BREAKING:
FBI retaliated against Michael Flynn by launching a Russia probe because he was going to Testify against McCabe in a Major Sexual Harassment Case.
The FBI launched a criminal probe against former Trump
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn two years after the retired Army
general roiled the bureau’s leadership by intervening on behalf of a
decorated counterterrorism agent who accused now-Deputy FBI Director
Andrew McCabe and other top officials of sexual discrimination,
according to documents and interviews.
Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.
The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.
The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.
The deputy director’s testimony provided some of the strongest evidence in the case of possible retaliation, because he admitted the FBI opened an internal investigation into Gritz’s personal conduct after learning the agent “had filed or intended to file” a sex discrimination complaint against her supervisors.
McCabe eventually became the bureau’s No. 2 executive and emerged as a central player in the FBI’s Russia election tampering investigation, putting him in a position to impact the criminal inquiry against Flynn.
Three FBI employees told Circa they personally witnessed McCabe make disparaging remarks about Flynn before and during the time the retired Army general emerged as a figure in the Russia case.
The bureau employees, who spoke only on condition of
anonymity for fear of retribution, said they did not know the reason for
McCabe’s displeasure with Flynn, but that it made them uncomfortable as
the Russia probe began to unfold and pressure built to investigate
Flynn. One employee even consulted a private lawyer.
“As far as the troops in the field, the vast-majority were disgusted with the Russia decision, but that was McCabe driving the result that eventually led [former FBI Director James] Comey to make the decision,” said a senior federal law enforcement official, with direct knowledge of the investigation.
FBI agents’ concerns became more pronounced when a highly-classified piece of evidence -- an intercepted conversation between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak -- suddenly leaked to the news media and prompted Flynn’s resignation as Trump’s top security adviser.
“The Flynn leaks were nothing short of political,” one FBI employee said, noting the specific contents of the conversation were known by only a handful of government officials when they leaked. “The leaks appeared to be targeted to take Flynn out.”
Eventually the probe on Flynn moved beyond Russia to questions about whether he properly disclosed foreign payments affecting his security clearance.
FBI officials declined to answer any questions from Circa, including whether McCabe ever considered recusing himself or has recused himself from the Flynn aspects of the Russia probe. McCabe declined comment via the FBI press office.
But one of the FBI’s most famous whistleblowers says McCabe has an ethical obligation to recuse himself in the Flynn probe to avoid the appearance of retribution or bias.
“I don't think they have any choice. He has to step aside,” said Frederic Whitehurst, who as an FBI special agent and forensic chemist blew the whistle on misdeeds inside the FBI crime lab two decades ago and prompted widespread reforms.
“If he stays involved, the case against Flynn has no credibility,” explained Whitehurst, now often called as an expert witness in court cases. “If there are criminal charges that could go against Flynn, that's got to go to court. And those agents at some point may be called before a grand jury and anything he (McCabe) said to them about Flynn could be used as exonerating information or evidence of misconduct.”
Whitehurst said he saw senior FBI officials, including then-Director Louis Freeh and then-General Counsel Howard Shapiro, recuse themselves in the 1990s from his whistleblowing case to avoid looking they were involved in retribution after he made allegations of wrongdoing by the bureau
“Louie and Howie did it, and that sets the precedent I think,” Whitehurst said.
Documents and memos obtained by Circa detail how Flynn and other top officials at other government agencies in 2014 and 2015 came to intervene in the EEOC case of Gritz, who rose over two decades to a supervisory special agent inside the FBI on the strength of her counterterrorism work.
For nearly a decade, Gritz worked with the intelligence community to help successfully track down global terrorists or rescue Western hostages, and was even occasionally called upon to personally brief then-Director Robert Mueller on sensitive cases like the disappearance of a retired agent Robert Levinson inside Iran, memos show.
But her career took a sudden downward turn after she went to work under McCabe and his leadership team in 2012, resulting in her first negative rating after years of outstanding performance reviews. She filed an EEOC complain inside the FBI against a handful of bureau executives in 2012, alleging her career was being derailed by sexual discrimination.
The FBI referred her for an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation for timecard irregularities. As hostilities rose between the two sides, emails and testimony showed senior FBI officials castigated Gritz for being too “emotional,” having a possible mental illness and sending inappropriate emails.
The FBI concluded there was no discrimination, arguing Gritz was referred to OPR for investigation on June 20, 2012 before she ever filed her EEOC complaint.
But McCabe’s sworn statement offered evidence that actually supported Gritz’s claim of retaliation and discrimination, recounting a conversation on June 19, 2012 in which he authorized the OPR investigation of Gritz after one of his deputies told him Gritz was about to file an EEO complaint, his sworn statement shows.
“I first learned of the issues that led to Ms. Gritz’s current OPR investigation during a telephone call with Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) Jennifer Ley on June 19, 2012,” McCabe testified.
“I recalled that during the course of our conversation DAD Ley mentioned to me that Ms. Gritz had filed or intended to file an EEO complaint against her immediate supervisor.”
The very next day, the FBI initiated the OPR investigation of Gritz, according to evidence in the FBI’s official personnel files. FBI records support McCabe’s version of events, showing Gritz had contacted FBI EEO officials in mid-June before the OPR probe was initiated, then filed her formal complaint a few weeks later. The FBI ‘s official report of investigation on Gritz’s EEO complaint, which absolved the FBI of any discrimination, omitted any mention that McCabe had been aware of the EEO complaint before the bureau filed its OPR action against Gritz.
Gritz’s initial complaint in 2012 named the FBI supervisor
below McCabe. She chose to resign from the FBI in 2013, her case
becoming the poster child for a National Public Radio story on the FBI’s
allegedly hostile environment for women agents in 2015.
In 2014, Gritz amended her EEOC complaint to specifically name McCabe, alleging she suffered “a hostile environment, defamation of character through continued targeting by Andrew McCabe in official documents, and continuous patterns and instances of severe and excessive hostile behavior/attitude toward complainant. These actions have a negative impact on the complainant, professionally, financially, and personally.”
Flynn’s intervention in the case occurred around the time that McCabe’s name was added to the complaint. Flynn's first act was to write a letter of support in her case.
“SSA Gritz was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives,” Flynn wrote May 9, 2014.
At the time, Flynn was an Army lieutenant general and the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he put his letter on official agency stationary to be submitted in Gritz’s case.
As soon as Gritz revealed to the FBI that Flynn and other top federal figures had written letters to support her case and likely would be called as witnesses, the bureau dispatched a lawyer to try to block the evidence from being included in the EEO case, documents show.
The FBI “has reviewed the letters submitted by the Complainant and objects to their inclusion in the record,” the bureau’s lawyer wrote. “They are selfserving letters, not part of any personnel file nor contemporaneous generated during the period of Ms. Gritz’s employment with the FBI, and which she has unilaterally solicited and obtained. They should be excluded.”
While the FBI argued Gritz’s had become underperforming, tardy to work, insurbordinate, possibly mentally ill or emotional and deserving of a poor performance review, Flynn argued just the opposite, saying he saw the agent excel while working with the DIA and other intelligence community agencies.
“Her work consistently made a positive difference,” Flynn wrote. “.Her tenacity and personal commitment consistently produced outstanding results in the most challenging environments.”
Flynn went further, offering an interview in 2015 with NPR in which he called Gritz one of the “bright lights and shining stars” in the intelligence community who “just kinda got it when it came to the kind of enemy that we were facing and the relationship that was necessary between law enforcement and the military.”
Flynn wasn’t alone among top officials who came to Gritz’s defense in her battle against the FBI.
“SSA Gritz was without question, the most energetic, most consistently engaged and prepared and single most effective member of this interagency group,” wrote Navy Rear Admiral B. L. Losey, who served both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the White House’s National Security Council Director for Combatting Terrorism.
Losey offered a most poignant endorsement of the female agent. “If I were taken hostage, I would hope that above all others SSA Robyn Gritz were assigned the task to track and recover me,” he wrote.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley also afforded Gritz support, asking federal authorities to investigate whether her case was emblematic of a hostile workplace for women inside the FBI.
In a brief interview this weekend, Gritz said she was mortified to think that her request to Flynn to help with her EEOC case in any way affected his relationship with the FBI or his current status as someone under investigation in the Russia case.
“Flynn was the first leader to defend me,” said Gritz. “He forwarded a letter to the FBI and I personally think that Comey did not receive it. McCabe knew Flynn and I were friends. I felt that from the beginning it was an issue.”
NOW YOU KNOW !
General Flynn also stood up to Obama. He had a Radical way to stop ISIS and the Obama Administration would not even say the words "RADICAL ISLAM!"
Here is the America Thinker Interview with General Flynn.
The Field of Fight by Lt. General Michael Flynn delves into the world of ISIS. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing him.
Having been at the Republican convention, the general told of his dismay at those who concentrated on Melania Trump’s speech while there are so many important matters occurring in today’s world. He noted to American Thinker, “This shows you how petty the media will go to discredit Donald Trump. Since I was the next speaker, as I waited in the wings, I heard a woman who spoke from the heart about her love for this country and her husband. With all the complexities, threats, and challenges that the U.S. faces, for the media to harp on that is just ridiculous.”
The Democrats and media criticism emphasized the importance of words spoken in a certain context. Yet, President Obama will never utter the words Islamic Extremist or Radical Islam. Flynn points out the hypocrisy, “The president should clearly and unambiguously define the enemy that we face and the threat to our way of life. It is radical Islam… ISIS is a very determined enemy who wants to establish a global Caliphate. This political correctness of not naming our enemy is dangerous for the country. I am confident Americans can take the truth.”
Political correctness has also interfered in the way the U.S. conducts the war against terrorism. According to Flynn, “Using drones is a narrow strategy. We have to be able to capture guys and learn from them by getting the intelligence we need. We are not capturing anyone any more. Beyond that, apprehending individuals allows us to expose them instead of turning them into a martyr after being killed. By doing this we can show how their ideology is a disease that must by excised. The information warfare component of battle must discredit them. We show them as cowards and weak.” Exposure does seem to work if people think of how imbedded in their memory are the pictures of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Saddam Hussein after their capture.
Flynn
also debunks Democrats and some Republican pundits who say ISIS is
being defeated. They point to the terrorist groups loss of land and that
these recent attacks are acts of desperation. He strongly disagrees
with “those people because that is actually false. We excised them from
some village in Iraq like Fallujah, yet they are able to attack the
international community in San Bernardino, Orlando, France, Germany,
Bangladesh, and Turkey, all of these in recent months. The reason for
this is that the enemy has doubled in size and grown in a global
geographic footprint in the last six or so years.”
The blame lies squarely in the hands of the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton. In the book, Flynn gives high marks to President Bush while lambasting President Obama, “He (Bush) realized the war was going badly, that we were losing, and our entire strategy needed to change. The mere fact that he recognized this and proceeded to make the difficult decisions he eventually made is a leadership characteristic our current president lacks.”
Directly commenting, “There is no enemy that is unbeatable. Even though President Bush was at the end of his administration he brought in the fresh leadership of General David Petraeus and Robert Gates. We were able to reverse the strategy and come up with a new one to win. Now we are at the end of President Obama’s term; yet, when 99% of President Obama’s advisors told him to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq to stop the rise of radical terrorism; he did not listen. He made a political decision rather than a decision for our national security. This is a weakness in his leadership style. His problem is that he refuses to recognize this strategy is not working and the enemy has grown in capacity.”
One of the problems is that the current president wants to be surrounded by yes men. In the book Flynn reconts how he was fired in 2014 because he went before Congress and spoke of how to keep America safe. When asked about this, he responded, “I was appointed by President Obama twice, as Assistant Director of National Intelligence and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I never met with the president once; imagine that. Why not ask to speak with me about our differences of opinion and my suggestions? To me, this is very disturbing.”
He suspects he was fired because “our agency was very brutally honest about our findings. I am not, nor have I ever been the type of person that will state what the boss wants to hear. I am always very blunt and say what I feel, including offering solutions. I was fired partially due to my honesty about the enemy we are facing, radical Islam. In complete contrast to the president who called ISIS the JV team, I told Congress they were dangerous and growing. Intelligence is about truth to power.”
Although he outlines extensive solutions, he summarized it for American Thinker, “In order to beat this enemy we need to discredit the ideology. Muslims need to take a more public international stand. To do it they will have to be helped, prompted, and pushed by the U.S., something we are not doing now. We need to depend on Middle East allies like Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Finally, something that I have been criticized for is to get Russia involved. They should assume responsibility and pressure Iran to stop their proxy wars. As I show in the book the ties between the Iranian regime and al Qaeda have been a well-established fact.”
Since ISIS is a byproduct of al Qaeda does that mean Iran has ties to them as well? Flynn responded, “Dig deep down into the intelligence and you will find ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ There are these funny relationships that exist. We have clearly seen with Iran and al Qaeda that a Shiite state nation and a Sunni organization have worked together. They do this because at the end of the day they hate the U.S. more than they hate each other.”
Americans should take solace in knowing that Lt. General Flynn is one of Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisors. Obviously, Mr. Trump is not surrounding himself with yes people, but those who would not sit quietly back if he believes a “president” Trump has the wrong strategy.
When asked if he will be the next secretary of defense, and what type of leader would he be, Flynn commented, “I am confident in what I know but also what I do not know. I am willing to listen and learn. I believe we should never get involved in wars unless we have a clear unambiguous goal to win. America has forgotten how to win wars. I am not answering the question of my employment right now. Republicans must win many more battles before the war is won.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/a_conversation_with_michael_flynn.html
Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.
The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.
The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.
The deputy director’s testimony provided some of the strongest evidence in the case of possible retaliation, because he admitted the FBI opened an internal investigation into Gritz’s personal conduct after learning the agent “had filed or intended to file” a sex discrimination complaint against her supervisors.
McCabe eventually became the bureau’s No. 2 executive and emerged as a central player in the FBI’s Russia election tampering investigation, putting him in a position to impact the criminal inquiry against Flynn.
Three FBI employees told Circa they personally witnessed McCabe make disparaging remarks about Flynn before and during the time the retired Army general emerged as a figure in the Russia case.
“As far as the troops in the field, the vast-majority were disgusted with the Russia decision, but that was McCabe driving the result that eventually led [former FBI Director James] Comey to make the decision,” said a senior federal law enforcement official, with direct knowledge of the investigation.
FBI agents’ concerns became more pronounced when a highly-classified piece of evidence -- an intercepted conversation between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak -- suddenly leaked to the news media and prompted Flynn’s resignation as Trump’s top security adviser.
“The Flynn leaks were nothing short of political,” one FBI employee said, noting the specific contents of the conversation were known by only a handful of government officials when they leaked. “The leaks appeared to be targeted to take Flynn out.”
Eventually the probe on Flynn moved beyond Russia to questions about whether he properly disclosed foreign payments affecting his security clearance.
FBI officials declined to answer any questions from Circa, including whether McCabe ever considered recusing himself or has recused himself from the Flynn aspects of the Russia probe. McCabe declined comment via the FBI press office.
But one of the FBI’s most famous whistleblowers says McCabe has an ethical obligation to recuse himself in the Flynn probe to avoid the appearance of retribution or bias.
“I don't think they have any choice. He has to step aside,” said Frederic Whitehurst, who as an FBI special agent and forensic chemist blew the whistle on misdeeds inside the FBI crime lab two decades ago and prompted widespread reforms.
“If he stays involved, the case against Flynn has no credibility,” explained Whitehurst, now often called as an expert witness in court cases. “If there are criminal charges that could go against Flynn, that's got to go to court. And those agents at some point may be called before a grand jury and anything he (McCabe) said to them about Flynn could be used as exonerating information or evidence of misconduct.”
Whitehurst said he saw senior FBI officials, including then-Director Louis Freeh and then-General Counsel Howard Shapiro, recuse themselves in the 1990s from his whistleblowing case to avoid looking they were involved in retribution after he made allegations of wrongdoing by the bureau
Documents and memos obtained by Circa detail how Flynn and other top officials at other government agencies in 2014 and 2015 came to intervene in the EEOC case of Gritz, who rose over two decades to a supervisory special agent inside the FBI on the strength of her counterterrorism work.
For nearly a decade, Gritz worked with the intelligence community to help successfully track down global terrorists or rescue Western hostages, and was even occasionally called upon to personally brief then-Director Robert Mueller on sensitive cases like the disappearance of a retired agent Robert Levinson inside Iran, memos show.
But her career took a sudden downward turn after she went to work under McCabe and his leadership team in 2012, resulting in her first negative rating after years of outstanding performance reviews. She filed an EEOC complain inside the FBI against a handful of bureau executives in 2012, alleging her career was being derailed by sexual discrimination.
The FBI referred her for an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation for timecard irregularities. As hostilities rose between the two sides, emails and testimony showed senior FBI officials castigated Gritz for being too “emotional,” having a possible mental illness and sending inappropriate emails.
The FBI concluded there was no discrimination, arguing Gritz was referred to OPR for investigation on June 20, 2012 before she ever filed her EEOC complaint.
But McCabe’s sworn statement offered evidence that actually supported Gritz’s claim of retaliation and discrimination, recounting a conversation on June 19, 2012 in which he authorized the OPR investigation of Gritz after one of his deputies told him Gritz was about to file an EEO complaint, his sworn statement shows.
“I first learned of the issues that led to Ms. Gritz’s current OPR investigation during a telephone call with Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) Jennifer Ley on June 19, 2012,” McCabe testified.
“I recalled that during the course of our conversation DAD Ley mentioned to me that Ms. Gritz had filed or intended to file an EEO complaint against her immediate supervisor.”
The very next day, the FBI initiated the OPR investigation of Gritz, according to evidence in the FBI’s official personnel files. FBI records support McCabe’s version of events, showing Gritz had contacted FBI EEO officials in mid-June before the OPR probe was initiated, then filed her formal complaint a few weeks later. The FBI ‘s official report of investigation on Gritz’s EEO complaint, which absolved the FBI of any discrimination, omitted any mention that McCabe had been aware of the EEO complaint before the bureau filed its OPR action against Gritz.
In 2014, Gritz amended her EEOC complaint to specifically name McCabe, alleging she suffered “a hostile environment, defamation of character through continued targeting by Andrew McCabe in official documents, and continuous patterns and instances of severe and excessive hostile behavior/attitude toward complainant. These actions have a negative impact on the complainant, professionally, financially, and personally.”
Flynn’s intervention in the case occurred around the time that McCabe’s name was added to the complaint. Flynn's first act was to write a letter of support in her case.
“SSA Gritz was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives,” Flynn wrote May 9, 2014.
At the time, Flynn was an Army lieutenant general and the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he put his letter on official agency stationary to be submitted in Gritz’s case.
As soon as Gritz revealed to the FBI that Flynn and other top federal figures had written letters to support her case and likely would be called as witnesses, the bureau dispatched a lawyer to try to block the evidence from being included in the EEO case, documents show.
The FBI “has reviewed the letters submitted by the Complainant and objects to their inclusion in the record,” the bureau’s lawyer wrote. “They are selfserving letters, not part of any personnel file nor contemporaneous generated during the period of Ms. Gritz’s employment with the FBI, and which she has unilaterally solicited and obtained. They should be excluded.”
While the FBI argued Gritz’s had become underperforming, tardy to work, insurbordinate, possibly mentally ill or emotional and deserving of a poor performance review, Flynn argued just the opposite, saying he saw the agent excel while working with the DIA and other intelligence community agencies.
“Her work consistently made a positive difference,” Flynn wrote. “.Her tenacity and personal commitment consistently produced outstanding results in the most challenging environments.”
Flynn went further, offering an interview in 2015 with NPR in which he called Gritz one of the “bright lights and shining stars” in the intelligence community who “just kinda got it when it came to the kind of enemy that we were facing and the relationship that was necessary between law enforcement and the military.”
“SSA Gritz was without question, the most energetic, most consistently engaged and prepared and single most effective member of this interagency group,” wrote Navy Rear Admiral B. L. Losey, who served both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the White House’s National Security Council Director for Combatting Terrorism.
Losey offered a most poignant endorsement of the female agent. “If I were taken hostage, I would hope that above all others SSA Robyn Gritz were assigned the task to track and recover me,” he wrote.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley also afforded Gritz support, asking federal authorities to investigate whether her case was emblematic of a hostile workplace for women inside the FBI.
In a brief interview this weekend, Gritz said she was mortified to think that her request to Flynn to help with her EEOC case in any way affected his relationship with the FBI or his current status as someone under investigation in the Russia case.
“Flynn was the first leader to defend me,” said Gritz. “He forwarded a letter to the FBI and I personally think that Comey did not receive it. McCabe knew Flynn and I were friends. I felt that from the beginning it was an issue.”
NOW YOU KNOW !
General Flynn also stood up to Obama. He had a Radical way to stop ISIS and the Obama Administration would not even say the words "RADICAL ISLAM!"
Here is the America Thinker Interview with General Flynn.
The Field of Fight by Lt. General Michael Flynn delves into the world of ISIS. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing him.
Having been at the Republican convention, the general told of his dismay at those who concentrated on Melania Trump’s speech while there are so many important matters occurring in today’s world. He noted to American Thinker, “This shows you how petty the media will go to discredit Donald Trump. Since I was the next speaker, as I waited in the wings, I heard a woman who spoke from the heart about her love for this country and her husband. With all the complexities, threats, and challenges that the U.S. faces, for the media to harp on that is just ridiculous.”
The Democrats and media criticism emphasized the importance of words spoken in a certain context. Yet, President Obama will never utter the words Islamic Extremist or Radical Islam. Flynn points out the hypocrisy, “The president should clearly and unambiguously define the enemy that we face and the threat to our way of life. It is radical Islam… ISIS is a very determined enemy who wants to establish a global Caliphate. This political correctness of not naming our enemy is dangerous for the country. I am confident Americans can take the truth.”
Political correctness has also interfered in the way the U.S. conducts the war against terrorism. According to Flynn, “Using drones is a narrow strategy. We have to be able to capture guys and learn from them by getting the intelligence we need. We are not capturing anyone any more. Beyond that, apprehending individuals allows us to expose them instead of turning them into a martyr after being killed. By doing this we can show how their ideology is a disease that must by excised. The information warfare component of battle must discredit them. We show them as cowards and weak.” Exposure does seem to work if people think of how imbedded in their memory are the pictures of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Saddam Hussein after their capture.
Flynn
also debunks Democrats and some Republican pundits who say ISIS is
being defeated. They point to the terrorist groups loss of land and that
these recent attacks are acts of desperation. He strongly disagrees
with “those people because that is actually false. We excised them from
some village in Iraq like Fallujah, yet they are able to attack the
international community in San Bernardino, Orlando, France, Germany,
Bangladesh, and Turkey, all of these in recent months. The reason for
this is that the enemy has doubled in size and grown in a global
geographic footprint in the last six or so years.”The blame lies squarely in the hands of the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton. In the book, Flynn gives high marks to President Bush while lambasting President Obama, “He (Bush) realized the war was going badly, that we were losing, and our entire strategy needed to change. The mere fact that he recognized this and proceeded to make the difficult decisions he eventually made is a leadership characteristic our current president lacks.”
Directly commenting, “There is no enemy that is unbeatable. Even though President Bush was at the end of his administration he brought in the fresh leadership of General David Petraeus and Robert Gates. We were able to reverse the strategy and come up with a new one to win. Now we are at the end of President Obama’s term; yet, when 99% of President Obama’s advisors told him to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq to stop the rise of radical terrorism; he did not listen. He made a political decision rather than a decision for our national security. This is a weakness in his leadership style. His problem is that he refuses to recognize this strategy is not working and the enemy has grown in capacity.”
One of the problems is that the current president wants to be surrounded by yes men. In the book Flynn reconts how he was fired in 2014 because he went before Congress and spoke of how to keep America safe. When asked about this, he responded, “I was appointed by President Obama twice, as Assistant Director of National Intelligence and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I never met with the president once; imagine that. Why not ask to speak with me about our differences of opinion and my suggestions? To me, this is very disturbing.”
He suspects he was fired because “our agency was very brutally honest about our findings. I am not, nor have I ever been the type of person that will state what the boss wants to hear. I am always very blunt and say what I feel, including offering solutions. I was fired partially due to my honesty about the enemy we are facing, radical Islam. In complete contrast to the president who called ISIS the JV team, I told Congress they were dangerous and growing. Intelligence is about truth to power.”
Although he outlines extensive solutions, he summarized it for American Thinker, “In order to beat this enemy we need to discredit the ideology. Muslims need to take a more public international stand. To do it they will have to be helped, prompted, and pushed by the U.S., something we are not doing now. We need to depend on Middle East allies like Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Finally, something that I have been criticized for is to get Russia involved. They should assume responsibility and pressure Iran to stop their proxy wars. As I show in the book the ties between the Iranian regime and al Qaeda have been a well-established fact.”
Since ISIS is a byproduct of al Qaeda does that mean Iran has ties to them as well? Flynn responded, “Dig deep down into the intelligence and you will find ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ There are these funny relationships that exist. We have clearly seen with Iran and al Qaeda that a Shiite state nation and a Sunni organization have worked together. They do this because at the end of the day they hate the U.S. more than they hate each other.”
Americans should take solace in knowing that Lt. General Flynn is one of Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisors. Obviously, Mr. Trump is not surrounding himself with yes people, but those who would not sit quietly back if he believes a “president” Trump has the wrong strategy.
When asked if he will be the next secretary of defense, and what type of leader would he be, Flynn commented, “I am confident in what I know but also what I do not know. I am willing to listen and learn. I believe we should never get involved in wars unless we have a clear unambiguous goal to win. America has forgotten how to win wars. I am not answering the question of my employment right now. Republicans must win many more battles before the war is won.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/a_conversation_with_michael_flynn.html
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