Gina Haspel is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Haspel is the first career clandestine service officer to become director, and the first woman. She was the CIA Chief of Station in London — twice, and that repeat assignment is very unusual. What is most interesting is the timing of Haspel’s last tour as London Station Chief — from 2014 to early 2017. That is the same timeframe (specifically, the late summer of 2016) when the FBI approached foreign policy academic and “utility government operative” Stefan Halper to begin the operation targeting Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in an FBI-designed foreign counterintelligence operation, against Team Trump, to be launched in Cambridge, England.
Nothing speculative here — the Justice Department Inspector General pegged the exact date of the FBI/Halper meeting as August 10, 2016. Halper had been on contract (again) with the U.S. government since the Iowa Caucuses began in October 2015. For the sake of brevity, I am not discussing Halper’s role in targeting former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. That is another column for another day — and certainly Haspel knows a great deal about that, as well.
The timeframe (2014-2017) matters, because Haspel, as London Station Chief would have been briefed on the FBI’s counterintelligence plan before any actions were approved to go forward. The CIA Station Chief is the top intelligence official in any given country. The FBI must inform the Station Chief of what they planned to do and get Station Chief approval. The FBI hates that, but those are the rules. Because the various intelligence agencies are sensitive, they do not use the word “approved.” Instead, they use the word “coordinated.” Jargon aside, nothing would have happened without Haspel’s okay.
Think about this for a while: The current CIA director was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with a contrived foreign counterintelligence investigation. That carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Trump. People around President Trump were prosecuted and/or had their lives destroyed based on a scheme of U.S. government lies. Who appears to have been “in on it” from day one? Gina Haspel…
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