ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has not had a very good week.

Tuesday, under the withering and devastating interrogation techniques of comedian Joy Behar, he seemingly admitted that yes, the FBI had a spy monitoring the Trump campaign.

Behar: So I ask you, was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign? Clapper: No, they were not. They were spying on (a term I don’t particularly like) but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage and influence which is what they do.

He also went on to confirm the identity of Stefan Halper as the spy (or confidential informant if you prefer the euphemism that seems to make those who cheer the idea of government agencies spying on political operations more comfortable) a confirmation that none of his former Obama Administration colleagues have been willing to make.

“Unfortunately the identity of this informant is now out in the media, Clapper told the ladies of the view and million of television viewers. Wow. Imagine the kind of stuff he’d reveal under the water-board like inquiries of Jimmy Fallon.

But let’s go beyond the low hanging fruit of Mr. Clapper’s pathetic media skills. What about his competence as the senior intelligence operative in the United States government. Or, for that matter, the effectivenece of Obama’s FBI Director, James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan.

These three gentlemen continue to maintain that the counterintelligence operation against President Trump’s campaign was in actual fact an operation against the Russian government. They further maintain that the reason for the extraordinary operation in the middle of a highly-charged presidential election was to protect the election from Russian meddling.

This is their argument because it is the only one that keeps them from going to jail for violating the civil rights of the people they spied on under the color of law.

If the American people are to believe they used the powers of surveillance afforded to them by congress to protect the integrity of the 2016 presidential election, then by their own admission, they failed. Miserably.

They were never able to make any arrests. They were never able to stop a single hack of an email account. They were unable to prevent any Russian bots or online advertising efforts. They failed, at every turn.

If one is to believe the “Russian collusion” justification for the Comey/Clapper/Brennan assault on our constitution then one must also believe that those three, and the apparatus of government intelligence and law enforcement that they supervised were completely incompetent at their stated goals.

Either way, America should be very concerned about how things were run at the FBI, CIA and Office of the DNI under President Obama.

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