Tag Archive for: Wendy Sherman

Deep State Officials Opposing Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Have Close Ties To Defense Contractors, Censorship Tools

Numerous officials that signed a letter opposing Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence (DNI) are tied to groups targeting “election misinformation,” left-wing organizations, intelligence agencies and defense contractors.

Certain members of Foreign Policy for America, the group behind the letter, are linked to entities from Lockheed Martin to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Nearly 100 national security officials published a letter calling for a “thorough vetting” of Gabbard, and it was addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman criticized Gabbard’s views on the Russia-Ukraine war, former head of U.S. counterintelligence Joel Brenner blasted the nomination as “an insult to our intelligence agencies,” and former Senior CIA officer Melvin Gamble said her nomination “should worry any American who cares about keeping our country safe.”

But these very same people are part of the cohort of intelligence officials President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he wants to remove from power.

“This is a perfect example of why President Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard for this position,” Gabbard’s transition spokeswoman Alexa Henning told the Daily Caller.

“These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence,’ including the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. These intel officials continue to use classification as a partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy without putting the facts out.”

Much of the group’s criticism levied at Gabbard centered around her 2017 meeting with then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Much of that criticism has been absent for Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who also met with Assad in 2007.

Sherman, for her part, previously criticized Trump for attempting to remove U.S. troops from Syria in 2018.

Asaad fled the country and escaped to Russia after the oppositional coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew his regime last week. HTS is considered a terrorist organization by many of the world’s governments, including the United States. The group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, was previously a leader of an al-Qaeda affiliate in the country.

Before she criticized Gabbard for speaking with a foreign dictator, Sherman negotiated with terrorists on behalf of the Obama administration. She was his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and played a key role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. The Obama administration unfroze nearly $2 billion in assets for the Iranian regime in 2016.

Rose Gottemoeller, Joel Brenner, and Brian P. McKeon all served in the Obama administration and slammed Gabbard’s nomination. President Obama launched a CIA program in 2013 aimed at removing Assad, but it was ultimately a failure, and Trump ended the program in 2017.

Gabbard called Assad a “brutal dictator” in an interview with CNN in 2019, and has defended the meeting as a means of preventing America from being involved in foreign entanglements.

“He’s a brutal dictator. Just like Saddam Hussein. Just like Gaddafi in Libya,” Gabbard told CNN.

Some of the officials opposing Gabbard’s nomination are affiliated with organizations focused on combating “disinformation” in elections. Sherman currently serves as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, John Tien, also signed the letter and is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center.

The Belfer Center was involved in the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency’s (CISA) training seminars on election “disinformation,” according to a CISA “Disinformation in 2020” YouTube video. The CISA relied on the Center’s “Defending Digital Democracy Project” (D3P), which is led by former Army intelligence officer Eric Rosenbach, and Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney’s former campaign managers.

The Belfer Center also partnered with The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and The International Republican Institute (IRI) to tackle “misinformation in elections,” both of which are funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to USA Spending.

USAID, which has been accused of being a CIA front, has multiple alumni who signed the letter, including Donald Sampler and Dr. Eric Rudenshiold. Additionally, the Executive Director of Foreign Policy for America, Andrew Albertson, worked in the USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).

Multiple Foreign Policy for America members are also tied to Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which recently held a discussion with never-Trump neoconservative Bill Kristol. In September 2024, it had an event on “free and fair elections” about “threats of foreign interference, disinformation, [and] political violence.”

Former Chief of Staff of the Commission Security and Cooperation in Europe, Alex T. Johnson, signed the letter and was senior policy advisor for Europe and Eurasia at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations until February 2019.

Aside from ties to left-wing organizations combating “disinformation,” some of the members are linked to defense contractors or groups funded by them.

The Woodrow Wilson Center received funding from Lockheed Martin in 2023. Ambassadors Anthony Stephen Harrington and Kenneth S. Yalowitz are both fellows and signed the letter opposing Gabbard’s nomination. John D. Butler, another official listed on the letter, was previously on the board of Lockheed Martin.

Rose Gottemoeller, who stated Gabbard has “serious red flags,” is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for National Peace’s nuclear program. Carnegie received funding from Boeing and Soros’s Open Society Foundations, according to its 2023 report.

Former Ambassador Kenneth S. Yalowitz and former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Annie Pforzheimer, who signed the letter, are both members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is funded by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in addition to Blackrock, various banks, and tech giants like Google, according its list of corporate members.

Another official, former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian P. McKeon, is Senior Director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Classified documents from then-Vice President Joe Biden were discovered at the Penn Biden Center office in 2022.

Last Monday, however, hundreds of veterans endorsed Gabbard’s nomination and lauded her military service.

“As a Member of Congress and as a civilian, Tulsi has been a stalwart advocate for veterans’ health concerning toxic exposures and cancer care as a result of our fellow veterans’ military service. Tulsi’s life exemplifies a rare blend of selflessness, courage, and leadership—qualities desperately needed to reform and strengthen our intelligence community,” their letter reads.

AUTHOR

Eireann Van Natta

Intelligence state reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Biden’s Team of Israel-Haters

Just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, pro-Erdogan Turkish journalist Hakkı Öcal, according to Ahval News, “highlighted a report on the strong presence of Jews in the cabinet of U.S. President Joe Biden.” The report claimed that there was an “over 50 percent Jewish presence in the new U.S. cabinet,” and pointed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, among others. But Öcal was off base: among Biden’s handlers, Jewish and non-Jewish, there are few, if any, staunch friends of Israel. After just a few months in office, it was clear that Joe Biden’s handlers’ administration was shaping up to be the most anti-Israel presidency since the founding of the modern State of Israel.

Robert Malley, Special Envoy to Iran, has become notorious over the years for his support for Iran’s Islamic regime and pronounced distaste for Israel. The Washington Times revealed in February 2021 that back in July 2019, “Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.”

Malley (pictured above left) was a good choice for such an assignment. An Israeli security official noted in February 2008 that Malley “has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.” Obama dropped Malley in May 2008 after it came to light that he had met with representatives of Hamas, but six months later sent him as an envoy to Egypt and Syria.

Meanwhile, Reema Dodin is a deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. According to the Jerusalem Post, “during the Second Intifada, in 2002, Dodin spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with residents of Lodi, California, saying that ‘suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.’” Also, “in 2001, Dodin took part in a demonstration at UC Berkeley calling for the university to divest from Israel….The demonstrators compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.”

In a similar vein, Biden’s handlers appointed Maher Bitar the Senior Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council. In 2006, while a student at Georgetown University, Bitar was a member of the executive board of the viciously pro-jihad, anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine, and was seen dancing in front of a banner that said “Divest from Israel Apartheid.”

The Deputy Secretary of State is Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator of Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. The State Department’s undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights is Uzra Zeya. According to the Jewish News Service, Zeya “worked for the magazine Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and its publishing group, American Educational Trust. The Washington Report has questioned the loyalty American Jews have to the United States; published accusations against the ‘Jewish lobby’; claimed American Jews control the media; and accused the Mossad of perpetrating the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine is Hady Amr. In an unhinged 2002 rant, Amr repeated Palestinian jihad propaganda, declaring: “I have news for every Israeli: a very large proportion of the more than 150 million children and youth in the Arab World now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is Colin Kahl. According to Israel Hayom, “Kahl has quite the anti-Israel record. He thinks the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq was 1981 was a mistake. In 2012, he acted to remove recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the Democratic party’s platform. In 2015, he was among those to formulate the Iran nuclear deal. In 2016, at the end of his term, then-US President Barack Obama tasked him with enlisting support for the anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that determined Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria were a violation of international law.”

Have Biden’s handlers appointed a balancing group of strong supporters of Israel, who will move to prevent this unsavory group (which is larger than just those named here) from disrupting America’s relationship with its strongest, most reliable ally in the West? Is there any brake to the ability of the anti-Israel group in Biden’s administration to force Israel to make potentially life-threatening concessions to the Palestinian jihad force. The answer to both questions is no.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden names lead US negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal to be deputy secretary of state

The multiply-failed establishment is back in the saddle. The Iran nuclear deal was one of the most disastrous agreements ever entered into by any American administration. Get the details in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran.

“Iran deal architect among veterans named for Biden State Department,” AFP, January 16, 2021 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

The lead US negotiator of the Iran nuclear accord and a battle-tested hawk on Russia were named Saturday to top posts in President-elect Joe Biden’s State Department, signaling a return to a more traditional, multilateral approach after Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency.

Wendy Sherman, who brokered the Iran accord under Barack Obama and negotiated a nuclear deal with North Korea under Bill Clinton, was named as deputy secretary of state.

Victoria Nuland, a former career diplomat best known for her robust support for Ukrainian protesters seeking the ouster of a Russian-aligned president, was nominated undersecretary for political affairs — the State Department’s third-ranking post, in charge of day-to-day US diplomacy.

Biden said that the State Department nominees “have secured some of the most defining national security and diplomatic achievements in recent memory.”

“I am confident that they will use their diplomatic experience and skill to restore America’s global and moral leadership. America is back,” Biden said in a statement.

The State Department team will work with secretary of state-designate Antony Blinken, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, on the eve of Biden’s inauguration.

“America at its best still has a greater capacity than any other country on Earth to mobilize others to meet the challenges of our time,” Blinken said.

The optimism comes amid rising doubts about US leadership in Trump’s waning days after his supporters ransacked the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop the ceremonial certification of Biden’s victory.

In a sign of the Biden administration’s priorities, veteran diplomat Uzra Zeya was named undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights — a position that went vacant, except for officials in acting capacity, for Trump’s full four years.

Among the most visible posts, the spokesperson for the State Department will be Ned Price, a CIA veteran who made waves in February 2017 when he said he could not in good conscience serve under Trump.

Price, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, is expected to resume daily televised briefings, a onetime fixture of US diplomacy that came to a halt under Trump….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

US Appeasement of Iran Endangers the entire Persian Gulf

Following the Iconoclast post yesterday on the “Two Faces of Sen. Dianne Feinstein”, there was an exchange of views with Shoshana Bryen, Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Sarah Stern, President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth.  We were discussing a  matter related to the threat that Iran posed  to the US in the Western Hemisphere; the Administration succumbing to de facto Iranian nuclear hegemony in the Persian Gulf. Daniel Pipes in an, NRO-The Corner article, drew attention to  Administration appeasement enabling Iran to strike deals with Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This resulted in  Iran gaining potential control over the strategic Straits of Hormuz, “Has Iran gained a Foothold in the Arabian Peninsula”?

Pipes’ important article appeared while Washington and the world media were focused on the implementation of the Six Powers Joint Plan of Action, portions of which were released by the White House yesterday.  Other salient provisions  of which were sequestered at the request of UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).   He drew attention to the agreements both the UAE and Sultanate of Oman:

According to a sensational report by Awad Mustafa in Defense News, a Gannett publication, not only has Tehran signed an agreement with the UAE  over three disputed islands near the Strait of Hormuz, but it has also reached a possibly even more important accord with the government of Oman. Both of these agreements have vast implications for the oil trade, the world economy, and Iranian influence.

According to an unnamed “high level UAE source,” secretive talks taking place over six months led to a deal on the Greater and Lesser Tunbs finalized on Dec. 24: “For now, two of the three islands are to return to the UAE while the final agreement for Abu Musa is being ironed out. Iran will retain the sea bed rights around the three islands while the UAE will hold sovereignty over the land.”

This is big news, but yet bigger potentially is the source’s stating that “Oman will grant Iran a strategic location on Ras Musandam mountain, which is a very strategic point overlooking the whole gulf region. In return for Ras Musandam, Oman will receive free gas and oil from Iran once a pipeline is constructed within the coming two years.”

Both agreements center on the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil passageway and vulnerability.

  • The UAE deal involves the tiny but strategic islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs near the straits, occupied by Iranian forces since 1971, just as the UAE emerged as an independent country.
  • It’s not clear what granting to the Iranians “a strategic location on Ras Musandam mountain” means but Musandam is the very tip of the Straits of Hormuz and Tehran winning access to any sort of military position there could enhance their ability to block the oil trade as well as make trouble on the peninsula.

Oman’s role in facilitating the UAE-Iran talks, says the source, was approved by Washington: “Oman was given the green light from Iran and the US to reach deals that would decrease the threat levels in the region and offset the Saudi Arabian influence in the future by any means.”

Couple this development with what happened at a US Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing Wednesday involving the Obama emissary who facilitated those back channel conversations with Tehran in Oman, Puneet Tawar.   The Global Affairs blog of The Hill in a post noted how two Republican minority members, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Idaho Senator James Risch stopped Tawar’s confirmation, “Rubio, Risch block Obama nominee over ‘back channel’ talks with Iran”:

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) are holding up a vote on a State Department nominee over his involvement in back channel talks with Iran that have infuriated Republicans, The Hill has learned.

The Republican lawmakers prevented the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from voting Wednesday to confirm White House Iran adviser Puneet Talwar as the new Assistant Secretary of State for political military affairs.

Talwar was one of several U.S. officials who met in secret with Iranian negotiators in Oman in 2012 and 2013 before multilateral talks officially resumed following President Hassan Rouhani’s election in June.

“Sen. Rubio is requesting additional information from Mr. Talwar about his role in the so-called ‘back channel’ outreach to Iran,” a Rubio spokeswoman told The Hill in an email.

[…]

“It focused exclusively on the nuclear issue, so there were no other side discussions underway,” Talwar responded. “And it was merged [with the multi-party talks] after the conversations gained traction.”

In my discussion with Bryen and Stern I drew attention to what an Iranian nuclear hegemon in the Persian Gulf might do to US national interests.  Iran producing a nuclear weapon might threaten US Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain and possibly its strategic base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.  Both of these facilities   protect the free flow of oil to U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, among others.  Bryen pointed out that Japan may choose an energy deal with Russia rather than risk an oil cutoff from the Gulf if the U.S. is no longer the guarantor.  Such a deal would change the nature of American “pivot to Asia” and alliances there.  If Iran produces nuclear weapons, which it may have already, it is likely to play a form of n-dimensional nuclear Three Card Monte.   If the US capitulates, then the Gulf emirates and the Saudis may have to resort to baksheesh to preserve their access to the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz to make mega-revenues in the world energy trades.  The Saudis at least have pipelines to secure Red Sea ports. The Iranian Shia mullahs on the opposite  shore of the Persian Gulf will simply use hidden nuclear suasion to gain revenues from their despised Sunni members in the Muslim Ummah.

In a Wall Street Journal excerpt  from former Secretary Gates’ memoir, Duty, he criticized the political operatives  populating the West Wing National Security Council (NSC). In contrast to other Administrations,  many Obama NSC advisers are people to whom the Administration owed political favors. Among those he cites are  Tom Donilon, former Clinton era chief of staff at the State Department, who like his  NSC deputy, Denis McDonough, the later is Obama’s current Chief of Staff, had limited  national security groundings.  Early Obama Administration NSC chief, former Marine Gen., Jim Jones criticized Donilon for “his lack of overseas experience”,   telling him “You have no credibility with the military”, according to Bob Woodward’s, Obama’s Wars.  McDonough, prior to joining  Senator Obama’s staff  was a foreign affairs aide to former Senate Majority Leader  Tom Daschle and subsequently served in the same capacity with former Interior Secretary and Colorado Senator Ken Salazar.  We wrote about McDonough’s role in meeting  with Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the 2012 Brookings Doha Qatar Center meetings. Wendy Sherman, a colleague of Donilon at State during the Clinton Administration,   did us no favors over the oil/ food for no nukes deal with  North Korea under Kim Jong -Il, the late father of the current ruler, Kim Jong- Un.   All we received from Ms. Sherman’s efforts were nuclear tests;  test  of ICBMs and exchange of technology to assist Iran in its bomb making.  Now as Undersecretary of State, Sherman has brought us the P5+1 agreement.  As to nuclear bomb making support by North Korea just recall, the pictures we have of Iranian and North Korean scientists assisting Syria in building the nuclear bomb factory on the banks of the Euphrates destroyed by Israel in September 2007.  The Administration has failed in the view of many to meet the sense of the Kissinger adage: “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.

The Obama Administration has jeopardized potential strategic control of the oil rich Persian Gulf.  Both the UAE and Oman know that. This could present a threat to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean with its stockpile of nuclear weapons and  cruise missiles and B-52 bombers.  As Bryen commented, “When Munich occurred at least the Chamberlain rationale was that it gave the British and French time to prepare for war against Nazi Germany”.  However, what rationale does the Administration have?

The Persian Gulf allies have witnessed the Administration losing resolve in the region causing them to seek whatever cover they can from the predatory hegemon to avoid becoming what Churchill called, “crocodile food”.   Is Israel next?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.