Why haven’t we seen the information about the Russian investigation yet, even after Trump ordered it done? Blame Gina Haskel, CIA director, for refusing to obey direct orders. Why is Trump letting her get away with it and why it’s a political football so close to the elections?
Brad Johnson provides his analysis of the above and explains the process once she complies – a lot of review by various agencies is normal. Brad brings you his unique perspective from his 25 years with the CIA as a senior operative and station chief. Once retired, he formed Americans for Intelligence Reform to fight exactly the corruption and politics destroying our intelligence capabilities and threatening our national security.
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https://youtu.be/FhqCVrg8Noc
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brad johnson it is october the 12th two
00:02
days ago
00:03
was the third day when president trump
00:06
said
00:07
that within the next three days the
00:09
unredacted versions of all of these
00:11
documents
00:12
are going to appear and i don’t think
00:15
they have
00:17
and it would be great to know why
00:20
and what we can expect well
00:24
uh the process under which that’s done
00:28
is uh they do have to be read through
00:30
and looked at
00:31
and the president has given the order
00:33
that they be unredacted meaning
00:35
you know nothing is blacked out or or
00:37
canceled out on those documents as
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they’re given out but
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they still have to be reviewed and
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that’ll be done probably at the
00:44
director of national intelligence’s
00:46
office so there’s there’s documents to
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go through so there’s kind of
00:50
separate areas of things going on all at
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the same time so
00:53
we did have documents released a few
00:55
days ago it was an
00:57
another batch of uh hillary clinton’s
01:00
emails
01:01
that were released and i went through
01:03
those and the press has gone through
01:05
them and i’ve kind of read just to see
01:06
what everybody
01:07
else was saying about it and essentially
01:09
there’s not that much there
01:11
and uh they’re just talking the press
01:14
basically spends it saying
01:15
well it’s proof there was a lot of
01:16
confusion during this
01:18
benghazi attack which i you know there
01:21
probably was a certain level of
01:22
confusion during the benghazi attack but
01:25
everyone needs to remember that those
01:27
emails first of all some of them are
01:28
redacted and second of all
01:32
those are the things that hillary
01:34
clinton gave to her lawyer
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her lawyer went through them picked out
01:38
the ones that they were going to release
01:39
i’m sure he did it in
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full consultation with hillary and her
01:43
staff
01:44
and so the ones that we’re seeing out of
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all this stuff have already been gone
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through the fine-tooth comb
01:49
and we’re not going to find anything in
01:51
there if we can get our hands on the
01:53
other ones
01:54
which uh are probably sitting on
01:57
anthony weiner’s laptop at quantico
01:59
virginia
02:00
held by the fbi or at least a certain
02:02
percentage of them are sitting there
02:04
that
02:04
for whatever reason nobody wants to look
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at which
02:08
you know like is an unbelievable level
02:10
of political corruption that we’re
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seeing
02:12
those need to be gone through and those
02:13
classified documents are crimes that are
02:15
sitting on that computer
02:16
at any rate uh that aside uh the the
02:19
second level is that these are being
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processed as
02:22
as i as i said so they’re going to be
02:24
gone through the president has given the
02:25
order that they be released unredacted
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but still
02:28
they have to go through the third area
02:30
that’s that’s a problem that’s kind of
02:32
delaying
02:33
as well is that uh the federalists has
02:36
been reporting and they’ve done
02:37
excellent reporting on this up to now
02:39
that gina haspel personally who’s the
02:42
director of the cia
02:43
is holding back the a large swath
02:46
of documents that that president trump
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has or uh
02:50
be released now i want to make a comment
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on this and hopefully president trump
02:53
anyone
02:54
who knows president trump personally
02:55
would like to pass this message on
02:57
please do the the way to handle this if
03:00
he’s given an order
03:02
and director haspel is refusing to obey
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it
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and she’s resisting all of this the i
03:08
think what trump and the white house are
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looking at is they don’t want to fire
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her
03:12
because that would be a huge step right
03:14
before an election
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but there’s a lot of other things that
03:16
you can do there’s administrative steps
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that can be taken and in that position
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now of course i’ve been around
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the swamp a lot longer but in that
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position what i would do is say i gave
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you an order
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you didn’t obey it so i’m sending you
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home
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on administrative leave unpaid
03:35
administrative leave for
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three days two days one day a week
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whatever it doesn’t matter
03:40
send her home then call in the deputy
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and say deputy
03:43
i want these documents to go out that’s
03:45
an order i want them out right now
03:47
if the deputy refuses send him home or
03:50
he adds to him in this case send him
03:52
home on administrative leave for two or
03:54
three days you’re not firing them
03:55
you’re just taking administrative steps
03:57
they failed to obey
03:58
a direct order from the
04:00
commander-in-chief the president united
04:01
states
04:02
and so they get they get sent home
04:04
that’s their punishment for
04:05
for three or four five days whatever the
04:07
period of time is and then they come
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back in
04:09
and just keep going down the line till
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you get the guy that will follow orders
04:12
and once they follow orders then those
04:14
things are out and they would be all
04:16
released to the dni the dna could do
04:17
whatever they do in that process
04:19
and get them out that’s the perfect way
04:21
to handle it or and it’s an example of a
04:23
way that it could be handled
04:25
administratively without taking
04:27
extraordinary steps
04:28
like firing the director of the cia so
04:31
there’s a lot of interim steps the point
04:33
is
04:33
there’s a lot of interim steps that the
04:35
president can take and he needs to get
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that message he’s just
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he’s not surrounded by people that have
04:40
got a lot of experience in government
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and so he he doesn’t understand how
04:44
these things work very well
04:45
and this is an example of something that
04:47
he could do that’s an interim step that
04:49
would take care of the problem but
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i don’t like i said i just don’t think
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he’s surrounded by people that
04:53
understand it it would not be
04:55
a a huge step because the director of
04:58
the cia would be
04:59
coming back to the office after a couple
05:01
days and
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we’ll be back in her position she’s not
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fired it would just be an administrative
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punishment for not following orders
05:09
he did order these declassified and
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released
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uh rather than just authorize it then
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i would i think you’re making a
05:19
distinction that does not exist i think
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they’re the same thing the president
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expressly has the authorities to
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declassify information he does not
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require
05:30
the approval of the director of the cia
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he
05:33
he can he can make that decision himself
05:36
and
05:37
declassifying classified information is
05:40
much different than most people think
05:42
as a former chief of station having been
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overseas
05:45
chiefs of station for the cia also have
05:47
the authorities to declassify now
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of course they’re not going to do stuff
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willy-nilly but we take information
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that’s classified and we share it with
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our
05:55
liaison services our foreign partners as
05:57
they’re called today
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so for example if if the uh and gina
06:01
haspel knows this well she was the chief
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of station twice in london
06:05
and the amount of information that we
06:07
share with the brits is
06:08
massive so it was those things were
06:11
unclassified
06:12
to give to the brits on a you know on a
06:15
daily basis and
06:16
hundreds of documents i’m sure uh under
06:18
the authorities of gina haspel as
06:20
chief of station there so i mean that’s
06:22
that’s the way it works she understands
06:23
those things well
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but the unfortunately the president is
06:26
not but by giving the authority
06:28
and uh uh and giving the order to do so
06:31
those are all kind of really one thing
06:33
so it’s it should be acted upon right
06:36
away now for the dni to review them is
06:38
still a normal
06:39
normal step in it i’m not saying that
06:41
shouldn’t be done
06:42
but just so that they go through it and
06:45
you have another opinion another set of
06:46
eyes
06:47
to look at it just to make sure they’re
06:49
not missing something but
06:50
the basis of all of those documents
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appears to be political
06:54
not espionage or intelligence related
06:57
so the the basis of them lacks any sort
07:00
of reason to keep them classified
07:02
and so there there has to be there may
07:05
be an exception
07:06
somewhere mixed into that but as a
07:08
general rule that stuff
07:09
can and should be immediately
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declassified which it won’t take long
07:13
once
07:13
uh dni gets them but like like i said
07:16
apparently
07:17
the main batch of this stuff is sitting
07:20
uh
07:20
underneath cia director gene haspel’s
07:23
thumb
07:24
at the cia
07:40
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