by Jonathan Turley at The Hill
In 1980, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin saw an ad for the Central Intelligence Agency on a bus. John Brennan decided to apply, thinking that such a job would satisfy his “wanderlust.”
This month, the “wanderlust” of John Brennan came to an end, as the former CIA director stands accused of false testimony regarding the Russian collusion investigation.
Ironically, Brennan was first selected for his honesty — at least in part. During his entry polygraph, Brennan admitted that he had voted for the communist party candidate for president in 1976. He was impressed that the agency took him anyway.
That honest young man seems like a faint and tragic echo of the man today. When Obama picked Brennan to be the CIA director, he had become the ultimate Democratic insider and loyalist. And it would be choosing loyalty over honesty that would prove Brennan’s undoing.
Newly declassified information contradicts Brennan’s testimony before Congress on the origins of the now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory. There is a particular focus on the intelligence community assessment commissioned by President Barack Obama in December 2016, which suggested that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
Obama ordered the assessment after a prior assessment found no evidence…
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