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Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
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NSC official to testify Trump undermined national security with Ukraine pressure
A senior White House official plans to tell House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he believed President Donald Trump undermined U.S. national security when he listened in on Trump’s appeal to Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rivals, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by POLITICO.

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official overseeing Ukraine policy, plans to tell lawmakers, referring to Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.


Vindman, who will become the first White House official to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry, also plans to testify that he reported Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky to the NSC’s top lawyer after listening in on the conversation from the White House situation room. It was the second time Vindman had raised concerns to the NSC’s counsel about the Trump administration’s posture toward Ukraine.



“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained,” Vindman plans to say. (Burisma is a Ukrainian energy company of which Biden’s son Hunter was previously a board member.)

“This would all undermine U.S. national security,” Vindman adds. “Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC’s lead counsel.”

Vindman, an Army combat veteran who served in Iraq, will become the first official who listened in on Trump’s phone call with Zelensky to speak with investigators, providing a firsthand account of what House Democrats have said is a blatant abuse of power by the president. His opening statement leans heavily on his military service and a “sense of duty” to his country.

“I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country, irrespective of party or politics,” Vindman writes in his opening statement, adding that his family fled the Soviet Union when he was 3½ years old.

The Trump-Zelensky phone call is at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. Investigators have gathered evidence that Trump sought to withhold critical military aid to Ukraine and refuse a White House meeting with Zelensky until the Ukrainian leader publicly stated his intention to launch Trump’s desired investigations.

Vindman also says in his opening statement that he would be appearing before investigators under subpoena — an indication that he expects the White House to try to prevent him from testifying. He also says he is not the whistleblower who initially reported concerns about the White House’s handling of Ukraine to the intelligence community’s inspector general — though many of his concerns mirror the complaint that put the House on a path toward impeachment.

Vindman’s appearance before the three committees spearheading the impeachment inquiry will mark the most significant crack yet in the White House’s blockade of witness testimony.

Already, a handful of State Department officials and diplomats have described alarm at Trump’s handling of Ukraine and worried that he had withheld military aid and a White House visit from Zelensky in order to pressure him to launch the Biden probe.

Vindman plans to echo those concerns on Tuesday — in particular, efforts by “outside influencers” to promote “a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.”

Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was at the helm of that shadow campaign, which led to the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Vindman does not name Giuliani in his opening statement, but says he was alarmed that such efforts were inconsistent with American foreign policy and harming U.S.-Ukraine relations.

“This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy,” Vindman writes in his opening statement. “While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

Vindman plans to testify that he first reported his Ukraine-related concerns to the NSC’s lead lawyer in early July, after a meeting between Ukraine’s top national security official and cadre of senior Trump administration officials, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland.

Vindman says that when the Ukrainians raised the prospect of a Trump-Zelensky meeting — a crucial step for Ukraine as its newly elected leader sought to showcase a united front against Russia — Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, interjected “to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting.” At that moment, Vindman says, then-national security adviser John Bolton “cut the meeting short.”

At a subsequent debriefing, Vindman says, Sondland “emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma.” Vindman says he confronted Sondland and called his statements “inappropriate,” and said the NSC would not become involved in the push. Those concerns, he said, were echoed by Fiona Hill, who at the time served as the NSC’s top Russia policy official.

“Following the debriefing meeting, I reported my concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel. Dr. Hill also reported the incident to the NSC’s lead counsel,” Vindman said.

Sondland, for his part, told lawmakers earlier this month that he didn’t remember discussing the Bidens with State Department or White House officials.

“I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about Former Vice President Biden or his son, nor do I recall taking part in any effort to encourage an investigation into the Bidens,” he said.

Hill testified earlier this month that she met with NSC lawyer John Eisenberg twice, at Bolton’s urging, to relay similar concerns. Both Vindman and Hill met with NSC lawyers on the same day, July 10, after Bolton abruptly ended the meeting with Ukraine’s top national security official, Oleksandr Danylyuk.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
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Officials cringe as Trump spills sensitive details of al-Baghdadi raid
A couple of the president's statements on Sunday were inaccurate or left U.S. officials wondering where he got his information, officials said. The president said when U.S. officials notified Russia it would be entering airspace in western Syria, they told the Russians, "We think you're going to be very happy." But that phrase was not said on the call with the Russians, a U.S. official said. Trump also said al-Baghdadi was "crying and screaming" as U.S. forces chased him down, but U.S. officials said they didn't hear those sounds, and Milley told reporters he doesn't know the source of the president's information on that.

The overarching concern about Trump's disclosures on the al-Baghdadi raid, officials said, is that he gave America's enemies details that could make intelligence gathering and similar military operations more difficult and more dangerous to pull off.

Revealing that the U.S. possesses documents about future ISIS plans hurts the military's ability to use that information for quick follow-on operations, officials said. The president's disclosure that the U.S. had taken ISIS fighters from the compound complicated efforts to try to keep ISIS from knowing who is alive or dead for as long as possible while they interrogate them, officials said.

The president, as the ultimate authority on classification, can declassify any piece of government information simply by releasing it publicly. And some top U.S. officials — including then-President Barack Obama, who signed a law to reduce the amount of classified material — have lamented the government's tendency to over-classify information. But current and former senior U.S. officials said from the earliest days of his presidency that Trump consistently wants to make public more than his advisers think is legally sound or wise for U.S national security.

"We agonized over what we would put in his briefings," one former senior White House official said, "because who knows if and when he's going to say something about it."

"He has no filter," the official added. "But also if he knows something, and he thinks it's going to be good to say or make him appear smarter or stronger, he'll just blurt it out."

On Monday, Trump declassified a photo of the dog, revealing its breed, which was classified. But the dog’s name remains top secret. Inquiries about the dog flooded in after Trump disclosed that "the K-9 was hurt, went into the tunnel."

Trump also said Monday that he is considering releasing footage of the al-Baghdadi raid, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the military is working on declassifying some images.

"We have video and photos," Milley said.

We have declassified a picture of the wonderful dog (name not declassified) that did such a GREAT JOB in capturing and killing the Leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi! pic.twitter.com/PDMx9nZWvw

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2019
A couple of the president's statements on Sunday were inaccurate or left U.S. officials wondering where he got his information, officials said. The president said when U.S. officials notified Russia it would be entering airspace in western Syria, they told the Russians, "We think you're going to be very happy." But that phrase was not said on the call with the Russians, a U.S. official said. Trump also said al-Baghdadi was "crying and screaming" as U.S. forces chased him down, but U.S. officials said they didn't hear those sounds, and Milley told reporters he doesn't know the source of the president's information on that.

The overarching concern about Trump's disclosures on the al-Baghdadi raid, officials said, is that he gave America's enemies details that could make intelligence gathering and similar military operations more difficult and more dangerous to pull off.

Revealing that the U.S. possesses documents about future ISIS plans hurts the military's ability to use that information for quick follow-on operations, officials said. The president's disclosure that the U.S. had taken ISIS fighters from the compound complicated efforts to try to keep ISIS from knowing who is alive or dead for as long as possible while they interrogate them, officials said.

Some of the president's comments could complicate the intelligence gathering that leads to such raids because they revealed sources and methods the U.S. uses, officials said. They pointed to his saying that the U.S. knew of al-Baghdadi's whereabouts via technology, and also knew of the underground tunnels at his compound, which suggests the U.S. has infrared abilities to locate caves and tunnels.

"We knew it had tunnels. The tunnels were a dead end, for the most part. There was one, we think, that wasn't. But we had that covered, too, just in case," Trump said.

Other information Trump discussed provided America's enemies with tactical details on how the military carries out a raid like the one on al-Baghdadi, officials said, including the robot, the helicopter flight patterns and how U.S. forces entered the compound.

Some of the information, while not overly damaging, is just more than the military would like disclosed, officials said, such as that al-Baghdadi "had a lot of cash" and the president saying he was able to view the raid remotely "as though you were watching a movie."

Officials said the first major battle over disclosing details of military operations was in 2017 when Trump ordered airstrikes on areas controlled by the Assad regime in Syria.

The arguments against disclosures are usually based on concerns about revealing sources and methods or the idea that the more the president releases publicly, the weaker his argument about exerting executive privilege becomes. Sometimes he overrules them, while other times he simply says things publicly that they weren't expecting him to disclose.

Trump has since pushed the boundaries on a myriad of topics, officials said, and they don't expect that to be curtailed.

He's talked publicly about deploying a nuclear submarine in Asia, and more recently about nuclear weapons the U.S. never acknowledges it keeps in Turkey. Early in his presidency, Trump's disclosure of specific intelligence to Russian officials raised alarms among administration officials. After Trump wrote on Twitter in August that the U.S. was learning a lot about a mysterious explosion in Russia, a senior administration official told NBC News an aide would have to inform him his disclosure risked revealing sources and methods.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
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Wait, was the the only details Trump over shared or got wrong about the event?
I don't know, I wasn't privy to the video feed.

But I can tell you that Belgian Mals being the breed of choice for Spec Ops groups isn't "classified" so you can do with that information what you'd like.
 

Leigh

Engineer
Pro Fighter
Jan 26, 2015
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I don't know, I wasn't privy to the video feed.

But I can tell you that Belgian Mals being the breed of choice for Spec Ops groups isn't "classified" so you can do with that information what you'd like.
The article says:

"Other information Trump discussed provided America's enemies with tactical details on how the military carries out a raid like the one on al-Baghdadi, officials said, including the robot, the helicopter flight patterns and how U.S. forces entered the compound."
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
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The article says:

"Other information Trump discussed provided America's enemies with tactical details on how the military carries out a raid like the one on al-Baghdadi, officials said, including the robot, the helicopter flight patterns and how U.S. forces entered the compound."
I'm aware, but if their source is misreporting a fairly irrelevant detail why would we believe they're correctly reporting more important ones?
 

Rambo John J

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Jan 17, 2015
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BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
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to me it feels like when Obama had his big "kill" of Bin Laden
The ISIS leader Baghdadi has been reported to have been killed like 4 times now in the past few years.
He also was "buried at sea"
Why ISIS leader and founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's remains were buried at sea
even though he "blew himself up"

Not trying to piss anybody off but it reeks of propaganda IMO
It's not a secret that ISIL was funded by the government in its early days, I'm not sure why anyone would find it particularly notable that there'd be a picture of one of their future leaders with someone from the government in said early days.
 

Rambo John J

Baker Team
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Jan 17, 2015
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It's not a secret that ISIL was funded by the government in its early days, I'm not sure why anyone would find it particularly notable that there'd be a picture of one of their future leaders with someone from the government in said early days.
a lot of people are not in on that "secret"...Many would tell you that is tinfoil hat territory
we do not know when the funding ended if it has at all
the war machine is a dirty business and it is rife with propaganda and lies