Trump’s Intelligence Takeover Is a Five Alarm Fire | Anchor Watch

[00:00:00]What we have now, even in an acting capacity, is a man who donated a lot of money to President Trump, who has been running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by the way, will keep those jobs, and then [laughter] part-time, the head of uh intelligence for the United States of America with zero experience, doesn't even have a security clearance. Can you just please tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much we should be concerned about this?

[00:00:29]>> 15. I I go right to 15.

[00:00:32]Uh it's one, it's unlawful.

[00:00:37]>> Yes.

[00:00:37]>> Two, the fact that it's acting itself is concerning, and the president explained, as well as I could, why it's concerning, cuz the president has figured out that by making him an acting, he will stay in 4 months without any oversight from the Congress.

[00:00:53]And the president was very clear, that was the point of doing it as an acting appointment.

[00:00:59]Yes, there is the money. Yes, there is the lack of experience. Yes, there is having two other jobs at the same time.

[00:01:07]You get the irony there. That's why we created the DNI, but at least those two jobs were in the intelligence world. And Senator Warner, who's just uh uh whose face you just put up on the screen here, he pointed that out, and there's a guy who really does have experience in intelligence.

[00:01:23]>> He's >> Right.

[00:01:23]>> been on the committee that does the oversight, so he understands exactly what's going on here.

[00:01:29]But there's another element here, incompetence is part of it. There's no question about it. An inability to lead the intelligence community, but there's an if there.

[00:01:39]>> Mhm.

[00:01:39]>> The intelligence community is set up for one real purpose, to gather the best available intelligence to inform the people who make the most critical decisions for our nation, when to go to war, how to go to war, when to make treaties, when to build defenses, frankly, when Americans should be scared. And they do that for the president, cabinet secretaries, check the joint chiefs of staff, the Congress, as well.

[00:02:08]That's what the intelligence community is supposed to be doing. But that's not why this person was put in place. And again, the best source is the is the primary source, the president of the United States. He said he's there actually to clean out people who were quote loyal to presidents Obama and Biden. There's no evidence of any inappropriate loyalty other than the structural loyalty to the through and to the Constitution. But also to take a really good look at the midterms.

[00:02:37]Our elections. The intelligence community is not there to look at our elections and how Americans vote and when they vote and most importantly, who they vote for. And that's what the president has made very clear that this guy's job is.

[00:02:54]>> Let's let's see Let's dig right into that because my natural question is, okay, then why do this?

[00:03:00]Correct me if I'm wrong. We have various organizations, but most of our intel is focused internationally outside of domestic walls because of various laws, etc., structure.

[00:03:15]How is it that he can turn our intelligence apparatus inward domestically on American citizens?

[00:03:24]>> Well, first step And by the way, in my organization, the steady state has seen this overseas over and over again with a rising dictator, a rising autocrat. The first thing you do to deal with the problem you just talked about, which is how do you turn this I can I'm going to keep using these maritime analogies. You turn this ship.

[00:03:41]Well, first thing is you start firing people. You fire the people who know a lot. You fire the people who have demonstrated an allegiance to the law and the Constitution. You fire the people who you don't think are personally loyal to you.

[00:03:54]That's the first thing you you have to do. Second, you focus them inward. You actually direct them. And the president has already done that. It's a document called the National Security Policy Memo number seven. Sounds pretty geeky. You can look it up. I'd encourage your readers to go take a look at this. It is the single most scary government document I have ever read. An SPN 7 Google it, it will come right up.

[00:04:21]Doesn't really read like a typical presidential document either. But what it basically does is defines the threat that all of the government should be looking at inside America and includes people who don't hold American values, who do not believe in a traditional American family, who support a loosening of immigration rather than a tightening immigration. In the document there's called it's called open borders.

[00:04:51]I actually know very few people, certainly public leaders, who have called for open borders.

[00:04:55]>> Right.

[00:04:56]>> Not my lifetime.

[00:04:57]>> Right.

[00:04:58]>> Um it simply hasn't happened. So that's the second thing you do. You give them an order. And then you start putting in leaders across the national security community. You've seen Secretary of Defense who likes to call himself Secretary of War doing the same in the in the defense world in this which has by the way the bulk of the money in the intelligence community.

[00:05:20]>> Right.

[00:05:20]>> Most of the elements of the intelligence community are Defense Department elements such as DIA, the National Security Agency, and the intelligence elements of the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army. All of them.

[00:05:33]So that's the second thing you do. The third thing you do is you look at the the top leadership and you replace them with true loyalists to you. And that's the part we're we're seeing now.

[00:05:47]Um you also do things like when somebody takes action that you don't like. And by you don't like, I mean putting out intelligence that differs from what you said on TV the day before. When you enter into a war with Iran and then say nobody ever told me about the Straits of Hormuz.

[00:06:05]Um >> Mhm.

[00:06:06]>> I'm kind of paraphrasing the president.

[00:06:08]I mean that's just simply not true.

[00:06:12]It It's on the map. Everybody at CIA knows where the >> Strait of Hormuz.

[00:06:16]>> Yes.

[00:06:16]>> Yes.

[00:06:17]>> [laughter] >> It's not It's not rocket science. So those are the things you do. And what we've seen overseas is what what holds it back is the culture and the professionalism of intelligence services. It is very hard to have effective intelligence services in a functioning democracy. It usually doesn't work out so well. Look at Russia. Look at Germany. Look at Spain under Franco. Look at Serbia under Milosevic. Why? Because the skills of intelligence are really dangerous skills. Intelligence officers steal secrets. Intelligence officers do what we in the United States under law call covert action. Intelligence officers are a dangerous tool in the tool toolbox.

[00:07:02]You need to have it to keep the Ameri- the Americans safe. No question about it.

[00:07:06]But it's really dangerous. And what we're seeing is that very sharp tool taken out of the toolbox and pointed inwards. Pointed at Americans. And that is why my organization who sat in those seats, we know how dangerous it would be.

[00:07:22]We sat in seats next to foreign autocrats and their national security services. By the way, security services is When you hear people use that word, we're usually talking about another country and it's usually not a compliment. Um >> Right.

[00:07:37]>> And >> Right.

[00:07:38]>> You know, if you've worked at CIA, if you've worked in in the military intelligence, you've worked alongside those people. You know how dangerous they can be. So, we're worried. We're really worried. And when you couple it with what we're seeing about the election in California is not good.

[00:07:53]We're going to do investigations. And the similar I'm going to use the word weaponization, which is yet another word which has been sort of glommed onto by the Trump administration and turned around. Sort of my irony there. But, the the destruction of a Justice Department.

[00:08:10]>> That like the intelligence community holds itself apart from politics.

[00:08:14]Doesn't do the bidding of politicians to keep them in power.

[00:08:18]>> Um we're seeing the same thing there.

[00:08:20]And altogether, it's a it's a five-alarm fire.