dagblog - Comments for "The Man McMaster Couldn't Fire"

White House ‘Enemies List’

artappraiser — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 04:23:01 +0000

In reply to McMaster just removed Cohen

White House ‘Enemies List’ Drove McMaster-Bannon Feud

The Daily Beast reports two of the White House's most senior officials are locked in a power struggle--and an internal 'enemies list' may be to blame.

08.05.17 5:58 PM ET

An internal White House enemies list of alleged Obama loyalists to be fired early in the Trump administration is a key contributor to a long-running feud between the National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, two senior administration officials tell The Daily Beast.

Team Trump never acted on the list, the officials said, and now those employees have finished their tenure at the National Security Council and returned to their home agencies.

But fallout over the list—and questions about loyalty to Bannon versus McMaster—led the three-star general to fire two of his top aides, an act that’s landed McMaster in the firing line of Bannon’s alt-right media allies and Russian troll bots, both calling for his ouster.

It’s the kind of personality clash and conflicting lines of authority that ret. Marine Gen. John Kelly has been brought in to quiet as chief of staff. He gave McMaster the go-ahead to remove people whose loyalty he questioned, including NSC intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick and ret. Col. Derek Harvey, the NSC Mideast director. Both had meetings with Bannon throughout their tenure, described as hushed national-security related “chats,” by one senior White House official, without seeking McMaster’s permission beforehand.

Multiple administration sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that these “chats” between Bannon and Harvey and Cohen Watnick vexed Trump’s national security adviser, and contributed to McMaster’s desire to “finally make moves against” them, as one senior official recounted.

A third more junior director, Rich Higgins [....]

McMaster just removed Cohen

artappraiser — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 01:52:32 +0000

In reply to The Man McMaster Couldn't Fire

McMaster just removed Cohen-Watnick from the NSC:

McMaster reshuffles National Security Council

By Shane Shavitsky @ Axios.com, 4 hrs. ago

Since replacing Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster has worked to wrest control of the National Security Council away from the nationalist wing of the administration, carrying out a series of high-profile staffing changes in the process.

The latest move: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the NSC, was shown the door today by McMaster, who, according to a White House official, decided that "a different set of experiences is best-suited to carrying that work forward." The White House said that Cohen-Watnick will remain in another national security position in the administration.

Think back: Cohen-Watnick first gained notoriety in March as one of Devin Nunes' purported sources [....]

Oh, and David Ignatius over

artappraiser — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 03:37:46 +0000

In reply to The Man McMaster Couldn't Fire

Oh, and David Ignatius over at WaPo today is warning about the C.I.A. going wack without any grownup leadership from the White House and Congress:

The CIA is entering a danger zone. Here’s the map.