About that whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard

The whistle-blower report was based on a telephone intercept provided to the N.S.A. from a foreign intelligence service.

[...]

Because the intelligence report mentioned Mr. Kushner, Ms. Gabbard provided the information to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to people briefed on the events.

[...]

The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, while the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. At the end of June, the military bombed Iranian nuclear sites on Mr. Trump’s orders.

Mr. Kushner has subsequently helped lead negotiations between the administration and Iran over Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its sponsorship of terrorism across the Middle East. He also has business interests in the Middle East and in other parts of the world.

The episode has led to clashes over how to interpret the mention of Mr. Kushner in the discussion and whether Ms. Gabbard was improperly seeking to keep the intelligence from being distributed within the intelligence community.

[...]

The names of Americans, particularly senior U.S. officials, are usually redacted from accounts of intelligence intercepts, a process called masking.

The foreign nationals were discussing Mr. Kushner, but some officials who have read the underlying intelligence or been briefed on its contents downplayed the significance of the references to him.

  NYT

They would, wouldn't they?

The foreign nationals, they said, were commenting on Mr. Kushner’s influence with the Trump administration.

I have no doubt they were.

The intercept also included what officials described as “gossip” or speculation about Mr. Kushner that was not supported by other intelligence. Some senior officials said the information was demonstrably false. While the whistle-blower believed that information should be circulated, the N.S.A.’s general counsel, Ms. Gabbard and the intelligence community’s inspectors general disagreed.

Officials declined to describe the gossip, saying that revealing it would expose the source of the information.

The complaint, the investigation of the complaint and the underlying intelligence all remain classified.

[...]

Some officials who either read or were briefed on the intelligence report said that had Ms. Gabbard not moved to restrict access to the report, it would have been quickly forgotten as one of many that recount foreign officials trying to figure out who has influence with Mr. Trump.

Probably true, but that could depend on what was reported.

A heavily redacted copy of the inspector general’s report was provided to Congress. Ms. Gabbard’s office redacted Mr. Kushner’s name, citing executive privilege.

[...]

Ms. Gabbard had previously pulled back and then restricted access to another N.S.A. intercept. That intelligence report involved an intercept of a call between Nicolás Maduro, then the Venezuelan president, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s envoy. Names of U.S. officials recorded in intelligence intercepts are supposed to be masked, and Ms. Gabbard argued the N.S.A. had failed to properly conceal Mr. Grenell’s identity. Mr. Grenell was negotiating with Mr. Maduro on Mr. Trump’s orders.

"I'd like you to claim Venezuela interfered with the 2020 election and is planning to interfere in 2026 and 2028."

How long before the whistleblower is investigated by Bondi?  Probably happening now.

Intelligence report nixed by Gabbard

Every four years U.S. intelligence officials have published Global Trends, a public document that predicts what challenges the United States — and the world — will face in the coming decades.

With the intelligence community often focused on immediate issues, the Global Trends report has taken a longer-term look. Past editions warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, is eliminating the group that compiles the report.

  NYT

Perhaps because Trump's name is on that list, too.

Democracy dies in the dark.

Dismantling the CIA

 In previous years, I would say that might be a good idea.

“But in a Trump government that demands allegiance to a person rather than the Constitution, even quiet resistance is a signal. And signals matter—now more than ever. [...] The next intelligence failure will not be an accident. It will be a choice.” 

    -- former CIA senior exec Brian O'Neill - What LinkedIn Told Me This Weekend About U.S. National Security

"Somewhat pre-nuclear"

 

Nuclear weapons-wise, it was exactly the same.

Twenty years ago, intelligence was questionable.  Now, it's wrong.  (Actually, it wasn't questionable 20 years ago.  It was cherry picked.)

I'll take that as a no.

Trump 2.0 - Truth is the enemy

 

Loyalty is the only qualification necessary

 And it is non-negotiable.

New world order

 

The Project for a New American Century didn't get off the ground, and its spawn - Projecte 2025 - is practically a 180 turn.

Trump 2.0 - Destroying ally ties

Britain must develop a ‘Four Eyes’ intelligence sharing alliance in response to Donald Trump’s actions over Ukraine, defence sources have said.

The US President’s ‘unprecedented’ decision to block allies, including the UK, from giving Ukraine US-generated classified material that could benefit the eastern European country has sparked calls for a breakaway group.

Mr Trump used his powers as part of the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand to suspend intelligence to Kyiv.

[...]

‘It isn’t about pulling out of Five Eyes, it is about creating a new “Four Eyes” within it – without America,’ a source said.

[...]

‘Clearly, if you have some Trump supporters in these key jobs who have very strange track records and have said very strange things about Nato allies and the Nato alliance and you have people in the administration who seem to be looking for ways of appeasing Russia, then you have a problem on the intelligence front.

‘That is a big question mark against how the special relationship is sustained during the Trump administration.’

  Daily Mail

Trump 2.0 - Intelligence

The PCLOB is an independent agency whose mission is the oversight of the intelligence community. Created by Congress, its 5-person board must be bipartisan, reflecting the congressional view that oversight is an apolitical function in which both parties should be invested. I know from my own time working for the FBI as its General Counsel that the Board was an indispensable and important body for conducting valuable oversight. The board asked tough questions (regardless of party) and conducted thorough reviews.

[...]

The tsunami of executive orders emanating from the Trump White House can result in our missing something important. A “small” story about the removal of the three Democrats on the Private and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) is ominous. Their removal immediately results in the 5-member oversight board becoming inoperable. It now has four vacant seats and one remaining member, who cannot take any action as of now.

  Just Security

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

Well, what a surprise

In the case of Saudi Arabia, sources familiar with the matter said the kingdom was temporarily cut off from using Pegasus in 2018, for several months, following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but was allowed to begin using the spyware again in 2019 following the intervention of the Israeli government.

It is unclear why the Israeli government urged NSO to reconnect the surveillance tool for Riyadh.

However, the 10 countries that the forensic analysis for the Pegasus project suggests have actually been abusing the technology all enjoy trade relations with Israel or have diplomatic ties with the country that have been improving markedly in recent years.

  Guardian

Here's the full story.

And here's the background.

Also...

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

Of course

One thing is cetain: if Trump isn't ousted, he'll have to be impeached again.

Mueller testimony

The Intel Committee hearing has begun.  Chairman Adam Schiff's opening statement is a clear indictment of Trump's ambition, lies, and "disloyalty to country."  He's holding back nothing.  If you haven't heard it, check it out.  He should have a copy hand delivered to Nancy Pelosi.

In Mueller's opening statement, he seems to be saying he'll comply with Barr's letter to him limiting what he can say.  Based on his statements, I'm assuming most of his refusals to answer certain questions is because there are still counterintelligence investigations ongoing in those avenues.

Mueller was asked if he would say Manafort giving polling data to Kilimnik was a betrayal of our country, and he said he wouldn't agree with that assessment.  Then, he added, "Not that it's not true, but I can't agree with it."  That puts a different light on the previous hearing where Mueller often said he wouldn't characterize something the same way, or didn't agree with an assessment.  He "can't".

Mike Quigley (D) noted that publishing the stolen Clinton emails was illegal, and then asked if Don Jr publishing a link to those emails wasn't essentially republishing.  Mueller answered, "I'm not certain I would agree with that,"  which I was glad to hear.  That's been a concern in other cases where the FBI has gone after people on the internet for merely publishing links to other information that's already been published.

Quigley also noted that a second term for Trump, which would surpass the statute of limitations on his crimes, would essentially put the president above the law.  Mueller said he wouldn't characterize it that way.  But it's effect is right, and Quigley noted that this is why we have to pursue other avenues - i.e., impeachment.

Break time.

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

Showdown

President Donald Trump’s declassification order Thursday night has set up a showdown between his own Justice Department and the intelligence community that could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA’s ability to conduct its core business — managing secret intelligence and sources.

Trump’s order directed intelligence agencies to fully comply with Attorney General William Barr’s look at “surveillance activities” during the 2016 election — a probe that Trump’s allies see as a necessary check on government overreach but that critics lambaste as an attempt to create the impression of scandal. Numerous former intelligence officials called the move “unprecedented,” saying it grants the attorney general sweeping powers over the nation’s secrets, subverts the intelligence community and raises troubling legal questions.

  Politico

I have no proble with the CIA being put on a short leash. But it won't happen via the Trump administration without something even more lawless taking its place. Something likely involving Erik Prince.

Under the National Security Act, a post-World War II overhaul of the country’s military and intelligence structure, intelligence agencies are legally required to protect the unauthorized declassification of their secretive sources and information-gathering tactics. But Trump’s directive seemingly gave the attorney general the power to determine what should be declassified, potentially upending decades of precedent.

[...]

While the order includes a caveat that the directive should not impair “the authority granted by law” to agency heads on classification, it also notes that Barr has to consult these agency heads only “to the extent he deems it practicable” about declassification decisions.

[...]

Trump on Friday defended his decision as a pro-transparency move that will give the public insight into nefarious government activity. And he praised Barr as the ideal person to judge what should be released.

Barr is “a great gentleman and a highly respected man, so everything that they need is declassified and they’ll able to see how the hoax or witch hunt started and why it started,” Trump told reporters before leaving for a trip to Japan. “It was an attempted coup, an attempted takedown of the president of the United States.”

He only likes transparency if it makes him look good. And Barr is his personal henchman, who is not so highly respected. In fact, he may be even less respected than Trump.

“I can’t remember a time when a non-IC officer was given declassification authority over intelligence information,” said Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA under Obama and the host of the Intelligence Matters podcast.

Things have changed.

The Wall:


source

He'll be giving Barr the medal of freedom, or some such soon enough.


source

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

Here we go again - Part 2

On Sunday, the National Security Council announced that the U.S. was sending a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf in response to “troubling and escalatory” warnings from Iran—an eye-popping move that raised fears of a potential military confrontation with Tehran. Justifying the move, anonymous government officials cited intelligence indicating Iran had crafted plans to use proxies to strike U.S. forces, both off the coast of Yemen and stationed in Iraq. National Security Adviser John Bolton also discussed the intelligence on the record. A consensus appeared to be emerging: that Iran was gearing up for war.

[...]

“It’s not that the administration is mischaracterizing the intelligence, so much as overreacting to it,” said one U.S. government official briefed on it. Another source familiar with the situation agreed that the Trump administration’s response was an “overreaction” but didn’t dispute that a threat exists. Gen. Qasem Soleimani—the head of the Quds Force, Iran’s covert action arm—has told proxy forces in Iraq that a conflict with the U.S. will come soon, this source noted.

  Daily Beast

I think we could all make that prediction since the day John Bolton was made a part of the administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network” and once in office his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, used his inaugural press briefing to declare that Tehran was “on notice.”

Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, broke with the president on his uncompromising attitude towards the Islamic Republic, but with the appointment of John Bolton has come a more hawkish return to form.

[...]

“I would characterize the current situation as shaping operations on both sides to tilt the field in preparation for a possible coming conflict,” continued the second source, who is also a U.S. government official. “The risk is a low-level proxy unit miscalculating and escalating things. We’re sending a message with this reaction to the intelligence, even though the threat might not be as imminent as portrayed.”

And that message? Is it "gin us up some intel to match what we're saying"?

A third U.S. government official close to the situation described the administration’s response this way: “It is meant to send a clear message and remove any ambiguity from a tense situation. We’re demonstrating the overwhelming capability we can bring to the region.”

Iran’s specific intentions may be a subject of debate, but there’s little doubt that it has the capability to hit U.S. forces through proxy groups, as the Quds Force demonstrated with lethal efficiency during the Iraq war.

[...]

The Daily Beast has not reviewed the intelligence itself, which is all but certain to be classified. That means that the characterization of the intel—both on the record and anonymously—is crucial. And in this case, there is not a consensus in intelligence and military circles on whether the administration’s interpretation, used to justify the deployment of an addition U.S. aircraft carrier and Air Force bomber task force to the Gulf, was accurate.

Then it's probably a good guess that it wasn't.

[T]ension between the Trump administration and Iran, already strained after the U.S. walked away from the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement, has only increased. In recent weeks, the administration has ratcheted up sanctions on the Islamic Republic even further, announcing that it will no longer grant waivers to countries allowing them to buy Iranian crude oil without risk of U.S. sanctions and designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization.

[...]

In response, Iranian officials have recently hinted that they would walk away from commitments made under the nuclear deal to limit enrichment of uranium fuel—a key component necessary in the production of nuclear weapons.

Despite the apparent intelligence indicating an increased risk to U.S. interests in Iraq, Secretary of State Pompeo made a surprise visit to the country on Tuesday.

"Despite" or "because of"?

When Bolton took the unusual step of announcing that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and an Air Force bomber task force were headed to the Gulf, he said that the movement was in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”

But one congressional aide cast doubt on the claim that intelligence alone had driven the deployments. The administration, the source told The Daily Beast, was “pivoting off posture moves already underway to respond to what they interpret as real risk in the intelligence reporting.”

Still, the aggressive messaging, meant to dissuade Iran from unleashing its proxies on the U.S., could end up backfiring, the aide told The Daily Beast. “Even if you view it as non-escalatory or in the ‘escalate to de-escalate’ school (where a tough message is essential to walk things back) it’s taking place in an environment of increased pressure, including the IRGC designation. That context matters.”

And the context of what administration is in office matters, too.

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

Oh, Jesus, FUBAR

Never mind unauthorized leaks or enemy hacks.

Sensitive information about the location and staffing of military bases and spy outposts around the world has been revealed by a fitness tracking company.

The details were released by Strava in a data visualisation map that shows all the activity tracked by users of its app, which allows people to record their exercise and share it with others.

The map, released in November 2017, shows every single activity ever uploaded to Strava – more than 3 trillion individual GPS data points, according to the company. The app can be used on various devices including smartphones and fitness trackers like Fitbit to see popular running routes in major cities, or spot individuals in more remote areas who have unusual exercise patterns.

However, over the weekend military analysts noticed that the map is also detailed enough that it potentially gives away extremely sensitive information about a subset of Strava users: military personnel on active service.

[...]

In Helmand province, Afghanistan, for instance, the locations of forward operating bases can be clearly seen, glowing white against the black map.

[...]

Zooming in on one of the larger bases clearly reveals its internal layout, as mapped out by the tracked jogging routes of numerous soldiers. The base itself is not visible on the satellite views of commercial providers such as Google Maps or Apple’s Maps, yet it can be clearly seen through Strava.

[...]

“In Syria, known coalition (ie US) bases light up the night,” writes analyst Tobias Schneider. “Some light markers over known Russian positions, no notable colouring for Iranian bases … A lot of people are going to have to sit through lectures come Monday morning.”

  Guardian

Jesus.

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

The Intercept has an explanation of that intelligence money bit

THE HOUSE SPENDING bill released Wednesday would allow President Donald Trump, or people under him, to secretly shift money to fund intelligence programs, a break with 70 years of governing tradition.

Since 1947, section 504 of the National Security Act has mandated that the administration inform Congress if it intends to shift money from one intelligence project to another, if the new project has not been authorized by Congress. That notification can be — and almost always is — done in secret, but it is at least a minimal check on executive power.

[...]

But without any obligation to spend funds as specifically authorized, there is no obligation to inform Congress.

  Intercept

And five Dems let this go through.

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

But wait! There's more!

So did those five Democrats who voted yes, allowing this to go into effect, know about this?

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

UPDATE:  More on that.

Follow up on Prince's private CIA-type agency

If you need it, here's a background post on Erick Prince's proposal for private spies to serve Trump. And here's The Intercept's story on the same. Now we have CNN fact-checking the administration's denial of such a thing.

National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told CNN that "the White House does not and would not support such a proposal" and that, "I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or (White House) at all."

  The Intercept

Also, our favorite smarmy, lying press secretary tried to deny it without actually denying it.

The Intercept was first to report the proposal. A CIA spokesperson told The Intercept, "You have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda."

A spokesperson for Prince denied the claims in a statement to CNN's Erin Burnett.

[...]

The founder of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, Erik Prince, and his allies lobbied contacts inside the administration to provide the CIA with a private network of intelligence contractors, according to a US official with knowledge of the proposal. "This idea is going nowhere," the official said and stressed neither the agency nor the director of the CIA is or was ever considering the proposal. National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told CNN that "the White House does not and would not support such a proposal" and that, "I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or (White House) at all."

[...]

The Intercept was first to report the proposal. A CIA spokesperson told The Intercept, "You have been provided wildly inaccurate information by people peddling an agenda." A spokesperson for Prince denied the claims in a statement to CNN's Erin Burnett.

"The allegations made in Intercept's latest article about Erik are completely false and this was made clear to them before the article was published. Any meetings Erik did have with members of the intelligence community, current or former, focused on his well-publicized plan for saving the US taxpayer $42 billion in Afghanistan," the statement said.

Yeah, that's another problem. We don't need more private soldiers to do our nefarious bidding around the world.

Prince was also questioned by House lawmakers last month over reports that he met the head of a Russian investment fund in an apparent effort to set up a backchannel for Russian communication with the Trump administration, and that senior Trump officials had authorized the meeting.

[...]

He also downplayed his ties to the Trump's team, merely saying he was a Trump donor and had met the President on only one occasion, the sources said. CNN has previously reported that Prince met with members of Trump's incoming national security team during the presidential transition, and that he boasted about his influence in the Trump orbit around that same time.

More work for the Mueller team.

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

Leaky, Leaky

Half a dozen former intelligence officers at the spook-heavy Cipher Brief conference in Georgia spoke to The Daily Beast, as did other former CIA officers, describing their Russian interactions during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years.

[...]

[A] 17th-century mansion served as the backdrop of a 2007 summit of CIA officers, FBI agents, and their Russian counterparts, as the Bush administration tried to build a cooperative relationship with Moscow on counterterrorism.

Over glasses of cognac and the occasional shot of chilled vodka, the Russian and American officers sat across from each other at a long conference table, in what turned into an interrogation instead of the hoped-for bridge-building exercise. The Russians probed the Americans to find out where their sources were, how big their networks were and any potential weaknesses to exploit later.
[...]

They described a consistent pattern: the U.S. engages with Moscow on a tough problem like terrorism, and Russia comes through at first. After a matter of months, the U.S. finds the cooperation is short-lived or has plenty of strings attached. The moment a disagreement over something like Ukraine or Syria intrudes, everything the Americans have shared with the Russians gets turned into a weapon against them.

[...]

The Americans ended the meetings in frustration, and went back home.

A few months later, a Russian delegation came to Washington, D.C., and they gave it one more try.

The Russians insisted on only meeting at their embassy, which is legally Russian sovereign territory.

[...]

The former U.S. intelligence official said the same pattern of aggressive questioning they’d experience in Moscow resumed. “It was all about influence, manipulation, intimidation."

[...]

Once again, the Americans called it off.

[...]

The Obama administration went through that learning curve a few times over. Agreements that looked successful at the outset turned out to be more complicated or incomplete.

[...]

“I never met with the Russians. Not worth it,” said Michael Morell, former acting CIA Director in the Obama administration. He said Russia wants to be seen as equal to the United States, a goal most nations would seek to reach by growing their influence through their economy.

“They’ve got nothing to work with,” Morell said in an interview. “Their economy is a disaster. Their demographics are a disaster. Their politics are a disaster. So they go with the second step, which is to undermine us, everywhere they can.”

[...]

“We, the United States, are the ‘main enemy’ to them,” said former CIA officer John Sipher. “In their mind, they are at war with us. Anything that’s hurtful to the United States is positive for Russia.” That goes doubly for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who once led Russia’s FSB, the successor to the infamous Soviet-era KGB.

  Daily Beast

Too bad we can't believe everything the CIA says. And THAT is another reason why the CIA is perhaps the most destabilizing force on the planet.

“Every time there’s a new president, a new director of the CIA, there’s always this thought: ‘We can make it right with Russia,’” said Hall. “But it rarely ends up working. The Russians see us coming and take us to the bank every time.”

Probably true.

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

Trump's "Intel" Is Fox News, Alex Jones & Brietbart

Remember MIT professor Professor Theodore Postol's conclusion that the US government was lying about a sarin attack by Assad on "his own people"?

US President Donald Trump ignored reports from US intelligence that said they had no evidence Syria had used sarin to attack a rebel-held town, Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says.

[...]

In a report published by the German newspaper Die Welt on Sunday, he describes how the Trump administration mishandled the media frenzy after the Syrian bombing of the rebel-held town Khan Sheikhoun in April.

[...]

[Trump]ordered his military to prepare options for a response, which they did.

The subsequent Tomahawk attack on the Syrian Shayrat Air Base did less damage that the White House claimed, as was apparently intended by the military planners of the operation, Hersh said. The US mainstream media failed to question the government’s narrative of the situation, instead giving Trump what appears to be the pinnacle achievement of his presidency so far.

[...]

“If you’ve already decided it was a gas attack, you will then inevitably read the talk about a special weapon as involving a sarin bomb,” the adviser told Hersh. “Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

  RT

A "Wag the Dog" scenario that secured media praise for Trump and exacerbated the powder keg that is Syria.

You don't suppose that's why the OPCW's request to go to the site and examine the evidence was denied do you?

The reaction to the show of force in the US media was probably everything the Trump administration could have hoped for. MSNBC anchorman Brian Williams described the sight of Tomahawks being launched at the Syrian base as “beautiful.” CNN host Fareed Zakaria reacted by saying that Trump finally “became president of the United States.”

[...]

“None of this makes any sense,” one US officer told colleagues upon learning of the White House decision to retaliate against Syria. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack... the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth.

[...]

Hersh’s report is based on interviews with several US advisers and evidence they provided, including transcripts of real-time communications that immediately followed the Syrian attack on April 4. According to the advisers, the Syrian Air Force’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun targeted a meeting of several high-value leaders of jihadist groups.

[...]

The US was informed of the operation in detail beforehand as part of a conflict prevention arrangement with Russia.

An arrangement that Russia suspended in response to the strike.

The target of the Syrian bombing was described as a two-story cinder-block building. According to Russian intelligence, the jihadists used the second floor as a command and control center. The first floor housed a grocery store and other businesses. The basement was used as a warehouse for weapons, ammunition, and goods, including chlorine-based decontaminants and fertilizers.

[...]

According to a US assessment of the morning airstrike cited by Hersh, the 500-pound Russian bomb triggered secondary explosions. The heat could have evaporated the chemical products in the basement, producing a toxic cloud that spread over the town, pressed close to the ground by the dense morning air.

The scenario is consistent with the accounts of patients who reported a chlorine odor in interviews with Medecins Sans Frontieres. It could also explain the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning that were attributed to sarin, but may have been caused by organophosphates used in many fertilizers, Hersh said.

Pretty much exactly what the Russians said at the time.

Meanwhile, US intelligence had no evidence to indicate the presence of sarin gas at or near the Shayrat Air Base, from which the bombing mission was launched.

[...]

“No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt,” the adviser said. “Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.”

“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity,” he added. “It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”

Sadly true. And not only was the missile attack based on Fox News intel, it was bungled.

Of the 59 Tomahawk missiles fired at Shayrat, as many as 24 missed their targets because the initial strikes hit gasoline storage tanks, triggering a huge fire and a lot of smoke that interfered with the guidance systems of the following missies. Only a few actually penetrated the hangars, and these only destroyed nine aircraft that were apparently not operational and could not be moved during the window of opportunity between the US warning of the looming attack and the strike itself.

“It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end,” the senior adviser told Hersh.

[...]

“The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.”

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