Two top Republican senators are demanding CIA Director Gina Haspel hand over documents
requested more than two months ago following Federalist
reporting that the intelligence chief is blocking their declassification until after the November election to
save her job.
In July, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent Haspel a letter asking the CIA director to comply with a series of oversight requests pertaining to their review of Crossfire Hurricane, the undercover FBI operation that sought to execute a deep-state coup on President Donald Trump. After months of no response, Grassley and Johnson are following up.
"The American people have a right to know the full extent of official action taken by federal officials during the 2016 campaign, the presidential transition, and into the Trump administration," Grassley and Johnson wrote in a Wednesday
letter.
"The information that has already been made public reveals what might be the most outrageous abuse of power in U.S. history against a presidential candidate and sitting president. Unfortunately, many of the puzzle pieces remain hidden, and some of that information rests within your agency."
The senators gave Haspel a Friday deadline to comply with their requests.
During her 2018 Senate confirmation hearings, Haspel emphasized her commitment to working cooperatively with Congress as it exercised a core function of its constitutional duty to oversee executive agencies:
As both a career intelligence officer and as an American citizen, I am a strong believer in the importance of oversight. Simply put, experience has taught us that CIA cannot be effective without the people's trust, and we cannot hope to earn that trust without the accountability that comes with Congressional oversight.
...
If confirmed as Director, I will uphold the Agency's obligations to Congress and ensure that oversight works on behalf of the American people.
"Your apparent unwillingness to speak with us on this matter contradicts your testimony," the senators wrote.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials told The Federalist this week that Haspel is deliberately blocking the release of key Russiagate documents in hopes that Trump loses in November. Haspel was also formerly the CIA station chief in London
under Obama CIA Director John Brennan in 2016 and 2017 while ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele pieced together the discredited dossier that would later become the basis accusing Trump of being a Kremlin agent.
"
Haspel and [FBI Director Christopher] Wray both want Trump to lose, because it's the only chance they have of keeping their jobs," a senior intelligence official told Federalist Co-Founder Sean Davis.
"They're banking on Biden winning and keeping them where they are."
Comment: What did Trump expect from career spook and torturer Gina Haspel when he hired her? Her allegiance is to the pathological power elite and their policies, and certainly not to truth and justice.
But the plot does thicken further when one considers how neck deep she is in
Russiagate herself:
[...] For the sake of brevity, I am not discussing Halper's role in targeting former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. That is another column for another day -- and certainly Haspel knows a great deal about that, as well.
The timeframe (2014-2017) matters, because Haspel, as London Station Chief would have been briefed on the FBI's counterintelligence plan before any actions were approved to go forward. The CIA Station Chief is the top intelligence official in any given country. The FBI must inform the Station Chief of what they planned to do and get Station Chief approval. The FBI hates that, but those are the rules. Because the various intelligence agencies are sensitive, they do not use the word "approved." Instead, they use the word "coordinated." Jargon aside, nothing would have happened without Haspel's okay.
Think about this for a while: The current CIA director was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with a contrived foreign counterintelligence investigation. That carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Trump. People around President Trump were prosecuted and/or had their lives destroyed based on a scheme of U.S. government lies. Who appears to have been "in on it" from day one? Gina Haspel.
So, when we read in an article by Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, that Haspel is personally resisting the declassification and release of records on "Russiagate," we are not surprised. In fact, we are relieved, because a few of us have been shouting from the mountaintops about Haspel for years, to no avail. The smarmy James Comey is easier to identify and loathe than the elusive Haspel.
For those seeking more information on Haspel, Shane Harris of the Washington Post wrote a nauseating hagiography of Haspel in July 2019. Consistent with WaPo's standards there are several factual errors and loads of opinion masquerading as "tough reporting." Harris (and one assumes Haspel) makes sure readers know that Haspel and company "boils down" presidential intelligence briefings to "a few key points that they think Trump absolutely needs to know." We are supposed to also believe that "Trump favors pictures and graphics over text." Of course, the CIA director's office did not cooperate with Harris. No, not at all.
The FBI is not allowed to penetrate and subvert a presidential campaign. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9, "Undisclosed Participation in Organizations in the United States," prohibits it in plain language. Historically, the prohibition is a consequence of U.S. Army Counterintelligence penetrating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the behest of the FBI during the 1960s -- among other abuses of power and authority. That legal prohibition is the reason the FBI felt the need to manufacture a "foreign counterintelligence threat" in the UK and then "import" the investigation back into the United States.
The FBI plotters needed to establish a foreign counterintelligence "event" to run their operation. The UK was the easiest and operationally safest/friendliest place to pull it off, especially with Stefan Halper's connections to Cambridge. Haspel was clearly fully informed and had "coordinated" the operation. She also enjoyed cordial relationships with MI6 and GCHQ. Now we (largely, but imperfectly) know what transpired. Halper under oath, in public, would fill in a lot of blanks. Gina Haspel, under the same circumstances and conditions, might just complete the puzzle. Should President Trump be reelected, it might just happen. A President Biden guarantees we will never hear another syllable of the rest of the story.
Comment: What did Trump expect from career spook and torturer Gina Haspel when he hired her? Her allegiance is to the pathological power elite and their policies, and certainly not to truth and justice.
But the plot does thicken further when one considers how neck deep she is in Russiagate herself: