Harvard University Bends the Knee to the CIA

Let’s get caught up real quick. On Wednesday, Harvard University announced that Chelsea Manning — who leaked evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq to Wikileaks and was incarcerated for seven years before being pardoned by Barack Obama — had been named a visiting fellow. I disagree with almost everything Obama did as president, but his pardoning of Manning is something I applaud. Then the CIA complained.

The complaint was swift and two-pronged. First, former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote a letter by which he resigned in protest. Then the current CIA director, Michael Pompeo wrote a note of his own, which included support for Morell. Morell’s letter is absolutely incredible if you know some of this guy’s history. I suggest reading the entire thing.

Towards the end of the letter, Morell has the nerve to write:

“I have an obligation to my conscience — and I believe to the country — to stand up against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information.”

Let’s now take a moment to review this man’s well documented conscience.

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Ex-Spook and Top Trump Antagonist Michael Morell is a Very Sleazy Character

Michael Morell first came to my attention in a meaningful way last summer when he wrote an editorial in The New York Times calling Donald Trump “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”  The article was widely seen as an audition for CIA director under the seemingly inevitable Clinton administration. I covered the episode in the post, New York Times Fails to Disclose Op-Ed Writer’s Ties to Hillary Clinton’s ‘Principal Gatekeeper’:

While that opportunistic hit-job certainly caught my attention, I had no idea of the horrifying professional history of the man until today. Apparently he’s had an extremely successful career being promoted for screwing up over and over again.

As The National Interest explains in a must read piece, Who Is Michael Morell?

“No doubt Putin is playing Trump!” Yes, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell is indeed at it again. During the presidential campaign he repeatedly attacked Donald Trump as an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” In the same vein, anonymous CIA officials have supposedly provided evidence of our new president’s nefarious dealings with the Kremlin and its agents.

Didn’t Trump’s own lawyer, Michael Cohen, meet in Prague with a Kremlin agent in August 2016? And isn’t this final proof of the ongoing secret liaisons between the tycoon and the tyrant? ‘​Fraid not. But it is déjà vu. Fifteen years ago, Morell vetted and took to the White House, a preliminary report that 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Samir, Al-Ani at the Iraqi embassy in Prague on April 9, 2001. Both reports have turned out to be bogus.

Why does CIA fiction always seem to revolve around fake Prague meetings?

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