Revoke Their Security Clearance!
Punishing the Former 51 Intelligence Officials for their Disinformation Campaign
By Chuck Warren
In the heat of the 2020 presidential election, 51 former intelligence officials signed the now-discredited letter that claimed Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
These 51 propagandists will give you spin and justification for why they did it, but the fact of the matter is they hated Donald Trump and lent their once-good names to disparage a factual story about Hunter Biden. Did it cost President Trump the election? Probably not. Would it have made the margin closer? Yes.
Would this have played a role in swing states like Georgia and Arizona? Some polling suggests it would have.
We will never know because a group of trusted former public servants gave cover to the corporate media to protect Biden. That is the reality.
According to a Rasmussen poll, "Most Americans not only believe the revelations about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop are 'important,' they also think President Biden had knowledge of—and may have made money from—his son's foreign business deals.”
Shouldn't there be some punishment for their deceptive actions? When people who have public trust participate in such a blatant political cover-up, what should the punishment be?
I recommend revoking their security clearances.
According to The Washington Post, "When senior officials leave government—on good terms; former FBI director James B. Comey lost his clearance after being fired—there has been an informal standard of continuing to grant clearance for the rest of their careers. Those clearances go through a review process every five years, but it's common.”
Why do they have these security clearances? Again, The Washington Post reported:
"The United States faces recurring threats that often mirror past incidents. With regularity—every four or eight years, for example—much of the leadership of our intelligence agencies sees turnover. Former officials are part of the institutional knowledge of those organizations, and access to that knowledge can be useful.
"Having former senior officials hold active security clearances can be critically important for those currently charged with defending our nation," said Jamil N. Jaffer, who was associate counsel to President George W. Bush and founder of George Mason University's National Security Institute, "because it allows them to turn rapidly to people with significant experience, context, and contacts to help interpret the activity of our opponents and to provide wise counsel and guidance, whether that's in the terrorism, foreign policy, or any national security context."
Former officials don't need a security clearance to offer their opinions to their successors, of course, but any counsel offered might be hampered if there's current information that can't be shared.
Serving the government in an official capacity. In addition to the informal outreach to former officials, there are governmental advisory boards on which those officials can serve in a formal way."
Do we want people who knowingly misled the voting public to have national security clearance?
These former officials betrayed the public trust. They played a political game. They misinformed for political purposes.
Of course, everyone deserves their day in court. We should not be a Twitter mob. So maybe before the government revokes their security clearance, maybe they should all be required to take a lie detector test. With those results, they should be required to sit in front of a bipartisan congressional committee and explain why they should keep their security clearance. The committee votes up or down on approving their security clearance. Then, release those transcripts and polygraph results.
CIA employees are required to take a polygraph test every five years. The agency has done this since the late 1940s. Why not for this Dirty 51?
If they do not pass the dual verification of polygraph and congressional committee vote of confidence, revoke that clearance. Such blatant disinformation from our intelligence community must not happen in a U.S. Election again.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.