Some Thoughts about General Flynn
Originally posted in November, 2017 on social media.
First, who is David Cattler, and why is that relevant to Flynn’s plea?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/02/white-house-national-security-advisor-announces-nsc-senior-staff-0
Cattler’s position on the NSC staff was created by Flynn. It was one of two new deputy assistant positions he created within the NSC. This is important because Cattler was approved and granted top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) clearance along with the other senior NSC staff hand-picked by Flynn. This allows them to access and see raw signals intelligence (SIGINT) without violating national security—something denied to many other Trump appointees in January/February.
“The denial of the [TS/SCI] clearance…was widely viewed as a bureaucratic power play by opponents of both Flynn and Townley inside intelligence agencies… Angelo Codevilla, an intelligence expert, said the denial of clearances was engineered by the CIA and came despite Townley’s holding of the high level clearance for many years when he worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency… The clearance denial drove Townley out of the White House National Security Council staff… The TS/SCI clearance grants a holder access to special intelligence, such as information obtained from foreign recruited agents and electronic communications intelligence.”
Source: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/white-house-clearance-process-increasingly-politicized/
Cattler was hired on February 2, 2017—eleven days before Flynn would resign, less than a week after Flynn’s interview with the FBI where he lied, and thirty two days after Flynn’s phone call was leaked to the press. Flynn steps down February 13th. February 20th, McMaster is hired, and he immediately begins reassigning Flynn’s NSC senior staff and eliminating positions Flynn created, including Cattler’s.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mcmaster-national-security-council-staff-changes-235579
“President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, is taking steps to streamline the National Security Council—starting by eliminating positions created by his short lived predecessor Michael Flynn… McMaster did away this week with two deputy assistant spots, one overseeing the NSC’s regional desks and another overseeing transnational issues, according to a senior White House aide.” Cattler was not fired. He was reassigned: “Dave Cattler, who was named deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, will return to the office of Director of National Intelligence, where he worked during the Obama administration…”
Excluded from this article is the fact that Cattler returned to his former post while retaining his TS/SCI clearances which he did not hold previously.
“Cattler and Hansell are generally well-regarded, according to a person familiar with the current NSC… Cattler was a Flynn pick, the person said. According to his LinkedIn page, Cattler worked under the former NSC boss at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn was forced out of the DIA in 2014.
According to the person familiar with the NSC, some career intelligence professionals regarded Cattler with suspicion because of his connection to Flynn, a vocal critic of the CIA and its tactics.”
You may be able to see where this is going now, but these are really important questions to think about. In my other post about Flynn, I mentioned what he did prior to joining Trump’s team. Flynn is a democrat and was appointed by Obama to head the DIA. What, specifically, did they have a falling out over?
Trump fired all of the heads of the IC except for one person. Who was it? Did he and Trump meet in an unorthodox way? What did that IC chief and the Obama administration have a falling out over. Is it related to Flynn’s issues? Who has everyone’s secrets?
With those questions in mind, look at the Flynn timeline again.
December 28, 2016: Obama administration places sanctions on Russia for “meddling” and expels over 30 diplomats.
December 29, 2016: Flynn, acting as a member of the transition team, called the Russian Ambassador and asked him not to escalate the situation in response to the sanctions. This call was made on an open line, and it is almost a certainty that Flynn, with a 33 year career as a spy, was aware that the call was being monitored and recorded by many different parties, including the USIC and FBI.
January 12, 2017: David Ignatius, relying on unnamed sources, reports the following and ignites a media firestorm:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-obama-dawdle-on-russias-hacking/2017/01/12/75f878a0-d90c-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.0e8d57932bd9
January 15th, 2017: Pence goes on Face the Nation and describes the Flynn/Kislyak call as coincidental and not prompted by Obama’s sanctions the day prior. He bases this on a conversation Pence had with Flynn days before.
The firestorm of speculations in the media intensifies as pundits breathlessly write about just what might have been said in the call between Flynn and Kislyak. Pence is in the spotlight and dragged through the mud as op-eds claim he’s covering for Flynn and Trump both.
January 20-21, 2017: Trump is sworn in. Flynn’s senior staff begins to get deployed and granted TS/SCI clearances while Trump immediately begins to fire swaths of people at both State and CIA. At this time Trump also gave an incredibly interesting speech at Langley where he joked about building them a new room “without any columns.” This wasn’t a comment to the public or the media. He even reiterated, “Do you understand that?” Look up what a “5th column” is. This is an incredibly audacious “joke” for a newly elected president to make while standing in front of the CIA’s wall of honor.
During the same speech, Trump mentions Flynn. This is significant because he’s standing in Langley. Flynn was once head of the DIA—the DIA and the CIA do not get along, and it was Flynn’s clash, in part, with the CIA which led to him losing his position. There’s a lot more going on here, I think, than just Trump standing behind Flynn. It seems like a threat or a challenge.
Here’s the speech. The remark about the columns comes after a long ramble about “liking honest reporting” at 15:09:
https://youtu.be/GMBqDN7-QLg
January 24, 2017: Flynn has his meeting with the FBI. Flynn had the legal right not to answer the question, yet rather than do that, he knowingly lies to the FBI about a call which a) he knows to have been legal, and b) he knows the FBI has a complete transcript of already.
January 26, 2017: Sally Yates (per her congressional testimony in May) informs White House Counsel that Flynn is now vulnerable to Russian blackmail because he lied to the FBI and to Pence about the contents of the call. It’s important to note that Sally Yates did not have TS/SCI clearance and thus could not legally read the contents of Flynn’s call unless Flynn’s name had been unmasked and shared with her by Obama’s administration. Remember Trump’s tweet after her testimony in May: “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
Also note that Flynn was cleared of any illegalities with regards to the contents of the call itself—meaning there was nothing illegal or treasonous in the transcripts for which Flynn could be charged. This is why he only got hit with “process crimes.”
From Yates, “We weren’t the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others.”
https://www.thewrap.com/sally-yates-says-told-white-house-michael-flynn-blackmailed-russians/amp/
February 2, 2017: In the midst of the media firestorm and leaks causing the administration headaches, Flynn likely knows he’s on borrowed time, creates a new deputy assistant position in the NSC senior staff and appoints Cattler to fill it.
February 8, 2017: Flynn denies the story to the Washington Post, saying the topic of sanctions never came up during his call with Kislyak. This sets off another media fury.
February 9, 2017 Flynn then backtracks to the Washington Post, and through a spokesman said the topic “might have come up.” What is he doing here? Are these mistakes, or is he leading the media by the nose?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/10/just-how-much-trouble-is-michael-flynn-in/?utm_term=.d5210dda2a4f
February 13, 2017: Flynn resigns, officially for lying to Pence and the FBI.
February 20, 2017: McMaster is hired as National Security Advisor and recycles Flynn’s staff. McMaster eliminates the two new deputy positions Flynn created, transferring Cattler back to the office of the DNI, though he is now armed with TS/SCI clearance which is good for 12 months.
Why is this timeline important? By January 24th we know that Flynn knew three things for certain: 1) his phone call to Kislyak was not illegal, nor was discussing sanctions. 2) His phone call with the Ambassador was being monitored and recorded. 3) The administration was trying to plug leaks of classified intelligence to the media by members of the USIC.
It’s entirely possible that Flynn knowingly lied to the FBI about something he knew they’d know was a lie (and wasn’t legally compelled to answer in the first place) because he didn’t trust the FBI to keep his answer confidential. Had he answered yes, and the FBI leaked it, in that environment (which was even more hysterical about Russia than it is now) the news could have sunk the administration to the point of crippling it in less than two weeks after his inauguration. Maybe Flynn fell on his sword to protect the administration from undue and unfair scrutiny.
The other possibility is that a career spook was doing something else entirely. Cattler’s career in the USIC is flawless. His specialty is counter terrorism. He and Flynn go way back. He’s a field spy who specializes in finding terrorists using SIGINT and “human intelligence” (HUMINT). It’s possible—if not likely—that Flynn brought on Cattler (and others) to hunt for the leakers inside the USIC feeding the media as well as to root out CIA corruption/influence in both the FBI and DOJ.
Remember, National Security Advisor is not confirmed by the Senate. Flynn was an outsider who had just been torched by an outgoing administration at the time he was picked for the job—he was already a target before he took it.
Flynn appointed Cattler at a period when he knew he had lied to the FBI and they had proof. He knew that proof, which was classified TS/SCI, was being shared illegally with members of the media with the explicit purpose to undercut the incoming administration’s ability to dictate its own foreign policy agenda.
Flynn created a new position within the NSC senior staff to bring Cattler on, assuring he would get TS/SCI clearance above his existing clearances, which he would then retain for the next 12 months even after he was transferred out of the NSC. This would allow the NSA to share raw SIGINT with Cattler even after Flynn’s resignation without violating the law.
Raw SIGINT that would be most useful for someone hunting leakers would be the same SIGINT that would be useful to a terrorist hunter: cell phone records, conversations and all electronic communications—encrypted or not.
Why holds the keys to that particular kingdom?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQONqjwUMAAd-G8.jpg
Oh look: it’s the single USIC chief that Trump retained. Curious.
First, who is David Cattler, and why is that relevant to Flynn’s plea?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/02/white-house-national-security-advisor-announces-nsc-senior-staff-0
Cattler’s position on the NSC staff was created by Flynn. It was one of two new deputy assistant positions he created within the NSC. This is important because Cattler was approved and granted top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) clearance along with the other senior NSC staff hand-picked by Flynn. This allows them to access and see raw signals intelligence (SIGINT) without violating national security—something denied to many other Trump appointees in January/February.
“The denial of the [TS/SCI] clearance…was widely viewed as a bureaucratic power play by opponents of both Flynn and Townley inside intelligence agencies… Angelo Codevilla, an intelligence expert, said the denial of clearances was engineered by the CIA and came despite Townley’s holding of the high level clearance for many years when he worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency… The clearance denial drove Townley out of the White House National Security Council staff… The TS/SCI clearance grants a holder access to special intelligence, such as information obtained from foreign recruited agents and electronic communications intelligence.”
Source: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/white-house-clearance-process-increasingly-politicized/
Cattler was hired on February 2, 2017—eleven days before Flynn would resign, less than a week after Flynn’s interview with the FBI where he lied, and thirty two days after Flynn’s phone call was leaked to the press. Flynn steps down February 13th. February 20th, McMaster is hired, and he immediately begins reassigning Flynn’s NSC senior staff and eliminating positions Flynn created, including Cattler’s.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mcmaster-national-security-council-staff-changes-235579
“President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, is taking steps to streamline the National Security Council—starting by eliminating positions created by his short lived predecessor Michael Flynn… McMaster did away this week with two deputy assistant spots, one overseeing the NSC’s regional desks and another overseeing transnational issues, according to a senior White House aide.” Cattler was not fired. He was reassigned: “Dave Cattler, who was named deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, will return to the office of Director of National Intelligence, where he worked during the Obama administration…”
Excluded from this article is the fact that Cattler returned to his former post while retaining his TS/SCI clearances which he did not hold previously.
“Cattler and Hansell are generally well-regarded, according to a person familiar with the current NSC… Cattler was a Flynn pick, the person said. According to his LinkedIn page, Cattler worked under the former NSC boss at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn was forced out of the DIA in 2014.
According to the person familiar with the NSC, some career intelligence professionals regarded Cattler with suspicion because of his connection to Flynn, a vocal critic of the CIA and its tactics.”
You may be able to see where this is going now, but these are really important questions to think about. In my other post about Flynn, I mentioned what he did prior to joining Trump’s team. Flynn is a democrat and was appointed by Obama to head the DIA. What, specifically, did they have a falling out over?
Trump fired all of the heads of the IC except for one person. Who was it? Did he and Trump meet in an unorthodox way? What did that IC chief and the Obama administration have a falling out over. Is it related to Flynn’s issues? Who has everyone’s secrets?
With those questions in mind, look at the Flynn timeline again.
December 28, 2016: Obama administration places sanctions on Russia for “meddling” and expels over 30 diplomats.
December 29, 2016: Flynn, acting as a member of the transition team, called the Russian Ambassador and asked him not to escalate the situation in response to the sanctions. This call was made on an open line, and it is almost a certainty that Flynn, with a 33 year career as a spy, was aware that the call was being monitored and recorded by many different parties, including the USIC and FBI.
January 12, 2017: David Ignatius, relying on unnamed sources, reports the following and ignites a media firestorm:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-obama-dawdle-on-russias-hacking/2017/01/12/75f878a0-d90c-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.0e8d57932bd9
January 15th, 2017: Pence goes on Face the Nation and describes the Flynn/Kislyak call as coincidental and not prompted by Obama’s sanctions the day prior. He bases this on a conversation Pence had with Flynn days before.
The firestorm of speculations in the media intensifies as pundits breathlessly write about just what might have been said in the call between Flynn and Kislyak. Pence is in the spotlight and dragged through the mud as op-eds claim he’s covering for Flynn and Trump both.
January 20-21, 2017: Trump is sworn in. Flynn’s senior staff begins to get deployed and granted TS/SCI clearances while Trump immediately begins to fire swaths of people at both State and CIA. At this time Trump also gave an incredibly interesting speech at Langley where he joked about building them a new room “without any columns.” This wasn’t a comment to the public or the media. He even reiterated, “Do you understand that?” Look up what a “5th column” is. This is an incredibly audacious “joke” for a newly elected president to make while standing in front of the CIA’s wall of honor.
During the same speech, Trump mentions Flynn. This is significant because he’s standing in Langley. Flynn was once head of the DIA—the DIA and the CIA do not get along, and it was Flynn’s clash, in part, with the CIA which led to him losing his position. There’s a lot more going on here, I think, than just Trump standing behind Flynn. It seems like a threat or a challenge.
Here’s the speech. The remark about the columns comes after a long ramble about “liking honest reporting” at 15:09:
https://youtu.be/GMBqDN7-QLg
January 24, 2017: Flynn has his meeting with the FBI. Flynn had the legal right not to answer the question, yet rather than do that, he knowingly lies to the FBI about a call which a) he knows to have been legal, and b) he knows the FBI has a complete transcript of already.
January 26, 2017: Sally Yates (per her congressional testimony in May) informs White House Counsel that Flynn is now vulnerable to Russian blackmail because he lied to the FBI and to Pence about the contents of the call. It’s important to note that Sally Yates did not have TS/SCI clearance and thus could not legally read the contents of Flynn’s call unless Flynn’s name had been unmasked and shared with her by Obama’s administration. Remember Trump’s tweet after her testimony in May: “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
Also note that Flynn was cleared of any illegalities with regards to the contents of the call itself—meaning there was nothing illegal or treasonous in the transcripts for which Flynn could be charged. This is why he only got hit with “process crimes.”
From Yates, “We weren’t the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others.”
https://www.thewrap.com/sally-yates-says-told-white-house-michael-flynn-blackmailed-russians/amp/
February 2, 2017: In the midst of the media firestorm and leaks causing the administration headaches, Flynn likely knows he’s on borrowed time, creates a new deputy assistant position in the NSC senior staff and appoints Cattler to fill it.
February 8, 2017: Flynn denies the story to the Washington Post, saying the topic of sanctions never came up during his call with Kislyak. This sets off another media fury.
February 9, 2017 Flynn then backtracks to the Washington Post, and through a spokesman said the topic “might have come up.” What is he doing here? Are these mistakes, or is he leading the media by the nose?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/10/just-how-much-trouble-is-michael-flynn-in/?utm_term=.d5210dda2a4f
February 13, 2017: Flynn resigns, officially for lying to Pence and the FBI.
February 20, 2017: McMaster is hired as National Security Advisor and recycles Flynn’s staff. McMaster eliminates the two new deputy positions Flynn created, transferring Cattler back to the office of the DNI, though he is now armed with TS/SCI clearance which is good for 12 months.
Why is this timeline important? By January 24th we know that Flynn knew three things for certain: 1) his phone call to Kislyak was not illegal, nor was discussing sanctions. 2) His phone call with the Ambassador was being monitored and recorded. 3) The administration was trying to plug leaks of classified intelligence to the media by members of the USIC.
It’s entirely possible that Flynn knowingly lied to the FBI about something he knew they’d know was a lie (and wasn’t legally compelled to answer in the first place) because he didn’t trust the FBI to keep his answer confidential. Had he answered yes, and the FBI leaked it, in that environment (which was even more hysterical about Russia than it is now) the news could have sunk the administration to the point of crippling it in less than two weeks after his inauguration. Maybe Flynn fell on his sword to protect the administration from undue and unfair scrutiny.
The other possibility is that a career spook was doing something else entirely. Cattler’s career in the USIC is flawless. His specialty is counter terrorism. He and Flynn go way back. He’s a field spy who specializes in finding terrorists using SIGINT and “human intelligence” (HUMINT). It’s possible—if not likely—that Flynn brought on Cattler (and others) to hunt for the leakers inside the USIC feeding the media as well as to root out CIA corruption/influence in both the FBI and DOJ.
Remember, National Security Advisor is not confirmed by the Senate. Flynn was an outsider who had just been torched by an outgoing administration at the time he was picked for the job—he was already a target before he took it.
Flynn appointed Cattler at a period when he knew he had lied to the FBI and they had proof. He knew that proof, which was classified TS/SCI, was being shared illegally with members of the media with the explicit purpose to undercut the incoming administration’s ability to dictate its own foreign policy agenda.
Flynn created a new position within the NSC senior staff to bring Cattler on, assuring he would get TS/SCI clearance above his existing clearances, which he would then retain for the next 12 months even after he was transferred out of the NSC. This would allow the NSA to share raw SIGINT with Cattler even after Flynn’s resignation without violating the law.
Raw SIGINT that would be most useful for someone hunting leakers would be the same SIGINT that would be useful to a terrorist hunter: cell phone records, conversations and all electronic communications—encrypted or not.
Why holds the keys to that particular kingdom?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQONqjwUMAAd-G8.jpg
Oh look: it’s the single USIC chief that Trump retained. Curious.
What does Admiral Rogers have in common with General Flynn? Both were Obama appointees who had serious falling outs with the administration. So much so that Obama warned Trump that both Flynn and Rogers should be viewed with caution. If you’re still reading, and you’re really interested, look into what, specifically, Flynn and Rogers clashed with the Obama administration about.
On November 17, 2016, Admiral Rogers had an unscheduled meeting with Trump at Trump Tower. He completely subverted the chain of command by doing this without notifying his superiors, Obama and Clapper. They were outraged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-and-intelligence-community-chiefs-have-urged-obama-to-remove-the-head-of-the-nsa/2016/11/19/44de6ea6-adff-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html?utm_term=.3ab5e8a7dece
https://www.npr.org/2016/11/22/502980006/reports-suggest-nsa-director-mike-rogers-is-on-his-way-out
The very next day, Trump moves his transition team out of Trump Tower in NY to the small town of Bedminster, New Jersey without any warning. What did Trump and Admiral Rogers talk about? Was this move related? A lot of the press, as you can see from the above links painted this as Rogers “begging” to keep his job. Maybe.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/18/trump-brings-transition-team-quiet-new-jersey-town/94097100/
Regardless of what was discussed, Rogers was retained as head of the NSA, and in that position, he has the keys to the world. The NSA collects all digital communication in the US, and there are additional collection nodes in other countries. Rogers has everyone’s email and phone conversations. This is information he would have been able to share with people like Cattler once he got his TS/SCI clearance.
The possibility then is that Flynn brought in counter-intelligence people to the NSC (not just Cattler), got them all TS/SCI clearances which they retained after Flynn’s resignation in order to assist in tracking down the leaks coming from with the USIC. These people have been at work since February of last year. How’s it going?
Let’s go back to the story which broke last week, and another from yesterday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/politics/mueller-removed-top-fbi-agent-over-possible-anti-trump-texts.html
The initial reports attempted to paint Strzork as a middling level agent involved in the investigation. This is a lie. He was running the investigation into Clinton’s emails and was heading up the FBI’s Russia investigation before Mueller was hired as special prosecutor. Why specifically was Strzork reassigned off the investigation and into human resources (lol)?
“The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear critical of Mr. Trump.”
This is precisely the kinds of raw SIGINT that the NSA collects on every one of us every day. Precisely the kind of intelligence that Flynn’s spooks were given clearances to see.
When was Strzok reassigned?
“But Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller’s investigation to the FBI’s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. “
He was reassigned during the summer, but this news didn’t leak until after Flynn signed his plea deal. Why is this significant? Remember back to the speculations revolving around Papadopoulos, he was arrested in July:
“The next day, in the motion to seal the filings associated with his arrest, the office of the special counsel argued that “public disclosure of the defendant’s appearance” would “significantly undermine his ability to serve as a proactive cooperator.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/what-did-george-papadopoulos-give-robert-mueller/544493/
Papadopoulos wasn’t formally indicted until October because they did not want to expose to the world that he’d been caught and ruin his ability to gather intelligence for the special investigation.
Why didn’t the news of Strzok’s reassignment leak until after Flynn signed his plea? Could it be because the Strzok texts were given to Mueller by Flynn’s leak hunters and announcing it in July would have exposed Flynn’s network? And if that’s true, now that Flynn has come in from the cold, it could mean that Strzok is just the beginning. We are perhaps about to see the results of the network Flynn deployed before resigning.
This brings us to yesterday’s story:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/02/politics/fbi-agent-removed-trump-investigation/index.html
What makes this noteworthy is that IG investigators don’t usually talk about investigations when they’re in the middle of them. They discuss them when they’re wrapping up. This may explain the timing of the Strzok revelation, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out Flynn’s network had something to do with it. The results of this might be quite major.
Here’s the announcement of the investigation, almost 11 months ago—while Flynn was still National Security Advisor and filling out his staff/deploying his network.
https://oig.justice.gov/press/2017/2017-01-12.pdf
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