NSA Reportedly Refuses Pentagon Chief’s Order to Install Trump Loyalist as Lead Counsel

The move comes just days before the expected 20 January handover of power from President Trump to President-elect Biden following a bitterly fought election in November which led angry Trump supporters to storm the Capitol on 6 January. That event led Trump to become the first president in US history to be impeached twice.

Acting Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller ordered the National Security Agency to install GOP operative and Trump loyalist Michael Ellis as the global surveillance agency’s top lawyer on Saturday, The Washington Post and CNN have reported, citing a total of seven sources said to be familiar with the situation.

However, according to CNN’s sources, the order’s 6 pm Saturday EST deadline was not met by NSA director Gen. Paul Nakasone, who appeared to ignore Miller’s instructions.

Like Miller, who was himself recently appointed Pentagon chief by Trump shortly after the 3 November election to make progress on the president’s promises to pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, Ellis was named as NSA general counsel in November by Pentagon General Counsel Paul C. Ney Jr amid the shakeup of the US national security apparatus.

However, his appointment was reportedly held up by administrative roadblocks, including the need to take a polygraph test. According to the Post’s sources, Nakasone has been deliberately stonewalling Ellis’s appointment.

Ellis is a senior functionary of the Republican Party, and has served in multiple roles under Trump, including senior associate counsel to the president and deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council. He was among the officials accused of leaking information about potentially illegal surveillance of Trump’s transition team following the 2016 election. Ellis was also involved in trying to censure the release of disgraced former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s memoirs over alleged classified materials contained therein. Before that, Ellis served as lead council to California Republican Representative Devin Nunes, a major Trump ally in Congress.

According to CNN, the post of general counsel to the NSA is a civil service job, and not a political appointment, which among other things means it does not require Senate confirmation hearings. This, it is said, would make it harder for President-elect Biden to try to fire Ellis after he takes over come 20 January.

The National Security Agency is one of the most powerful intelligence services in the United States and the world, and has been involved in the controversial and unconstitutional sweeping surveillance of Americans' call records, internet metadata, and other information.

The National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md. The National Security Agency has been extensively involved in the US government's targeted killing program, collaborating closely with the CIA in the use of drone strikes against terrorists abroad, The Washington Post reported Wednesday 16 October 2013 after a review of documents provided by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden.

© AP Photo / Charles Dharapak

NSA Reportedly ‘Stonewalls’ Questions About 'Back-Door’ Encryption in Tech Products

The vast scale of the agency's activities in the United States and around the world was confirmed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. The whistle-blower's revelations turned him into a fugitive wanted in his home country on charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property. They also prompted US lawmakers to try to rein in some of the NSA's activities. However, the agency has openly flouted some attempts to restrict their activities in recent years.

https://sputniknews.com/us/202101171081793190-nsa-reportedly-refuses-pentagon-chiefs-order-to-install-trump-loyalist-as-lead-counsel/

Armed Protesters Begin To Arrive At State Capitols Around The Nation

Armed protesters have arrived at multiple state capitol complexes across the country Sunday morning. This follows a special bulletin from the FBI last week that warned: "armed protests" were being planned at 50 state capitols and the US Capitol in Washington, DC, ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.

While the protesters are being identified across various platforms as members of a so-called "boogaloo" movement, they largely appear to be generic anti-government anarchists - some of whom call themselves "liberty boys," and others who oppose the conservative Proud Boys. Their sudden emergence surrounding the inauguration is curious to say the least.

More

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/it-begins-armed-boogaloo-members-begin-marching-state-capitol-buildings

The Media’s Incitement Campaign Against Congress is What Really Radicalized Americans.

America’s media has demonized the U.S. Congress, the President, the police, and other American institutions for decades. They they want to blame Trump for the extremist, fringe elements that attacked Congress on January 6th. Taking into account how long it takes to radicalize someone, it is far more likely that America’s corporate media caused the violence.

As most now recognize, the January 6th timeline disproves the claim that a singular Donald Trump speech caused simultaneous violence two miles away. He hadn’t even taken to the stage while thugs made their move on the Capitol. Thugs we now know include members of Black Lives Matter and registered Democrats.

So clearly some people were pissed off at Congress, but who caused that rancor?

How Radicalization Works.

Counter-terrorism experts suggest the median radicalization time is over four years long, with 10 percent of those studied taking a decade or longer to influence with extremist propaganda.

Brandeis University’s Jytta Klausen noted in 2016 that men especially took longer: taking a median of 52 months to radicalize.

If we track this timeframe back, it lands within a period of time when the media’s campaign against Congress was reaching fever pitch, and only just as President Trump was emerging onto the scene. The ‘Proud Boys’ were still not a thing.

One could claim Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric contributed to the cavalcade of criticism, as outlined below, but it makes scant sense for thousands of Trump supporters to suddenly turn on the very same people they were defending a few months prior: the police.

It was the police, not the politicians, who bore the brunt of the January 6th assault. And during 2020 it was the political right backing the blue while the left continued another incitement campaign, urging the “defunding” of those tasked with protecting communities and national landmarks.

Klausen’s report goes further into the details of the initial period of exploration of the extremist belief system: “pre-radicalization”, and the time taken to decide on action: a mean average of “6.25 months for the cohort of offenders who radicalized after 2010 compared to 15 months for the pre-2010 cohort.”

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https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/the-medias-incitement-campaign-against-congress-is-what-really-radicalized-americans/

Pentagon spent $174 million on drones for Afghan army that now can’t be accounted for

A large portion of the Taliban's armory is comprised of missing and abandoned American weapons given to Afghan forces

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just the News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s.

This week, our award is going to the Department of Defense for spending $174 million on contracts to provide drones to the Afghan National Army (ANA) and then failing to maintain contract records or compile performance reports necessary to track and evaluate contract fulfillment, equipment performance and maintenance, training services, ANA readiness —or even the custody and ultimate whereabouts of the drones themselves.

In March of 2015, the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) determined that the Afghan National Army (ANA) needed assistance in their ability to conduct independent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. To aid the ANA, the Defense Department hired a contractor to supplement the technical capabilities of the ANA, in addition to teaching its members how to run successful ISR operations.

In total, the contracts were for 16,000 assets, including 105 ScanEagle drones, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) was in charge of overseeing the contracts, but ultimately fell short of government standards for contract oversight and failed to account for about 30% of the contractors' deliverables, the report concluded.

Due to a failure by NAVAIR and the contractor, Boeing subsidiary Insitu, to keep all required contract records, the report found, "NAVAIR lacked important information on the numbers of ANA soldiers Insitu trained (i.e., training summation reports), hours ANA operated ScanEagle vehicles flew (i.e., monthly flight readiness reports), spare parts purchased and used to maintain the ScanEagle systems (i.e., parts usage reports), and ScanEagle vehicle crashes or failures (i.e., MISHAP reports)."

Gaps in performance reporting by NAVAIR and the contractor impeded program review and evaluation. The contractor reported just 12,413 flight hours with the drones, according to the SIGAR report — less than half the time NAVAIR estimated would be necessary to support ScanEagle missions for the contracted time.

Because of spotty reporting by NAVAIR and Insitu, "NAVAIR lacks the performance information necessary to determine the extent to which the ScanEagle equipment and training services it procured is used," the inspectors found.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/waste-fraud-and-abuse/hold-dod-spent-174-million-drones-afghan-army-they-lost