by WorldTribune Staff, April 30, 2018
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper continues to retain his security clearance despite leaking information on the Trump dossier to the media outlet he now works for, a report said.
At the White House Correspondents Association dinner on April 28, CNN reporters were awarded the Merriman Smith Award for their broadcast work and reporting on the dossier.
Reporters Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein were honored “for their role in making public a briefing by intelligence officials to then President-elect Donald Trump,” investigative journalist Sara Carter reported on April 29.
A House Intelligence Committee report credited Clapper with the leak to CNN. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said today that the award was earned not for enterprise journalism but for “taking dictation.”
CNN reported the briefing “included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” But the information briefed to Trump, Carter noted, was also leaked to the media by Clapper, “one of the same senior Obama administration officials who orchestrated the briefing and was hired by CNN months later as a paid analyst.”
When it hired Clapper, CNN did not disclose that he was a major source behind the leak of the unverified dossier which the FBI now acknowledges was opposition research paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Carter wrote that “Some are questioning now if this was ethical – a pay for play of sorts – as it raises serious questions about the role and responsibility that U.S. intelligence officials have when taking on paid positions as analysts for news organizations, while still retaining their high-level security clearances. It also raises similar questions about news organizations and their role of remaining objective and not paying their sources.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan, now a paid analyst for MSNBC, “candidly expresses his anti-Trump opinions in public venues and continues to drop insults along with vague and ominous premonitions about the president, while refusing to show any evidence that the Russian’s possess blackmail material or that the Trump campaign was ‘colluding’ with the Russians to win the presidency,” Carter wrote.
Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom criticized Brennan and Clapper in an interview on Fox News Sunday Morning Features with Maria Bartiromo saying there is “no doubt there is a cabal – to diminish his (Trump’s) ability to manage the country.”
Kallstrom said “this is third world country stuff.”
Carter wrote that “It certainly appears that briefing the unverified dossier to the president and then leaking it to the media was part of a plan to undermine an incoming president. It was a ‘news hook’ that led to more than a year’s worth of stories that accused the president of alleged collusion with Russia and aided the Kremlin in what appears to be one of the greatest disinformation campaigns to sow chaos in the United States, according to numerous former and current U.S. intelligence officials.”
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