Former CIA Deputy Director Who Attended Conference at Link University Once Penned Essay Criticizing Trump Handling of Intelligence Community

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Former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Jami Miscik who once attended a CIA-organized conference at Link University once made thinly veiled criticisms of Trump and his administration.

In 2004, the CIA sponsored a conference co-hosted by Link that brought together officials from intelligence and police agencies from nearly 30 countries. The goal of the conference was the rethinking of intelligence-gathering activities in a post-9/11 and a post-Iraq-war-intelligence-debacle world.

Link University from its founding in 1999 until just about a few years ago, seems to have been a well-known gathering place for global intelligence officials.

FBI & CIA agents, Italian ministers and intelligence officers, as well as members of the UK intelligence services, have given talks, or organized conferences or seminars there.

While the information has been public for some time, recent developments shed new light on what can be described as globalist threads that seem to run through elements of the U.S. intelligence community, Link University and factions within the Italian government.

That globalist sentiment seems to have focused its attention on President Trump, and more broadly, emerging populist movements all over the world (including Italy) during the last several years.

It was while associated with Link University that professor Joseph Mifsud planted the seed of the Russia investigation when he told then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.

Miscik, who is now a member of Kissinger Associates, a geopolitical consulting firm founded by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, once penned a lengthy essay for Foreign Affairs (alternate link here) in which she, without explicitly naming him, criticized Trump and his administration.

“The whole point of the National Security Act of 1947, which codified modern governmental arrangements, was to foster a professional national security community inoculated against partisan politics,” Miscik wrote. “This is why public concerns were raised when a political adviser was added to the National Security Council’s Principals Committee.”

Miscik seems to be a referring to onetime White House Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, who was added to the National Security Council’s principals committee in the early days of the Trump adminsitraiton in 2017. The NSA’s principals committee is the group responsible for formulating the national security guidance that is given to the president.

Miscik also criticized Trump’s attitude toward the intelligence community. From the article:

“Mike Pompeo, the director of the CIA; Gina Haspel, the deputy director; and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, are well positioned to lead the [intelligence] community into the future. But the importance of the intelligence community’s relationship with the president himself cannot be overstated. If human sources don’t believe that their intelligence will make a difference, they may not take the extra chance to meet with a case officer. If friendly foreign intelligence services believe that their most sensitive information might be leaked to the public as part of political score-settling, they will hold back and be disinclined to share. Leaders of the intelligence community must be able to walk into the president’s office at any time and be received openly and professionally.”

Donald Trump was assailed by many for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 in the weeks after he was elected.

“The relationship needs to be recalibrated, with policymakers gaining a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the work of intelligence professionals—a mission in which ‘alternative facts’ have no place,” Miscik added, alluding to comments made by then-White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Miscik’s essay was published in the May/June 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs. It was in May 2017 that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Most, if not all of those allegations, would eventually be found to be baseless.

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