DONALD Trump has withdrawn has removed security clearance from John Brennan, the former CIA Director.
It is ironic that Mr Brennan finds the “tables turned” on him by a capricious and an increasingly dictatorial president of the Free World. The CIA was and is a security threat to American opponents, imaginary or real and the organisation was responsible for non judicial killings and failed assassination attempts worldwide. Fidel Castro knows about the exploding cigars scheme in an attempt to silence him.
Now it seems, according to Mr Trump, that, for whatever reasons, Mr Brennan is now a perceived threat. An increasingly isolated and paranoid Mr Trump will no doubt turn on other former servants of the US state in the months to come as many have become vocal critics of his many actions, statements and outbursts via Twitter.
Where does it all end? Such actions by a US President in the past have been directed outwards beyond the United States. Now they are being directed at the US establishment past and present.
Mr Brennan is the victim of the very tactics he was responsible for when CIA director and now must feel that “they are now coming for me”. He and others claim the US President is stifling free speech. The CIA has been and still is a promoter of unsavoury regimes worldwide.
As the American establishment turns in on itself, how will the CIA as a quasi state-within -a-state organisation react? It has plenty of tactics in its back pocket and experience of “dealing with other regimes”. How will the US military react? Tanks trundling down Pennsylvania Avenue?
Mr Trump’s action has been called “ill-considered” in a joint letter from 12 former senior intelligence officials – six former CIA directors, five former deputy directors and a former director of national intelligence James Clapper.
It is an open secret that a list exists in the White House naming more who are to have security clearances revoked. Is the US administration morphing into a dictatorship and contravening the constitution? It begs the question: who else is going to be on the way out?
John Edgar,
1a Langmuir Quadrant, Kilmaurs.
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