Dangerous people will populate a second Trump administration

Including Kash Patel.  A story has just come out about him in the last Trump Administration in an Atlantic article entitled "The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump."

I don't have a subscription, but I found the story elsewhere.

[On October 30 2020,] SEAL Team 6 was awaiting the green light on a rescue mission in West Africa. The admin had recently learned where gunmen were holding an American who had been kidnapped that week from his farm near the Niger/Nigeria border.

As multiple agencies coordinated on final details for the evening operation, the State Department worked to resolve the last outstanding task: securing airspace permission from Nigerian officials.

Around noon, Patel called the Pentagon with an update: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said, had gotten the approval. The mission was a go.

The SEALs were close to landing in Nigeria when DOD discovered that State had not, in fact, secured the clearance, as Patel had claimed. The aircraft were quickly diverted, and flew in circles for the next hour as officials scrambled to alert the Nigerian gov’t to their position.

With the operation window narrowing, Esper and Pompeo called the Situation Room to put the decision to the president: Either they abort the mission and risk their hostage being killed, or they proceed into foreign airspace and risk their soldiers being shot down.

  Scottie's Playtime

Luckily, the clearance was granted in the meantime.

But back in Washington, the celebration was checked by anger. How to make sense of Patel’s bad report?

Two people familiar with the exchange told me that Tony Tata, the Pentagon official and retired Army general to whom Patel had originally given the green light, confronted Patel in a rage. “You could’ve gotten these guys killed!” he shouted. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Patel’s response: “If nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares?”

[...]

If Patel had in fact just invented the story, as Esper’s team concluded, then why?

Was it because the election was in four days, and Patel was simply that impatient to set in motion a final potential victory for Trump, whatever the risk — was it as darkly cynical as that? Did his lack of experience mean he just had no grasp of the consequences?

Trump likes this guy for the very reason that Patel will do whatever Trump wants, so my guess is Trump made that decision, and Patel carried it out.