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.

Comments

People at the top are not mentally stable.

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. government is becoming more and more corrupt.

Re: People at the top are not mentally stable.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the stink of corruption rises form the attempt to disassemble the US government, parcel the things of value out to private enterprises and shove the cost of paying for this theft off on to the middle-class

Re: People at the top are not mentally stable.

[tbannist]

Exactly. And once you realize that both parties do it relentlessly, in coordinated lockstep, and that partisan idiots give their own party a complete pass when they do it, you will see how impossible it is to stop.

This is obviously and poignantly wrong. We have a huge counter-example right here. The Democratic party supports net neutrality, the Republican party does not. How is that co-ordinated lock step?

You are right that your elected officials don't (usually) hate one another but they aren't in this together, either. The Republicans and the Democrats are competing for the same positions, they may have gentlemen's agreements on what is acceptable behaviour, but they are still die-hard competitors for the same positions. I think, in general, their relationship could be summarised as frenemies, though I think with the introduction of Tea Party and Alt-Right candidates the legislature is moving away from friendships and towards partisan enemies.

This means that government can get away with anything. You don't think the parties start with what they want to achieve and work backwards from there? You don't think that they divide up the unpopular positions to push down the throats of their own supporters?

Yes, I don't think that and I don't think any sane person would. Politicians are political, they have views and beliefs and while they may compromise those beliefs for the sake of winning an election, they are not working together towards a single unified goal. Beyond that, keeping a conspiracy of that sort secret would require levels discretion that clearly the average elected official is not capable of maintaining. You can imagine that everyone running for office in America is secretly a super-villain, but I don't think that delusion is going to help you understand anything.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that elected republicans hate democrats, and vice versa. You silly child. Hate is only good for manipulating stupid people. "Our" elected officials are all in it together.

There's a middle ground between those extremes, and that's where sanity lies. Republican and Democratic officials, generally speaking, don't hate each other, but they aren't working towards the same goals either. There are consistent differences between the positions of the two parties over multiple election cycles. It is true, that there is a lot of similarity between the two parties, but that's because they operate in the same country, solicit money from the same donors and fight for the votes from the same people.

Basically you are arguing that competing tool manufacturers are secretly working together because they produce tools that look very similar. No, the tools look the same to the untrained eye because they have been produced to do the same job with similar technology and similar materials. An expert, however, will be able to tell you if one company produces a better quality tool than the other for the job you want to get done. And just like in construction, in every election you should be trying to pick the best tool for the job.

CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[Destined Soul]

Then he's not really doing a good job of directing it, is he?

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[Osgeld]

don't worry, he will do much better this time with no accountability

Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[UdoKeir]

He was left over with a mess

Ivan, this is poor English grammar. Will you be beaten and sent to a gulag for this mistake?

Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[MooseTick]

"which is why we also don't have the truth about things like Benghazi"

How do you know "we" don't know the truth?

Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[Kyudosha]

New FSB directive: co-opt liberal and social justice terminology in an attempt to sow dissent. When called out for your shit, make sure to call it "racism" and say you are "deeply offended". If possible, say "so much for the tolerant left".

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[CanadianMacFan]

It seems to be a requirement in order to run a department for Trump. The head of the EPA didn't think it should exist because it hurt business too much. The head of the housing department came out with a bunch of statements against social housing. So not trusting your department would make you qualified to run it.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[jellomizer]

The problem is the CIA is showing that most of these conspiracies are not real. So this doesn't fit Trump narrative. I honestly think that Trump just wanted to get into office, just to see all the real dirt that is going on, only to realize there was no grand conspiracy, just normal paper pushing, and a few good ideas and a few bad ideas. Trump being a Conspiracy theorist, and not getting the information that he knows in his heart to be true, figures the CIA is against him, purposely hiding information.

Trumps main chip on his shoulder is because he feels like the upper crust is always rejecting him. Hence his appeal to the middle class, who also have the same feeling that the upper class folks are trying to lock these people out. So no matter how rich he is, or powerful of a position he is in, the fact that he isn't accepted as one of them bugs him.

This man really is unfit for the position, and is more or less controlled by others, just as long as they keep his tweeter running.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[lgw]

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.

What I object to is the Byzantine palace intrigue bullshit. Don't trust the CIA? Fine - fire everyone, bar them from future government work, and start over. That's very transparent, very open, and sends a clear message to both voters and other departments. This double-secret probation stuff is just the worst.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[mbkennel]

"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.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

> Don't trust the CIA? Fine - fire everyone

Problem is that's impossible. The whole structure relies on a lot of people who have been doing the same thing for years. Here's a good writeup on the topic:

"But there was another reason. During and after the Civil War, government laws and policies had become far more complex with more long-lasting effects on society. A presidential term lasted four years; policies could last for generations. If administrators were replaced every time a president left office, as previously had been the case, there would be no continuity in government. New administrators would constantly have to learn the complexities of their jobs, and by the time they mastered it, they would have to leave. Government operations had outgrown a president’s term."

https://geopoliticalfutures.co...

Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[kqs]

Islamic terrorists were behind 9/11. Liberals are fine going after Islamic terrorists, but not all Muslims. Conservatives seem to want to go after all Muslims, or at least treat all Muslims poorly. Or, to put it another way: "White gun owners were behind the attack in Las Vegas. Conservatives defend white gun owners at all costs."

The Russian government meddled in the 2016 elections with trolling that didn't kill anyone but which may have changed a presidential election. Liberals are horrified, conservatives defend Russians at all costs.

Bigotry is a better word than racism. Bigotry is hating all Muslims for the acts of a few, or all Russians for the acts of their government, or all white gun owners for the acts of a few. Bigotry is not really a conservative or liberal trait, though recently conservatives have chosen bigots as their leaders for some reason. There are certainly liberal bigots, but liberals try to not elect them.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[lgw]

New administrators would constantly have to learn the complexities of their jobs, and by the time they mastered it, they would have to leave.

You say that like it's a bad thing. The more complex the government, the less I want it to be able to do. It isn't acting in our interests, after all.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[squiggleslash]

It doesn't really work that way: for the high up roles, he generally needs the consent of the senate to appoint "who works for him". For the lower roles, he doesn't get a say at all. That's why you see Senate hearings on everything from Cabinet roles to the CIA director. From Wikipedia (which is sourced if you really want to go down that rabbit hole):

The Director is a civilian or a general/flag officer of the armed forces nominated by the President, with the concurring or nonconcurring recommendation from the DNI, and must be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate. [My emphasis]

Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[tbannist]

Actually, Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization that used propaganda and religious zealots to wage a political campaign of terrorist attacks against the United States and western democracies. It was estimated that there were between 200 and 1,000 members of Al-Qaeda. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Do you think it's right to condemn a group based on the actions of 0.0625% of it's membership?

You should also be further aware that part of the goal of Al-Qaeda and later DAESH was to incite the western world into attacking innocent Muslims, so that they could gain power in the Muslim world. Conservatives who blame all Muslims for the actions of a small group of murderous criminals play right into the hands of those same criminals.

Russians meddled in the 2016 elections with trolling that didn't kill anyone. Liberals act horrified.

The Russian government meddled in the 2016 elections and liberals are horrified at the results of that meddling. Conservatives, however, are ok with it because they won. Way to sell out your own country for a bit of fleeting power.

Got it.

Nope.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[tbannist]

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.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[lgw]

Yes, but assuming the confirmed director of the CIA and Trump are working together (as seems to be the case here), they should be able to fire anyone or everyone in the agency, and hire replacements at their pleasure (well, conformant with EEOC rules etc).

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[lgw]

That's a fair point, but just as replacing everyone every election would be bad, never cleaning house is bad. Large institutions become gradually more corrupt over time, and humanity has never found a fix for that, beyond the bigger hammer approach.

For the same reason, I think we should go back to state-appointment of senators (and then switch back again in 50 years or so) - the corruption is so firmly in place that simply switching the system will disrupt the finely-tune lobbying machine for decades. Both ways are vulnerable to corruption, but there's a win in switching.

Similarly, replacing government agencies with new people (but a similar charter) every 50-100 would be very beneficial. And they're really bad now.

Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA?

[im_thatoneguy]

I can't believe I didn't see it coming. I wondered out loud last year "Once Trump is the Government how will he justify all of his bat shit government conspiracies?!" ...one year later: "I'm being attacked by the DEEP STATE, which is a parallel government where Obama and Hillary are co-presidents. I'm not president of that government, so if it's bad, it's them."

Fuck me.

That sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, isn't this the same reasoning that led to the creation of the SS in the 20s?

Re:trump dat bitch

[swimboy]

What could possibly go wrong?

Holy shit

[WindBourne]

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.

There's no good that can come of this

[Baron_Yam]

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?

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[sl3xd]

Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?

I've heard Trump voters saying things along the lines of "If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it is true. That is how confident I feel in the president."

We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[Gravis Zero]

Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?

We'll likely found out at the conclusion of the Mueller investigation.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[vux984]

Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?

Even if they trust trump to the end of the world (which is batshit crazy all on its own), their rabid distrust of everyone else should slap them back down to earth.

Give the whitehouse a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.

No matter what happens, whether it's 3 or 7 years, the next president will *not* be Trump.

We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.

key word being 'ostensibly Christian'; they're not Christian... at most they're just 'team Christian', and only when it suits. We're about to watch "ostensible Christians" in Alabama elect a pedophile because he's on the same team as the sexual predator in chief.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?

I came to the conclusion months ago that he can't do anything that will cause his hardcore supporters to stop supporting him. We're getting reports of people in places like Alabama saying if Jesus came back and ran as a Democrat they'd still vote for Trump. We need to admit in America that for about 80-90% of the population the only thing that matters is whether there is a D or an R by a candidate's name and all other issues are negotiable. Assuming he can avoid doing something illegal that gets him removed from office or makes him resign, he's going to be re-elected in 2020. The economy is good and in almost every case of a sitting president losing a re-election bid, a bad economy was in play. Heck, GW Bush and Obama both ran for re-election with kind of crummy economies and both won easily. Trump has everything in his favor. The damage will be immense and his successor will have to do a lot of repair work in 2024 to fix the messes he'll cause in 2 terms, but angry white people love him and there's sadly still enough of them to decide the election in 2020 for Trump.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[Baron_Yam]

>Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?

"It's OK to cheat to win, when you're right." Both sides are guilty of that, though I'm not going to argue whether it's an evenly divided guilt or not.

However, given that for Trump's base 'their guy' is in power, I doubt they're worried much about keeping him there - the rules can be bent to make a 2nd term happen, and then you have another 4 years to work on making a Republican dynasty a thing.

I mean... look at gerrymandering. It's not exactly an obscure attempt to manipulate democracy to ensure a win, and it's not a great long-term method for achieving that end repeatedly.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[Freischutz]

Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?

I've heard Trump voters saying things along the lines of "If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it is true. That is how confident I feel in the president."

We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.

I heard a (female) Trumpkin and self confessed eveangelical say that: "...he must walk with god, if you are that rich god must love you". It is fascinating how Americans have managed to turn Jesus who stormed into the temple in Jerusalem and toppled the moneylender's tables into a modern day god of money and greed.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[jbengt]

You misspelled misspelled.
And if it's a "fishing expedition" (it's not), Mueller at least knows where they're biting, as he's already gotten Guilty pleas.

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[tbannist]

Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?

Some of them are secretly hoping that there won't be a "next time a democrat president sits in the White House", which is one potential consequence of giving the President his own secret army of spies and assassins...

Re:There's no good that can come of this

[tbannist]

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.

Re:Vice reports from an anonymous source

[cloud.pt]

Yet they have been corroborated a gazillion times and are, unusually, one of the most trusted sources of relevant information these days. Gonzo style journalism sux at first, but it has a "raison d'etre" that sinks in pretty damn fast.

Dangerous and terrifying...

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Dumbest Idea Ever

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:Dumbest Idea Ever

[hey!]

It's a common play for leaders to develop parallel, privately controlled security and even military apparatuses where institutional or national loyalties may outweigh personal loyalty to the leader (Hitler's Waffen-SS), or where legalities restrain the leader prompting him to find ways to exercise power covertly and without restriction (Nixon's Plumbers).

It's not dumb, it's treacherous.

Re:Dumbest Idea Ever

[StormReaver]

What happened to those small government principles?

The Republicans only want small government when some other party is in control. When Republicans are in control, they want an all-powerful government.

Everyone but trump

[WaffleMonster]

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.

Re:Everyone but trump

[postbigbang]

Keep trying. Go ahead. Are you actually hired for Trump media damage control?

The sheer number of credible media sources gives this madness, this Trump SS idea, a lot of believability. Everyone has dirt, and by gosh, he'll distract the media with what he finds.... and not necessarily within the lawful confines of his office.

Don Quixote couldn't have done better. You, either.

Re:Everyone but trump

[quantaman]

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.

Exactly.

[b0s0z0ku]

This is basically a private secret police agency with no lawful oversight from the courts and Congress. Awful idea.

Re:Exactly.

[mbkennel]

> Doesn't it report into the same CIA director? So not private

No, that's baloney. "not private" means "authorized by Congressional law and, usually funded by appropriation, and subject to Congressional & judicial oversight".

Re:Exactly.

[tbannist]

Doesn't it report into the same CIA director? So not private. And we know about it? So not secret. And it's a spy agency? So not police. So, yeah, every word in "private secret police" is wrong.

Here's a hint: Secret police aren't police, they're spies. Otherwise they'd just be "police". The "secret police" part just means they have the power to make you disappear, permanently.

Forgive me if I wait until a credible source

[wfrazee2004]

Both the linked article and its in turn linked source are of dubious integrity, and have highly questionable histories of independent/original reporting. The presentation here at minimum smacks of over-reach and speculation. Our intelligence services - and those of every other country - already do exactly this. So does wikileaks, which is frankly a private intelligence service in all but name. So if the simple story here is "Erik Prince to run privately funded PatriotLeaks" that's a far cry from a US government sponsored "replace the CIA" initiative.

Re:You guys break me up

[PmanAce]

Why are you bringing in the left when it has nothing to do with the article? Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy.

This just keeps getting weirder

[orgelspieler]

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!

Re:This just keeps getting weirder

[Gilgaron]

Ah, but a hefty estate tax and heterodox media would prevent that... ! :(

Re:You guys break me up

[Baron_Yam]

> Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy

It is not valid, but it's been pretty effective for about a year so far.

Re:You guys break me up

[orgelspieler]

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.

"Deep State"?

[rsilvergun]

Everytime I hear that my ears perk up. It's the kind of crazy conspiracy stuff that crazy dictators have used for years to breed distrust in Democracy so they can 'temporarily' supplement it.

Re:Vice reports from an anonymous source

[orgelspieler]

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.

Re:You guys break me up

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:Great idea

[mnemotronic]

...If the liberals weren't so racist against Russians

"Russian" in this context is a nationality. While "Race" was once used to distinguish people by language, location or politics, that custom disappeared several hundred years ago. Perhaps the gulag's educational system has not kept up?

Sidenote: when I was a kid I was bombarded with talk about them "Ruskies" and "Commies" from hard-core Republican adults. They wished that General George Patton had continued fighting at the end of WW II and leveled Moscow.

Re: trump dat bitch

[Bing Tsher E]

No, you're just an idiot A.C. crapflooding Slashdot.

Why is this even a topic on Slashdot? More clickbait from mishmash? I looked at the article and it appears to be a spun up fabricated nothing-burger. Not even credible enough to be buzzfeed fodder.

Have you really sunk this low, slashdot owners?

DO NOT BE RACIST TO PAID SHILLS!

[i286NiNJA]

I think it's very racist of them to assume you're a slav when all we know for certain is that you're posting from a smoky internet cafe for peanuts in order to support your starving family.

Sociopaths are going to put this guy on a pedestal

[BadTuna]

17 spy depts that we pay for and he want to create yet another one? That answers only to him?

  How far is the batshit allowed to go before he is removed? How many definitions of the word narcissist need to be explained?
How long before he wants to change 'President' to 'Utmost Supreme Leader"?

Re: Great idea

[Zero__Kelvin]

You don't think maybe they call Trump a racist because he declared there were many very nice white supremacists?

Re:trump dat bitch

[AutodidactLabrat]

PRIVATE spies who report only to tRump and cronies?
The problem isn't a Philby, the problem is tRump!!!
He wants another gov't paid spy system?
Use the CIVIL SERVICE TO HIRE THEM and make them report to Congress!

Re:Great idea

[jbengt]

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..

Re:Great idea

[AutodidactLabrat]

Did you cash your Putin check today, apparatchnik?

Re: Great idea

[jbengt]

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.

That's not why people know him to be a racist.

Can't trust the CIA?

[Heebie]

Of course Dump and his administration cannot trust the CIA. The CIA's mission is to take out enemies of the United States of America. Dump and his entire administration *ARE* enemies of the United States of America. There is no way in hell that a PRIVATE army of spies should ever represent the interests of the U.S. or any other nation on the planet. PRIVATE spies CAN BE BOUGHT... at least, if not more, easily than ones that legitimately work for the government. This idea should be killed by congress and the courts before it gets off the ground... but it probably won't be. :(

Re:trust the private spies

[jbengt]

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.

... because two Santa Clauses ...

[Freischutz]

why is it whenever Benghazi is mentioned no one ever looks at the fact that a Republican controlled Congress slashed the security budget for the State Department?

I don't know if this applies to Benghazi but what the Republicans normally do is make sure that any spending cuts manifest themselves on the Democrat's watch. They are doing the same thing with the current tax cut. I believe it is called the "Two Santa Clause" strategy. Both parties have a Santa Claus, Republican Santa and Democrat Santa. What the Republicans must do is send in Republican Santa Claus, run up a huge deficit by having Republican Santa promise people massive and popular tax cuts, then defer the financing of those tax cuts until the democrats are in power and force them to shoot their Santa Claus to pay for Republican Santa's largesse. This theory was popularised by a guy called Jude Wanniski back in the late 1970s and the American electorate and the Democrat party are still falling for it, with Obama being the latest victim. Remember how the Republicans screamed their heads off over Obama's policies causing deficits that he actually inherited from the Bush administration? ... that was the Republicans forcing Obama to shoot Democrat Santa to pay for the presents handed out by Republican Santa (and if you don't believe me get a Republican strategy lesson straight from the horse's mouth). Apart from defeating Republican tax cut bills, the only way out of this would seem to be for the Democrats to become just as fiscally irresponsible as the Republicans and continue deferring the spending cuts in some way and dump them in the lap of the next Republican administration. Either that or mount a grass roots revolution, dump their current leadership, read Machiavelli and the Republican playbook, fight back and get massively better at communicating with the electorate but that seems about as likely to happen as a dog laying an egg and that egg hatching into a unicorn.

Re: Great idea

[tbannist]

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.

Trump the First

[TiggertheMad]

Give the white house a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.

If you give Trump a private army / spy network / whatever, there would be no next president. Do you for one second think that Trump would step down from power if he had a private army? He has been attacking established intelligence agencies, The FBI, the free press, and grabbing power where ever he can. Even Nixon, one of the most arguably corrupt presidents we have ever had took six years to come to a point where he stated that a president cannot break the law because he is above it. Trump is defending his actions in under a year. You give this guy an inch and you will have America's first dictator.

Re:The comments here are TERRIFYING

[caseih]

Yes, but what is truly terrifying is that there's a non-zero chance that the fatalists are right. Everything *has* changed with Trump, and not for the better. Even the most far-fetched conspiracy theories are now a tiny bit plausible. I for one have no doubt that Trump actually talked with some people about this idea. I do not believe, however, that it came to anything or will come to anything.

Before Trump there was a certain decorum, gravitas, and respect with which the president acted, both before fellow citizens, and with nations and leaders abroad. The US was respected and feared because of this, despite the rapid changing of power between the major parties over the last 100 years. Conspiracy theories had no weight, because of this respect. Despite party politics, the US could be depended on to act in ways that were beneficial to US interests, but also benefited the rest of the world. That has all changed now, and no one knows from moment to moment what Trump might do or say. This breeds intense anxiety in the world and at home.

Trump has also given license to people to express freely their baser natures, to the detriment of all. And this is actually what the evil is.

As a moderate I'm very disturbed by the affects of Trump's presidency on the nation. Seems like everyone is being forced to take an extreme side. The middle is getting quite lonely and increasingly under scorn.

Also what disturbs me is that otherwise rational American citizens would rather vote for men of dubious reputation and open allegations of sexual assault, than vote for someone of the other party. This ties directly back to Trump and what he's started.

newspeak

[multi io]

Under Trump, "deep state" is code for "rule of law". -- David Frum

Re:trust the private spies

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:trump dat bitch

[Locke2005]

"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?

Trump the First

[TiggertheMad]

The Waters of the United States issue was a clear power grab by Obama. It doesn't matter where you stand on the EPA. That was clearly a power grab.

And yet for all the slurs and barbs the right has concocted about Obama for no other reason than that he had the wrong skin color, there was a peaceful transition of power when his term was up. What reason is there to form a secret police force, other than to extra-judicially enforce the will of the president and keep him in power? The only reason to form a 'Off the Books' intelligence service is to BREAK LAWS.

Re: Great idea

[Zero__Kelvin]

Which was a lie as every single person marching in the white supremacist side self identified as worthless scum.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

Usage in Hitler's psychological profile

The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Hmmmm. Sounds like someone currently squatting in the White House.