Overruled
Yesterday’s late breaking news:
Jared Kushner’s application for a top-secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
My first reaction was “we already knew that.” Didn’t we? There was plenty of coverage of Kushner’s failure to get a clearance, and administration bobbing and weaving about why he was allowed to be at meetings that were for people with security clearances, and then an obviously bogus clearance pushed through. Wasn’t there? But I guess the details weren’t pinned down.
The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner’s was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top-secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline’s arrival.
That’s fabulous, isn’t it? Maybe all 30 are feeding classified information to Putin. What an exciting world we live in.
The Trumpers tried to get him an even higher level of clearance that is granted by the CIA and not the White House, and the CIA said you must be joking. The CIA also wondered why Kushner had the clearances he did have.
But maybe it’s all worth it because of Kushner’s amazing talents?
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D.-Md., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement that the NBC News report raised questions he hopes to answer as part of his investigation, announced this week, into how the Trump administration has handled security clearances.
“The system is supposed to be a nonpartisan determination of an individual’s fitness to hold a clearance, not an ad hoc approach that overrules career experts to give the president’s family members access to our nation’s most sensitive secrets,” he told NBC News.
“What you are reporting is what all of us feared,” said Brad Moss, a lawyer who represents persons seeking security clearances. “The normal line adjudicators looked at the FBI report … saw the foreign influence concerns, but were overruled by the quasi-political supervisor.”
The sources said they did not know whether Kline was in communication with senior political White House officials. They say he overruled career bureaucrats at least 30 times, granting top-secret clearances to officials in the Executive Office of the President or the White House after adjudicators working for him recommended against doing so.
But it will probably be ok. Won’t it?
The Washington Post, citing current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter, reported last February that officials in at least four countries had privately discussed ways they could manipulate Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage, according to the current and former officials, were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the Post reported.
On the basis of potential foreign influence, the adjudicator deemed Kushner’s application “unfavorable” and handed it to a supervisor.
Oh well it’s only…um…China.
If (when) we finally get rid of Trump and his family, the top officials at the government will need to change everything we think, do, and say to make all the information obtained by foreign powers irrelevant. That will be impossible, of course. Many things are thought, done, and said in a certain way because that is how they need to be thought, done, and said.
A lot of others should have been changed a long time ago because they were unethical and immoral, not to mention of questionable legality, but I doubt any changes made would be in the right direction, considering our history with foreign and domestic intelligence.
But surely it was worth overruling the denial of Kushner’s security clearance when one considers the incredible successes he’s achieved in bringing a real and lasting peace to the Middle-Ea….pardon?…he hasn’t done what, now? Ah, never mind, forget I spoke.
If I’m being gracious, I can sort of see a case for a president having a senior advisor who lacks relevant experience or qualifications but is a reasonably well-educated person who the president trusts because of personal or family connections. There is a virtue in being able to talk with someone who you don’t believe is part of the game of politics. (Though imagine how apeshit the usual suspects would have gone if Chelsea Clinton had been given a senior post in a Clinton White House — and they would have had a point.)
But if that person can’t pass the standard security clearances? Maybe the president should overrule the security folks if we’re talking about someone uniquely qualified and gifted — maybe. But for a favored son-in-law? No way.
BUT HER E-MAILS!
Screechy, I was thinking something similar recently, but with politically neutral (or as neutral as possible) in place of familial, since a close family member may give advice that they know the president wants to hear rather than that which appears to them to be the correct advice based lon an unbiased view of the evidence/issue at hand.