Meet MSNBC's Federal Law Enforcement Handlers
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
12 March 19
MSNBC has a trio of darlings who comment nearly every day on Donald Trump,
his administration, and the disaster that has befallen the American
government with his election. Jeremy Bash, Chuck Rosenberg, and Matthew
Miller are ever so well-informed, so experienced, and so insightful that
they appear on virtually every show the network has, from "Morning Joe" at
the start of the day to "The 11th Hour" at the end of it. But who are these
guys? What are their biases? And why should we respect anything they have to
say?
Jeremy Bash is the former chief of staff to Leon Panetta during the latter's
time as both CIA Director and Defense Secretary. Earlier in his career, he
was a law clerk for Judge Leonie Brinkema in the federal Eastern District of
Virginia. (Brinkema is the judge who sent CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling
and me to prison, who has reserved the Edward Snowden case for herself, and
who is apparently overseeing the case against Julian Assange.)
Before signing on with Panetta, Bash had served as national security advisor
on the 2000 Gore/Lieberman campaign, focusing mostly on the Middle East
peace process, counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and counterproliferation.
He then went to the Washington law firm of O'Melveny & Myers, one of the
most prominent firms in the city, concentrating on congressional
investigations and litigation. It was from that position that he moved on to
the House Intelligence Committee, where he was minority chief counsel and
the top intelligence advisor to Rep. Jane Harman, who later became the
committee's chairman.
Bash was in one of the seniormost positions in the CIA (remember, focusing
on counterterrorism) when Panetta, his boss, decided to illegally give
classified briefings - over a classified mock-up of the Osama bin Laden
house - to the producer, director, and screenwriter of the film Zero Dark
Thirty. That film falsely credited the CIA's torture program with leading to
bin Laden's location. Weeks later, Panetta (again illegally) revealed the
name of the Navy Seal who killed bin Laden during a classified speech where
the same producer, director, and screenwriter were present. Panetta later
apologized. As chief of staff, Bash would have reviewed the speech first and
would have known that there were uncleared attendees. He did nothing to stop
the disclosures.
Chuck Rosenberg also has had a long career in government. He was an
Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing cases
before Leonie Brinkema, where he successfully prosecuted NFL quarterback
Michael Vick and "the 20th hijacker," Zacharias Mousawi. He then became
counsel to the FBI Director, counsel to the Attorney General, and then chief
of staff to the Deputy Attorney General. He also clerked for Judge T.S.
Ellis, who gained notoriety last week when he sentenced former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort to 47 months in prison on multiple charges
of fraud and official corruption. He was named US Attorney for the Eastern
District of Virginia, US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas (all
under George W. Bush), and later chief of staff to FBI Director James Comey.
At the end of the Obama administration, Rosenberg became director of the
Drug Enforcement Administration, but resigned in protest in 2017 when
President Donald Trump told a gathering of DEA agents that they should
"rough up" drug suspects a little. He then went directly to MSNBC.
Matthew Miller is my least favorite of the three. Miller is a former
functionary from the Democratic caucuses in both the House and the Senate.
He headed communications for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign in
Florida and later went to work for Chuck Schumer at the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee. Interestingly, on his personal website,
Miller even claims credit for eight Democrats being elected to the Senate in
2008. A year later, he joined the Obama administration as the Justice
Department spokesman, working directly for Attorney General Eric Holder.
(It was in this capacity that Miller gleefully announced my arrest in
January 2012, calling me a "bad actor" and saying that I was a threat to the
national security. He later echoed Brinkema's self-serving comment at my
sentencing - in which I received a sentence of 30 months - that I deserved
at least a decade in prison, adding "Sometimes the difference between
blowing the whistle on wrongdoing and exposing a legitimate national
security program is in the eye of the beholder. But some things are secret
for a reason, and when government employees violate the law to disclose
information that undermines our national security, there must be
consequences. It may not be popular, but the administration is right to
enforce these laws." Miller has continued to speak out against me - and
other national security whistleblowers, especially Sterling and NSA's Thomas
Drake - on MSNBC and in events at the National Press Club.")
So these are the Washington experts, the swells, who are "educating" us at
MSNBC. They're all deep state actors with a vested interest in maintaining
the same federal status quo that is the root of the problem. The problem
with our government isn't just Donald Trump. The root of the problem is that
we have thousands of federal employees who answer to no one. They are
involved in a revolving door of senior-level federal jobs. They move back
and forth between the halls of power, the major law firms, the K Street
lobbying firms, and the media. And worse, they're almost certainly going to
return to government when Trump is no longer in the White House, where
they'll have even more senior positions. It's a never-ending cycle.
There's still another question: What is MSNBC going to say when their
talking heads are back in power? Will they criticize them? Will they call
them out when they violate our civil rights and civil liberties, which of
course they will do? Or will they give them a pass and welcome them back
into the fold when they finish another round as our federal overseers. I
expect the worst.
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John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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