NOW THE BIG SILICON VALLEY CORPS ARE EATING EACH OTHER UP?!
BRENNAN THROWS BHO UNDER THE PROVERBIAL SHIT BUS
Brennan Admits Obama Refused to Retaliate For Russian Cyber-Warfare Against U.S.
Making nice with the Russians
According to former CIA director John Brennan, who served in that post under Barack Obama, even after Obama had been apprised that Russia was conducting cyber-warfare against the United States, he refused to go on the offensive and retaliate against Moscow.
Speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday, Brennan admitted that there was a plan to respond and retaliate against Moscow that had been formulated by the intelligence community, but Obama refused to act, instead weakly issuing a verbal warning to Russia. Brennan acknowledged, "President Obama was the ultimate decision-maker on that.”
Brennan said Obama was afraid that if America retaliated, Russia would increase their cyber-warfare against the United States. He stated, “There was consideration about rattling their cages with some type of cyber event.”
Obama had already weakened American intelligence; last week, Michelle Van Cleave, a former national counterintelligence executive, said that in 2013 Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reduced the national counterintelligence program authority by directing that all counterspy programs be run by individual departments or agencies. She added:
The national head of counterintelligence was rebranded director of a security and CI center, his duties further dissipated by the fixation on leaks and insider threats driven by the grievous harm done by Snowden, Manning, et al. … Gone was any dedicated strategic [counterintelligence] program, while elite pockets of proactive capabilities died of neglect. Read between the lines of existing CI guidance and you will not find a whiff of a national-level effort left, other than caretaker duties such as taking inventory and writing reports.
Brennan said he had "great confidence" Russian President Vladimir Putin had directed the Russian effort. The Obama Administration first recognized Russian interference in late 2015 and early 2016; Brennan acknowledged Russian operations had been confirmed.
Brennan stated, "We were really trying to strike the right balance between doing everything we could to prevent and thwart as well as to uncover and understand what the Russians were doing without doing anything that would almost advance their interests in trying to disrupt our election.” He added that Obama was concerned that U.S. action against the Russians might be perceived as Obama attempting to influence the 2016 election, saying, "So if we did more things and stood at the hilltops and cried out, ‘The Russians, the Russians are trying to help Trump get elected,' and if President Obama who is the titular head of the Democratic Party were to do that, I think that there would have been a lot of people would believe, I think with some justification, that the President of the United States was trying to influence the outcome of a presidential election.”
But as Ed Morrissey of HotAir points out, that is a specious argument:
There are only a couple of small holes in Brennan’s argument, though. The first is that Obama did go public with the Russian threat … in October 2016, no less, and it had been leaking out of the Obama administration for months at that point. In fact, the Obama administration also leaked out a CIA plan for massive cyber retaliation in the middle of the same month, just three weeks before the election, a plan which was never activated. Obama was in full “The Russians are coming” mode by that point anyway — so why not make the Russians pay for it?
Second hole: The US picked up on these efforts much earlier than the DNC hack. First, Russia has longstanding disinformation campaigns against Western elections, but as early as 2014, intelligence showed that Moscow was going to put more resources into it. Senator Tom Cotton warned the administration that they were unprepared for the hostile action to come and tried to get Obama to expand counter-propaganda resources in 2015, only to get his proposal shot down by Obama himself.
Ed Schultz: I Was Fired From MSNBC Because I Supported Bernie Sanders
The former anchor claims the network was in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
MSNBC anchor-turned-Russia Today host, Ed Schultz, told National Review Monday that he believes he was fired from the left-leaning cable news network because he openly supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary. The network, he claims, was in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
The interview itself is fascinating and a shocking look at the inner workings of MSNBC, even if Schultz isn't exactly a reliable narrator. Schultz claims that MSNBC took a heavy hand in dictating what went on air, and that he was often pushed in the direction of a story by higher-ups, even if he felt his audience wouldn't be interested
Schultz says his trouble at MSNBC started when he informed his bosses that he planned to cover Bernie Sanders' campaign announcement live from Vermont, and that he would be airing the first, exclusive, cable network interview with the progressive presidential candidate. They objected, and even went so far as to tell Schultz to drop the story.
He refused. And was forced to cover a boring news story in Texas, he says.
Schultz is clear on whom he blames: Hillary Clinton.
"I think the Clintons were connected to [NBC's] Andy Lack, connected at the hip," Schultz told NRO host Jamie Weinstein. "I think that they didn't want anybody in their primetime or anywhere in their lineup supporting Bernie Sanders. I think that they were in the tank for Hillary Clinton, and I think that it was managed, and 45 days later I was out at MSNBC."
Schultz's stint at MSNBC came to a screeching halt in July 2015, just as the Democratic primaries were heating up. That same week, the network also axed other underperforming shows, but Schultz maintains that he was given the boot because they didn't want him speaking out against Clinton in the heat of the primaries.