New authority departs from Obama-era policy under which only the Pentagon conducted the operations
The new authority, which hadn’t been previously disclosed, represents a significant departure from a cooperative approach that had become standard practice by the end of former President Barack Obama’s tenure: The CIA used drones and other intelligence resources to locate suspected terrorists and then the military conducted the actual strike... The Obama administration put the military in charge of pulling the trigger to promote transparency and accountability. The CIA, which operates under covert authorities, wasn’t required to disclose the number of suspected terrorists or civilian bystanders it killed in drone strikes... Mr. Trump’s action specifically applied to the CIA’s ability to operate in Syria, it means the agency eventually could become empowered under Mr. Trump to once again conduct covert strikes in other places where the U.S. is targeting militants in Yemen, Libya, Somalia and elsewhere... “The CIA should be a foreign intelligence gathering and analysis organization—not a paramilitary one.”.. Some members of Congress also resisted the effort to move drone operations into the sunlight... Members of the intelligence committees, for example, generally favor a paramilitary CIA role, and believe they are best positioned to conduct oversight of secret operations, while members of the armed services committees argue the military should control the mission... When it comes to vetting targets, the CIA uses a higher, or “near certainty,” standard, while the Defense Department relies on “reasonable certainty” in war zones, though it adheres to the higher standard when operating elsewhere.
The CIA’s No Good, Very Bad, Totally Awful Tuesday
This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.
.. The dump itself is mostly developer notes and Wiki-type contents, probably from a private Atlassian development coordination server based on automatic-text in a PDF. It describes a large variety of tools targeting a whole host of platforms, ranging from Cisco routers to iPhones to Samsung Smart TVs. Technically, there really are no big surprises; these are all systems we would expect the CIA’s hackers to target.
.. Dates in the files suggest that the compromise happened in February or March of 2016, so this is a recent breach.
Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump
Decision to withhold information underscores deep mistrust between intelligence community and president
U.S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
The officials’ decision to keep information from Mr. Trump underscores the deep mistrust that has developed between the intelligence community and the president over his team’s contacts with the Russian government, as well as the enmity he has shown toward U.S. spy agencies.
.. In some of these cases of withheld information, officials have decided not to show Mr. Trump the sources and methods that the intelligence agencies use to collect information
.. Intelligence officials have in the past not told a president or members of Congress about the ins and outs of how they ply their trade. At times, they have decided that secrecy is essential for protecting a source, and that all a president needs to know is what that source revealed and what the intelligence community thinks is important about it.
.. The intelligence agencies have been told to dramatically pare down the president’s daily intelligence briefing, both the number of topics and how much information is described under each topic, an official said.
.. The current and former officials said the decision to avoid revealing sources and methods with Mr. Trump stems in large part from the president’s repeated expressions of admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his call, during the presidential campaign for Russia to continue hacking the emails of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
.. lawmakers have called on the government to release the transcripts of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and to disclose whether Mr. Trump was aware of or directed Mr. Flynn’s conversations.
.. he publicly accused the Central Intelligence Agency and others of leaking information about alleged Russian hacking operations to undermine the legitimacy of his election win.
.. Mr. Trump didn’t explain Wednesday why he asked for Mr. Flynn’s resignation. Instead, he suggested the leaks and the media were to blame for his ouster.
“General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think it’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.
.. Mr. Trump said the “illegally leaked” information was from people with political motivations. “People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton,”
.. Mr. Trump also felt Mr. Flynn did nothing wrong in his conversations with the U.S. ambassador to Russia and had good intentions.
.. “This is not about who won the election. This is about concerns about institutional integrity,” said Mark Lowenthal, a former senior intelligence official.
CIA ATTACKS. Top Flynn Aide Fired From National Security Council
One can’t lose track of the fact that the CIA probably is less than happy with Flynn (it is hard to believe none of the sources for the Washington Post’s nothinburger yesterday were not CIA), knows it can’t get rid of him directly — that will come by the Death of the Thousand Cuts — and is just picking off his key allies.
Pompeo, of course, was between a rock and a hard place. He’s tying to gain control of an agency that is in open revolt against the administration and has demonstrated, now and under George Bush, that it is has no compunction about damaging a president and an administration if it believes its institutional prerogatives are in danger. Going along with sandbagging Townley is a small price to pay if it helps him avoid the Porter Goss treatment.