New in SpyWeek: Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
Also this week: Tulsi’s Exit, Ratcliffe’s Cuba stunt, Kash's latest caper, Trump's Iran fantasies, Israel's kill list, more cyber debacles
Gone Girl: The best eulogy of sorts for Tulsi Gabbard’s pathetic tenure at the ODNI goes to Shane Harris over at The Atlantic: ”It’s a measure of Donald Trump’s low regard for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as its soon-to-be former occupant,” Harris wrote, “that while the commander in chief was making final preparations to invade Venezuela and kidnap its president, Tulsi Gabbard was posting photos of herself from a beach in Hawaii.” Alas, for her, much the same went during planning for the Iran war, which she was opposed to as an “America Firster” and which caused her to be “forced out,” according to a Reuters report, despite her desperate and despicable effort to hold on by concocting a criminal conspiracy case against Obama administration officials for investigating Russian influence on the 2016 campaign and bizarrely flying off to Georgia to put herself in the middle of the FBI’s seizure of election ballots. The immediate beneficiary of her departure was said to be CIA Director John Ratcliffe (a fait accompli, really, many months ago). The question now is what happens to the ODNI, a longtime bête noire for the CIA, which once ruled the sprawling spy agencies by statute but lost its grip when it bore principal blame for the failure to disrupt the 9/11 attacks.
