Key U.S. intelligence agencies are now politicized, and partisan elected officials have caused extremely grave damage to the country using this politicized reporting.

I started writing and publishing my concerns about this politicization, especially of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since shortly after the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released the unclassified version of the Intelligence Community (IC) Assessment on Russia’s activities and Intentions in the 2016 Elections.

…the specific approval and release of these politicized intelligence agency documents led this nation through more than two years of a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign

Here is part of my January 2017 open letter to the IC leadership:

“I served with and supervised intelligence professionals many times in my more than three decades of service in uniform to the United States, including as a senior officer leading an intelligence unit. I am stunned at what I am seeing coming from your professional community and utterly dismayed at what sure looks like a series of politically motivated published intelligence reports and leaks of misinformation. These actions put intelligence information into the public domain without vetting, credibility, or authoritative support in order to de-legitimize a duly elected President of the United States in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as our 45th President.

The latest is the fiasco that resulted in the release of false information (the unverified Steele Dossier) from your profession through two media organizations who average citizens now know as fake news outlets, thanks to the courage and communications ability of the President-elect. I demand to see some resignations and retirements from this one.

Just the week before that damning release of misinformation, your agencies actually published a report (the Intelligence Capability Assessment ordered by President Obama in December of 2016) making unsubstantiated assessments that Russia actually changed the outcome of a presidential election. I have read the report and its lousy work. Whoever approved it wasted American tax dollars. The thing is full of speculation highlighted by assessments that present NO EVIDENCE AS PROOF and not all intelligence agencies on the thing even agree with the presented assessments confidence level. Interestingly it does admit there is NO EVIDENCE Russia tampered with any election systems that could affect outcomes and clearly states the information released to the media by Wiki Leaks WAS NOT FORGED. Obviously, the information itself, accurate information from the Democrats and Mrs. Clinton herself, had some impact on the election but to link the outcomes specifically to successful Russian influence operations is unprofessional AND undermines our political process legitimacy, violating your oaths of office by causing grave damage to the United States.

Just days before the inauguration, civil rights movement hero John Lewis, a Democrat Party leader and sitting U.S. Congressman, publicly stated that Mr. Trump’s election, based on your release of information leading Americans to believe the Russians actually changed the outcome of the election, is not legitimate. John Brennan, out-going CIA Director, had the arrogant audacity to publicly rebuke the President-Elect on the national networks in a way that seemed threatening when he spoke about Mr. Trump’s reference to the Nazi Germany regime tactics of releasing false information to attack its political enemies. Well, if Mr. Brennan did not like the Nazi reference, maybe he should instruct his political hacks to knock off the leaking of this unvetted, not corroborated material! I for one, am ashamed to have ever been associated with the intelligence community and am calling you out to clean your own house. The American people expect you professionals to step forward and identify the political hacks that are doing this and do it now for the sake of the intelligence community and the nation!”

As we can all see now, the specific approval and release of these politicized intelligence agency documents led this nation through more than two years of a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign (CrossFire Hurricane), incessant accusations (he’s a Russian Asset) against the duly elected President United States of America, appointment of a special counsel (Mueller) to criminally investigate the entire administration, his campaign team, his family, and his associates.

In my opinion, based on more than three decades of national security experience, this insertion of politics into the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of our government has caused extremely grave damage to our nation’s ability to defend itself, make and keep treaties, and for our citizens to have confidence that the Nation’s justice system is equally applied to all Americans.

From a national defense perspective the damage is so great, this scenario I described in April 2017 can realistically be applied to any sitting or future President!

“Imagine this: The 3 A.M. call comes in to the President of the United States stating that intelligence shows North Korea is preparing to launch three nuclear armed missiles at South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The President, remembering the politicized intelligence community he inherited from his predecessor and the long sordid investigations resulting in the uncovering of surveillance on his own presidential campaign and transition, immediately asks the name of the approving official over the intelligence reports. The President tells his aide to let him know the name, as he will not make any decisions until he confirms that a “trusted” intelligence professional has reviewed the report for truth and accuracy. The phone rings after 5 minutes have passed, and the military aide sets aside the Nuclear Decision Handbook (the nuclear football Black Book) he is using to brief the President on nuclear targets in North Korea to answer it. His face turns white as he listens and tells the President, “Sir, we are too late, 12 missiles are in the air, space assets indicate targets are Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington D.C., missile types are NK-14, NK-08, and estimated time en-route to target is 33 minutes. Mr. President, we are out of time, so I recommend Option 3 from nuclear response plan Humpty Dumpty.” The President nods and reaches for the code card in his pocket …

Two years ago, this scenario would have been unthinkable, that a President of the United States would not be able to have absolute confidence in the loyalty of the U.S. Intelligence Community to help him make a timely military decision. Let alone that a President might have to delay a military decision until it was too late to discuss any further because he or she needed to know that the source was politically loyal. Unfortunately, due to the years of the Obama administration politicizing the entire U.S. Intelligence apparatus, we have arrived at this destination.

My experiences with Intelligence Community professionals and as one of them serving in a senior command position of the Air Force’s largest airborne intelligence organization compels me to sound this alarm due to the dangerous terrain our nation is now treading.

According to the Secretary of Defense, the cruise missile attack conducted by the United States on Syria to re-establish chemical warfare deterrence was based on rock-solid technical and ground intelligence confirming the perpetrators were Syrian government air forces. Considering that President Trump and many other national leaders have openly questioned the integrity of intelligence providers and the reliability of intelligence from areas such as Syria, we face this very dangerous situation. Even if there is no truth behind the reliability of intelligence questions, the perception lives in the minds of almost half of all American adults, if President Trump’s support polling numbers are used as a rough guide.

These conditions make it very difficult for the U.S. Government to request, gain, and maintain support for any military action from the American people through their elected representatives in Congress, the government branch empowered to authorize military action via the Constitution.

The North Koreans appear to be at the precipice of more nuclear weapons and missile launch testing. They are threatening to use nuclear missiles directly on the United States and Japan. Are America and her allies in the best position to face this threat? I argue we are not until we get our intelligence house in order. It’s one thing to shoot a bunch of old cruise missiles at a hapless monster dictator like Assad who has been weakened by six years of civil war, but quite another to try to convince the American people to support an attack on a nuclear armed country as belligerent as North Korea.”

Even the recent release of the vaunted Mueller Report reveals how political views have tainted our justice system.

The average American probably finds it difficult to believe these agencies are politicized but the evidence is now overwhelming.

Even the recent release of the vaunted Mueller Report reveals how political views have tainted our justice system. The entire Volume Two of the report reads like a series of wish-list scenarios written by Democrat Party operatives designed to entrap the current President into obstruction of justice charges even while admitting Counselor Mueller decided not to bring charges because there was no evidence to substantiate any charges.

This report clearly enables partisan elected officials to use its speculations surrounded by a few very weak facts, to further attack the President, his administration, his family, and they’ve implemented 14 additional investigations using it.

If you’re not convinced of the damage, Attorney General Barr has now testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, as he said he would after public release of the Mueller report, and again, openly stated there was spying on the Trump campaign and it may not be adequately predicated. In other words, was there even a counter intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign even warranted?

The opposition politicians on the committee slandered and smeared Barr, who has accomplished everything he told them he would in his confirmation hearings, but they are undeterred in the insanity of trying to “get Trump.” The more this absurd application of injustice happens in the halls of congress, the damage will only increase. And it gets worse.

In my latest April 2019 article I challenged the Trump administration to finally do a complete criminal investigation into the genesis of the entire sequence of events that led to “Crossfire Hurricane” which is the formal name given to the effort to investigate President Trump’s campaign team.

I am convinced President Obama was involved in the decision-making from at least early 2016 and into the end of his term in office because of what former DNI James Clapper said in a July 2018 interview on CNN:

“If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller’s investigation.”

As we follow the evidence trail and connect the dots, we find corroborated linkages to bits of information substantiating that President Obama not only could have easily made the decisions, but maybe even directed the operations.

Clapper’s comment is not the only indicator to believe the Obama administration decision making process involved President Obama personally. We have evidence and can show records of the “Deputies Meetings” convened to manage the Russia cyber crisis exist based on Washington Post reporting from June 2017 that confirms who was in these meetings: Susan “Rice, Haines and Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the White House Situation Room, which would later be referred to as “Deputies Meetings”. These meetings were initially attended by:

Director John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency

Director James Clapper, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Director James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, United States Department of Justice

As time passed, another Cabinet member joined the Deputies Meetings: Vice President Joe Biden.”

As we follow the evidence trail and connect the dots, we find corroborated linkages to bits of information substantiating that President Obama not only could have easily made the decisions, but maybe even directed the operations.

For example, FBI Director Comey told ABC News that he met with the President in August 2016 and offered to publish an op-ed in the New York Times to let everyone know what was going on with Russia, except not the investigation, referring to Crossfire Hurricane operations against the Trump Campaign team.

This implies the Obama team was withholding information, a highly unusual move since a defensive briefing to American targets (in this case Trump) of foreign intelligence services of this nature are normally given the opportunity to defend against these operations as a counterintelligence investigation proceeds, (see the Senator Diane Feinstein Chinese spy incident).

We must stand up to the partisan political elites, government bureaucrats, and political appointees and get to the bottom of the decision process used by President Obama.

As I wrote just weeks ago, “Clearly, the genesis of the Mueller Investigation started with President Barack Obama. He and his team must answer the really hard questions. These include:

Why did the president order the Intelligence Community Assessment NIE?

What was the factual information he used to make the decision?

What were the factors that drove the CIA and FBI High Confidence levels versus the NSA’s Moderate Confidence level? “We assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.”

Why was, and is, his CIA Director John Brennan making extreme accusations, such as treason, about the current president?

Why were so many U.S. citizen unmaskings requested in NSA surveillance during the last year of the Obama administration?

Why did Acting Attorney General Sally Yates lie about Lt. General Mike Flynn being “compromised” while no collusion existed?

What were the roles of President Obama, Yates, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Comey, Rice, Rhodes, Power, McCabe, and Strzok in the decision to move forward on the NIE, release it publicly, and forcefully accuse President Donald J. Trump of being a Russian asset?

Only in answering these questions will we be able to establish the linkage to the things we already know about the FISA applications, the FBI’s corrupt leaders, and the extent of the attempted takedown of a U.S. president. But, answer them we must, and quickly.

As the Mueller report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Mueller proves President Trump was falsely accused and that the extensive power of the intelligence capability of the United States was brought to bear on his campaign team, his family, and his presidency.

The New York Times is now confirming that investigators “spies” were sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign in 2016 and all the players, both media hypers of the Russia Collusion Hoax and the intelligence agency players are trying to spin their stories as if spying on a political campaign of a presidential candidate by a government lead by a President from the opposing party is no big deal.

Well, as Attorney General Bill Barr has indicated, it is a very big deal and the American people deserve an answer how this started and continued into this troubling effort to remove a duly elected President, Donald J. Trump. These latest revelations of the truth make it even more urgent that we correct our intelligence agency processes and procedures, or our Republic is doomed.

Colonel Rob Maness is the owner of Iron Liberty Group LLC and Hosts at OpsLens.com TV. Colonel Maness was on duty in the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 attack. He served on the Joint Staff, commanded the the oldest bomber squadron in the Air Force and the sixth largest installation before retiring from active duty in December 2011.