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The Whole World is Watching, Trump Edition

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A Pile of Doozies, waiting to be signed

There are some real doozies among the executive orders that were signed yesterday. As Marcy noted, the pardons were certainly among them. There is also the irony of opening up ANWR for drilling once more and exploiting Alaska’s environmental resources, while at the same time stopping the offshore continental shelf leases to wind farms,

with due consideration for a variety of relevant factors, including the need to foster an energy economy capable of meeting the country’s growing demand for reliable energy, the importance of marine life, impacts on ocean currents and wind patterns, effects on energy costs for Americans –- especially those who can least afford it –- and to ensure that the United States is able to maintain a robust fishing industry for future generations and provide low cost energy to its citizens.

I guess Alaskan fish and the Arctic Ocean are on their own.

There is also an EO giving now-Secretary of State his marching orders:

Section 1.  Purpose.  From this day forward, the foreign policy of the United States shall champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.

Sec. 2.  Policy.  As soon as practicable, the Secretary of State shall issue guidance bringing the Department of State’s policies, programs, personnel, and operations in line with an America First foreign policy, which puts America and its interests first.

“And don’t you forget it, Little Marco!” was apparently deleted from the final version that was signed.

It’s not just Americans watching all this play out on Day One. Around the world, the heads of intelligence services of friends and foes alike were no doubt watching as well, to see what was just campaign rhetoric and what Trump actually followed through on with action. The EO that really made me sit up and take notice and most certainly caught their attention was this one:

The Executive Office of the President requires qualified and trusted personnel to execute its mandate on behalf of the American people.  There is a backlog created by the Biden Administration in the processing of security clearances of individuals hired to work in the Executive Office of the President.  Because of this backlog and the bureaucratic process and broken security clearance process, individuals who have not timely received the appropriate clearances are ineligible for access to the White House complex, infrastructure, and technology and are therefore unable to perform the duties for which they were hired.  This is unacceptable.

Therefore, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order:

1.  The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months; and

2.  That these individuals shall be immediately granted access to the facilities and technology necessary to perform the duties of the office to which they have been hired; and

3.  The White House Counsel, as my designee, may supplement this list as necessary; and

4.  The White House Counsel, as my designee, shall have the authority to revoke the interim clearance of any individual as necessary.

The introduction blaming the Biden administration for screwing up the process for getting security clearances is a red herring. This EO is straight up slamming the FBI for not immediately giving clearances to his favored people back in 2017. But beyond that . . . wow.

Do you remember how things began for Trump in 2017? As I wrote in 2022, when the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago seeking (and finding) missing very sensitive national security documents, Trump had a history of shoddy security practices dating back to the very beginning of his first administration.

On May 15, 2017, a disturbing story hit the news:

President Donald Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation, two U.S. officials said on Monday, plunging the White House into another controversy just months into Trump’s short tenure in office.

The intelligence . . . was supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the militant group, both officials with knowledge of the situation said.

H.R. McMaster categorically denied it, and as the story unfolded over time, McMaster was lying through his teeth. The unnamed ally was later revealed to be Israel, who had a mole inside an ISIS cell. And Trump blithely blew the cover of that Israeli asset by bragging to Lavrov.

Shortly after this meeting (at which Trump also bragged about just having fired James Comey), US intelligence officials made a bold move. From CNN:

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

This was the opening act of the Trump presidency. From the very beginning, intelligence officers worried about how Trump handled classified information. Our intelligence officers worried, and so did the intelligence officers of our allies, as they asked themselves some version of the question “Will Trump say something or do something that will get us killed?” In a completely different way, so did the intelligence officers of our adversaries. If Trump were to rashly reveal something he learned about the capabilities of our adversaries, it could have disastrous consequences for those countries and their leaders, as the reaction to the revelation could easily spiral out of control in unforeseeable ways.

And the damage was done.

Fast forward to today, and imagine you are the head of the German Bundesnachrichendienst, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Israeli Mossad, or any of the intelligence agencies with whom we regularly share intelligence. This EO says that Trump is giving a six-month waiver to the background check requirement. What could possibly go wrong?

Now imagine you are the head of the intelligence service of an unfriendly country. How large is your smile?

Just as they watched Biden’s new team in 2021, all the foreign intelligence services are watching Trump today. Yes, they are taking note of Trump indicating the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and also the World Health Organization. But screwing with security clearances in the White House is on another level.

Little Secretary of State Marco is going to have a lot of work to do, trying to clean up this mess. This kind of thing will turn “America First” into “America Alone,” at least when it comes to sharing intelligence among allies.

And finally, imagine you are a senior person in the CIA, NSA, or another US intelligence agency. Imagine you are an agent in the field, passing sensitive information through your handler back to Langley. How many agents are going to ask to be pulled out? How many agents are going to “go dark” for a time, cutting off the flow of information they had been sending? And how many potential sources are going to rethink any idea of cooperating with US intelligence services, and decide to go to the Germans, the British, or others instead of the US — or decide it’s not worth cooperating with any western country?

The whole world is watching, and it’s not a pretty picture. Unless, of course, you are a certain former KBG agent, who is even more elated today than he was on November 9th.

Did Karzai Fire NDS Head Nabil for Confirming ISI Shared Intelligence on Badruddin Haqqani’s Killing?

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai today fired the head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. This move comes as a great surprise, as the NDS was credited with thwarting a recent Haqqani network attack on Kabul and a subsequent attack by another group of militants targeting Afghanistan’s Parliament. Complicating the effort to understand Karzai’s move is the fact that he is engaged in a battle with the Afghan Parliament. Karzai made a number of moves today that are sure to anger Parliament even further. Citing border incursions from Pakistan, Parliament voted earlier this month to remove the Defense and Interior Ministers. Today, Karzai reappointed the ousted Interior Minister as Defense Minister while at the same time announcing the firing the head of the National Directorate of Security. Parliament has vowed to support the ousted intelligence chief.

Reuters brings us the basics of Karzai’s moves today:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai filled gaps in two top security ministries on Wednesday as part of a reshuffle forced on him by a fractious parliament, but risked a destabilising row with lawmakers by reappointing a sacked minister.

Parliament, in a rebuff to Karzai, earlier this month voted to remove Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi over deteriorating security, corruption accusations clouding the government and cross-border attacks blamed on Pakistan.

But Karzai appointed Mohammadi, an ethnic Tajik with a strong powerbase in northern Afghanistan, as Defence Minister, while removing spy agency chief Rahmatullah Nabil, charged with countering the Taliban and cutting insider attacks by Afghan police and soldiers on foreign troops.

“Intelligence chiefs cannot serve more than two years. President Karzai called Nabil today and thanked him for his services,” Karzai’s chief spokesman Aimal Faizi told Reuters ahead of the announcement.

We get more on the politics of these moves from Khaama Press:

Afghan lawmakers on Wednesday criticized Afghan president Hamid Karzai for dismissing Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Rahmatullah Nabeel from his position.

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi Afghan parliament member called Rahmatullah Nabil an effortful person and said neighboring intelligence agencies are behind the decision of president Hamid Karzai to dismiss Rahmatullah Nabeel.

Note the reference to “neighboring intelligence agencies” being behind Karzai’s move to fire Nabil. This is a very thinly veiled reference to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. I had previously noted that there were signs since the new ISI head Zaheer ul-Islam visited the US August 1-3 that important new intelligence information was flowing from ISI to the US. In fact, it seems to me that the sudden intelligence victories by Afghanistan’s NDS could well be explained by this new flow of information from ISI to the US (and then to NDS). Read more →

Signs of Intelligence Sharing Give Way to Call for “Divorce”: US-Pakistan Relations Continue Extreme Swings

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJPYlu8qls[/youtube]

Back on August 2, I noted a very interesting development. At a time when the US and Pakistan were holding high-level meetings both in Washington and Pakistan, a terror plot in Afghanistan reported to be in preparation by the Haqqani network was disrupted. This was a surprising development to me because at the time I was predicting that the talks between the new head of Pakistan’s ISI and CIA head David Petraeus would go badly and that the US would launch poorly targeted drone attacks in retaliation, perhaps even while General ul-Islam was in transit back to Pakistan. Instead, there seemed to be a distinct possibility that Pakistan had provided intelligence on movement of Haqqani network members from Pakistan into Afghanistan and that this intelligence allowed the plot to be disrupted before it was carried out.

Once the meetings in Washington ended, no new drone strikes occurred in Pakistan. In fact, another attack plot was thwarted in Afghanistan on August 12. Although this plot was not believed to be at the hands of the Haqqani network, there was evidence that Pakistanis were involved, which again led me to postulate that this plot also was disrupted with the help of intelligence information from Pakistan.

The absence of drone strikes continued and then on August 13 Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was interviewed by Lolita Baldor and Robert Burns of AP. As seen in the video excerpt above, Panetta said that he expected Pakistan to launch military operations soon against Taliban militants in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. As Bill Roggio noted at Long War Journal, this was a shocking development. After opening with “This is absolutely stunning”, Roggio went on to list his reasoning for why the announcement didn’t make much sense. He concluded:

How many times has Pakistan promised to take action in North Waziristan, or claimed to take action there, only to make fools of top US defense officials?

The lull in drone strikes continued.

Did the US lose patience with Pakistan’s promise to launch an operation in North Waziristan? On August 18, the lull in drone strikes ended (don’t bother looking this or any other drone strike up in New America Foundation’s database, as it now appears to have been taken down). And it ended in a particularly ugly way, at midday on the day when the religious feast of Eid al-Fitr would begin at sunset. That strike has been followed up with three others, so that as of Tuesday, there were four drone strikes in as many days. The lull does not match up with Ramadan. Ramadan started on July 20 and The Bureau for Investigative Journalism’s database shows attacks on July 23 and July 29. Instead, that last strike prior to the lull was just before ul-Islam’s meetings in Washington, which started on August 1.

This sequence of events suggests to me that if there was indeed a time of increased cooperation in which ISI shared intelligence on movement of militants from the tribal areas into Afghanistan for attacks in return for no drone strikes occurring, this agreement has now fallen apart. The intense rate of drone strikes once they re-started is typical of US actions when retaliation is desired. It would not be surprising, then, for the next attack by militants moving from Pakistan to Afghanistan to be successful instead of being disrupted before it can take place.

It appears that I am not alone in thinking we are again at a low point in US-Pakistan relations. Former Pakistani envoy to the United States Hussein Haqqani suggested yesterday that the US and Pakistan should “divorce”. This latest outbreak of drone attacks could then be seen as the US serving notice of separation.