In his column today in the Washington Post David Ignatius considers the case of Gen. Michael Flynn, presently being investigated for accepting payments from foreign companies closely tied with their governments and lying about it. Basically, my take on it conforms with his: spooks and generals don’t know how to behave when they come out in in the light of day.
Senior command is a world unto itself. The tribal culture that envelops all our military and intelligence personnel is especially tight for our most secret warriors. They sometimes miss the signals that life outside will be different.
Flynn certainly got a clear warning when he left the military after serving as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. On Thursday, the Pentagon released a letter he received Oct. 8, 2014, about “the ethics restrictions that apply to you after your retirement.†The instructions listed eight areas of “post-employment restrictions,†including an obligation to get approval for any foreign compensation.
Flynn apparently cruised through that red light when he accepted $45,000 for speaking to the Russian government’s television-propaganda channel in 2015, and when he received more than $500,000 in 2016 from a firm with close ties to the Turkish government. Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign-government representative for work on behalf of Turkey that occurred on the eve of Donald Trump’s election and Flynn’s selection as national security adviser.
It’s unclear whether Flynn disclosed these foreign-government payments and other foreign contacts, as required, in renewing his security clearances at the White House, where he oversaw the nation’s most sensitive, compartmented programs. Failure to reveal such information can sometimes violate Section 1001 of the U.S. criminal code, known as the “false statements†provision.
As well as I can tell it’s being dealt with appropriately. It’s being investigated and the investigation may well lead to legal action.
I’m not so sure about what Ignatius says. Although it’s completely true that personnel in areas like intelligence tend to be sheltered and a bit weird (There are a LOT of jokes about this), I think the common thread among Flynn, McCrystal, Petreaus, etc. is hubris more than anything else.
I wonder how likely it would have been for Flynn to have been caught in the hairs of a govenment investigation had he not developed any ties to the Trump presidency? This inquery leads to another question, as to how much this investigation is about a man straining at the tether of an established practice/law, versus how much it is adjoined to adding another brick to bring down a despised presidency.
Maybe I should have put the following comment under the “Mining The Dirt” piece….
However, adjacent to the drumbeat attempts to capture Flynn in a legal misstep, there is an additional revelation that the FBI had convened a Grand Jury. Subpoenas were issued to obtain those elusive emails generated on hillary’s illegal private server. It proved, to be another unsuccessful mission – one of many surrounding the Clinton investigation – because of being on the wrong side of the retention time metric for the provider to give over her archived emails.
One question hovers, though, as to why this Grand Jury detail wasn’t exposed during HRC’s presidential run? Also, what about other problematic actions of Clinton – those involving blatant violations of the Government Record’s law or even hints of espionage grievances?
Oh well back to Flynn….
$45K? $500K? I’m told by reliable sources that these are paltry sums that don’t really amount to anything more than change in the seat cushions.
Oh, wait, that’s when Dems get the payments. When a Rep gets the payments, that just confirms that the person is WORSE THAN HITLER!
…
Appropriate of nothing here, really, I’ve been accused on Twitter this year of being one of Putin’s paid agents – by an English journalist, no less! His basis for this belief is that I tweeted at him (once) that wanting a nuclear war with Russia over Syria (which he has been advocating!) isn’t a great idea. Therefore, KGB agent. Never mind several years of tweets mostly about Central Florida, sports, and chess. (No, he doesn’t get to suspect me of being Russian for being a chess player, as he himself is a chess player, and a chess organizer of great prominence, and personally hangs out with lots of Russians, including some of Putin’s billionaire cronies, on a regular basis. Like I said, unhinged. Strike that. Make it, un-FUCKING-hinged!)
And yes, they’re so unhinged that they can’t even remember that the KGB doesn’t exist anymore. Which is funny, because these are the same people that were ON THE KGB’s SIDE back when the Soviet Union was a going concern, and STILL openly lament that Joe Stalin IV doesn’t rule the world. The amount of brain damage being shown by the elites astounds even a cynic like me.
The ruling class the world over has lost it’s mind, and most of the people everywhere are still blindly following them. I can’t see how there won’t be major power wars in the near future, and probably a civil war in the USA, though I also can’t imagine how such things would start. But this mix of crazy and incompetence being so wide-spread can’t possibly avoid disaster.
“$45K? $500K? I’m told by reliable sources that these are paltry sums that don’t really amount to anything more than change in the seat cushions.”
Flynn has $65 million? Seriously, the issue is taking payment and not reporting it. I agree with Andy and this probably mostly hubris on his part.
Steve