All posts tagged "Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence"

A security expert warned that the confirmation of Trump's new spy chief marks a "really alarming moment."

During an appearance on CNN, Paul Rieckhoff said that the confirmation of Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence shows that Trump rewards loyalty above all else. Rieckhoff made the warning as CNN panelists spoke about Trump threatening upcoming elections and as Senate votes came in to confirm Clayton as the new head of America's 18 intelligence agencies.

"Standards don't matter. Competency doesn't matter. Independence doesn't matter. Loyalty matters," Rieckhoff said. "This is a really alarming moment that we shouldn't normalize."...

The outgoing director of national intelligence spent his last days on the job bragging about unproven firings, per the New York Times.

Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, is expected to be replaced on Tuesday by Jay Clayton after a short-lived stint as President Donald Trump's spy chief. During his last days and hours on the job, Pulte bragged that he reduced staff at the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), a claim ex-officials doubt, according to reporting by the Times.

The Times noted a "flurry of social media posts" by Pulte. In a Tuesday post on X, he wrote, "We are, this morning, Executing a 5th and near final round of Terminations, an approximately 30 percent Staff Reduction from Weeks ago."...

A federal official assigned to the Trump administration’s Interagency Weaponization Working Group, tasked with delivering “accountability” for alleged “misconduct” under Joe Biden, operates a pseudonymous X account that has advanced conspiracy theories including characterizing the Jan. 6 attempted pipe bombing as “an orchestrated inside job” and sharing a video in which a pro-Trump activist who has advocated violence harasses a lead prosecutor, accusing her of “covering up for the fed-surrection.”

Carolyn Rocco, a former Air Force official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), was identified by Reuters as a member of the Interagency Weaponization Working Group, or IWWG.

Raw Story can reveal that Rocco last month used the X account @Krow121812 to tag Attorney General Pam Bondi in a post sharing an interview with former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. ...

At the dawn of former President Donald Trump’s administration, government employees and contractors in need of security clearances could wait years for approval. Federal agencies stared down a backlog of 700,000 clearance investigations starting in 2017.

For one former senior-level State Department employee, who is a person of color, they waited more than two years to get approved for a top secret clearance.

When the Trump administration arrived, many new Trump officials received “interim security clearances” because they didn’t initially meet standard security requirements, the former employee told Raw Story. This contributed to a screening backlog. ...

“High-risk.”

That’s how the U.S. Government Accountability Office — an internal watchdog for the federal government — has classified the nation’s security clearance vetting process for the past five years.

The latest report to Congress dropped amid several national security threats from current and former government employees this year alone: 21-year-old airman Jack Teixeira leaked defense documents on a gaming social media site; a jailed neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet allegedly saved classified materials on his computer; a former FBI analyst was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for retaining defense documents in her home....

When news broke that 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard airman Jack Teixeira leaked defense documents on the social network Discord, experts and concerned citizens alike began questioning who vetted this low-level service member who potentially caused grave damage to national security.

The Teixeira saga, which will likely play out for years to come across courtrooms, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, laid bare how a troubled young man with extremist tendencies needed only a computer and reliable home internet to disseminate government secrets.

But on a more fundamental level, Teixeira’s leaks represent just the dramatic, final failure of an enfeebled national security vetting system that struggles at times to track which employees have access to classified information at all....