Obama is the Deep State's Achilles Heel -- Lawrence Sellin, PHD

     Another guest writer, who is no stranger to Obiter Dictum is Retired Army Colonel Lawrence Sellin.  Once again, he is right on target when sorting out who, and what is at work in this latest attempt to undermine our current President, and his Administration.

     You can read similar opinions, as well as Colonel Sellin's at
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

By LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD March 5, 2017


Want to drain the swamp? Expose Barack Obama, who he really is and the damage he has done.

Let's start with President Trump's allegation that the Obama Administration wiretapped the Trump Tower in October of 2016.

In summary, here is what we know.

In June 2016, the Obama Administration, using flimsy evidence of Russian connections to the Trump campaign, made an initial request for electronic surveillance of Trump and his associates under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and its approval body the FISA court.

It should be noted that approval requires a very low standard of evidence. Since its inception, the FISA court has permitted 99.7% of requests. The fact that the initial request was denied, means that the basis upon which the request was made must have been extraordinarily weak or excessively broad or both.

According to a Heat Street article, the "FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October [2016], giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons' in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia."

In that regard, Breitbart stated: "No evidence is found - but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services."

On January 12, 2017, the New York Times reported:

"In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections."

"The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws."

"The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data."

In other words, the Obama Administration intentionally increased, by orders of magnitude, the possibility of leaks of classified information about private U.S. citizens gathered under a FISA warrant.

The Obama Administration has an extensive history of using federal agencies to attack political opponents; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups (why is John Koskinen still IRS Commissioner?) and the Department of Justice spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen, to name only two instances.

For Obama, the FISA warrant and the leaks it produced has been a gift that keeps on giving. It perpetuates the false narrative of a substantive Trump-Russian connection. It led to the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It forced Attorney General Jeff Session to recuse himself from the Trump-Russian investigation opening the way for a Special Prosecutor.


President Trump has a window of opportunity to challenge the Deep State, expose the depth of corruption in our political-media culture and pave the way for reform. Continue reading at link:

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obama-is-the-deep-states-achilles-heel?f=must_reads