Was the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory launched by John Brennan and the CIA?

Stefan Halper has been named by the media as the informant spy who was meeting with Trump campaign advisors in in July of 2016. Halper's first meeting with Carter Page was reportedly in early July 2016. This is before the FBI claims they had information a drunken Papadopoulos claimed to Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer he knew who had Hillary’s emails. The FBI has claimed this conversation was what launched the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Let's assume the FBI is being technically factual about the July 31, 2016 start date of their investigation. If Halper wasn't working for the FBI at the time, who was paying him?

Federal records show that Stefan K. Halper has been paid $928,800 by the Federal Government since 2012 on four separate "research projects"

— Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) March 26, 2018

The FBI would be unlikely to have had enough criminal cases relating to people in Great Britain, where Halper was located, to spend that kind of money. The likely answer is Hapler was doing work for the CIA. That would mean the initial contact may have been a CIA operation launched by John Brennan. The CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on Americans except under certain circumstances and it requires senior approval from several people.

Under the rules, there would have had to been evidence of involvement in espionage. What was this evidence? Remember this informing spying started before the FBI had information about the drunken Papadopoulos bar conversation with the Australian ambassador that the FBI claims caused them to launch their investigation. At that time, all they had was the very early part of the Steele Dossier. Steele reportedly first met with an FBI agent in London on July 5, 2016. Then, shortly afterwards, Halper first met with Carter Page.

So, either the FBI is lying about when they started their investigation, and why, or they handed off the initial investigation to the CIA because they didn't have enough to launch an investigation on their own. Either way, the Steele Dossier seems to be the real reason the investigation got launched. If the CIA was involved, it would have required the approval of CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper and Attorney General Loretta Lynch or, alternately, John Brennan went rogue. This likely goes to the highest levels of the Obama White House, perhaps even Obama himself.

As a side note, what's up with the leaking of Halper's name and involvement by the deep state? They are certainly trying to get the initial spin on this spying as something innocuous since it was going to come out eventually. However, I think the main spin is to portray Halper as an FBI informant and hide the CIA involvement because that opens a huge new can of worms.

Note: Edited to correct information about Papadopoulos bar conversation.

Obama picks congressional liar James Clapper to lead “independent group” reviewing government spy programs...

So, Clapper will tell us he fixed every concern the public has and we will be left wondering if he is lying?

Via WaPo:

On Friday, President Barack Obama promised to appoint an “independent group” of “outside experts” to review the government’s surveillance programs.
Today, the president formally ordered the formation of this group, giving us a sense forjust how independent the group would be. The announcement doesn’t inspire confidence that the president is interested in truly independent scrutiny of the nation’s surveillance programs.
The panel will be chosen by, and report to, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper famously answered “no sir” when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked whether the NSA collects information about millions of Americans. Clapper has since conceded that this answer was “clearly erroneous.”
And there are other signs that the group won’t turn out quite the way the president described it on Friday. Friday’s speech talked about the need for input from outside experts with independent points of view. The president made no mention of the need for outsiders or independent viewpoints in his memo to Clapper.
Keep on reading…

DNI Chief James Clapper admits lying to Congress?

Throw him in jail...

Via Yahoo News:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is really struggling to explain why he told Congress in March (see video above) that the National Security Agency does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans. His latest take: It’s an unfair question, he said, like “When are you going to stop beating your wife?” And it seems to depend on the meaning of “collect.”

“I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying ‘no,’” Clapper told NBC News on Sunday.

A newly revealed NSA program, however, in which the agency secretly vacuumed up the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers seems to fit the definition of both “data” and “millions of Americans.”

Last week, Clapper said his “no” meant that NSA analysts don’t read Americans’ emails. Some have noted that could explain his earlier answer because “collect” has a precise meaning in intelligence-gathering circles, and it’s along those lines.

Keep on reading…

Did Obama DIA Director James Clapper lie to Congress about NSA domestic spying?

Based on what we now know, the answer seems to be yes...



Via National Journal:

As we now know, the NSA has been collecting data on millions of domestic and international phone calls for some time now — since 2006, according to Dianne Feinstein. Maybe this bothers you; maybe it doesn’t. Feinstein insists the program is an essential part of “protecting America”; Congressman Mike Rogers says it has already been “used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States.”

But one person who doesn’t like the idea of the NSA spying on Americans is Oregon senator Ron Wyden. And at a hearing in March, he asked James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, a straightforward question: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper’s answer? “No, sir … not wittingly

Keep reading…

The Obama administration is going for a Guinness record in the lying to Congress category...

National Intelligence Director Clapper opens mouth and inserts foot again

Doesn't Director of National Intelligence James Clapper know only one buffoon is allowed per administration and VP Joe Biden already has dibs on that position? Clapper's most recent gaffe is publicly declaring the Qaddafi regime will prevail!

(F0X News)- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an exclusive interview with Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron, called for Gen. James Clapper to resign or be fired as Director of National Intelligence, citing his comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, on which Graham sits.

Clapper had stated his belief that the Qaddafi regime, in the long term would “prevail,” and also assessed China and Russia to be primary threats to the United States.

Graham told Cameron that he lacks confidence in Clapper’s understanding of his job, that President Obama should “repudiate” Clapper’s remarks, and that this is the third time Clapper has faltered in this way.

“Three strikes and you’re out,” Graham said.

National Intelligence Chief James Clapper is still clueless

 

This time he can't figure out what the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda is.

BARACK Obama’s top US intelligence official has pledged to step up “observation” of the Muslim Brotherhood after admitting to ignorance of its agenda in Egypt.

James Clapper, the President’s director of national intelligence, conceded yesterday that he was unclear about the group’s attitude to Iran, Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel or arms-smuggling to Gaza.

Challenged by members of the US Senate intelligence committee yesterday, Mr Clapper said: “It is hard to, at this point, to point to a specific agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood as a group.”

Here are a couple of points from the Muslim Brotherhood's English site: (accent is mine)

– Insist to liberate the Islamic nation from the yoke of foreign rule, help safeguard the rights of Muslims everywhere and unite Muslims around the world.

–The Islamic nation must be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and the enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing an Islamic state.

I guess National Intelligence Chief James Clapper doesn't get on the Internet much.

Video: Glenn Beck Rips National Intelligence James Clapper’s Muslim Brotherhood Comments

Glenn Beck sums up National Intelligence James Clapper’s Muslim Brotherhood comments. Incompetence...

White House admits National Intelligence Director James Clapper was clueless

James Clapper is the National Intelligence Director and he wasn't briefed?

(The Blaze)- After initially blaming Diane Sawyer and an “ambiguous” question for National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s inability to answer a question on recent UK terror arrests, the White House has now admitted that Clapper was not briefed on the issue prior to the interview.
The arrests had taken place the morning of the interview, and had been popular news on all the major networks. Still, Clapper had no idea about them when Sawyer asked him about their implications for the U.S.