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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.
The U.S. government is becoming more and more corrupt.
Then he's not really doing a good job of directing it, is he?
Uh, isn't this the same reasoning that led to the creation of the SS in the 20s?
What could possibly go wrong?
Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
Trump continues to go down the hole to hell further and faster.
America NEEDS mueller to really get on this probe. There is little doubt that Trump committed treason, but now, he is going off the deep end.
THis is exactly how dictators operate and need to be stopped.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You cannot tolerate your president trying to build a power structure outside the one constrained by your Constitution unless you WANT a dictatorship.
He's already tried to bring the FBI and court system to heel (including at least twice now declaring himself above the law), he's expressed an interest in controlling the media to ensure it aligns with his wishes (and taken a few practical steps in that direction), and now he's going to create a new intelligence service that is under his direct control?
Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
This is the making of a secret police agency that doesn't have any oversight from lawful civil authority (courts, Congress). This idea needs to be shut down. Hard.
So Trump wants us to run two completely independent intelligence networks? How is this not insanely wasteful? What happened to those small government principles?
And here is the kicker:
The group reportedly brought in former Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North to sell the idea to Trump.
Their salesman is going to be the poster boy for corruption in the military. The only reason he's not a felon is a technicality, and he admitted his wrongdoing in front of Congress.
I want to believe this is total bullshit. It's coming from Vice, so maybe it's safe to ignore it for the time being.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
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.
This is basically a private secret police agency with no lawful oversight from the courts and Congress. Awful idea.
Why are you bringing in the left when it has nothing to do with the article? Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
So your "solution" is a private spy network with even less accountability? YOU ARE A RETARDED CUNT.
How am I just now learning that Betsy DeVoss's brother is the Blackwater guy?! Erik Prince has a soul of pure, black, unadulterated evil. This whole thing is so fucking strange. If they think the CIA is that bad, why not fire everybody and hire new people? Is it even legal for the president to have a personal, private spying apparatus? No congressional oversight? No judicial review? Sure seems like a unconstitutional and unconscionable idea to me!
> Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy
It is not valid, but it's been pretty effective for about a year so far.
This isn't reform. This is privatization. This is taking an apparatus that is already basically beyond oversight, and putting it under the direct control of an unstable dictator who cannot tell fact from fiction. Just because we think the CIA is bad doesn't mean it can't get worse.
This has been reported in other, more reputable sources. I don't know why /. went with Vice. Basically, the official line from Trump's people is that there is no way in hell he would agree to this. Seeing as how the guy's sister in in the cabinet, I bet there will be more of this story coming out. My guess is that Trump will tweet about what a great guy Erik Prince is, and what a true patriot Ollie North is, and that the CIA cannot be trusted. I guess we can't really guess what the Angry Cheeto will tweet until Fox and Friends comes out with their version of the story, though.
You don't have to be liberal to have a moral problem with assassination of foreign leaders.
Any sane person who complains about American intelligence agencies is going to focus on the the lack of oversight and accountability. The transparency and accountability will be far, far worse for private intelligence service that reports only to the President.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
IMHO, the "deep state" is really the "normal government" of the USA. The reason Trump and friends are always droning on about it is because many of the ideas Trumps wants to do (or at least the way he thinks these ideas should be done) are mostly illegal, or at least highly unethical and so far outside the bounds of civilized discourse it's ridiculous. Trump is so used to being the "CEO", saying "get this done now" and it just happens; not needing to care who is financing what, or whom he is actually employing...he just can't adapt to the idea of "checks and balances" and "procedures".
Erik Prince is treading on some very dangerous ground going up against the CIA like this. His overseas contractors will be open-season targets, outside of any Geneva Convention protections, and he himself might end up being a target for some type of "accident". "Edge of the knife" and all.
No way in hell will something like this fly in the USA.
I imagine trump sits in his bed at night, under the covers with his smartphone, and dreams up things just like this as ways to troll the media, so he can point fingers and cry fake news later.
But then again, the more I think about it, the more it seems like this might have been the plan all along. Suddenly all the bananas bullshit of the past year and half starts to make sense when viewed through a "spin up the secret police" filter.
Seriously, if this comes to pass, it's time to start looking at the 2nd amendment solution.... and I don't say this lightly. Once something like this is a thing, people start falling into unmarked vans and black bags.
How far we have fallen.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
That's a false equivalency. It used to be true that both parties helped the rich donors while placating their voters, but they had core sets of values that they would more-or-less adhere to when push came to shove. There's a huge difference between Trump's "Republican" party and the old Republican and Democratic parties, and it's not and improvement to abandon all sense of truth and decency, eliminate as many checks and balances as possible, call reality "fake news", and lie so much and so blatantly that it almost becomes normalized..
Yes. You remember the Iraqi "asset" going by the code name "Curveball", and the information he provided about weapons of mass destruction, and how useful he was to our efforts at making the middle east more stable peaceful. This will work out just as well for our new paid informants.
It's not just the Gulag; there's no shortage of Americans calling Trump "racist" because he purposed a ban on Muslim immigration from certain countries, or because he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico. This wanton abuse of the word "racist" is quite common.
Or maybe they're not-subtly saying that he's racist and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration because Muslims are predominantly Arab, and proposing to build an ineffectual and costly wall between the US and Mexico to tap into anti-Latino racism?
Seriously, it should be transparently obvious to everyone that Trump is racist because of the things he says and does, but it's not entirely his fault. He did grow up during the era of segregation. It's pretty likely that he was taught at an early age that blacks were inferior to white people. That type of mental damage can be hard to unlearn, and Trump doesn't like ever admitting that he was wrong, so fat chance of a sincere change of heart on his part, especially at his age.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It wasn't the informant's fault, his masters had already decided they wanted a war and were just looking for someone to give them the intel they needed. They were not mislead, they mislead the UN and their citizens.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Off the books"?!? In other words, they can spend as much as they want, and congress cannot cut off the funds, even if they are used explicitly for espionage on businesses competing with businesses owned by the Trump mob family?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.