like we did after the Snowden revelations, let things to fade into the recesses of the public attention span, and maybe brush up against the edges. Barring a CV event, Orange Man ain't going anywhere until Jan 2021. This notion that we literally do nothing else politically in the mean time is dumb, esp when dealing with provisions that term out and are up for renewal.    

Edited December 16, 2019 by Anastasis

[BLKNSTY 290]

We should rally a bipartisan effort to correct the problems while the iron is hot.

 

You moan and moan and moan like a fucking whore in heat about the FISA shit and honestly, if the Dems manipulated the FISA court to spy on Trump, good. Team Red vs Team Blue, and we need a fucking win. At least I can be honest about that.

 

You’ve picked your side. 1/3 people on your team are full-blown fascist Nazis, 1/3 are literally retarded with a superiority complex that only rivals your own. Embrace your team Ana, you fit right in. Just fucking come out and say it, you’re voting for Trump cause you want your team to win.

 

[Anastasis 23727]

3 hours ago, BLKNSTY said:

honestly, if the Dems manipulated the FISA court to spy on Trump, good. Team Red vs Team Blue, and we need a fucking win. At least I can be honest about that.

Yes, I suspect that this is a common, but typically unstated, perspective among some here. Some posters like to hide behind deflection and this notion that we can't do anything but fixate on Orange Man, but the reality is that they just don't care precisely because of Orange Man.  I suspect some, like you, really deep down would celebrate it because Yea Team! I do appreciate that you are at least honest enough to say it out loud. 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Anastasis

[DDD Dad 14675]

3 hours ago, BLKNSTY said:

honestly, if the Dems manipulated the FISA court to spy on Trump, good. Team Red vs Team Blue, and we need a fucking win. At least I can be honest about that.

No.  Not good.  This is not about team over country.  It's about whether we are going to have a country based on laws or based on raw power, whether the government is representative of its population while protecting minorities from mob rule.

Quote

You’ve picked your side. 1/3 people on your team are full-blown fascist Nazis, 1/3 are literally retarded with a superiority complex that only rivals your own. Embrace your team Ana, you fit right in. Just fucking come out and say it, you’re voting for Trump cause you want your team to win.

I don't get this whole "Anastasis is a Trump supporter" vibe that many post here.  I get it that he trolls us with some HSO's, but he's been consistent on the FISA abuses, FWIW.  I agree with Wildcat on this, though:

Quote

Our point in this argument is pretty straightforward: who gives a fuck about FISA rules when the President is 90% done with his mission to replace everyone who cares about rules with toadies who will follow any order and actually took their jobs with the intention of abusing power to harm their political opponents? If you're hyperfocused on the former while you completely ignore the latter, well we're going to draw some reasonable conclusions from that fact. This is the national politics version of the planet being on fire while assholes only worry about what any impact to mitigate that will have on their beef supply.

I still give a fuck about the FISA rules, but I also agree that there are some far more pressing and urgent issues that threaten the very basis of our republic, or at least what may be left of it.

 

I'll be on the ledge with Brisket while you all figure out how to fix the FISA issue.  I'm sure it will be critically important during Trump's fourth term.

[jimmyjazz 47397]

Let's be very clear:  Anastasis "cares" more about FISA procedural issues than he cares about the Republic going to hell in a hand basket.

The way I see it, we're at war.  Fuck the right.  Anastasis sides with the right -- he's on the wrong side of history.  Fuck his perspective, fuck his "outrage".

Is that clear?

[ndawg 1242]

Everyone remember: if you find yourself perseverating over FISA warrants for more than three hours, consult your doctor.

[BLKNSTY 290]

Fuck his perspective, fuck his "outrage".
Is that clear?

And it’s soooooff-base too. You wanna get all righteous about the fucking FISA Court, put that shit at the feet of the Patriot Act. But nooo, Comey and Brennan.

[JimmyJames 12271]

4 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Oh, shocking. Wildcat09 is being intellectually dishonest.

We've already been around the block in terms of being able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. 

March 20 renewals come up for three FISA and Patriot related authorizations. We should rally a bipartisan effort to correct the problems while the iron is hot. Or we can just do like we did after the Snowden revelations, let things to fade into the recesses of the public attention span, and maybe brush up against the edges. Barring a CV event, Orange Man ain't going anywhere until Jan 2021. This notion that we literally do nothing else politically in the mean time is dumb, esp when dealing with provisions that term out and are up for renewal.    

How is pointing out something stupid you said about warrants based on hearsay  “intellectually dishonest?”

Would your response be an example of “deflection,” or something else on your list? 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Seems like the Russian interference was the bigger intelligence failure than the FISA stuff. 

[Anastasis 23727]

15 minutes ago, ndawg said:

Everyone remember: if you find yourself perseverating over FISA warrants for more than three hours, consult your doctor.

Pesky time killers, like constitutional protections that are the fundamental basis for why our republic was established. 

[Anastasis 23727]

3 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

How is pointing out something stupid you said about warrants based on hearsay  “intellectually dishonest?”

Would your response be an example of “deflection,” or something else on your list? 

Yeah, JimmyDS2, you are going to have to quote to me exactly what you think that I said about warrants and hearsay.

[JimmyJames 12271]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Pesky time killers, like constitutional protections that are the fundamental basis for why our republic was established. 

Trump farts in your general direction with that. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

19 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Ouch.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/multiple-levels-of-hearsay-upon-hearsay-11576439564

‘Multiple Levels of Hearsay Upon Hearsay’

 

 

 

Here ya go bud. Deflect away. 

[Anastasis 23727]

Just now, JimmyJames said:

Here ya go bud. Deflect away. 

I quoted the title of the article I was linking you fucking clown. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

Just now, Anastasis said:

2 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

I quoted the title of the article I was linking you fucking clown. 

Ouch. 

[GW Hayduke 1957]

Solid opinion piece by Kamarck with Brookings.  She goes through the possible motives driving Trump's kowtowing relationship with Russia. 

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2019/12/13/why-trumps-tax-returns-are-so-important-this-week-in-impeachment/

[JimmyJames 12271]

An article most of us can’t read beyond the paywall. 

[Anastasis 23727]

1 minute ago, JimmyJames said:

An article most of us can’t read beyond the paywall. 

I put the entire text of the article in the quote block.  Which you clearly did not read. But please continue embarrassing yourself. 

[Spring Branch Horn 124]

On 12/14/2019 at 11:47 AM, Anastasis said:

Carter page is a total dipshit who has a hard time not drooling on himself for any period of time. Which every poster here should have been capable of assessing after 1 minute of watching him on TV. But a lot of people were willing to turn off their brains and buy into a fantastical conspiracy narrative where he was the lynch pin of the international conspiracy.  Because Orange Man. 

Agree with this.     Many of Trumps associates were pure dumbasses who could not find work.   No normal consultants were willing to cross the Republican Never Trumpers or the Democrats to work for him.   That is why he accepted this guys as volunteers or consultants

[triplehorn 2664]

41 minutes ago, Spring Branch Horn said:

Agree with this.     Many of Trumps associates were pure dumbasses who could not find work.   No normal consultants were willing to cross the Republican Never Trumpers or the Democrats to work for him.   That is why he accepted this guys as volunteers or consultants

You’re talking about losers who compensate for it using their only available option - the con within a con that crime pays.  Dotard out front should have told you.  

[JimmyJames 12271]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

I put the entire text of the article in the quote block.  Which you clearly did not read. But please continue embarrassing yourself. 

No I only read the extremely stupid title you cited of the article you quoted, given that the entire warrant application process is based on hearsay on hearsay. Or are you under the impression that multiple people are sworn in and testify in open court, just to get a warrant?

I did go ahead and read the article, which was ok, but no way am I going to get in another worthless debate with you on a tired subject where this entire board is very familiar with your take on the subject. 

[Anastasis 23727]

Beware. More opinion pieces incoming. This time from WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/it-should-be-disturbing-for-every-american-to-read-horowitzs-report/2019/12/16/0ba461da-2021-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html

It should be disturbing for every American to read Horowitz’s report

 

By 

Charles Lane 

Opinion writer

Dec. 16, 2019 at 3:41 p.m. CST

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act represents a characteristically American fix for a particular American problem.

Passed with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, FISA responded to what were then recent exposures of FBI and CIA civil-liberties violations. It did so by legislating a “probable cause” requirement for wiretaps or clandestine surveillance of suspected foreign agents or terrorists.

Before FISA, presidents claimed inherent executive authority to engage in such activities for national security. After FISA, the executive could still carry them out, but only with approval of federal judges serving temporarily on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a.k.a. the “FISA court” — and following a legal framework set by Congress. In short, FISA’s cure for a single-branch monopoly over secret government was more branches.

And so it is, or should be, disturbing to every American to read — in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s procurement of a FISA court warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — how poorly the four-decade-old FISA compromise protected a U.S. citizen’s civil liberties amid national and, indeed, international political tension.

Horowitz damned the FBI with faint praise, noting that it launched a counterintelligence investigation of Page and others after meeting the bureau’s very low evidentiary standard — an “articulable” factual basis to suspect he might be a Russian agent — and that it was not provably politically motivated.

Thereafter, his report — by far the most detailed public examination of FISA’s real-world functioning ever — ticks off one episode of FBI corner-cutting and fact-massaging after another, up to and including the conscious forging of evidence by an FBI lawyer.

Garbage went in to (unwitting) FISA judges, and garbage came out: surveillance warrants that might have been changed or denied altogether if the FBI had played it straight.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray promised swift action on the nine procedural and other recommendations in Horowitz’s report. Fine — but many violations that Horowitz identified occurred despite bureaucratic improvements in response to previous issues.

Also necessary, but not sufficient: individual accountability for misdeeds the inspector general’s report documented, along with Horowitz’s promised new review to see whether the Page case is exceptional or part of a broader pattern.

What we really need is more Horowitz.

Specifically, there should be permanent quality control, via mandatory random inspector general audits — as probing and public as Horowitz’s — of a certain share of FISA warrants on U.S. citizens or permanent residents each year.

The FISA court approved surveillance on 232 such “U.S. people” in 2018, according to the director of national intelligence. If those cases got the full Horowitz treatment at the same rate the Internal Revenue Service audited tax returns showing $1 million-plus in income in fiscal 2018 — 3.2 percent — there would have been seven public airings.

That should be enough to deter misconduct and negligence, but not so much as to chill aggressive counterintelligence.

Random audits don’t hinge on the naive notion that bureaucratic process can immunize an organization against a determined cheater.

Instead, they embody the adage “trust but verify,” as well as the equally wise “incentives influence behavior.”

They also beat another oft-proposed reform: a permanent “defense” lawyer, attached to the FISA court, to dispute FBI warrant applications. The FISA court itself already serves this function (or should). And what’s to prevent a new “repeat player” in the process from getting co-opted, over time?

Far too much time and energy have been wasted on trying to prove “bias,” as if anyone ever writes a memo declaring “I hereby cut corners because I want Donald Trump to lose.” The fact of secret government wrongdoing — especially affecting individual constitutional rights — is even more significant than the motivation for it.

Congress, the Justice Department, the FBI and the FISA court should focus on making it in everyone’s self-interest to follow the rules and analyze facts objectively, thus preserving the integrity, actual and perceived, of a process that, despite its flaws, is still vital to national security and more protective of civil liberties than what the United States had before 1978.

“Political bias” is far from a crystal-clear concept in any case. It can take the lofty form of a “higher loyalty,” whereby a G-man appoints himself Rule-Bender for the Republic (James B. Comey). Or it can take the crasser form of putting partisan spin on what are meant to be nonpartisan processes (William P. Barr).

In that regard, too, we need more Horowitz. In his investigations of highly contentious issues involving the FBI and President Trump, Horowitz has modeled old-fashioned impartiality, sticking to the proven facts and resisting repeated invitations by both Democrats and Republicans to refract them through their partisan lenses.

His work’s implicit but unmistakable message: The ends do not justify the means — and if you don’t believe it, look how much trouble people who think otherwise have gotten into.

Read more from Charles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

[JimmyJames 12271]

12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Beware. More opinion pieces incoming. This time from WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/it-should-be-disturbing-for-every-american-to-read-horowitzs-report/2019/12/16/0ba461da-2021-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html

It should be disturbing for every American to read Horowitz’s report

 

 

 

 

13 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Beware. More opinion pieces incoming. This time from WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/it-should-be-disturbing-for-every-american-to-read-horowitzs-report/2019/12/16/0ba461da-2021-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html

It should be disturbing for every American to read Horowitz’s report

 

 

 

That article doesn’t discuss anything about the imminent danger trump poses to our democracy and his attempt to declare himself a dictator/king. When are you going to start posting articles about that? Maybe just once?

[UpperWestside 6286]

8 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

 

That article doesn’t discuss anything about the imminent danger trump poses to our democracy and his attempt to declare himself a dictator/king. When are you going to start posting articles about that? Maybe just once?

Please quit arguing with a troll. Its brain is permanently stuck on FISA. I work with someone like this and they cannot take their focus off of one thing so I avoid them. This poster will just keep on keepin' on with their nonsense if you give it attention. 

Edited December 17, 2019 by UpperWestside

[Anastasis 23727]

20 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

Please quit arguing with a troll. Its brain is permanently stuck on FISA. I work with someone like this and they cannot take their focus off of one thing so I avoid them. This poster will just keep on keepin' on with their nonsense if you give it attention. 

Yeah, sorry for rubbing some of the dipshits around here noses in it after they called me a liar, a traitor, a trumpkin, and numerous other names for simply connecting obvious dots for them. My bad.  Much better if we leave the dialog around here to people huffing server fumes and dossier delusions and the like without any reality checks allowed. That is what some of you guys really want.   
 

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Anastasis

[ndawg 1242]

3 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Pesky time killers, like constitutional protections that are the fundamental basis for why our republic was established. 

Yeah you’re not getting it. Where we’re headed, Trump’s executive branch can just brazenly violate civil liberties.

[Cacti 191]

1 hour ago, JimmyJames said:

That article doesn’t discuss anything about the imminent danger trump poses to our democracy and his attempt to declare himself a dictator/king.

Nor does it discuss Trump’s imminent impeachment, or the length of Trump’s trousers, or anything else unrelated to Horowitz’s report. It’s an opinion piece narrowly focused on a report that claims the FBI—at least in this case—misled the FISA court.

As such, there should be no expectation from the ‘Surly-ledge crowd’ for the author to opine on anything other than the report.

[washparkhorn 9974]

History will look harshly on reactionary and regressive neoliberal Democrats embracing the authoritarian and totalitarian dismantling of civil liberties in the early 21st Century. They chose to partner with neoconservative Republicans and their disregard for individual liberties.

Some of you lost sight of the forest because of one orange bush. 

FISA and Patriot Act reform is necessary. Take the orange plank out of your eye. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Your keeping your step

In the line

Got your chin held high and you feel just fine 

Cause you do 

What you're told 

But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold 

Just how deep do you believe? 

Will you bite the hand that feeds? 

Will you chew until it bleeds? 

Can you get up off your knees? 

Are you brave enough to see? 

Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's

A charade

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

For the blood

On which we dine

Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?

So naive

You keep holding on to what you want to believe

You can see

But you keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

Will you stay down on your knees?

 

[Homercles 10206]

5 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

History will look harshly on reactionary and regressive neoliberal Democrats embracing the authoritarian and totalitarian dismantling of civil liberties in the early 21st Century. They chose to partner with neoconservative Republicans and their disregard for individual liberties.

Some of you lost sight of the forest because of one orange bush. 

FISA and Patriot Act reform is necessary. Take the orange plank out of your eye. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Your keeping your step

In the line

Got your chin held high and you feel just fine 

Cause you do 

What you're told 

But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold 

Just how deep do you believe? 

Will you bite the hand that feeds? 

Will you chew until it bleeds? 

Can you get up off your knees? 

Are you brave enough to see? 

Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's

A charade

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

For the blood

On which we dine

Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?

So naive

You keep holding on to what you want to believe

You can see

But you keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

Will you stay down on your knees?

 

This last post reminds me of the se...severely long story 

 

[David Dennison 19574]

6 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

History will look harshly on reactionary and regressive neoliberal Democrats embracing the authoritarian and totalitarian dismantling of civil liberties in the early 21st Century. They chose to partner with neoconservative Republicans and their disregard for individual liberties.

Some of you lost sight of the forest because of one orange bush. 

FISA and Patriot Act reform is necessary. Take the orange plank out of your eye. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Your keeping your step

In the line

Got your chin held high and you feel just fine 

Cause you do 

What you're told 

But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold 

Just how deep do you believe? 

Will you bite the hand that feeds? 

Will you chew until it bleeds? 

Can you get up off your knees? 

Are you brave enough to see? 

Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's

A charade

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

For the blood

On which we dine

Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?

So naive

You keep holding on to what you want to believe

You can see

But you keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

Will you stay down on your knees?

 

Osama bin Laden did a lot of damage to this country on 9/11. 

[GRHorn 105]

6 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

History will look harshly on reactionary and regressive neoliberal Democrats embracing the authoritarian and totalitarian dismantling of civil liberties in the early 21st Century. They chose to partner with neoconservative Republicans and their disregard for individual liberties.

Some of you lost sight of the forest because of one orange bush. 

FISA and Patriot Act reform is necessary. Take the orange plank out of your eye. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Your keeping your step

In the line

Got your chin held high and you feel just fine 

Cause you do 

What you're told 

But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold 

Just how deep do you believe? 

Will you bite the hand that feeds? 

Will you chew until it bleeds? 

Can you get up off your knees? 

Are you brave enough to see? 

Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's

A charade

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

For the blood

On which we dine

Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?

So naive

You keep holding on to what you want to believe

You can see

But you keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

Will you stay down on your knees?

 

I’m also a big fan of their Stanning for the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community. Especially its humble former servants/leaders. 
MoAR BrENnaN aNd COmEy TwEeTs plZ

[washparkhorn 9974]

Quote

That an entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing.

These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/03/veteran-nbcmsnbc-journalist-blasts-the-network-for-being-captive-to-the-national-security-state-and-reflexively-pro-war-to-stop-trump/ -long read in the dumbed-down age of tweets, but worth it.

 

[washparkhorn 9974]

32 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Osama bin Laden did a lot of damage to this country on 9/11. 

None more damaging than the immense growth of the national security state.

 "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."  This all "amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight."  We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government:  functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.

https://www.salon.com/2010/07/19/secrecy_6/

 

[Anastasis 23727]

6 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/03/veteran-nbcmsnbc-journalist-blasts-the-network-for-being-captive-to-the-national-security-state-and-reflexively-pro-war-to-stop-trump/ -long read in the dumbed-down age of tweets, but worth it.

 

Good article.  Unfortunately a few posters won't be able to make it past the byline without being triggered. 

That an entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing. These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

[CowboyFred 1164]

7 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

History will look harshly on reactionary and regressive neoliberal Democrats embracing the authoritarian and totalitarian dismantling of civil liberties in the early 21st Century. They chose to partner with neoconservative Republicans and their disregard for individual liberties.

Some of you lost sight of the forest because of one orange bush. 

FISA and Patriot Act reform is necessary. Take the orange plank out of your eye. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Your keeping your step

In the line

Got your chin held high and you feel just fine 

Cause you do 

What you're told 

But inside your heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold 

Just how deep do you believe? 

Will you bite the hand that feeds? 

Will you chew until it bleeds? 

Can you get up off your knees? 

Are you brave enough to see? 

Do you want to change it?

What if this whole crusade's

A charade

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

For the blood

On which we dine

Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?

So naive

You keep holding on to what you want to believe

You can see

But you keep holding on and on and on and on

Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

Will you stay down on your knees?

 

Reform is necessary and past due IMO, and I'd find it difficult to find any of the "neolibs" on this site that wouldn't agree with you.  No orange plank or bushes, trees, or foilage blocking the views.  Also as to the WaPo opinion article Anastasis posted: it should be common fucking sense to have an audit apparatus within the FBI/FISA courts to be checking on abuses of the system.  So it pretty much didn't say anything contrary to what most of the left leaning posters have said previously: "yes there were shortcuts taken, report says they should be looked at but did not invalidate the requests, agreed that reform should be done after all is said and done" (I'm pretty sure JimmyJazz has posted something along those lines at least 3 times).

24 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Good article.  Unfortunately a few posters won't be able to make it past the byline without being triggered. 

 

That an entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing. These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

lets dissect this:

"paying attention to politics for the first time" - imo this has more to do with technology being more readily available to all walks of life now and not just the middle to upper class.  Information (good and bad) is available at their fingertips when before some would not be aware of anything going on.  One big tool used by the younger population is twitter (boomers have taken over Facebook so fuck that).  Twitter has information overload where they can get information about pretty much anything (right or wrong) for all walks of life.

"a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies" - no 2 ways around it, Trump is a traitor.  He is a self-interested businessman "acting" as president (2 things: yes I know self-interested businessman acting as a president is redundant / at least they acted semi presidential and didn't flaunt it in our fucking faces they were fucking us).  If you can't see the shit he's done and agree it warrants his removal from office, then I don't know what to tell you.

belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing - hahahahahaha 

Edited December 17, 2019 by CowboyFred

[washparkhorn 9974]

18 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

That an entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing. These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

Full scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons. I remember when some of them were calling for Cheney to be "frog-marched in cuffs" out of the White House. They have become what they hated. 

[Anastasis 23727]

 

Just now, CowboyFred said:

lets dissect this "byline":

The byline is the part where the author is identified.

 

[jimmyjazz 47397]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

The byline is the part where the author is identified.

Zing!  Boy, you really nailed him.

[CowboyFred 1164]

Just now, Anastasis said:

 

The byline is the part where the author is identified.

 

touche, do not know why I added that at the end.  

 

[washparkhorn 9974]

There is no separation between Bush and Obama policies on the National Security and Surveillance State. Clinton was supposed to be more of the same. And that power was ceded to Trump. What a clusterfuck. 

[Anastasis 23727]

  

15 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Full scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons. I remember when some of them were calling for Cheney to be "frog-marched in cuffs" out of the White House. They have become what they hated. 

That other aspect touched on in that article is the wholesale co-opting of the media by the intelligence apparatus. That dovetails into CF's observation below, which was a salient point.  

16 minutes ago, CowboyFred said:

"paying attention to politics for the first time" - imo this has more to do with technology being more readily available to all walks of life now and not just the middle to upper class.

Across the entire political spectrum, we are constantly bombarded with spin masquerading as straight news. Look at the run up to the OIG report for example. Anonymous sources twisting and shaping the narrative via self-serving leaks to frame the discussion before the substance hits.  Same fucking thing people lost their mind over with Barr's narrative shaping actions prior to the release of the Mueller report, but carried out with the complicity of a compliant media. We are being steeped in constant propaganda, whether the mode of delivery is twitter, cable news, or print media. And it is not limited to one example of an OIG report, or a Mueller report, there is a systematic bias present in our media. 

 

Arkin has worked with NBC and MSNBC over the years and continuously since 2016. But yesterday, he announced that he was leaving the network in a long, emphatic email denouncing the networks for their superficial and reactionary coverage of national security, for becoming fixated on trivial Trump outbursts of the day to chase profit and ratings, and — most incriminating of all — for becoming the central propaganda arm of the CIA, the Pentagon, and the FBI in the name of #Resistance, thus inculcating an entire new generation of liberals, paying attention to politics for the first time in the Trump era, to “lionize” those agencies and their policies of imperialism and militarism.

That MSNBC and NBC have become Security State Central has been obvious for quite some time. The network consists of little more than former CIA, NSA, and Pentagon officials as news “analysts”; ex-Bush-Cheney national security and communications officials as hosts and commentators; and the most extremists pro-war neocons constantly bashing Trump (and critics of Democrats generally) from the right, using the Cheney-Rove playbook on which they built their careers to accuse Democratic Party critics and enemies of being insufficiently patriotic, traitors for America’s official enemies, and abandoning America’s hegemonic role in the world.

MSNBC’s star national security reporter Ken Dilanian was widely mocked by media outlets for years for being an uncritical CIA stenographer before he became a beloved NBC/MSNBC reporter (where his mindless servitude to his CIA masters has produced some of the network’s most humiliating debacles). The cable network’s key anchor, Rachel Maddow, once wrote a book on the evils of endless wars without congressional authorization, but now routinely depicts anyone who wants to end those illegal wars as reckless weaklings and traitors.

 Some of the most beloved and frequently featured MSNBC commentators are the most bloodthirsty pro-war militarists from the war on terror: David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, Ralph Peters, and Bill Kristol (who was just giddily and affectionately celebrated with a playful nickname bestowed on him: “Lil Bill”). In early 2018, NBC hired former CIA chief John Brennan to serve as a “senior national security and intelligence analyst,” where the rendition and torture advocate joined — as Politico’s Jack Shafer noted — a long litany of former security state officials at the network, including “Chuck Rosenberg, former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James B. Comey, and counselor to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; Frank Figliuzzi, former chief of FBI counterintelligence; Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser under Bush.”

As Shafer noted, filling your news and analyst slots with former security state officials as MSNBC and NBC have done is tantamount to becoming state TV, since “their first loyalty — and this is no slam — is to the agency from which they hail.” As he put it: “Imagine a TV network covering the auto industry through the eyes of dozens of paid former auto executives and you begin to appreciate the current peculiarities.”

Edited December 17, 2019 by Anastasis

[Anastasis 23727]

And the email from Arkin he is referencing....

January 4 is my last day at NBC News and I’d like to say goodbye to my friends, hopefully not for good. This isn’t the first time I’ve left NBC, but this time the parting is more bittersweet, the world and the state of journalism in tandem crisis. My expertise, though seeming to be all the more central to the challenges and dangers we face, also seems to be less valued at the moment. And I find myself completely out of synch with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter nor interested in the Trump circus.

I first started my association with NBC 30 years ago, feeding Cold War stories to Bob Windrem and Fred Francis at the Pentagon. I became an on-air analyst during the 1999 Kosovo War, continuing to work thereafter with Nightly News, delighting and oftentimes annoying in my peculiar position of being a mere civilian amongst THE GENERALS and former government officials. A scholar at heart, I also found myself an often lone voice that was anti-nuclear and even anti-military, anti-military for me meaning opinionated but also highly knowledgeable, somewhat akin to a movie critic, loving my subject but also not shy about making judgements regarding the flops and the losers.

When the attacks of 9/11 came, I was called back to NBC. I spent weeks on and off the air talking about al Qaeda and the various wars we were rushing into, arguing that airpower and drones would be the centerpiece not troops. In the new martial environment where only one war cry was sanctioned I was out of sync then as well. I retreated somewhat to writing a column for the Los Angeles Times, but even there I had to fight editors who couldn’t believe that there would be a war in Iraq. And I spoke up about the absence of any sort of strategy for actually defeating terrorism, annoying the increasing gaggles of those who seemed to accept that a state of perpetual war was a necessity.

I thought then that there was great danger in the embrace of process and officialdom over values and public longing, and I wrote about the increasing power of the national security community. Long before Trump and “deep state” became an expression, I produced one ginormous investigation — Top Secret America — for the Washington Post and I wrote a nasty book — American Coup — about the creeping fascism of homeland security.

Looking back now they were both harbingers for what President Obama (and then Trump) faced in terms of largely failing to make enduring change.

Somewhere in all of that, and particularly as the social media wave began, it was clear that NBC (like the rest of the news media) could no longer keep up with the world. Added to that was the intellectual challenge of how to report our new kind of wars when there were no real fronts and no actual measures of success. To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one county in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous.

As perpetual war has become accepted as a given in our lives, I’m proud to say that I’ve never deviated in my argument at NBC (or at my newspaper gigs) that terrorists will never bedefeated until we better understand why they are driven to fighting. And I have maintained my central view that airpower (in its broadest sense including space and cyber) is not just the future but the enabler and the tool of war today.

Seeking refuge in its political horse race roots, NBC (and others) meanwhile report the story of war as one of Rumsfeld vs. the Generals, as Wolfowitz vs. Shinseki, as the CIA vs. Cheney, as the bad torturers vs. the more refined, about numbers of troops and number of deaths, and even then Obama vs. the Congress, poor Obama who couldn’t close Guantanamo or reduce nuclear weapons or stand up to Putin because it was just so difficult. We have contributed to turning the world national security into this sort of political story. I find it disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting.

I’m a difficult guy, not prone to either protocol or procedure and I give NBC credit that it tolerated me through my various incarnations. I hope people will say in the early days that I made Brokaw and company smarter about nuclear weapons, about airpower, and even about al Qaeda. And I’m proud to say that I also was one of the few to report that there weren’t any WMD in Iraq and remember fondly presenting that conclusion to an incredulous NBC editorial board. I argued endlessly with MSNBC about all things national security for years, doing the daily blah, blah, blah in Secaucus, but also poking at the conventional wisdom of everyone from Matthews to Hockenberry. And yet I feel like I’ve failed to convey this larger truth about the hopelessness of our way of doing things, especially disheartened to watch NBC and much of the rest of the news media somehow become a defender of Washington and the system.

Windrem again convinced me to return to NBC to join the new investigative unit in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign. I thought that the mission was to break through the machine of perpetual war acceptance and conventional wisdom to challenge Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness. It was also an interesting moment at NBC because everyone was looking over their shoulder at Vice and other upstarts creeping up on the mainstream. But then Trump got elected and Investigations got sucked into the tweeting vortex, increasingly lost in a directionless adrenaline rush, the national security and political version of leading the broadcast with every snow storm. And I would assert that in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself — busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.

I’d argue that under Trump, the national security establishmentnot only hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism. I’d also argue, ever so gingerly, that NBC has become somewhat lost in its own verve, proxies of boring moderation and conventional wisdom, defender of the government against Trump, cheerleader for open and subtlethreat mongering, in love with procedure and protocol over all else (including results). I accept that there’s a lot to report here, but I’m more worried about how much we are missing. Hence my desire to take a step back and think why so little changes with regard to America’s wars.

I know it is characteristic of our overexcited moment to blast away at former employers and mainstream institutions, but all I can say is that despite many frustrations, my time at NBC has been gratifying. Working with Cynthia McFadden has been the experience of a lifetime. I’ve learned a ton about television from her and Kevin Monahan, the secret insider tricks of the trade and the very big picture of what makes for original stories (and how powerful they can be). The young reporters at NBC are also universally excellent. Thanks to Noah Oppenheim for hissupport of my contrarian and disruptive presence. And to Janelle Rodriguez, who supported deep expertise. The Nightly crew has also been a constant fan of my too long stories and a great team. I continue to marvel as Phil Griffin carries out his diabolical plan for the cable network to take over the world.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done with my team and know that there’s more to do. But for now it’s time to take a break. I’m ever so happy to return to writing and thinking without the officiousness of editorial tyrants or corporate standards. And of course I yearn to go back to my first love, which is writing boring reports about secret programs, grateful that the American government so graciously obliges in its constant supply. And I particularly feel like the world is moving so quickly that even in just the little national security world I inhabit, I need more time to sit back and think. And to replenish.

In our day-to-day whirlwind and hostage status as prisoners of Donald Trump, I think — like everyone else does — that we miss so much. People who don’t understand the medium, or the pressures, loudly opine that it’s corporate control or even worse, that it’s partisan. Sometimes I quip in response to friends on the outside (and to government sources) that if they mean by the word partisan that it is New Yorkers and Washingtonians against the rest of the country then they are right.

For me I realized how out of step I was when I looked at Trump’s various bumbling intuitions: his desire to improve relations with Russia, to denuclearize North Korea, to get out of the Middle East, to question why we are fighting in Africa, even in his attacks on the intelligence community and the FBI. Of course he is an ignorant and incompetent impostor. And yet I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically argue the contrary, to be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war. Really? We shouldn’t get out Syria? We shouldn’t go for the bold move of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula? Even on Russia, though we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War? And don’t even get me started with the FBI: What? We now lionize this historically destructive institution?

Even without Trump, our biggest challenge as we move forward is that we have become exhausted parents of our infant (and infantile) social media children. And because of the “cycle,” we at NBC (and all others in the field of journalism) suffer from a really bad case of not being able to ever take a breath. We are a long way from resolving the rules of the road in this age, whether it be with regard to our personal conduct or anything related to hard news. I also don’t think that we are on a straight line towards digital nirvana, that is, that all of this information will democratize and improve society. I sense that there is already smartphone and social media fatigue creeping across the land, and my guess is that nothing we currently see — nothing that is snappy or chatty — will solve our horrific challenges of information overload or the role (and nature) of journalism. AndI am sure that once Trump leaves center stage, society will have a gigantic media hangover. Thus for NBC — and for everyone else — there is challenge and opportunity ahead. I’d particularly like to think and write more about that.

There’s a saying about consultants, that organizations hire them to hear exactly what they want to hear. I’m proud to say that NBC didn’t do that when it came to me. Similarly I can say that I’m proud that I’m not guilty of giving my employers what they wanted. Still, the things this and most organizations fear most — variability, disturbance, difference — those things that are also the primary drivers of creativity — are not really the things that I see valued in the reporting ranks.

I’m happy to go back to writing and commentary. This winter, I’m proud to say that I’ve put the finishing touches on a 9/11 conspiracy novel that I’ve been toiling on for over a decade. It’s a novel, but it meditates on the question of how to understand terrorists in a different way. And I’m undertaking two new book-writing projects, one fiction about a lone reporter and his magical source that hopes to delve into secrecy and the nature of television. And, If you read this far, I am writing a non-fiction book, an extended essay about national security and why we never seem to end our now perpetual state of war. There is lots of media critique out there, tons of analysis of leadership and the Presidency. But on the state of our national security? Not so much. Hopefully I will find myself thinking beyond the current fire and fury and actually suggest a viable alternative. Wish me luck.

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Arkin is a true American Patriot.