Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Inspector Who Never Inspected Anything

The intelligence community has a history of compromising its overseers. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, hasn’t held a single hearing over the intelligence community’s rampant and illegal domestic spying. Instead, Schiff has used his position to coordinate political attacks on President Trump. 
The intelligence community long ago disabled its inspector general. First, it gutted the inspector general position. Then it installed Atkinson, who is one of its own, a swamp creature, so he could use the office as a base of operations in the campaign to resist or unseat a duly elected president.
Some history is in order. As Julie Kelly has reported, “In July 2016 . . . Atkinson was named senior counsel to John Carlin, then head of the National Security Division. Carlin was Robert Mueller’s chief of staff when he ran the FBI and was appointed NSD chief by President Obama in 2013.” She further noted, “the National Security Division chiefly is responsible for the Justice Department’s oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The NSD “closely coordinates with the FBI and other Intelligence Community agencies on . . . matters relating to FISA and other national security laws.”
That means, as Kelly points out, Atkinson likely had a hand in the now totally discredited Carter Page FISA warrant. 
But even more troubling is that during Atkinson’s tenure with the NSD, it falsely certified that the National Security Agency was not abusing the powerful bulk data collection database. In so doing, the intelligence community concealed a January 7, 2016 inspector general’s report exposing vast abuses. (Read more.)
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