Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump regime's purge of the non-loyal continues even unabated by COVID-19 as the White House proceeds with its plans to put as much of the country's intelligence apparatus under control of people loyal to Trump personally. Washington Post's David Ignatius:

The Trump administration is continuing its shake-up of the intelligence community with a potentially disruptive change of leadership at the National Counterterrorism Center, the agency that coordinates government efforts to guard the homeland.

The White House announced its plan to nominate as NCTC director Christopher Miller, a former Army Special Forces officer who had overseen counterterrorism efforts in the Trump White House before moving to a similar position at the Pentagon.

Miller gets solid marks from former colleagues, but the move has increased fears within the intelligence community that the administration has embarked on a politically motivated campaign against career professionals.

The move came hours after I reported that Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, had begun a “review” of the NCTC and was weighing staff cuts there and in other parts of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Congress created both in 2003 as part of its effort to coordinate intelligence activities after the failure to “connect the dots” that allowed the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Miller, if confirmed, would take over from Russell Travers, who has been acting director since the departure of Joseph Maguire last August to become acting DNI. Travers, a widely respected career intelligence officer, was told that he could remain as Miller’s deputy, according to a Senate source who had been briefed by the ODNI leadership.

The timing of the proposed change was surprising, since it came as President Trump and most of the country were focused on the coronavirus threat that has preoccupied the world. But Grenell and the new team overseeing intelligence apparently couldn’t wait. An intelligence source told me that Miller received a call about 10 p.m. Tuesday from the White House, asking if he would take the job.

Travers didn’t learn about the move until Wednesday morning, when he was briefed by an aide, the intelligence source said. Despite Travers’s long record of service, Grenell apparently didn’t notify him personally in advance that the White House had selected someone else for the top job. This treatment of a career officer will grate among his colleagues.

Again, these are people being put into top positions purely out of their loyalty to Trump. COVID-19 has definitely moved Bill Barr and the intelligence agency fiasco off the front pages, and he's going to make maximum use of them to cover his tracks.