TBT: Barack Obama Was a Paranoid President

Remember? Obama So Paranoid Over White House Leaks He Used Invasive Procedure on Staffers - Conservative Tribune

Former President Barack Obama (Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock)

Apparently, the president being against leaks is now not only unpatriotic but a sign that he’s a paranoiac — at least, so long as Donald Trump is in the White House.

Axios  reported Thursday that because of the leaks — including ones which found their way into a Bob Woodward book and a  New York Times Op-Ed — Trump had become an “increasingly conspiracy-minded president.”

“He would basically be like, ‘We’ve gotta get rid of them. The snakes are everywhere but we’re getting rid of them,'” one source said.

“Trump would often ask staff whom they thought could be trusted. He often asks the people who work for him what they think about their colleagues, which can not only be uncomfortable but confusing to Trump: Rival staffers shoot at each other and Trump is left not knowing who to believe,” Axios reported.

“When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the ‘snakes’ in the White House,” a source said.

“Trump would often ask staff whom they thought could be trusted. He often asks the people who work for him what they think about their colleagues, which can be not only uncomfortable but confusing to Trump: Rival staffers shoot at each other and Trump is left not knowing who to believe,” Axios reported.

“When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the ‘snakes’ in the White House,” a source said.

“One day, after one of those meetings, he said, ‘Everything that just happened is going to leak. I don’t know any of those people in the room.’ … He was very paranoid about this.”

Wow, horrifying. I wonder what would happen if anyone else did this. Say, Barack Obama.

Because of course he did this, and of course the answer was “nothing.”

Yet, the Obama administration prosecuted leakers and gave staffers lie detector tests, as the  Washington Examiner  reminds us. In fact, the whole thing had to be reported by the  Committee to Protect Journalists, whose 2013 report received almost none of the kind of play that Trump’s “paranoia” is getting these days.

“U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press,” the report said. “Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.”

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, longtime chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

The administration called its efforts against leaks the “Insider Threat Program” and implemented plenty of invasive methods to stop it.

“The Insider Threat Program being implemented throughout the Obama administration to stop leaks — first detailed by the McClatchy newspapers’ Washington bureau in late June — has already ‘created internal surveillance, heightened a degree of paranoia in government and made people conscious of contacts with the public, advocates, and the press,’ said a prominent transparency advocate, Steven Aftergood, director of the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington,” the report said.

This included lie detector tests.

“The director of national intelligence, James Clapper , announced on June 25, 2012, his own internal steps to stem leaks,” the report said.

“Employees of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies — including the CIA, NSA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency — would be asked during routine polygraph examinations whether they had disclosed any classified information to anyone. And the new inspector general for the Intelligence Community, with jurisdiction over all its agencies, would investigate leak cases that had not produced prosecutions by the Justice Department to determine what alternative action should be taken.”

A contemporaneous article from USA Today said the report “portrays an administration gripped by strict policies about information flow and paranoid about leaks across all executive branch departments.”

Yet today? Nothing.

But the paranoid one is Donald Trump. Right.

- Cillian Zeal 
link:  POTUS, Barack Obama, was so paranoid

pc: the White House

C T Commentary

Flashback: Obama prosecuted staff leakers, gave lie-detector tests, ‘paranoid’

Obama Administration Prosecuted More Leak Cases Than All Previous Presidencies Combined

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Warning from an Israeli Agent (Golda Meir's bodyguard)

AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ!

Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ' Munich ' was based.. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard - she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in New York City a few weeks ago, he shared information that EVERY American needs to know -- but that our government has not yet shared with us.

He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week... At the time, O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East ) to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant..


Now for his future predictions .
He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months.

Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke -- that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective..

For example:

1) Our airport technology is out dated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.

2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all traveling naked! Every strategy we have is reactionary..

We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates. Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in.
 It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel , security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (I. E., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc...) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as rural America this time ( Wyoming , Montana , etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.

Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.

He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown' - having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.. S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East .. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them..

Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will, inevitably, face.. America still has only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.

So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel 's, Ireland 's and England 's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out...in fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves. But, unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City , this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, to respond to in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel .

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.

How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak? You need to have a plan.

If you believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send to every concerned parent or guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whatever and whomever. Nothing will happen if you choose not to do so, but in the event it does happen, this particular email will haunt you..."I should have sent this to..." and didn't.............................