Bright and early Tuesday morning — actually so early it was still dark — President Trump picked up his phone to address another report he says is more “fake news.”
On Monday, The New Yorker published a piece based on unnamed sources claiming that White House officials had discussed revoking former President Obama’s security clearance back in 2017, but national security adviser H.R. McMaster blasted the idea and, ultimately, “Trump decided not to exclude Obama.” Here’s the passage:
At the time, some of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the White House saw former Obama Administration officials as powerful enemies who threatened the new President’s rule, and they agitated for punishing them by revoking their security clearances. The idea was rebuffed by the national-security adviser at the time, H. R. McMaster, who signed a memo extending the clearances of his predecessors at the N.S.C., Republicans and Democrats alike. As Trump stepped up his public and private attacks on Obama, some of the new President’s advisers thought that he should take the extraordinary step of denying Obama himself access to intelligence briefings that were made available to all of his living predecessors. Trump was told about the importance of keeping former Presidents, who frequently met with foreign leaders, informed. In the end, Trump decided not to exclude Obama, at the urging of McMaster.
Fake News, of which there is soooo much (this time the very tired New Yorker) falsely reported that I was going to take the extraordinary step of denying Intelligence Briefings to President Obama. Never discussed or thought of!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2018
On Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to slam the report. “Fake News, of which there is soooo much (this time the very tired New Yorker) falsely reported that I was going to take the extraordinary step of denying Intelligence Briefings to President Obama,” he wrote. “Never discussed or thought of!” – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]The Establishment Media Did Not Care When The Obama Administration Called For The Aggressive Scrubbing Of Security Clearances Back In 2013.
“W.H. Looks to Scrub Clearance List,” was the November 21, 2013, headline at the far-left Politico.
In a directive obtained by POLITICO, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper questioned the booming rolls of security-clearance holders. At last count, more than 4.9 million people held clearances, of whom over 1.4 million were cleared for access at the “Top Secret” level.
“I write to express my concern about threats to national security resulting from the increasing number of people with eligibility for access to classified national security information, particularly Top Secret (TS) and Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information (TS/SCI),” [then Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper wrote in a three-page memo, dated Oct. 31 and cited at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
Clapper asked agencies to perform a top-to-bottom scrub of the teeming rolls of people authorized to access classified information and to remove anyone deemed not to have a so-called need to know.
What’s more, Clapper specified his concern about contractors: “Agencies should debrief all government and contractor personnel who no longer require such access and update the appropriate national security database or repository.” – READ MORE
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