Trump’s Relationship with US Intelligence

And it’s not only a matter of the intelligence and diplomatic community not being particularly sharp.

There’s the matter of apparently unstated policy aims, particularly those regarding China, in which our corporate and other elites saw, decades ago, a promising two-fer.

1) They could encourage offshoring jobs to China as a way to help US manufacturing muddle along as other countries (notably Germany) invested in advanced manufacturing technology and worker training, thus clearing the way for

2) the legalization of stock buybacks using company profits to artificially jack up stock prices to benefit shareholders and CEOs holding stock options.

This is why we can be told that it’s not so much outsourcing and offshoring that’s eating into US manufacturing jobs as it is the advance of technology and robots, etc. Well, yes, but that’s only because US industry spent decades avoiding tech investment and instead taking advantage of cheap labor abroad when they could have been investing in technology AND the highly focused training that would keep the US manufacturing workforce viable and largely employed.

That’s the case in Germany and a number of other countries — even though Germany itself now allows stock buybacks, which once were banned here and elsewhere as flagrant stock manipulation — which, of course, they are.

All that said, I’m still puzzled as to the precise mix of stupidity and cupidity among our elites.

Didn’t the FBI call the CIA evidence of Russian involvement nonsense?

Also Pelham, I thought everyone knew that shipping jobs to China was necessary because only those tens of millions of peasants straight off the farms each year really were able to understand and deal with advanced technology and what says automation better than needing tens of millions of low skilled workers each year to run it. /s

Arguably relevant: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/books/review-debriefing-the-president-tears-into-the-cia.html?_r=3

At least according to the review (haven’t read the book yet): An insider’s take from a former top agency official that criticizes the CIA for basically abandoning real analysis in favor of daily memos for the president, and that depicts the agency as being willing to tell the president whatever they want to hear in order to gain access.

The author apparently states this process started under Clinton, but I think it came to its full fruition under Bush, as I recall LOTS of past and then-present CIA agents speaking out, either publicly or anonymously (and, as we later found out, in private, to their detriment), that invading Iraq was a terrible, potentially world-destroying idea and describing the likely result quite accurately, in regards to corresponding to what actually happened. Most of those people were purged or given postings that effectively ended any influence they had, one or the other. Let’s not forget the Valerie Plame case, either.

From the review: Mr. Nixon, the first C.I.A. officer to interrogate Hussein after his capture in December 2003, reveals gobsmacking facts about that deposed Iraqi leader that raise new questions about why the United States bothered to invade Iraq to oust him from power. These details will likely appall Americans who have watched their nation’s blood and treasure wasted in Iraq ever since.

The review presents this as being a case of “will they stand up to Trump?” of course, missing (or more likely deliberately ignoring) the entire soft (or hard) manipulation angle. And that catering to the prejudices of people who are basically doing something you are comfortable with is entirely different than catering to someone who have a hostile relationship with, or mutually opposing goals, what have you. And the possibility (at different times, the certainty or probability–this may no longer be true) that there would be different factions with competing agendas.

@MW

Good point and I think we need to separate the intelligence from the management in these intelligence services. Not that long ago a large number of intelligence analysts, I think from the CIA, publicly called out their management for manipulating their findings for political reasons.

It’s probably a good thing that this exposure of sheer madness being led by the Clintonites and their allies at the CIA happened before Trump is sworn in. Now he has time to sharpen his knives and finish his lists so the pruning can begin immediately after he becomes CiC. There is no possibility of bringing these people to heel, they are untrustworthy and must be removed quickly.

Bannon will be useful in bringing the republican party to heel which may be difficult but they have nowhere to go. Trump has already bypassed the Clintonite media with his direct speeches to the public and that should continue as much as possible but maybe not his tweets.

Much of the media may continue to erupt at everything Trump says or does but they are very tainted by their partisan behavior and lies which most people won’t ignore. Many blogs and comments will continue to sound like Clintonite talking points and most of these bloviators will continue to underestimate Trump.

@Kim

What problem? Trump is getting weekly briefings with new important info anytime it’s necessary but he is in control. The other and more important problem is the management source of the Trump/Putin BS which should produce a pyramid of severed heads in front of CIA headquarters.

This would be the correct take if what’s replaced briefings was an actual understanding of the world. You know how Trump informs himself? Watching Fox. He’s replaced briefings with the world view of Michael Flynn and Fox News panelists like Monica Crowley.

@OaktownGirl — Happy Birthday! I remember seeing you around various blogs quite a bit in the past, not so much lately, but hope you are doing well.

Hrrrm … where to begin?

In normal presidencies the daily intelligence briefing is a dance – people who are there put on masks for each other and the result is a kind of kabuki dance. the CIA and others know what is on the presence of mind and delivers that view of the world, along with the CIA wish list of what should be happening. the result is that each group of individuals here is what they want to hear. so it was not the CIA who wanted to go guns blazing into Iraq – it was the Bush administration. the Bush administration which fancy themselves as the “Vulcans” – when in fact they were the Ferenghi. as a result, the intelligence briefing is basically a dance. One must get from the intelligence services what they know, without being infected by their point of view.

But Trump has his own intelligence services, one that is private and with its own point of view – and not one of you is not Fox, but the world of semipublic semiprivate intelligence services. these people are strange, and filled with the kind of misinformation that has public citizens you can only dream about. It is all based on individual people connecting with the English speaking counterparts, and drawing rather ornate conclusions from that interaction. You can imagine the warped point of view by thinking about going down to Dallas and speaking with people who are repairing the Statehouse. You get a lot of opinions and even inside information, but what you would not get is what the state is actually doing.

And sometimes that is actually important, such as where Saddam was hiding out. other times, it is the intelligence services guessing what the other sides intelligence services are thinking of, and not what is actually happening. For example they missed entirely the Arab Spring, but they were basically on track to what the government was going to do about it – if the government actually survived. Sometimes they correctly guessed which governments could be brought down – though they guessed wrong in the case of Syria. There was actually some detail that would suggest that Syria was going to last, based on its close relationship with Russia – but you would need your own intelligence staff to tease it out of them. Which is why the offensive in northern Iraq happened, but is happening badly.

Trump on the other hand, listens to his gut. This is going to go badly for him, because they have elaborate systems for deceiving even intelligent people. and they have nets to even nets of obfuscation for the world weary traveler – and those nets have pointed teeth on them. the result is that trump will get what he wants at the primary level, but further down he will be surprised. this will erupt as the recent wave of violence will – almost any good intelligence officer will know that something, or other some things, are going to happen. the question is to you want to do anything about it? The answer actually has 2B made by the presidency, and the presidency is not going to listen. So what that means, is that normal people will die at a more prevalent rate than in the past. And this is for anything that the presidency wants to have happen – such as keeping our little base in Cuba open. in other words there will be nasty spectacular success – such as giving Syria to the Russians, and even more nasty failures – such as what is gradually happening in Libya.

What this means is that there will not be jolting news of a dictator falling – and has a matter of course this is actually good, though you do not know the names of the dictators that have fallen in this way. and eventually some bee will get up the president’s ass, and he will start to issue some orders designed to take it out – such as Iran. And the levers will not work.

But what will not happen is a more effective policy, because the people who will direct policy will not actually have genuine good intelligence. Because the people who get actual good intelligence are going to be not listened to the way they are not listened to right now. That is actually important, because normally in about six years or so, they will be listened to in a normal presidency. But not in Trumpland who will be listening to men will largely stroke his ego – which is what they are used to. It gets hotels built, but at a cost. That cost is prohibitive at the scale of state actions. They will find out that their opposite numbers are going to lie.

Think of it as a hotel being built in the middle of no place.

I just love reading the detailed and verbose ‘insights’ of all these crystal ball owners who are predicting unrelenting catastrophe under Trump but never realized that Obama’s Hope And Change was never going to happen.

Vanity. My favorite sin. (h/t Al Pacino) 🙂

I would agree if I thought he was getting his information elsewhere and independently thinking about this data to arrive at conclusions. Unfortunately, without these briefings I suspect his path is blind ignorance. Not a trait to celebrate in a President in 2016 IMHO. I would rather he have the briefings and be critical of everything that is said, search for alternate viewpoints and news sources. Knowing nothing and tweeting everything is not a path to a steady ship of state.

As I recall, just before the USSR collapsed and broke apart, the CIA was issuing fresh warnings that the Russkies were ten feet tall and growing, poised to overrun western Europe, armed with an inexhaustible supply of mysterious superweapons. I’m not refering merely to the ravings of the 2nd Committee On the Present Danger, but the official intelligence estimates produced by their “Team B” members infiltrated into CIA by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Everyone will recognize these two names as the same lying shitbags who induced us to destroy Iraq and set the world on fire, almost thirty years after they sabotaged détente and reignited Cold War weapons buildup.

Any new President, who is preparing to assume office, and who hopes to do right by their peeps, will have loads of more important things to do than to sit through a daily litany of lies and brainwashing sessions by CIA goonsquads.

Stirling’s point is important to understand, and expands on this somewhat shallow post in at least one significant way.

Shorter: While Trump may not trust the CIA to give him unbiased accurate intelligence, in their place he will trust sources that are very likely even worse.

Also: To dismiss the entire intelligence apparatus because they have been famously wrong is misguided. I’m also fairly certain that they are often right. Ignoring them on the basis of their mistakes alone, without acknowledging or recognizing the possibility for good info, throws the baby out with the bathwater to put it nicely. To put it bluntly, it is the act of an impetuous idiot, and as such should certainly not be condoned.

The smart and responsible executive takes in as much information as they can and evaluates the merits of each piece before making decisions. But of course we know exactly why that will not be happening under Orange Mussolini. Pretending that his limited mental capabilities are somehow a good thing is rationalization of the highest order. I get that the “silver lining” strategy is one way to try to get through the onrushing global disaster that his election will precipitate, but I don’t think it will do anything to help avoid it or assuage the damage.

There will be plenty of time to listen to their lies. Just remember the Agency is politicized, that politicization was an integral and initial first step in the conversion of the post-Vietnam, US economy to a permanent war economy. The defense buildup that began under Carter in response to CIA scaremongering about USSR’s strategic capabilities and intentions, and the ramp up of military spending AND red baited fear mongering never stopped. Even after GHWBush, the CIA director who oversaw the “Team B” takeover of CIA had decided, in retrospect, that their project was manipulative and political and that their conclusions were flawed, CIA was never depoliticized. If the hysteria inducing Neoconservative (what would eventually be called Neoconservatism) ideology ever flagged, the lust for lucre was there to pick up the slack. The connection between ringing the alarm bells and ringing the cash register of “defense” spending had been made and the gravy train had left the station for good. Accordingly, CIA never even glimpsed the possible collapse of the Soviet Empire and indeed the USSR itself coming. Never. Right up until the end, the Red Menace was always getting stronger and bigger. Until it blew away in a puff of wind. There were consequences arising from US paranoia, the bight side was the development of technology, the dark side was the de-prioritizing and hollowing out of every part of the economy not directly related to the pursuit of military technological advantage. The same sick institution counseled using Iraq as a cat’s paw against Iran, helping to start and prolong a war that cost a million lives, then turned around and told a mountain of lies about Iraq to start a war that has cost surely another million lives, as it has metastasized across the region and across decades, and as of this morning isn’t even done killing. If Trump or any President is serious about trying to rescue the US economy, he or she must understand the role of the warfare state in destroying the health of the economy, and CIA’s important leading role in that history.

Of course Donald Trump will have to listen to CIA. After all if they don’t think they have your ear, God knows what may happen to you! Hopefully as he listens, he will understand that most of what they tell him is a lie told to bend and poison his mind away from any wholesome purpose.

Good food for thought Ian but the knife cuts both ways. Bush got the Aug. 9th PDB wrong when he brushed it off about bin Laden wanting to crash planes into buildings

@ Larry Beck: and didn’t that lead to the creation of the DNI? the one ring that rules them all?
funnily enough, i’d just been reading a squib at reuters from tim weiner, author of ‘legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA. titled ‘Commentary: Mr. Trump, here’s what other presidents learned from the CIA’ he speaks of transitions being perilous times, tra la la, noting how briefings by lame-duck prezes have gone over the last 40 years, but this knocked me out (about clinton, no dubya).

In December 1992, Bill Clinton had few profound ideas about America’s strategic interests after the Cold War. His CIA briefers drove over to the Arkansas governor’s mansion in Little Rock from their rooms at a $38.50-a-night Comfort Inn, but they drove back wondering whether the president-elect cared much about what they said. He chose a new CIA director, Jim Woolsey; they met exactly twice during the next two years. “I didn’t have a bad relationship with the president,” Woolsey reflected. “I just didn’t have one at all.”

Things were very different eight years later. Alarms flashed red: al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, loomed large. Clinton had grave fears; so did CIA director George Tenet. After the Supreme Court declared Bush 43 the victor in December 2000, both men warned him about the group. The president and the president-elect met alone for two hours in Crawford, Texas. Clinton remembers telling him: “Your biggest threat is bin Laden.” Bush swore he never heard that. The question remains whether Bush was listening.”

his internal link goes to two chapters of his book.

@Stirling Newberry: would you explain “such as giving Syria to the Russians”, please? and what intel services mr. T will rely on?

from my understanding, ‘deep state’ is not only the various 17 or so ‘intel’ agencies, but the MIC, wall street, hordes of think tanks, compromised NGOs like avaaz, hrw, amnesty int’l, and perhaps even the related oligarchical power of those at davos every year. the alleged deep dark organizations i have scant knowledge about, though.

many think tanks akin to rand seem to have given the deposed ovien blueprints, and congress just provided trump w/ one to use against big, bad china if he pleases.

“As Carter was visiting New Delhi, the US Senate was passing legislation, already adopted by the House of Representatives, to promote Indo-US military-strategic ties.

The “2017 National Defence Authorization Act,” that is the Pentagon’s $618 billion budget allocation, contains a section titled “Enhancing defence and security cooperation with India.” It calls on the US secretaries of state and defense to take the necessary steps to designate India a Major Defense Partner, instructs the administration to designate a high-ranking official to ensure the success of the DTTI, and highlights “defence and security cooperation” with India as a means of advancing US “interests in South Asia” and the “greater Indo-Asia-Pacific regions.”

Speaking following the Senate vote, Mark Warner, the senior Democratic senator from Virginia and co-chair of Senate India Caucus, applauded the “inclusion of forward-leaning provisions designed to strengthen bilateral defense cooperation with India, including expanded military-to-military engagement, increased defence trade, and greater cooperation on technological development.”

and oh, no; no one pressured modi to allow plebiscite votes in kashmir or jammu as to which nation they would like to join: thug hindu modi, or pakistan ahead of this ‘alliance’. all of the murders are just incidental to the big picture in the pivot to asia.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/12/15/inus-d15.html

but i agree with a few others here that note mr. T’s many contradictory FP statements tend toward incoherence. i saw a headline that he’d tweeted (iirc) that he reckons he won’t ‘depose leaders he knows nothing about’. hmmmm. broad caveat, no? does he mean he can learn that duly-elected x, y, or z…should be be deposed? or a nation deserves an r2p in the name of ‘democracy™’? god’s blood, i hope not. anyone know how he feels about any of the remaining quasi-socialist nations?

‘interesting times’ i so cliché, but quite operative now, yes? and a good solstice to all.

No, Mr. Ex-Pat,I don’t know what will happen under Trump, but I did know what would happen under Killlery.

When I KNOW something, as opposed to just having something on my list of plausible hypotheses, a smart guy like you will be able to tell the difference.

What keeps me humble is that I am always cognizant of the many ways I could be wrong about something; smart people rarely get to have 100% certainty about anything complex. It’s all about getting to where you have a high enough degree of certainty to feel justified in taking a specific action or reaching a specific conclusion. In always every case, there exists some degree of possibility that you might be wrong about something. If you can’t stand to act in the face of some small probability that you might be wrong, you doom yourself to paralysis. Knowing all that is the opposite of vanity, it is actually a very deep humility.

Vanity is continually patting yourself on the back for being out of your country, despite not being able to keep from commenting about your country and how smart you were to leave it, IMO.

So, anyone have any insights into Rep. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s nominee for director of the CIA? Seems like that would be a good place to start with. Superficially, he looks like a semi-sensible back-bencher who made some noise as a member of the House Intelligence committee, hawkish if not bellicose, partisan but originally backed Rubio(so not a Trump loyalist). Presumably, the committee background was the qualifier. What’s this guy’s paper trail look like? What’s his ideological framework, foreign policy outlook-wise? Who’s he going to be bringing in with him into the top political appointment slots of the both the Agency and the other, lesser known intelligence gathering and analysis outfits that comprise “the deep state”? Answering some of those questions will give us a lot better basis on which to speculate than gut feelings and emotional responses.

@ RC
I’m not an expat; I’m self exiled; there’s a difference.

@ V. Arnold

You are a very pleasant fellow who only mentions his self-satisfaction with being an ex-pat every ten minutes or so.

@OaktownGirl– I get you with the busy. Likewise–probably shouldn’t be taking so much time to comment here. Ian’s and Naked Capitalism are my two regular stops to read and the only places I regularly comment (as in, other places, I might once a year or so if something inspires me, for better or worse). If I’m posting at one I’m not posting at the other because I simply don’t have time. I haven’t even been able to do more than skim some of the comments at NC lately because there are so many, even tho it’s one of my favorite places. Can’t keep up w/all the links there either but try.

Call those my tier one blogs. About 4-6 in tier two that I never comment at but mostly keep up with the reading xcept when super busy, then about a dozen in tier 3 that I check out when I can/when the mood suits me.

And yes, I’m on twitter. =) I have no issues with twitter, really, it’s handy and let’s me check out a huge range of people and links I would normally miss unless someone called my attention to a particular article (from Jacobin, which I still haven’t got in the habit of reading even tho I should, to The Federalist, which I just read and retweeted two good articles from, and yes I know it’s the Federalist but this time we’re in accord).

Facebook I avoid like the plague. My wife convinced me to sign up for linked in at one point, which led to me being contacted by a very enthusiastic reunion committee, which led to a polite, even friendly demurral on my part followed by me avoiding linked in like the plague.

If you were asking for recs, what sort of blogs do you like (other than here) where do you fit on the various spectrum of issues etc.?

A lot of my favorite feminist blogs no longer exist (Reclusive leftist, The apostate). Most of the blogs and online friends I had from the prior decade (mostly spec fic writers and fandom) went full tilt SJW followed by full tilt “Neoliberalism Yay Mainstream Dems & Corporate Media vs the racist Russian Nazis!” and I find it impossible to speak to most of them these days. I have tried a couple of times but I had better luck conversing at the one right wing site I recently tried my hand (where people were quite friendly and welcoming during my brief run in the commentariat). With my older online friends, mostly I can’t say what I think because I frequently want to yell at them but I like them, and things are so lockstep in some ways that even politely expressing strong disagreement in mutual social circles could lead to conflagration, in which people might feel compelled to semi-defend me even tho they also are horrified at my lack of being down with the program, so . . . I have bailed. Amazed at how many people who are very free-thinking in some ways so easily fall into zealous lockstep in others (or, maybe, I am underestimating people, but even so I’m underestimating people who are choosing to keep quiet and not buck the current and I don’t want to put them in a bad position, like, “oh, yeah, ummm, I used to be friends with him and I don’t really know what happened .. . .yes, yes of course it’s terrible but ummm . . .I swear he’s a nice person and never showed previous signs of slavering evil! I certainly don’t support his newfound lack of devotion to the cause and if he’s a cannibal I swear I didn’t know!”)

Anyway, despite all that I still read all sorts of places so if you’ve been awol I can maybe give you an idea where to head even if your worldview is very different from mine.

@ MojaveWolf

Has it occurred to you that “full tilt SJW followed by full tilt “Neoliberalism Yay Mainstream Dems & Corporate Media vs the racist Russian Nazis!”

is inherent to their beliefs as is the conformism they demand? Ethically you’re way better off where you are.

@mfi — Absolutely I’m better off here, and hope I didn’t sound like I was complaining about this place or NC–I love both!

Conformist neoliberal sjws — I’ll grant you for a big part of the left these days, what you say is true. I cannot stand those people.

re: my subset of friends (I still consider them such) from earlier online days —

I *don’t* think they are or were inherently conformist. Or that they were coming from a starting point of basic beliefs that were that different from my own (my having a few personality quirks notwithstanding). In general, I would put them down as exceptionally original thinkers. So I’m not sure wtf happened.

Maybe you are right and I am wrong on this one, but I’m putting it down to what I think at first glance are laughably obvious propaganda & manipulation techniques actually being really effective if you are not paying attention. But I confess to major befuddlement and no certainty.

@ realitychecker: i’m so glad to know that you’ve ‘outgrown me’, lol,; it’s completely in character. it seems many of you here believe you are collectively by way of creating the vanguard of a revolution of some sort or other. but by my lights, if and when it comes, it will be all the oppressed of the world who realize that capitalism itself is the root of the evil that enslaves them and precludes justice of any sort: social or economic, and a new world must be created in which socialism replaces capitalism.

who but the underclass people of color see this most clearly? yes, i learned from those societies who attended the ‘side meetings’ at the rio 2012 ‘sustainability conference’. they’ve watched their lands be decimated, their water poisoned by mining and oil spills, their crops ruined by gen-modified crops and glyphosate, and in the US uranium, all in the name of capitalistic profiteering. and no, miz klein, capitalism will never be ‘fettered’ again, so you changed *nothing*.

yes, you believe that the black lives (and i reckon by extension) the native lives matter movements are craptastistic, and while not all have twigged to capitalism as evil, they’re learning, bless their hearts. rabble africans have long experienced the same fate, but now with africom afoot, and so many resources to plunder, many are being re-colonized and are in the cross-hairs of the US military and cia.

well, peace to you, and please feel free to define my visions and political credo as you will. it’s of small matter to me. but i will say again that i regret who you’ve become by now.

I freely admit to being imperfect. Were it not for the fact that I’m excessively humble I’d be perfect – which is a profoundly humbling realisation. What’s not even slightly humbling Wendy dear is the number of people who’ve written to me telling me how bitterly they regret not heeding my warning that you and your claque were parasites who would hollow out the members’ forum on FDL. I don’t take any pleasure in that – but there is a certain grim satisfaction in having been proved right.

” . . . Obama: Handmaiden to the same intelligence agencies. . . “?

It’s well to remember that Obama’s mother was CIA and her parents were OSS (Lebanon during WWII) and CIA (Hawaii where Obama’s mother met his father who was in a “training” program fronted by the Ford Foundation for the CIA and run by her father, and her mother handled banking for CIA Asian accounts).

Obama first attended CIA-affiliated Occidental College and then CIA-affiliated Columbia. That’s the reason his school records are a “secret”.
In case you hadn’t guessed The Company is big on nepotism (e.g., see, Ames, Aldrich). The “deep state” runs very deep.