Deep State apoplectic over the appointment of John Ratcliffe as DNI — for good reason

The testimony of Robert Mueller signaled the end of Act One of the Russia Hoax story arc. The appointment of Rep. (and former U.S. attorney) John Ratcliffe as the new director of National Intelligence launches Act Two, where the events of the first act begin to be understood in a new light. (Act Three is coming, where the villains are held responsible, but that will have to wait for trials to begin, after indictments are handed down by grand juries in Hartford and Salt Lake City. Remember that the election is still 15 months away.) The miscreants and their friends understand very well what is ahead, and they are acting accordingly. As predictable as the sun rising in the east, we see hysteria, such as this from the Washington Post's David Ignatius, worried that the safety of the Republic (or at least the CIA — pretty much the same thing in the eyes of Deep Staters) itself is in danger. It comes complete with a goofy picture of Ratcliffe, whom Post readers are supposed to regard as a dangerous, demented clown:

Among intelligence professionals, President Trump's nomination of an inexperienced, partisan politician to oversee America's spy agencies prompted deep dismay — but also a stolid reaffirmation of the spymaster's credo: Let's get on with it. This combination of incredulity and stoicism was voiced by a half-dozen current and former officers I spoke with Monday about Trump's choice of Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) to become director of national intelligence. The worry is partly that Ratcliffe lacks any real experience, and perhaps more that he has embraced Trump's "deep state" conspiracy theories about the CIA and FBI. "This makes the workforce wonder, what are we doing here?" said one veteran CIA station chief. But a few moments later he affirmed: "This place is under siege. People say, carry on, protect the mission, avoid the firing range." In other words, trust and protect those intelligence professionals who conspired with their MI6 colleagues, FBI head Comey and counterintelligence agents like Peter Strzok, and the Australian and Italian intel services (among others) to set up surveillance of the Trump campaign and the later appointment of the Mueller/Weissmann team to take down the elected president. It's not for nothing that Ignatius has been called "the mainstream media's apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency" and is a leading recipient of leaks. (A couple of paragraphs after the prose above, Ignatius calls James Clapper "the most successful DNI since the position was created" — which tells you what he considers "success" to be.) Others were even more unhinged. Ralph Peters called him an "unqualified monkey." Colonel Peters had better hope Rep. Ratcliffe doesn't have any African-American ancestry. The other kickoff of Act Two is the declassification of documents by A.G. Barr. Recall that President Trump gave Barr the power to declassify or downgrade the classification of intelligence documents on May 23. Until Mueller's report was issued and testified about, that power has not been publicly manifested. According to former U.S. attorney and highly connected D.C. lawyer Joe diGenova, we shall be seeing the first declassified documents tomorrow, over the objections of FBI head Wray and outgoing DNI Coats. Listen to him say so, with great specificity, on WMAL radio yesterday (hat tip: Sundance): Barr continues to state that federal grand juries under the supervision of U.S. attorneys Huber (Utah) and Durham (Connecticut) are active and will handing down indictments of senior members of the DoJ, FBI, and Intelligence Community. With Ratcliffe as head of the DNI, top-down pressure can be added to discover who did what, what memos and documents were created, and what budgets were established to carry out the Russia Hoax. The Deep State wants these to remain secret, of course, but with Barr's declassification powers and Ratcliffe's access to the files, that is much more difficult than before. I wonder how much longer Gina Haspel will stay in her job at the CIA. If she wants to stay in charge of the agency she has served her entire career, she had better get with the program. After all, Act Three is coming.