Kent Clizbe--Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Commentary

Purges, Dissidents and the Progressive Regime—Something’s Gotta Give

 

By Kent Clizbe                                                                                 May 16, 2013

The Obama/Hillary/Holder regime’s arrogant façade is slowly crumbling. The president and his cabal of handlers have somehow gone a step too far. There is no accounting for why the media and some other of the Chicago gang’s public enablers are seemingly turning on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But indeed they are. Maybe the revelations of the Associated Press (AP) having its communications sucked into the maw of the political targeters let slip the mask of the “fun-to-hang-out-with-dude” fronting the regime. The revelation that the “dude” is instead a punk may have shocked those Politically Correct Progressives who empowered the dude and his handlers.

The pure power the gang commands is unprecedented in American history. An astute student of American politics, influence, scandals, and misdeeds would be hard pressed to find a more stunning abuse of power than what has been revealed of the Obama clique’s misdeeds to date. And I use “to date” purposefully. It is very likely that there remain many more shoes to drop as we learn specifics of this regime’s corrupt political hounding of its “enemies.”

Intimidation and veiled threats are powerful when wielded by investigators with the power to take your livelihood, your reputation, your freedom, or your life. I first wrote about what I called the Obama/Holder Global War on the CIA, in August of 2009 (in Newsmax), when the uniquely unqualified Leon Panetta was the Director of the CIA. In the next two years, I wrote several more articles about the politicization of the CIA and the war on terror. The main target of my analysis was the unctuous John Brennan, at the time Obama’s toady “Terrorism Czar.”

In February, 2011, I wrote a BigPeace article titled Cairo Meddler--Czar Brennan Needs to Go.  “This massive cluster-failure of a foreign policy looks like an amateur operation, run by a wannabe operator. The one personality in the Obama administration that fits that description is John Brennan.

“Egypt today is no place for a ‘semester abroad expert’ political analyst to be allowed free rein. Obama, fire John Brennan today. Let the DNI that you and your party craved do his work. You have a huge intelligence collection and analysis infrastructure idling while Brennan plays his egomaniacal games.

 

“Do the right thing. Bring Brennan back out of the shadows and put him to pasture. Let professionals do the job.”

I heard from friends that some of my articles had been posted on the media board inside headquarters. A shrewish comment on the BigPeace website was clearly from a classmate, now a high level officer in management. While not quite notorious, I definitely had ruffled feathers, and was not appreciated. 

In an article published in BigPeace in May 2011, I said, “The CIA leadership now is more political than ever. Never in its history has a pure political hack been in charge, before now. Never has an administration been so enamored of lying and hiding its true foreign policies behind covert action.

“The Libyan operation has all the makings of a disaster for the CIA.

“The disaster inflicted on the Agency by the Kennedys [at the Bay of Pigs] began a cycle of degeneration that endured until 9/11…The CIA’s refurbished reputation, as a result of GWOT successes, is now in jeopardy in Libya.

“Of course, the CIA will not refuse orders from Obama’s office to carry out covert action in Libya. But for anyone who understands the Bay of Pigs debacle, the political fallout, and the damage inflicted on the CIA, it is only right that we should fear the same damage and downward spiral from the upcoming Obama/Hillary Libyan covert action.”

When my first article was published in 2009 attacking the regime’s aggressive attempts to prosecute CIA officers who had been involved in the Bush administration’s aggressive interrogation work, many asked me why other CIA veterans were not speaking out. The regime’s partisan targeting of the intelligence bureaucracy was unprecedented. Before Holder’s efforts were checked, it appeared that he intended to punish CIA officers for carrying out exhaustively coordinated and legally authorized activities in the Global War on Terror.

My answer then, as now, is “They are terrified. Staff officers are terrified that they will lose their jobs. They are terrified that they will lose their clearances. Retirees are terrified they’ll lose their pensions.” The business of intelligence is not clean and tidy. A vindictive reading of the background of virtually any CIA officer involved in field work during the war on terror would uncover incidents or actions that could be spun as administrative, or worse, misdeeds.

Every operations officer knows this. All of them, even retired ops officers, are used to living under a microscope with every action, word or deed spotlighted. Holding a top secret clearance is useful for lucrative post-retirement contracting. Cleared personnel enjoy a premium pay scale for the same work as non-cleared personnel. The thought of losing one’s clearance is terrifying. Just the financial damage alone could be hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career. The clearance/security process can be the ultimate in political vetting, if it were to fall into the hands of unscrupulous politicians. Now it has.  

The clandestine personnel security system is virtually impervious to oversight. Decisions are made by bureaucrats, much like the IRS, the DOJ, and other regime offices, which we see now are all too willing to please their PC-Prog masters. The big difference from the IRS is that everything the CIA does is cloaked to outside view due to national security. Their decisions are not appealable. They don’t have to explain.

Invisible standards are imminently flexible. When a contractor is purged by the security apparatus, his belongings are gathered up overnight, his name tag removed from his cubicle, and he is never heard from again. None of the survivors dare to even utter his name. All are intimidated. All are terrified of losing their paycheck and career. If you doubt it, see how Director Petraeus was purged as soon as he stepped out of line on Benghazi. 

Into this environment I stumbled again in 2011, against my better judgment. I had written extensively, including a scorching book, Willing Accomplices, about the PC-Prog, anti-American background of Obama, his handlers, and his minions. But when an intelligence contracting company made me a monetary offer I could not refuse, I bit my tongue, and accepted a job in the belly of the beast.

At the time, I had a second book in draft, Obliterating Exceptionalism. It detailed very clearly the Obama administration’s misdeeds from 2008 to 2011. It was based on columns that I’d published during that time frame. Many of the columns were about Hillary’s Arab Spring, their Libyan debacle, the war on terror, and John Brennan—none were complimentary.

Following the rules, soon after settling in, I requested permission, as required, for an “outside activity,” speaking to the media about Willing Accomplices. The book’s contents had been cleared by the Publication Review Board (PRB) years before, and there was no classified information in it. At the same time, Panetta and his public relations crew were gallivanting with the PC-Progs of the media and Hollywood. They seemed to give them free rein in the building, and revealed extensive details on the Osama bin Laden operation, information which had been protected by the highest level of security classification. PC-Prog friends of Obama in Hollywood and the media were cool and classified information didn’t matter.

My request was summarily denied, after going through six or eight layers of management. The reply from security added something that was unheard of, however. Attached to the denial were several documents that laid out what seemed to be a new policy. At least, I don’t remember ever hearing about it before. The security officers advised me that not only was my outside activity request scrutinized for the potential to reveal classified information, but also for “appropriateness.”

It’s important to note here that government employees are prohibited by the Hatch Act from political speech or activities in public. It’s pretty much a bargain with the devil they make for job security and a guaranteed pension. But government contractors are not subject to the Hatch Act, outside of the workplace.

Appropriateness? What does that mean? Appropriate to whom? I was soon to find out.

I immediately began searching for a new job. But the salary differential was too much for my wife to accept. The offers I got didn’t match the rate I was earning. If Mamma’s not happy, nobody is. I kept going in every day, and kept searching for another job. Finally, I got a fantastic job interview—managing a training department in an international corporation in Switzerland. They flew me over (after I recieved approval for the outside activity request) for a full-day of meetings with the entire corporate group the same week that John Brennan became the DCIA. 

On my return, the wait for word from Switzerland dragged on longer than expected. I knew that working under Brennan would be unconscionable. I decided that I’d rather sell cars than defile my conscience.

The phone call summoning me to discuss my outside activities was not a surprise. A mere two weeks after Brennan’s arrival, I was called on the carpet. The discussion with the nice lady made clear that they’d been monitoring and inspecting my personal email, my comments on political blogs, my recently published books (one political, and one on the secrets to avoiding colds and flu), and pretty much everything about my personal life since 2001.

Just as the IRS demanded Facebook access, emails, and other personal details from Tea Party activists for political purposes, the nice lady ended the hour and a half discussion with a request to turn over my personal computer to her. Having nothing to hide, I said sure. On the way home, though, it suddenly hit me. My entire life is in that computer—three books, dozens of articles, hundreds of research projects, finished and draft articles and book ideas, my entire executive recruiting business—clients, candidates, and profiles of both—my business and personal financials going back 15 years, my family’s Christmas letters, my personal correspondence with friends and family, my email archive of 15 years or more, every picture I’ve taken in the last 15 years, and much, much more.

And that was when I decided, like Roberto Duran against Sugar Ray Leonard, “No mas.” No more. Screw the salary differential. Screw the nice lady. This was a political witch-hunt. I wasn’t gonna take it any more.

The first thing I did when I got home was to call the best lawyer in town. The one who handles every high level issue having to do with the CIA and personnel. The first thing he said was, “Don’t ever give the government your computer. They’ll never give it back. And they’ll search it forever.” I called the nice lady and told her that I’d changed my mind.

The next thing I did was tell the lawyer that I wanted nothing more to do with this game. I felt dirty, cheap, violated, used, and compromised. I did not call the nice lady back, as she’d asked me to do. My lawyer called to tell her that I would not be coming back again.

Two months after my lonely decision to defy the regime, the Obama/Holder/Hillary regime is finally being questioned about Benghazi, about IRS vendettas, about political hit pieces, about enemies lists, about turning the Constitution on its ear. If there is any justice, those who have perverted the tools designed to protect our Republic in order to advance their own political careers and objectives will face justice. As in all things PC-Progressives do, however, they will continue to lie and pervert our system. May we all survive the coming upheavals.

This regime, once it understood the power of the covert action and investigatory apparatus it controlled, turned on normal Americans. It applied the lessons learned in the GWOT to monitoring its domestic enemies. Total collection, all the time, of all electronic records—cell phones, emails, smart-phones and now tax returns—allows the regime the capability of compiling a complete profile of its enemies—names of contacts, physical locations, message content, interests, photos, and now tax records. What other “confidential and private” government records are added to this “big data” for the uses of the regime?

The sum of all the data available provides them with a holistic overview of an enemy—where he is, what he’s thinking, who he’s talking to, and what his plans are. This overview can be used, as on the battlefield, for targeting. What’s that about drones in America, Master Holder? Have you recused yourself on that one too?

 

Kent Clizbe is a former CIA counter-terrorism operations officer. His two books, Willing Accomplices, and Obliterating Exceptionalism detail the covert influence operation that introduced the anti-American message that became Political Correctness into American culture and the horrendous effects of PC-Progressivism today.