John Brennan’s CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson

I was mildly amused by Paul Sperry’s recent tweet announcing as “breaking news” that Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, set up a Task Force to target Donald Trump. This should not be considered something “new.” I reported on this almost one year ago (October 2019 to be precise). You can check out the original pieces here and here. The following provides an updated, consolidated piece.

While chatting in late October 2019 with a retired CIA colleague, he dropped a bombshell–he had learned that John Brennan set up a Trump Task Force at CIA in early 2016. One of my retired buddy’s friends, who was still on duty with the CIA in 2016, recounted how he was approached discreetly and invited to work on a Task Force focused on then Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Task Force members were handpicked instead of following the normal procedure of posting the job. Instead of opening the job to all eligible CIA personnel, only a select group of people were invited specifically to join up. Not everyone accepted the invitation, and that could be a problem for John Brennan

A “Task Force” normally is a short term creation comprised of operations officers (i.e., guys and gals who carry out espionage activities overseas) and intelligence analysts. The purpose of such a group is to ensure all relevant intelligence capabilities are brought to bear on the problem at hand. I am not talking about an informal group of disgruntled Democrats working at the CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash real estate guy from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy Donald Trump.

A “Task Force” is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project.  But it also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA. Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here’s a recently declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958.  The author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an Operational unit “in the field”, i.e. deployed around the world.

While a “Task Force” can be a useful tool for tackling issues of terrorism or drug trafficking, it is not appropriate or lawful for collecting on a U.S. candidate for the Presidency. But Brennan did it with the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper. 

A Task Force operates independent of the CIA “Mission Centers” (that’s the jargon for the current CIA organization chart).

So what did John Brennan do? My friends said that a Trump Task Force was running in early 2016 and may have started as early as the summer of 2015. Recruitment to Task Force included case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and admin personnel were recruited. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did.

But this was not a CIA only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force. We have some clues that Christopher Steele’s FBi handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been detailed to the Trump Task Force (see here).

So what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on identifying intelligence collection priorities. Task Force members could task NSA to do targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in covert action, such as targeting George Papadopoulos. Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who met with him, briefed on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange monitored meetings. Was the honey pot (i.e., the attractive woman) named Azra Turk, who met with George Papadopoulos, part of the CIA Trump Task Force?

The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force.

In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them.

When I described this development last November to one friend, a retired CIA Chief of Station, his first response was, “My God, that’s illegal.” We then reminisced about another illegal operation carried out under the auspices of the CIA Central American Task Force back in the 1980s. That became known to Americans as the Iran Contra scandal.

We know one thing for certain about he work of this Task Force–it failed to produce any intelligence to corroborate the specious claim that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians. Even though the despicable Brennan has continued to insist that Trump was/is under the thumb of Putin, he failed to provide any substantive information in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that supported the claim.

Comments

[Jack]

Math majors...what is the likelihood that more than 10 top Mueller officials all put their phones in airplane mode and then forgot the password and used too many passwords to wipe em out?

https://twitter.com/adamhousley/status/1304179395511287808?s=21

Wouldn’t the network carriers have all the communications from these phones including text messages?

Adam Housley a former Fox reporter who broke some big stories during his time, has been tweeting that there are more people likely to be indicted than Clinesmith in the Russia Collusion hoax probe.

Unless these happen in the next few weeks it will depend on who wins the election. If Biden wins the coupsters will be home free to get their own Netflix series.

It would appear that the Mueller special counsel was a corrupt attempt to cover up the origins and machinations to frame an opposition presidential candidate and then oust a duly elected president.

[Keith Harbaugh]

Re:All those SCO lawyers having their phones wiped/erased.

If that isn't a conspiracy, then what is?
Of course it was manifest conspiracy.
That shows you why so many people, in the media, in politics, in social media,
have made such an effort to demonize "conspiracy theories."
So that when real conspiracies arise and are uncovered, describing them as what they truly are can be derided.

[Deap]

LJ,, the Brennan secret Trump Task Force is finally getting some wider publicity.

Red State is now running a story with links to more articles about this - the Corpulent Vindman

. We heard it here first from you as you point out - a long time ago. So how frustrating is it when you know about something like this, and it does not get the immediate traction it should be getting but maybe it needs to wait for wider context ......and an organic acceptability in the readers themselves which may well be closer now to the Durham report/cases coming to fruition:
https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/12/before-crossfire-hurricane-began-brennan-led-his-own-top-secret-probe-into-russian-collusion/

Let's see where the now "breaking" info about the separate Brennan Trump Task Force finally breaks now. It does tie into Brennan lying under oath, does it not? Look how long it took to dig into Benghazi and still don't think the story ever finally came together - what was the CIA really doing there with such a large base, and why were they running the cover story it was consulate - you busted that one too.

[Deap]

Explosive stuff - RedState - Digging into the Corpulent Vindman":
VIPS to the forefront for a must read:

......"Some former and still-serving members of the US Intelligence Community speculate that the Obama administration compromised communications security in the White House and National Security Council prior to Inauguration Day 2017.

Their goal was setting traps for privileged classified communications that could be collected and spun by trusted agents in the media to undermine Trump policies, and to sow suspicion and discord among Trump White House/NSC personnel.

This would involve setting up long-dwell passive collect-and-store sensors that would gather information for later downloading by Obama embeds loyal to former CIA Director John Brennan or former FBI Director James Comey who remained in the White House and on the NSC staff with access.

Another possibility is that the previously existing White House fiber optic networks might have been spliced or tapped by induction at some point outside the walls of the facility/building, at which point the data could be routed clandestinely to an external collection source, and perhaps decrypted using codes provided by those same Obama embeds.

Either way, these measures might have been implemented by the Obama embeds to ensure that the passive sensors were protected from detection by periodic communications security sweeps aimed at detecting communications compromises, bugs, and unauthorized taps.

It is quite possible that the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) would agree with this assertion based on past disclosures from the organization. Note that a key member of VIPS is William Binney, a former senior technical officer at the National Security Agency and whistleblower who argued convincingly on technical grounds that the DNC server was not hacked by Russia, but rather that information was downloaded internally and leaked by an insider, as reported here. ........