I hadn't seen Mudd's comments but he certainly has always come across to me as a straight shooter. You do realize that he's on the CNN payroll and is very much a part of how they are reporting and analyzing this story, right?old salt wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 1:30 amCNN CIA & FBI expert Phil Mudd waves the BS flag on CNN's version of this story.CU88 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2019 10:02 am US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017!
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/09/09/poli ... ssion=true
U.S. extracted a top spy from Russia in part due to "concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy."
DEPLORABLE and the r's love it!
Just a reminder: this was a guy who literally ran his campaign based around the idea that his opponent’s private email server was a national security risk and she couldn’t be trusted to handle sensitive national security matters.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... rom-russia
I picked up Mudd's book today at the library. Looks like a good quick read.
The CIA & NYT are also waving the BS flag on CNN's story.
Leakers burned him in 2016. Trump wasn't President yet.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cia-sl ... filtration
The Central Intelligence Agency on Monday evening slammed what it called CNN's "misguided" and "simply false" reporting, after the cable channel's chief national security correspondent authored a hole-filled piece claiming that the CIA had pulled a high-level spy out of Russia because President Trump had "repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy."
The extraordinary CIA rebuke came as The New York Times published a bombshell piece late in the evening, which largely contradicted CNN's reporting. According to The Times, CIA officials "made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia" -- weeks before Trump even took office.
Concerns about media reporting on Russian election interference drove the decision, according to the Times, which described the source as "the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders” from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction," the Times wrote.
The purported spy refused the 2016 offer of extraction, the Times reported, citing family concerns. But the CIA "pressed again months later after more media inquiries" threatened the source, and he relented, according to the paper.
"CNN's narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false," CIA Director for Public Affairs Brittany Bramell said in a statement.
Bramwell continued: "Misguided speculation that the President's handling of our nation's most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate."
It was not clear from the CNN piece how exactly Trump's comments in the Oval Office would have further compromised the Russian source.
Numerous other holes quickly surfaced in CNN's reporting. Commentator Aaron Mate pointed out in a Twitter thread that several major news organizations had previously cited a high-level source in the Russian government as a source -- suggesting that the intelligence community itself, not Trump, had compromised the spy.
For example, The Washington Post reported in June 2017 of "'sourcing deep inside the Russian government' -- so deep that it purportedly 'captured Putin’s specific instructions" to launch a pro-Trump influence campaign," Matte noted.
And the Times reported in August 2018 of "anonymous intel officials complaining that their 'vital Kremlin informants have largely gone silent.'" But "if these Kremlin informants are so vital, why are US intel officials talking about them?" Matte asked.
The source resurfaced in May 2019, when the Times "reported on intel fears of this source being exposed."
"Again, the irony is lost that it's the ones who are complaining who are the ones revealing this supposed source," Matte wrote. "So there's a pattern here of intel leaks in order to: create a false link between Trump-Russia; to reveal supposed high-level Russian sources that advance the Russiagate narrative & then falsely blame Trump for these sources' supposed vulnerability."
So, I bothered to watch the clip.
He does NOT raise any such "BS flag on CNN's version of the story" other than to say that he "suspects there's more to the story" than just Trump's loose lips being the issue; he then goes on to confirm that the intel community is quite suspicious of Trump beyond this particular topic.
From all I've read, that sounds likely. They were concerned for this guy's life before Trump became President due to increased attention and potential leaks, but grew far more concerned as greater attention to the Russian interference grew and Trump's seeming to not be willing to believe the intel presented to him, along with his demonstrated willingness to put allies' agents in danger through what he told the Russians directly.
Maybe it went down differently, with more emphasis on one aspect more than another, but the general progression to decision to extract makes sense to me.
BTW, if you haven't watched the 6 episode short series "The Spy" on Netflix, it's worth the time. True story of Israeli spy in Syria late-50'svthru mid '60's, Eli Cohen. I won't spoil the conclusion, but suffice it to say there are some parallels to the discussion of extraction we're having here.
