Reaction & Commentary
Am Janiak ellic today we sit down with Tony Schafer acting president of the London Center for Policy Research he served as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army where he was a senior intelligence officer today he’s also an advising producer for National Geographic and a member of the Trump 2020 advisory board
So let’s talk about what has been known as the spy gate scandal or also known as you know the Russia collusion scandal in some circles in short the FBI used politicized and flawed information to investigate the Trump campaign they were fed information by a series of people
Who were actually paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign including mi6 agent Christopher Steele Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussman the FBI then used this unverified information to obtain I guess a series of FISA warrants on the Trump campaign volunteer Carter page this seems like a terrible thing that to
Happen and it’s all very we were discussing earlier this has really tarnished their reputation of certain agencies especially the FBI in this case what do you think can be done to fix that and there’s three things that need to be examined in this and I’ve had experience in dealing with these sorts
Of domestic operations well it’s not well known the Department of Defense has parallel authorities with the FBI regarding what we call foreign counterintelligence so we the Department of Defense do do these sorts of things and so I’m very familiar with the authorities based on having to have
Briefed these sorts of operations to the National Security Council so let’s start there EEO 12 triple three is the foundational document which governs all of these sorts of collection activities each agency then takes and has its own implementation guidelines within the context of the FBI doing domestic foreign counterintelligence
Especially on political campaigns the a waiver is required by the National Security Council in this case of Anna Susan Rice to allow for enhanced domestic collection on individuals that is to say that to have the Trump campaign collected on is extraordinarily hard because in most circumstances a US
Citizen if you’re a US citizen and you’re being targeted by the Russians you are obligated to be told the FBI is obligated to tell you you’re a target because you’ve done nothing we’re on you’re a US citizen the only way you can not have that done is by a waiver at the
National Security Council so everything starts everything we’re talking about in some form goes back to the National Security Council because those waivers had to be granted so let’s start with that once those waivers are granted then we’ve seen from that allowance that diversion from policy for the FBI to
Have essentially this this door open for them to do extraordinarily bad things regarding their authority the FISA system the foreign and intelligence collection activities which we’re talking about are very powerful the US government has very powerful technology I’ve overseen very complex technology programs which the American public has no clue exists they just
Don’t and anytime you have these programs you must have really good oversight so that this power is not abused my belief is that certain members of the FBI knew exactly what they were doing regarding using these powerful tools of collection collection and technology against domestic political threats what they saw is threats which
Were the Trump campaign and others who were essentially endangering the candidacy of Hillary Clinton that that kandacy was jeopardized by twofold issues first her use of an illegal email server that’s an unforced unforced error on her part it’s still not resolved and then of course just the fact that political forces were
Challenging her in the domestic political front so these two things combined we’ve now seen the FBI essentially took aside and they did so again based on the waivers they got from the White House so when you get down to the operational level to the level of combing of Peter Strock of Andrew McCabe
And these others who are now the overseers of these immensely powerful programs there was at some point from my judgment a decision to allow for what we as intelligence officers never permit outside information to be used as gospel until heart intelligence facts I did intelligence collection for over 30
Years and within those operations unless we the US government developed the information through our own independent sources it wasn’t considered valid you would never take information from a quote-unquote opposition research firm put it into the system and say this is validated intelligence it’s never done for two reasons first it’s going to be
It’s going to be honest opposition research so you automatically understand the slant even if it’s factual is going to be flavored in a certain way to essentially be unusable for purposes of factual understanding of a situation it’s just not done secondly whenever you do something like that you have the
Potential of opening a door to information operations and deception in this case in the case of Steele and his information it is my belief based on what I’ve seen regarding the information collection chain this was information that was fed to steel for purposes of uh pending our our elections this was
Information designed by someone in Russia to essentially be a poison pill and I don’t believe the Russians just for the record I’ve said this another I don’t believe the Russians took aside during the 2016 elections I believe the Russians were trying to upend the elections for purposes of just
Being Russians the Russians tried to be disruptive in any democratic process this was no different so they were in a position to win no matter who became the president they would win because if Trump gained president they were able to do some things to undermine his authority and obviously the whole
Russian time but he the Russian narrative the Russian investigation has been a huge lodestone on the presidency if Hillary Clinton had won they could have done things to say that they undermined her legitimacy by saying that they you know that she did things too with them and her election was not
Legitimate they were going to win no matter what their way either way and the FBI was completely oblivious to the danger of taking in this information putting it into the intelligence collection system as if it’s gospel so those are the two things I see that were
Hugely wrong with the FBI doing this but again let me emphasize this again they could not have done all of these things especially not telling Trump about the fact that there was a perception that he was being collected against if not the White House opening the door for them to
Do all this because of this waiver because of that waiver yes sir idea SC well so again so what two two questions one is how can who can be held accountable for this how can accountability be be found and the second is what can be done to you know
Rehabilitate you know obviously this incredibly important agency the FBI you know to right now is in this tarnished State yeah well I mean let me say for the record I have worked with the FBI three times undercover with them over the past 30 years doing the INF the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty
We work with FBI in Texas where we were in the process of destroying our boosters and the FBI and the army R and joint teams to monitor the Soviet officers who were involved in observing our activities I’ve worked with the FBI against 17 November a terrorist group in
Athens where we were working right out here at a WFO deploying forward with an FBI team to defeat that terror organization which notably they defeated that terror organization right before the the Greek Olympics and then also in Afghanistan in my book operation dark heart I do document the time we work
Together with the FBI the FBI and action and I actually conducted interrogation which ended up breaking not we didn’t touch him a enabler of the IRGC trying to fund terrorist activities against us in Afghanistan these are all things which I’ve done so I have the highest
Regard and respect for FBI agents I have no regard at all for their leadership in many ages feel as I do because of the this tarnished image that these leaders have now created for the FBI so what do we do first I think we have to do a full review of
Everything within the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence programs you have to have a peer come in and do essentially an academic and operational review in the Army we do reviews all the time of foreign counterintelligence cases we have someone with fresh eyes come in and look at it to verify the legality verify
The operational necessity and opera and verify the tradecraft a very simple thing someone needs to do that regarding all FBI agents I’m arguing that we should have the Department of Defense what their foreign counterintelligence activities do a full audit and I do mean a full audit not an IG audit not a
Criminal investigation just an audit because if we believe that the FBI took the shortcut shortcuts we do know they took the shortcuts for this Russian narrative issue there may be others there’s probably other things so I think we owe it to the American people to do
And the FBI owes it for their own interest to have someone come in and do a look do it they need to have this done to begin the process of overcoming this tarnished image that they have created secondly and I think equal of equal importance is to hold those accountable who broke the
Law there are specific instances of Title 18 which some people like McCabe have been referred to the Department of Justice for violations of that there have been criminal referrals I believe that if you examine each player within the context of the play Komi McCabe struck Lisa Paige and others you will
Find that they did violate directly elements of Title 18 and based on the fact that you need to have a single justice system that doesn’t play favorites they must be looked at for prosecution based on these violations we know call me compromise classified information we know struck for a fact
Has been has lied before Congress at least three times I’ve talked to members of Congress about the conflicts between what are you said in closed session versus what he says in open session that’s something that’s being dealt with right now so you’ve got to do both
Things you’ve got to do a full review to make sure that the American people can regain a trust by a third party looking at what the FBI did on foreign counterintelligence as well as now at this point examining the full scope of all the the title 18 felony violations
Conducted by these officers and investigate them and prosecute them to the full extent of the law they should not be above the law simply because they were federal officers in the FBI it gives him no special dispensation for their bad acts so we know one of the
Things that really struck me as you were speaking earlier of course this is we’re talking about some opposition research that was used rights also research that was actually done by foreign intelligence a drug days at least in part and so you know we had current and former unit United Kingdom intelligence
Agency people basically providing information about Americans right I think many of our audience would see that as gross overreach by intelligence agencies right how do we protect again this how do we protect Americans against this in the future this goes back to where the FBI did violate laws or allow
The violation of laws to exist within the context of this u.s. citizens cannot deal legally with foreign intelligence operatives you can’t do it the moment you do that you are in danger of violating US law there’s a number of exceptions that allow for the FBI and he
Tells community to spy on you one of those is if you’re you are dealing with a known intelligence operative of a foreign nation that’s a leak that opens the door opens the door but in this case it was encouraged this in this case the FBI did
Not say oh fusion GPS you shouldn’t be doing that they were all in and allowing this to be open and the second point of concern is the very thing you said foreign intelligence services have an interest that is not generally in line with our interest even the British will
Tell you that while we’re allies we’re not necessarily in sync on every single issue they as a nation had their own national security objectives some overlap and some do not so I think this is one of the issues that we have to be aware of when we study this as an after
After the fact issue the FBI knowingly permitted intelligence operatives from foreign nations with with objectives which clearly were not in the interest the United States to allow information to come into our system to be used as fact which is to this day disrupted our political process and continues to
Interfere with some people’s confidence and democracy as you mentioned earlier you know you your weren’t happy or you’re not happy with the top brass you know in the FBI right but actually a lot of them it seems actually have now been replaced or removed and I mean I don’t
Know how many layers how deep that goes but it does look like significant action has been taken how significant is that not sufficient director Rey has been reluctant to I think go to the full extent of what’s necessary to weed out the bad actors the FBI did not become corrupted overnight
This was I would argue a process started under the Clintons back in the 90s where you had a series of individuals over time who came into the senior levels of the FBI who are more legally focused more lawyers out of DOJ running at rather than field operatives and look I
I’ve been an operative my entire life I have little tolerance for analysts who want to play at operations and I think in our intelligence community we have seen huge failures based on analysts coming in to be in charge of operations the same parallel exist within DOJ and FBI basically the agents who come
Through the field have a really good understanding of how to go about investigating preparing evidence and submitting it for purposes of prosecution or in the case of foreign counterintelligence how to effectively set up counterintelligence operations to catch spies lawyers who have never had any field operational experience coming
In to be in charge and overseeing that tend to politicize the operations rather than allow them to run to the full extent of what the logical conclusion should be so what lawyers are two FBI operators we have the same problem with analysts and they tell us committee
Telling us as operatives what to do so this has been a problem and over the time so a lot of the folks we see now running the FBI are very focused on legality rather than success and the legality they often refer to has been for example within the last couple days
I hope you don’t mind mentioning it lisa pages texts which were revealed over the last 72 hours indicate that the FBI was trying to cut a deal with state department regarding hillary clinton’s classified emails found on the warner weiner laptop so they said basically if you FBI downgrade the classification to
Unclassified will give you more space than our embassies overseas that’s payola that doesn’t sound good that is dunno so so that’s my point is you these low and Lisa pages a lawyer so what you see is lawyers coming in to manage the process of the whole activity
And so I don’t believe for a minute lisa pages actions were reflective of what a field operative and the FBI would have done regarding seeking justice I don’t think a field operative would have cared about how many attache positions they have in embassies overseas they would have done their best as sworn
Officers sworn law enforcement law enforcement officers to follow information where it was you bring in people like Lisa page who have no interest in serving justice trying to basically cut political deals behind the scenes that’s this is the illustration of my point and when you have this level of corruption
You got to weed it out and I don’t believe Christopher Rea has has actually gone in and done this to the level necessary to write the FBI but do you think he will no I don’t I think he needs to be good I think he is a member
Of the swamp I think based on his actions to date that he has done what he can to stop the bleeding but he has no interest in cutting out the cancer that’s in the FBI okay well actually speaking of the email server though there’s also some evidence recently
Unearthed that some of the emails may have been sent to all of them except for seven yeah okay can you explore that a little bit more so I’ve actually spoken to the members of DoD who discovered this flaw the this flaw was discovered by the intelligence community part of
The Department Department of Defense it was the the odni inspector general’s office and they did a full evaluation they received the same copy of the email server and all the emails that the FBI had and the purpose of the the odni the the IG who came out of DoD the the
Reason they were doing this review is because they had to make an assessment of the classification of all the email that were contained on Hillary Clinton’s server so it was during that review of every email basically they went through every email not only did DoD the odni
And and DNI guys look at the email they looked at the metadata so every email as you know and your audience probably knows at the within the data which moves the email there’s router information that indicates who sent the email when it was sent how it was sent the route it took
And anybody else who gets copies of it so within this very deep metadata review the odni IG discovered that in every email except for like seven or being sent to a third party that third party was a apparently I’m told a business that was that is in Manassas Virginia
And that business is was owned or is owned by the Chinese intelligence service and there was a drop at this place and then it was sent off to Chicago’s what I was briefed and what what’s significant about this is not so much as I know it’s the fact that
According to the odni IG Peter struck the guy in charge of the Clinton email investigation within the FBI was briefed on this three times and each briefing he was presented with this information and the question was what are you going to do about this so and by the way this was
This is now in congressional testimony Peter struck did was asked this question in closed hearings he gave one answer in closed hearings and that he was asked again in public by congressman louie gohmert and he gave a different answer so this is an unresolved issue and based on the
Information I have from talking to people who are directly involved this was this was known to the FBI and the FBI refused to examine it as part of their investigation to this day I have no clear understanding of why Strock did not look at this but they did provide
Him that is the odni did provide struck the specific investigation data from their investigation which indicated this all had occurred can you comment on the Nass plus security implications of this well yeah the two implications are first anything that Hillary Clinton had on its server was compromised to the Chinese
Intelligence Service which indicates to me that that by law there supposed to be a damage assessment conducted by this compromise that’s by law anytime you have a compromise like this of information to a foreign intelligence threat you have to do an evaluation of what damage was done Jim clapper when he
Was o D&I himself was asked about why haven’t you done a damage assessment and he said I just don’t want to do it I don’t think you know that’s a good answer I don’t but it needs to be done and III again I’ve said this to a number
Of members of Congress and the Senate on this this is not a partisan issue by law when you have a compromise like this it says in the law you must do a damage assessment so the first thing you got to do is do a stat damage assessment secondly there is other evidence the
Chinese have been very effective in eating our lunch we lost a number of assets back about 2011-2012 in Beijing we’ve never recovered from that and there’s other indicators Chinese are very effective in their telogen collection programs against us so I think we need to do a review of
Everything we’re doing to figure out why the Chinese are so effective so those are the things I think we should do based on this information and again I’m speaking this speaking about this purely as an intelligence professional you need to set aside the politics whatever they are and actually do the job of
Evaluating how this was compromised what was compromised and what the damage was that came from this compromise so you know this work that you do you know advising congressional members and so forth that also speaks to your role as now the acting president at the London
Center yes can you tell me a little more about what you do well being the president’s very distracted from getting work done I’ll say that for the record what I normally do is as the vice president for operations and I’m still doing it as a president is I
Manage a group of extraordinary fellows male and female who are masters of the practicing of their art of expertise or channel of our choosing Sidney Powell you interviewed Sidney Powell a few days ago Sidney is a an amazing woman who is an extraordinary litigator she’s well respected a
Practitioner one of my closest friends and colleagues who’s one of our distinguished members of our board is bud McFarlane the national carrier advisor to President Reagan Jim Woolsey another extraordinary fellow who distinguished fellow who actually is one of the backbone of our organization the the common thread of the people that we
Have within our ranks and our purpose is practitioners we are very big on examining practical issues from the perspective of what policies work we don’t deal well with theoretical you know papers you don’t see us do a lot of papers because while we do have academics I publish editorials your
Organization’s and published on my editorials were very much into educating the public in a very academic and factual way we deal primarily in fact in fact relating to this process worked in the past we believe if you adapt this process for this current challenge the chances of success are pretty good and
I’d like to believe that if we’re brought into a situation we were brought in to Venezuela recently by a certain senior leaders at State Department we’re being brought in because they want to have practical answers which will result in some outcome that is favorable to the national security interest the United
States very interesting well so and this also speaks to my next question actually which is you know personally you are involved as you know an advisor to the 2020 campaign and you know what inspired you to do this it’s not a question prior to president Trump’s election we
As practitioners of intelligence and law enforcement had seen ad mu Nisshin if you will of a commitment by the federal bureaucracy to do the right thing and I think we talked today about the Russian narrative a Russian collusion investigation is an example of that where the bureaucracy I’ve seen a number
Of times to include my own issue of able danger of the 9/11 attacks I’ve seen I’ve seen personally cover-ups which would you know curl the hair of the American public and I you know a lot of us were kind of tired of seeing the federal bureaucracy or the swamp being
Able to determine its own future by being pretty much impervious to any oversight and when President Trump rolled into town one of the extraordinary things about the man is he actually one about keeping his political promises and so to me you know as someone who has seen the swamp go after
People for purpose of trying to protect its own wrongdoing I was very buoyed by president Trump’s election and then him keeping his word so when I was asked I was asking I believe it was November of 20 2016 a little over a over a year ago now to
Join as an advisor to the campaign I thought about it seriously and based on the actions to that point in time of the president I felt that joining that the campaign as an advisor would be a good thing and since then I’ve been gratified and you could go on the president’s
Facebook page I’ve been the one putting together the national security policy planks for his campaign I’ve done a number of interviews with Laura Trump they’re available and what I do appreciate about being on Trump 2020 is that the London centres fundamental philosophy is very Reagan best based a lot of fellows are very
Close to Reagan’s thinking on national security and as the adviser to the campaign I advise them to do Reagan type stuff this is not real it’s not rocket science this is actually examining what worked in the Reagan years having my colleagues and mentors our Reagan you know not many of them
Left but the ones who are left we work with very closely and we tried it and so I try to impart the wisdom that I get from these folks into the campaign to say hey this is this is what I think may be best regarding our national security
So I I have found that they’ve been completely receptive to what I believe to be common-sense approaches the president has seen what I’ve done for his campaign and apparently he likes it because he allows it to be posted on his Facebook so I’ve been happily gratified
That they actually do take my advice and just a word you know if you ask me to advise you and I show up and you don’t my advice don’t ask me to advise you and I have been gratified by the fact these people are very open to the advice I’d
Like to believe the advice has been well applied in his foreign policy over the past year excellent well Tony thanks so much surely appreciate speaking with you thank you it’s been a great and I appreciate your organization and being on with you thank you
