RUTHFULLY YOURS

From a Nov. 13, 2010, speech by then-Lt. Gen. John Kelly to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis, describing a 2008 suicide bombing in Iraq that killed two Marines, Cpl. Jonathan Yale, 22, and Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, 20. Gen. Kelly’s son, Second Lt. Robert Kelly, 29, was killed in action in Afghanistan Nov. 9, 2010:

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had about five seconds left to live.

It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing nonstop, the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe, because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty—into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

This morning President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

He’s referring to yesterday’s news that, as CNN headlined its story on the matter, “Fusion GPS partners plead Fifth before House Intel.”

Fusion GPS is the firm that paid for and disseminated the discredited dossier that former FBI director James Comey briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump about in January. The almost immediate and well-sourced leak of that briefing to CNN is what got the Russia scare really going in January. BuzzFeed published the dossier very soon after CNN’s story ran.

So, as Trump and CNN note, folks at the firm took the Fifth in a House investigation into that dossier and the firm that helped put it together (Fusion GPS executives similarly refused to testify under oath in a separate Senate inquiry). As to the questions of who paid for it, we still have absolutely no idea, although there have been published reports in The New York Times and Washington Post that Fusion GPS does anti-Magnitsky Actwork on behalf of Russia, that the dossier was funded by Democrats, and that the FBI also tried to pay for the dossier. Fusion GPS has also made the unsubstantiated claim that an unnamed Republican donor got the ball rolling on the dossier.

You might think that Russia-obsessed journalists would share the president’s curiosity about who funded the dossier and why Fusion GPS partners are worried about their legal jeopardy. You might think otherwise. Jake Sherman, a Politico senior writer, was utterly shocked to learn that there are questions about the FBI paying for the dossier. To wit:

Fun fact: the FBI was also in the U.S. government when word first got out that they tried to pay for opposition research on the out-of-power party’s nominee! Here’s theWashington Post’s Karen Tumulty:

Before I respond, a quick digression. Sometimes readers or viewers complain that “the media” haven’t covered a story. And it will turn out that the story was covered, deep in one media outlet’s newspaper. Or for a few seconds of a newscast. The Journolisters of Twitter don’t help the story go viral. They don’t dig further. It dies. But when readers complain that the story wasn’t covered, they point to that piece on page D14 and say, “See! We covered it!”

If I were a Fusion GPS-connected journalist desperate to bury news of the firm’s refusal to cooperate with a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. affairs, that is the approach I would have taken, instead of the one taken by journalists today. The approach they took today was to pretend that the story was made up. Instead, they could have pointed to the story that ran in the Washington Post on February 28 about how the FBI tried to pay the dossier drafter to continue his work:

The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump’s political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement.

When a Twitter interlocutor pointed out to Tumulty that her own paper had published the report that the FBI had tried to pay for oppo on the Republican nominee, she replied:

She’s quoting from the Post story. That story, incidentally, is based on anonymous sources, as all stories these days are. This from The New York Times also says that the FBI tried to, but ultimately did not, pay Christopher Steele for his dossier work. (Read on to get to the part about how the FBI did pay him, according to CNN’s anonymous sources.) It should be the first of many stories digging into how it was possible that the FBI got into the oppo research business on political opponents. As that story itself notes:

Fred Fleitz, who served as John Bolton’s chief of staff at the United Nations during the George W. Bush Administration, joined Fox Business host Lou Dobbs to discuss the fall of Raqqa (good), progress against North Korea’s nuclear program (better), and the appearance of insubordination among certain prominent members of President Trump’s cabinet (very bad).https://amgreatness.com/2017/10/21/fred-fleitz-to-lou-dobbs/

Lou Dobbs: Joining us tonight Fred Fleitz, former CIA analyst, chief of staff to Ambassador John Bolton at the United Nations, now a senior vice president at the Center for Security Policy and Fred great to have you with us.

Fred Fleitz: Good to be here.

Dobbs: And I think it’s terrific that tonight on this 20th of October, nine months ago the president inaugurated and today Raqqa is in the hands of U.S.-backed forces in Syria. ISIS is being rolled back, the successes as the president promised have been incredible, particularly compared to the passivity of the previous administration and its campaign against ISIS, such as it was.

Fleitz: I think that’s right, I mean, President Trump took the gloves off. There were so many restrictions on our operations in Iraq and Syria and it made a real difference against ISIS. Now, we’re not gonna hear this on other networks. I think we’re seeing some cautious signs of progress on North Korea but I don’t know that sanctions against North Korea will ever work but if they’re going to work, they’re gonna work under this president because he’s twisting the arms of the Chinese and the Russians and others to get them to enforce sanctions. We may have to attack but we have to go down the sanctions road and I’m encouraged.

Dobbs: And in the case of North Korea, the Secretary of State today suggesting it might be months before, only months, before North Korea has the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. This has been a stunning ratcheting up of the estimated timetable for the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.

Fleitz: They could have the capability now. We don’t know, the intelligence community says North Korea has 60 nuclear weapons. Whether they detonated a hydrogen bomb last month or not, we don’t know. It was a 250 kiloton weapon, which was 25 times their previous weapon. This is a very serious threat and I think North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is an offensive arsenal, not a deterrent and they will one day use it.

Dobbs: And as we are watching this, we hear from the secretary of state again, almost impossible to contemplate language. Tillerson’s saying that he wants to balance his views with those of the president. Are you kidding me?

Fleitz: I’m very angry with Secretary Tillerson, who told the Europeans today that they don’t have to worry about their trade deals with Iran, that we’re going to go after them. I immediately tweeted that Tillerson should be fired tomorrow for this. He undermined—well he’s trying to undermine what the president did, but I think the Europeans know that Mr. Trump is serious about the Iran deal and if it isn’t fixed, and it isn’t going to be fixed, but if it isn’t fixed, he’s gonna get out.

Dobbs: This is a very difficult moment for many people to understand. The president is tolerating such abuse from his own cabinet that I mean, I don’t react well to it I will tell you. I just cannot imagine a person not deferring to the president of the United States, any American citizen and to have this kind of arrogant insubordination on the part of a secretary of state is just, it’s infuriating and I have to give the president all the credit in the world. This is a man I don’t think most of us would have ever expected to this tolerant, to be this generous and nor would of I expected Rex Tillerson to be such a small and silly person.

Fleitz: You know, I think we should think of this in light of the really inappropriate speech George W. Bush gave yesterday. The Bush circle is not in Trump’s circle and the Bush circle helps staff Trump’s national security team.

Dobbs: Yes.

Fleitz: And that’s why there’s been all this trouble in the Iran deal, the Paris climate accord, radical Islam. At the end of the year, the president has to take account of who gave him good advice, who gave him good advice on personnel and make some major changes.

Dobbs: Yeah, this is truly the . . . It looks to be the contest of purpose, direction, and will between Bush globalists and Trump nationalists, and I thank the Lord the president seems to be winning nearly all of the battles.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has isolated himself from his own department and allowed subordinates to fill a handful of top positions with people who actively opposed Donald Trump’s election, according to current and former State Department officials and national security experts with specific knowledge of the situation.

News reports often depict a White House “in chaos.” But the real chaos, according to three State Department employees who spoke with American Greatness on the condition of anonymity, is at Foggy Bottom.

Rumors have circulated for months that Tillerson either plans to resign or is waiting for the president to fire him. The staffers describe an amateur secretary of state who has “checked out” and effectively removed himself from major decision making.

Hundreds of Empty Desks
About 200 State Department jobs require Senate confirmation. But the Senate cannot confirm nominees it does not have. More than nine months into the new administration, most of the senior State Department positions—assistant and deputy assistant secretary posts—remain unfilled.

What’s more, the United States currently has no ambassador to the European Union, or to key allies such as France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Meantime, Obama Administration holdovers remain ensconced in the department and stationed at embassies in the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East.

The leadership vacuum has been filled by a small group opposed to the president’s “America First” agenda.

At the heart of the problem, these officials say, are the two people closest to Tillerson: chief of staff Margaret Peterlin and senior policy advisor Brian Hook, who runs the State Department’s in-house think tank.

Peterlin and Hook are longtime personal friends who current staffers say are running the department like a private fiefdom for their benefit and in opposition to the president and his stated policies.

‘Boxing Out’ Trump Supporters
The lack of staffing gives the duo unprecedented power over State Department policy. Since joining Tillerson’s team, Peterlin and Hook have created a tight bottleneck, separating the 75,000 State Department staffers—true experts in international relations—from the secretary. As the New York Times reported in August, “all decisions, no matter how trivial, must be sent to Mr. Tillerson or his top aides: Margaret Peterlin, his chief of staff, and Brian Hook, the director of policy planning.” In practice, however, that has meant Peterlin and Hook make the decisions.

More important, sources who spoke with American Greatness say, Peterlin and Hook have stymied every effort by pro-Trump policy officials to get jobs at the State Department.
Margaret Peterlin

Margaret Peterlin

“Peterlin is literally sitting on stacks of résumés,” one national security expert told American Greatness. Together, Peterlin and Hook are “boxing out anyone who supports Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” he added.

Peterlin, an attorney and former Commerce Department official in the George W. Bush Administration, was hired to help guide political appointments through the vetting and confirmation process. She reportedly bonded with Tillerson during his confirmation hearings, and he hired her as his chief of staff.
Brian Hook

Brian Hook

Peterlin then brought in Hook, who co-founded the John Hay Initiative, a group of former Mitt Romney foreign-policy advisors who publicly refused to support Trump because he would “act in ways that make America less safe.” In a May 2016 profile of NeverTrump Republicans, Hook told Politico, “Even if you say you support him as the nominee, you go down the list of his positions and you see you disagree on every one.”

Hook now directs the department’s Office of Policy Planning, responsible for churning out policy briefs and helping to shape the nation’s long-term strategic agenda.

NeverTrumpers on Parade