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Trump Is Looking at Plans For a Global Network of Private Spies (vice.com)
David Gilbert, writing for Vice: The White House is reportedly looking at a proposal to create a ghost network of private spies in hostile countries -- a way of bypassing the intelligence community's "deep state," which Donald Trump believes is a threat to his administration. The network would report directly to the president and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and would be developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to multiple current and former officials speaking to The Intercept. "Pompeo can't trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him," a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals told the website. Described as "totally off the books," the network would be run by intelligence contractor Amyntor Group and would not share any data with the traditional intelligence community.
You don't think maybe they call Trump a racist because he declared there were many very nice white supremacists?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's not why people know him to be a racist.
Who would be stupid enough to do something like this?
Trump can't even keep his mouth shut long enough to save himself from criminal liability or resist to the urge to give Russian government the location of U.S. nuclear submarines.
Any spy who reports directly to trump is a dead man walking.
You're assuming these spies would be spying on governments hostile to the administration.
I think a more likely purpose for these spies is to collect dirt on domestic political actors and to provide back-channels to foreign governments that are secure from monitoring from the US government.
Both of these might put the spies at risk of criminal liability in the US, but the people and institutions they'll piss off are generally not the ones that go around ordering hits.
I stole this Sig
"Since I believe in democracy, I'm all for Trump being able to trash any and all federal departments - that's the power the Constitution gives him."
No it doesn't. The establishment and authority of those departments is law passed by Congress. The President is not a dictator.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, if this is true, it's not about trusting or not trusting the CIA. It's about creating a spy organization that doesn't report to anyone but the leader. It would be about having spies, and probably assassins, that are free from oversight and regulation. It would be about creating a secure and loyal power base like the one that Putin has, that can eliminate anyone who challenges the leader's position.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's the prosperity gospel. The basic premise is that there is an all-good, interventionist, God, therefore the people that good things happen to must be good people, and the people that bad things happen to must be bad people. Unless, of course, bad things are happening to you or me, then it's God testing our greatness. The corollary is, of course, that taxes on rich people are inherently unjust because rich people are doing good while taxes on the poor are just what those sick depraved perverts deserve.
It's a truly sickening perversion of Christianity.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Hmmmm. Sounds like someone currently squatting in the White House.