05 August, 2017
President Donald Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, has reportedly concluded that his predecessor, Susan Rice, did nothing wrong when she tried to learn the identities of officials on Trump's transition team who were mentioned in USA intelligence reports a year ago.
Trump ally and Fox News host Sean Hannity, who dined with the president last week, tweeted: "What is this?"
He wanted to know why the USA military wasn't winning in Afghanistan, and he asked, repeatedly, why, after more than 16 years of war, the United States was still stuck there.
And one NSC official told The Daily Caller to expect more in the next few weeks.
White House aides said they do not know if the purge list represented a genuine plan by a newly-empowered McMaster to root out more staffers or a ruse by pro-Trump activists created to sound the alarm about McMaster's perceived intent to clean house. They were doing so by taking advantage of rules Obama relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, according to documents obtained by Circa.
Apparently, new White House chief of staff John Kelly is unable to stop the war, or is siding with McMaster against Bannon.
That is according to Bloomberg View's Eli Lake, who first broke the story in early April that Rice, who served under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017, tried to "unmask" Trump associates mentioned by foreign officials in conversations picked up as part of the US' intelligence-gathering operations.
Director of the Middle East. He had also been a Flynn hire and a vocal opponent of the Iran deal. Harvey was originally brought in to the NSC by Flynn.
"General McMaster has to be fired because he is the captain of the ship and he has allowed that ship to get out of control and he can no longer be trusted with that responsibility", Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, an advocacy group, said in an interview.
McMaster also added that the White House wants to see a "change in behavior" from interested groups in the region, particularly Pakistan.
"That's why they took him out", explained one source, referring to Harvey, who is said to have constructed a comprehensive plan on how to scrap the nuclear deal.
Both officials expressed particular concern over the Trump administration's future policy in Afghanistan. John McCain (R-AZ), who had voted no on the GOP's ACA repeal bill and whom Trump had previously said was "not a war hero". "Many of these people were in Trump Tower during the period between the election and inauguration".
Another point of contention at the NSC was a Wednesday story by the Atlantic's Rosie Gray detailing the firing of Higgins.
There's now open speculation as to whether Steve Bannon could be the next Trump staffer to be ousted.
Bannon is responding with media allies outside the White House.
As for rumors that Trump is considering shifting CIA Director Mike Pompeo to national security adviser and sending McMaster to command US forces in Afghanistan, Waltz said McMaster would do a great job, but he wants to see him stay in his current position.
These loyalists are said to include many Obama holdovers, including key NSC personnel who work directly for senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes, who has become a central suspect in the leaks of damaging classified information to the press.
General McMaster had sought to remove him in March when Central Intelligence Agency leaders raised concerns about him, but Mr Cohen-Watnick appealed to Mr Trump's top advisers, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. He isn't capable of thinking rationally about it, only of being a loyal lapdog for Trump.
