Weaponization of the FBI and DOJ

Very Stalinist move. 

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Trump–Russia probe, including allegedly making false statements to Congress, Justice Department sources told Fox News Digital.

[...]

CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution.

[...]

As for Comey, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital that an investigation into the former director is underway, but could not share details of what specifically is being probed.

  Fox News

Probably because they have nothing. Posting a picture of shells on a beach that spelled out 86 47?

Were they on Kash Patel's enemies list?

Attorney General Pam Bondi called for creating the “weaponization” group in February to investigate claims by Trump and Republican allies that the Justice Department unfairly targeted conservatives during President Joe Biden’s administration. The group’s review includes the work of former special counsel Jack Smith, who led two federal prosecutions of Trump that were ultimately abandoned after Trump was elected to a second term.

[...]

A former FBI agent who was charged with joining a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and cheering on rioters is now working as an adviser to the Justice Department official overseeing its “weaponization working group."

[...]

Jared Lane Wise, is serving as a counselor to Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin Jr., who also serves as director of the working group.

[...]

Wise, who worked as a special agent or supervisory special agent for the FBI from 2004 through 2017, was arrested in Oregon on Capitol riot-related misdemeanor charges in May 2023.

Wise repeatedly shouted, “Kill ’em!” as he watched rioters assaulting officers outside the Capitol, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. Wise clapped his hands and raised his arms ”in triumph” after he entered the building through the Senate wing door, the affidavit says. He left the building about nine minutes after entering.

Police body camera footage showed Wise berating police officers outside the Capitol and repeatedly shouting, “Shame on you!”

“I’m former law enforcement,” he told them.” You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it.”

[...]

Martin was a leading figure in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement. He spoke at a rally in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. He represented three Jan. 6 defendants and served on the board of the nonprofit Patriot Freedom Project, which reports raising over $2.5 million to support riot defendants.

  AP

I assume Wise is the basis of the MAGA claim that FBI agents were involved in the insurrection.

Wise was on trial in Washington when Trump returned to the White House in January [...]. The case against Wise was dismissed before the jury reached a verdict.

Fascists on the march.

Weaponization Task Force.  Like "criminal attorney."

UPDATE 02:33 pm:  Unreal.  Nazis in high gear.

Wherein I am forced to agree with a CIA director

Tell us how you really feel, John

The New Yorker has a new article on ex-CIA Director John Brennan.

Brennan told me that he made a conscious decision to make his attacks personal in nature. “I did it knowingly and I did it being aware that it was going to have certain repercussions about how I was going to be perceived,” he said. Brennan said that his goal was to “call out” Trump for being “small, petty, banal, mean-spirited, nasty, naïve, unsophisticated . . . a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman, a schoolyard bully . . . an emperor with no clothes.”

  New Yorker

The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets. A jury is about to deliberate bank and tax fraud charges against one of those people, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman. And the campaign’s former deputy chairman, Rick Gates, has pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators.

Mr. Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.

  John Brennan @ The New Yorker

The president needs to have his TV privileges revoked

He has a country to run.



Hey, you forgot to give Ohr and Brennan nasty nicknames.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Trump gives the Wall Street Journal an "impromptu" interview

Why the Journal, I do not know.

Mr. Trump said some people may complain that in the short term steel prices may be “a little more expensive,” but that they ultimately will drop and his moves will have preserved an industry important to national security.

Competition will be “internal, like it used to be in the old days when we actually had steel, and U.S. Steel was our greatest company,” he said.

[...]

In upbeat tones, the Republican president talked about the strong domestic economy and his own political power as he said was demonstrated in GOP primaries throughout the country. He reiterated that he would like to see the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race end, but said he is considering giving an interview to the investigator, special counsel Robert Mueller.

“We’re looking at it,” he said.

[...]

In what he called a sign that the tariffs are working, Mr. Trump said steel companies are opening new U.S. plants and “our steel industry is one of the talks of the world. It’s booming.”

  WSJ

Three lies right there.

While some steelmakers have expanded U.S. production in the wake of the tariffs, other U.S. manufacturers remain heavily dependent on imported metals. Moreover, even the administration’s own estimates of the tariffs’ impact project a reduction in imports, not their elimination, still leaving significant foreign competition for U.S. makers.

[...]

On the midterms, the president said his endorsements are making a crucial difference, vaulting GOP candidates to victory in races they were on track to lose had he stayed out.

[...]

Several times Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to summon aides to the Oval Office to share charts showing his endorsement record and to discuss the size of his following on social media.

Making it appear that was the point of arranging the interview.

“So what’s my record?” he asked political director Bill Stepien, who said the president had yet to lose a candidate he has backed in Republican primary races.

Mr. Trump said he notched eight wins out of nine in special elections.

[...]

“As long as I can get out and campaign, I think they’re going to win, I really do,” he said. “It’s a lot of work for me. I have to make 50 stops, it’s a lot. So, there aren’t a lot of people that can do that, physically. Fortunately, I have no problem with that.”

If nobody else will proclaim his godhood, he will just have to do it himself.

“I think the Democrats give up when I turn out,” he said. “If you want to know the truth, I don’t think it energizes them. I think it de-energizes them. I think they give up when I turn out.”

[...]

Asked about the White House decision to yank Mr. Brennan’s security clearance and to evaluate the clearances held by others, Mr. Trump said was prepared to do it last week, but it was too “hectic.”

It was already done several weeks ago, and only just now announced. Did the Journal reporter not know that? Or just failed to call him on it?

Mr. Trump said the Russia probe is unwarranted. “Of course they say it’s not an investigation. You know, in theory I’m not under investigation…I’m not a target. But regardless, I think that whole—I call it the rigged witch hunt, is a sham.”

Who says it's not an investigation? Those voices in his head, I'm guessing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Surely he was looking in a mirror

And by every one of those, Trump should have his own security clearance revoked.

Him or your lying eyes?

March 1:



March 22:

April 4:

May 14:

May 15:

May 20:

May 21:

Which ones?  The ones he put in place a month ago?



Because he's such a great negotiator, no doubt.

Asshole.  We're not all idiots.

Aside from the ZTE concessions, I wonder which of these demands he's meeting:

Hmmmm....things are happening without him.  He seems to recognize that.  And yet, he's making demands after the fact?

I'm sure he can negotiate and strongarm both North Korea and China.  After all, he just made such a good trade deal with China.  They must be bowing and scraping to do whatever he wants.

But, let's not talk about China any more....





John Brennan is a liar and a spook.  But I'm skeptical that he's panicking.  You know who is panicking?  Yeah, Trump.  And, BTW, you're Trump.  Stop referring to yourself in the third person.

Does this "demand" (and accession) to investigate the investigation amount to another instance of obstruction of justice?

The Mueller investigation will never end if he doesn't stop adding to it.

I suppose that could work in his favor.

Impeach the criminal asshole.  There's more than enough evidence, and more than one reason.

It just occurred to me yesterday that it might not be a certainty that the Democrats, if they take the Houe in November, would indeed impeach him.  Not certain at all.

UPDATE:

BTW...

The president appeared to be loosely quoting Bongino from an appearance he made early Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

  The Hill

Well, there's a surprise.

Twitter war declared over McCabe firing

Attorney General Jeff Sessions's firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Friday night was reminiscent of the "Saturday Night Massacre" during the waning days of the Nixon administration, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.

"This'll be known as the 'Friday Night Slaughter,' " Brinkley told CNN. "The very idea that Jeff Sessions hasn't released something to inform the public of what this is, it was done in sort of a cloak of secrecy late at night, bizarre fashion. The fact that he was about to have his pension and they couldn't let it go."

"It's something very cruel and sad that's occurred tonight," he continued. "And I hope our country is going to wake up, I mean, Donald Trump is struggling for his life. He's paranoid, he decided McCabe was too close to Comey, and he decided to get rid of anybody and anything that's standing in his way of kind of survival mode right now."

  The Hill

The timing is definitely nasty. McCabe had stepped down back in January. They had all this time to fire him, and decided to do it at the last possible moment to not only prevent him from getting his pension, but to make that as obvious as possible. Not only is it nasty, it's very childish. But, that's our president. And Sessions, who did the actual dirty work, is no better. Too cowardly and too lacking in morals to refuse.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Clapper and Brennan Excoriate Trump

Two former top U.S. intelligence officials tore into President Donald Trump on Friday, saying in sometimes personal terms that Trump has shown disrespect for intelligence officials and a distasteful affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and warning he may be endangering U.S. national security.

  Politico

You can read the rest of that yourself.

I'm as eager as the next guy to see Trump in an orange jumpsuit, but I wonder that no one at this event asked the obvious question of Clapper: How do you expect us to believe anything you say when you lied under oath to Congress?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Brennan Testimony Before House Intel Committee

Rep. Trey Gowdy asked [Former CIA Director John Brennan, in testimony Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee ...],  whether he had seen evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Brennan replied: "I don't do evidence."

Pressed further, however, Brennan said that "the information and intelligence revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind about whether the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of such individuals."

[...]

Brennan said he doesn't know if collusion ever occurred, but he said that he saw "information that was worthy of investigation by the [FBI] to determine whether such collusion took place."

"People on a treasonous path ....don't always realize they're on that path until it's too late," Brennan said. He added that the House Intelligence Committee "now has access to the type of information I'm alluding to here."

Brennan later confirmed to Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley that it wasn't just the fact that Trump campaign officials communicated with Russians that concerned him — it was which Russians the Trump associates spoke to.

[...]

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier asked Brennan about Russian oligarchs investing in the United States, and whether he was aware of efforts by the Russians to cultivate Trump while he was a real estate developer.

Brennan replied that he could not comment. But he noted later that the Russians have long engaged in money laundering "in a number of countries" and that the intelligence community has seen more collaboration recently between Russian intelligence services and organized criminals.

  Business Insider

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP - Religious Right à la the Korean Kims

Who are you going to believe? Dear Leader or your lying eyes? All publicity will be good publicity.

Wonder why the National Park Service doesn't keep release official estimates of the number of people at events there?

[A]ccording to the Associated Press, the National Park Service stopped releasing official estimates for events at the National Mall following a dispute over the Million Man March in 1995.

  Guardian

The big babies.

Before Spicer’s briefing room tirade on Saturday, Trump had told an audience at CIA headquarters that he had given his inauguration address to a “massive field of people … packed”, he estimated, with between 1 million and 1.5 million people.

How stupid is that? Like the CIA doesn't know?

To his eye, Trump said, the crowd stretched “the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument” – but a television network he didn’t name had broadcast a shot of “an empty field” and put the crowd at 250,000.

He went on to say that God had stopped rain from falling during his speech, before adding that he had “caught” the news network in a lie: “We caught them in a beauty.

He's saying this stuff to the CIA?!? I'm going to have to rething my assessment of him as simply a disgusting huckster to a delusional disgusting huckster. What else did he say to them?

Traveling to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in what the White House pointed out was Trump’s first official act in office, Trump stood before the agency’s memorial to its dead officers and delivered an often self-referential and highly political speech.

[...]

Trump vowed “a thousand percent” support for an intelligence corps he has repeatedly and publicly insulted – including recently likening intelligence officials to “Nazi Germany” – and suggested they would have an open checkbook in his White House. Any feud between himself and the agency was the result of a dishonest press corps, the president astonished some by saying.

  Guardian

Does he really think the CIA doesn't know for itself? Or is this just pure hucksterism for the public?

The CIA crowd applauded Trump’s derisive comments about the press.

Well that's not encouraging, but it's also not surprising. The CIA has no more use for the US press than leaking self-serving information to the public - just like the Inflatable Rooster. At least they can understand him.

“They made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence agencies. It is exactly the opposite,” Trump said, adding: “I love you, I respect you, there is nobody I respect more.”

Wait a minute. He said the same thing about women.

He went on to discuss the crowds attending his events, said he felt “35 or 39” again, and boasted of being on more Time Magazine covers than the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

[...]

The speech’s tone, contrasting with the solemnity typically shown to the CIA memorial, prompted the just-retired director of the agency to proclaim his disgust.

Through a spokesman, John Brennan proclaimed himself “deeply saddened and angered at Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement”.

Well, the Trump public doesn't much like the CIA, either, since they appeared to be on the side of Hillary Clinton during the campaign. So that probably won't mean much.

The three-decade agency veteran added: “Trump should be ashamed of himself.”

But a true narcissist has no shame.

Trump suggested that “sometimes you haven’t always gotten the backing” from the White House, suggesting Obama had “restrained” the agency, and said to laughter and applause: “You’re going to say, ‘Please don’t give us so much backing.’”

He just recycles the same old stupid shit from his campaign everywhere he goes. Will he talk to foreign assemblies the same way? That was rhetorical.

The reference to “restraint” appeared to be a reference to Obama ending the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, something Trump has repeatedly endorsed restarting and about which his pick to run the CIA has sent mixed messages.

[...]

Suggesting he would provide the CIA greater latitude than under Obama, Trump said it would be “one of the most important groups” in combatting Islamic State and what he called “radical Islamic terrorism”.

If memory serves me correctly, it was the CIA officials who said torture doesn't work, but the pressure from Cheney's office to get some results and get them fast, together with Bush's approval of torture, forced their hand. (Not that the CIA is to be believed on anything.) I have a feeling the CIA is not eager to get caught up in that shit again.



Christ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Declassified, Maybe - Heavily Redacted, Absolutely

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

All in the Wording

Sir Thomas More from A Man for All Seasons: What is the wording?  [The oath] will mean what the words say.  ...  An oath is made of words. It may be possible to take it. ...  God made man to serve him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If he suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can. But ... our natural business lies in escaping.

 



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

You Want to Trust the Government to Keep Your Info Private?

They can't seem to keep their own.

A group of hackers calling themselves “Crackas With Attitude” or CWA made headlines in October, hacking into CIA Director John Brennan’s email account and apparently getting access to several online tools and portals used by US law enforcement agencies.

[...]

One of the group’s hackers, who’s known as “Cracka,” contacted me on Monday, claiming to have broken into [another official account].

[...]

His latest victim is the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

[...]

While in control of Clapper’s Verizon FiOS account, Cracka claimed to have changed the settings so that every call to his house number would get forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement. When they gained notoriety last year, Cracka and CWA claimed their actions were all in support of the Palestine cause.

  Motherboard

Uh oh. If they're not in another country, their ticket will soon be punched. And, even if they are, it will be punched; just may take a little longer.

And They Sleep at Night, Too

Having the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force direct Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State group is complicating the U.S. mission against terrorism and contributing to destabilization in Iraq, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Sunday.

  Yahoo

But, surely he is willing to give SOME of the credit for destabilizing Iraq to the US?

Brennan said he did not believe the presence of Soleimani and his advisers pointed to Iran having a larger role in Iraq and its future. However, he acknowledged it's not for lack of trying. Baghdad's Shiite-led government has forged closer ties with Iran.

"We're not letting them play that role. I think they're working with the Iraqis to play that role," the CIA head said. "We're working with the Iraqis, as well."

Was that it?

"I think the fault really lies with a number of the Iraqis who wasted and squandered the opportunity they had after the government was reconstituted not to put at rest some of these sectarian tensions and not to be more inclusive as far as bringing the Sunni community in," Brennan said.

Yeah, no. WE did all we could. THEY broke it.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

CIA's Official Response Is Coming Today

Doesn’t appear that it’s going to be “we were pressured”, but “we did the right thing, and we’d do it again.”

Brennan will speak at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on Thursday.

[...]

As the agency faces its gravest crisis in decades, John Brennan is expected to address growing pressure on the White House and the CIA to hold individuals to account for covering up the torture of terrorist suspects.

[...]

Brennan, one of President Barack Obama’s most trusted security advisers, has sought to tread a fine line since the report was released on Tuesday. He said then that intelligence gained from enhanced interrogation techniques helped to “thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives”. However, the CIA no longer argues that torture works, with Brennan and the agency instead saying the efficacy of torture is “unknowable”.

[...]

It was a “one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation, essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America”, the former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

[...]

Former top CIA officials created a website pointing out decade-old statements from senators Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller in apparent support of agency efforts.

  Guardian

Take 'Em to the Hague

There are no indications the CIA is ready to turn things around, of course. CIA Director John Brennan went to extraordinary lengths to stymie and discredit the investigation. And now, he is rebuffing its conclusions.

Brennan’s statement Tuesday acknowledged “shortcomings” and “mistakes,” but reasserted “that interrogations of detainees on whom [enhanced interrogation techniques] EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” He angrily rejected the report’s “inference that the Agency systematically and intentionally misled” Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public.”

And while they remain offstage by design, nothing in this report in any way exonerates the people who were running the show from the White House.

Other reports and works of journalism have clearly identified Vice President Dick Cheney as the prime mover in creating a torture regime that extended not just to the black sites, but to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and elsewhere. Cheney was no victim of misinformation; he was its architect.

And George W. Bush might have remained unfamiliar with the details until as late as 2006 – “According to CIA records, when briefed in April 2006, the president expressed discomfort with the ‘image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself’.” But he must have had some idea what Cheney and others were up to in the basement.

  Dan Froomkin

Cheney says he did.

[Ex-Vice President Big Swinging Dick] Cheney, in his first public comments since [the torture report's] release, said he had read only summaries of it but denounced the report as “full of crap” and said it was a “flat-out lie” to suggest that President George W. Bush was kept in the dark about details of the program. “He knew certainly the techniques,” Mr. Cheney said on Fox News. “We did discuss the techniques. There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.”

  NYT

And he'll be happy to shoot W in the face if he says otherwise.

Of course, Big Dick doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with torture.

“We asked the agency to go take steps and put in place programmes that were designed to catch the bastards who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11 and make sure it didn’t happen again, and that’s exactly what they did, and they deserve a lot of credit,” [Cheney] said, “not the condemnation they are receiving from the Senate Democrats.”

  Guardian

If I had to identify one key point from Tuesday, the thing that bothered me most about the narrative: Yes, the CIA goes off on its own and does things that political officials don’t know about; and yes, they mislead and lie to the committees that oversee them; and they do all these horrible things, the details of which are sometimes unknown to the political branches — but that’s how Washington wants it.

They’ve always wanted it that way. That’s what the CIA does. The CIA does the dirty work of the political branches of Washington and when they get caught, publicly, the ritual is that official Washington pretends that it was just these rogue CIA officers doing this without anyone’s knowledge or approval. It’s exactly what happened in the Iran-Contra scandal, which was ordered at the highest levels of the White House by President Reagan … but when they got caught, they said: Oh, it was Oliver North and these rogue CIA officers who were doing this without our knowledge!

That’s just the ritual Washington engages in; the CIA is kind of like their wild pit bull that they purposely let off leash. They don’t want to see the mauling but they know that it’s happening, and pretend they don’t know. And when it gets reported, they pretend that they’re horrified.

  Glenn Greenwald interview at Salon

But We Had a Good Reason

President Barack Obama on Friday starkly criticised the CIA’s past treatment of terror suspects, saying he could understand why the agency rushed to use controversial interrogation techniques in the aftermath of 9/11 but conceding: “We tortured some folks.”

[...]

“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened.”

  Guardian

Oooh, very stark criticism indeed.

We tortured “some folks” and that’s a little controversial, but understandable.

(Surely they are not our values if we act contrary to them.)

In some of the most expansive and blunt remarks on the CIA’s programme of rendition and detention he has made since coming to office, Obama said the country “crossed a line” as it struggled to react to the threat of further attacks by al-Qaida. However, he also said it was important “not to feel too sanctimonious”, adding that he believed intelligence officials responsible for torturing detainees were working during a period of extraordinary stress and fear.

So that’s okay, then? He should be standing before the world in abject disgrace apologizing for crossing that line. This is not the dark ages.

We shouldn’t feel too sanctimonious? Are you feeling sanctimonious about this? Me neither. We’ll leave that attitude to Dick Cheney and the defenders of torture.

A declassified version of the CIA torture report is expected to be published in the coming days or weeks. All indications are that it will provide a damning indictment of the CIA’s use of torture of terrorist suspects, arguing it was morally unjustified and did not yield particularly useful intelligence. However the Senate’s report, the result of years of investigation, reportedly stops short of using the word “torture” to describe the interrogation techniques used by the agency.

Can’t have that admission in the records. Because “torture” is illegal, and somebody would have to be punished. Probably at the least the Congressional people who knew of the torture and kept their mouths shut. Perhaps an ex-president who signed off on the use of torture.

Friday was not the first time since he came to the White House that Obama has used the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s methodology. In 2009, for example, he said he believed that “waterboarding”, one of several controversial interrogation methods used by US intelligence agencies during George W Bush’s administration, constituted torture, and that “whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake”.

[...]

While “some very poor judgment” was shown by the agency, Obama said, he added: “Keep in mind though that John Brennan was the person who called for the [inspector general] report and he’s already stood-up a task force to ensure that lessons are learned and mistakes are resolved.”

It was a mistake. Ooops. As was, I guess, Brennan’s and his predecessors’ lying to Congress about what the CIA was doing, including the CIA’s bugging of oversight investigators. Really, now can we move forward?

“When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques – techniques that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture – we crossed a line,” he said.

“That needs to be understood and accepted. We have to as a country take responsibility for that so hopefully we don’t do it again in the future.”

It’s become acceptable in our political arena to simply say, “I take responsibility for” something grievous. You don’t want to, if you don’t have to. But, in the end, if you do, you’re off the legal – and presumably, moral - hook.

“Hopefully” “we” won’t do it again in the future.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We Also Don't Need No Steenkeen Civil Liberties Advocates in the White House

You remember Richard Clarke.

[Obama] inherited this vacuum cleaner approach to telephone records from Bush. When Obama was briefed on it, there was no forceful and persuasive advocate for changing it. His chief adviser on these things at the time was John Brennan, a life-long CIA officer.

[...]

The vocal advocate of civil liberties was absent because neither Bush nor Obama had appointed one, despite the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and a law passed by Congress. Only five years into his administration is our supposedly civil liberties-loving President getting around to activating a long-dormant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. It will have a lot of work to do.

  Richard Clarke

Decisions, Decisions

As John Brennan moved into the CIA director’s office this month, another high-level transition was taking place down the hall.

A week earlier, a woman had been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history. She is a veteran officer with broad support inside the agency. But she also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

  WaPo

So that earned her a promotion. Sure. Why not.

The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.

He was a supporter of the torture program himself. I'm sure he'll figure something out. Or...if she were a man, he would.

UPDATE 8/20/18:

We now know this woman to be Gina Haspel, whom President Donald Trump (!!!) has named as the first woman Director of the CIA and who was confirmed by Congress, replacing Mike Pompeo,  who was moved to head the State Department, replacing Trump's first choice, Rex Tillerson.  Just one of many changes Trump has made in less than two years in the most chaotic and scandal-ridden administration in modern history.  Additionally, Trump has just stripped ex-Director Brennan of his security clearance for saying disparaging things about Trump.