Michigan Police Won’t Be Able to Seize People’s Cars for Suspected Drug Crimes Anymore

Michigan police have been using a tool called civil asset forfeiture to seize hundreds of cars a year over suspected marijuana offenses, even when the owner is not convicted of a crime. But those days will be coming to an end.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed three bills into law Thursday that significantly limit police’s ability to forfeit property without first obtaining a criminal conviction. Michigan will join 11 other states that have passed laws requiring convictions before forfeitures in some or all cases—part of growing bipartisan concerns that civil forfeiture deprives property owners of due process and creates perverse incentives for the police.

“I know that many of our citizen have not been treated fairly or offered the protections they deserve, and that changes today,” Whitmer said at a press conference before signing the bills.

The bills will bar police from seizing property for suspected drug crimes without first obtaining a conviction in cases involving assets under $50,000. They will also strengthen procedural protections for property owners.

“Just a few years ago, Michigan had the worst-rated forfeiture laws in the country, and here we are today, joining the states with the best civil asset forfeiture protections,” says Jarrett Skorup, director of marketing and communications for the pro-market Mackinac Center.

Law enforcement groups claim that asset forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt drug trafficking and organized crime, but civil liberties groups and news investigations have revealed abuses of the practice around the country, often involving everyday citizens carrying petty amounts of cash.

Using public records, Skorup studied Michigan’s use of asset forfeiture and found that police seized thousands of cars in 2017 under the auspices of marijuana enforcement. Of the more than 2,500 vehicles seized, 473 were not accompanied by a criminal conviction; in 438 of those cases, no one was even charged with a crime. In 10 cases, the cars were seized under suspicion of a drug violation even though the records say police didn’t find any drugs.

The majority of those vehicle seizures occurred in Wayne County, which includes Detroit. Wayne County law enforcement has a particularly aggressive practice of surveilling medical marijuana dispensaries, pulling over drivers, and seizing their cars. County prosecutors then typically offer to settle such forfeiture cases and return the owner’s car for a $900 payment.

As Reason has reported, that county’s asset forfeiture program is now the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a woman whose car was seized after Wayne County sheriff’s deputies found $10 worth of marijuana in it. The suit claims the seizure and settlement fee were a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s protections against excessive fines.

Overall, Michigan police used asset forfeiture to seize $13 million in cash and property in 2017—everything ranging from guns to TVs to Playstation 4s to grow lights for marijuana. Bowling balls, jumper cables, power tools, and Beats headphones also made the list.

More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of civil asset forfeiture reform over the past decade. Three states have abolished civil forfeiture altogether. In Hawaii, a bill banning civil forfeiture is currently awaiting the governor’s signature.

Some major cities, like Albuquerque and Philadelphia, have had to curtail their forfeiture programs due to lawsuits like the one against Wayne County.

There are some exceptions to the new Michigan laws. In addition to the $50,000 threshold, property can still be forfeited if it’s unclaimed, the owner cannot be located, or the owner signs away the conviction requirement as part of deal with law enforcement.

Skorup says he worries that defendants may be pressured by law enforcement to sign away their property. Indeed, in 2018 Wyoming banned the use of roadside waivers following the case of Phil Parhamovich. Parhamovich was pulled over by a Wyoming state trooper while on his way to Wisconsin. Parhamovich said the trooper pressured him into signing away $92,000 in cash that was found in his van, money he said he planned to use to buy a recording studio. A judge eventually ordered the money to be returned.

“But overall, this is a monumental reform,” Skorup says of Michigan’s new laws. “These changes, combined with the fact that Michigan passed a ballot proposal legalizing small amounts of marijuana, should prevent most cases of people losing their property without being charged or convicted of any crime.”

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As Crypto Surges, Novogratz Sees Bitcoin Above $20,000 Within 18 Months

Bitcoin is up 10 days in a row, surging above $6300 this morning (as China tensions have escalated)…

And Ethereum has followed the trend, albeit as the smaller cryptos have seen a lot of noise and tended to drift a little lower…

But, as CoinTelegraph reports, Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz said that he expects further gains with bitcoin set to beat its all-time-high price within 18 months. Novogratz made his remarks during an interview with mainstream media CNN published on May 9.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

During the interview, Novogratz also said that he believes that $6,000 is probably a stall point, and the next one will be $10,000. Moreover, he expressed the belief that this time, other cryptocurrencies “aren’t going to go up nearly as quickly.” He explained:

“The other coins, Ethereum being the next biggest, Ripple…they have to prove use case, right?”

Novogratz pointed out that out of the 118 elements present on the periodic table, only “gold has store of value just because.” This is in line with what he said in February, when he argued that bitcoin occupies a unique place in the cryptocurrency landscape, and that it “is going to be digital gold, a place where you have sovereign money.”

Novogratz then stated that there are other elements, such as copper, that we value because we use them. According to Novogratz, just like copper, altcoins need to prove their use case in a similar way, “and that means getting people in their community, getting developers, and programmers, and being worthy of something.”

When asked about how concerned the public should be about breaches such as yesterday’s hackof cryptocurrency exchange Binance, he said that “they should be somewhat concerned.” Still, he pointed out that “even the most aggressive exchanges only keep a certain amount of their coins on what’s called a hot wallet,” and that because of the reserves, no investor has lost his money.

Furthermore, Novogratz said that he expects regulators to take action and added:

“We think all the exchanges should go to a process where they almost self regulate, right? They do what the regulators want beforehand.”

When asked why the prices did not react negatively to the hack, Novogratz expressed the idea that bitcoin is currently in a bull market, stating “in bull markets, markets can digest bad news. We’re in a bull market.”

As Cointelegraph reported earlier today, when debating economist and notorious cryptocurrency critic Nouriel Roubini, Novogratz pointed out bitcoin’s recent recovery and concluded:

“The debate is over, bitcoin won. It is now seen by people all around the world as a legitimate place to [store] their value.”

Some have argued that Bitcoin’s recent gains have not accidentally coincided with an escalation in the US-China trade war (which we recently speculated on) as tariffs create geographic arbitrage, which encourages smuggling and drives money off-grid… and ultimately fuels cryptocurrencies.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VhrGRA Tyler Durden

Chelsea Manning Freed From Federal Detention but May Have to Return Next Week: Reason Roundup

Chelsea Manning was allowed to leave the federal detention center in Virginia. She had been held there since early March in an attempt to compel her testimony to a grand jury about Manning’s 2010 release to Wikileaks of a huge cache of government documents.

“Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center,” Manning’s lawyers said in a Thursday statement. But the whistleblower is still not in the clear:

Unfortunately, even prior to her release, Chelsea was served with another subpoena. This means she is expected to appear before a different grand jury, on Thursday, May 16, 2019, just one week from her release today.

“It is therefore conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court, and be returned to the custody of the Alexandria Detention Center, possibly as soon as next Thursday, May 16.

Chelsea will continue to refuse to answer questions, and will use every available legal defense to prove to District Judge Trenga that she has just cause for her refusal to give testimony.

On March 5, an Eastern District of Virginia judge denied Manning’s initial motion to quash a subpoena compelling her to testify before a grand jury and give testimony. The next day, Manning appeared before the grand jury but refused to answer any questions.

“Yesterday, I appeared before a secret grand jury after being given immunity for my testimony,” she said in a March 7 statement. “All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013. I responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.'”

Manning was found in civil contempt and, on March 8, taken to the Alexandria Detention Center. She was held in “administrative segregation,” which her lawyers describe as “conditions that amount to prolonged solitary confinement.”


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“I Will Not Yield” – In Epic Rant, Jim Jordan Accuses Dems Of Sweeping ‘Spygate’ Coverup

As Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee – led by Chairman Jerry Nadler – voted to hold AG William Barr in contempt on Wednesday, one Republican wasn’t having it.

During a heated diatribe during the vote, Jordan refused to yield and instead accused Democrats of trying to punish Barr for vowing to expose skullduggery by the Democrats and the Deep State during the campaign – particularly as it pertains to the provenance of the Russia collusion probe.

Jordan

When it came his turn to speak, Jordan laid out everything Barr had said about his efforts to investigate exactly how the Russia probe was initiated, and look into suspicions that senior FBI and DoJ officials colluded with the Democrats to create an “insurance policy” to stop Trump. Jordan accused the Democrats of trying to punish Barr for simply following the law, while covering up for the FBI’s malfeasance and politically motivated interference. 

“He’s going to get to the bottom of everything, he’s going to find out how and why this investigation started in the first place. Never mind what he said three and a half weeks ago when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee. He said four very interest things: First he said there was a failure of leadership at the upper echelon of the FBI.”

Out of everything Barr has said during his appearances before Congress over the last month, Jordan focused on one: Barr’s claim that he has found evidence suggesting that “spying did occur,” and that said spying may have been politically motivated – a reference to what has become known as “spygate”.

“Second thing he said…spying did occur. Third, he said, there’s a basis for my concern about the spying that took place. And maybe the most interest thing – two terms he used that frankly I find frightening – he said in his judgment that it looks like there might have been unauthorized surveillance and political surveillance.”

During his speech, Jordan cited a 2017 interview with Senator Chuck Schumer on the Rachel Maddow show where he said “if you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday for getting back at you.”

As far as Jordan can tell, the intelligence community took two concrete steps to try and get back at Trump for all of his deep state rhetoric.

“I don’t know if the FBI went after Trump in six ways, but they sure went after him in two ways. One was the dossier…the FBI used one party’s oppo research to get a warrant from a secret court to spy on another campaign.”

“When they went to the court they didn’t tell the court important things like who paid for it, that Christopher Steele had said he was desperate to stop Trump, and they didn’t tell them that Steele had been fired by the FBI because he was out talking to the press.”

The second was spying on the Trump campaign. To support this, Jordan referenced a New York Times story recounting an example of FBI spying on the Trump campaign.

“Second, just last Thursday, New York Times story, the FBI sent an investigator pretending to be somebody else to talk with George Papadopoulos who was working with the Trump campaign. You know what they call that? It’s called spying. Think about the term he used: Political surveillance.”

Asked to yield his time, Jordan replied “I will not yield.”

Unfortunately, Republicans weren’t able to stop the contempt vote from moving forward, but now that Trump has invoked executive privilege to protect the unredacted Mueller report and any related materials – which Democrats had demanded Barr release to them.

Watch Jordan’s speech below:

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2LAsPEq Tyler Durden

Loonie Spikes After Canada Adds The Most Jobs In Its History

Just two weeks after the Canadian central bank pivoted to a dovish stance, slashing growth and inflation expectations, Canada just added 106,500 jobs in April – the biggest monthly gain in labor since records began almost 50 years ago.

Putting that number in context, the US labor force is 162MM, Canada’s is 20MM, so today’s Canadian employment spike is equivalent of almost 900K jobs created in the US in one month.

For some context, this is a 10 sigma beat of expectations…

This was the largest yearly growth in employment since 2007 as youth unemployment rate falls to lowest on record.

The immediate result – the algos panic-bid the Loonie…

Poloz better get out there asap and jawbone this ridiculous outlier of a jobs print quick! Canada is booming!!

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HeFtos Tyler Durden

Chelsea Manning Freed From Federal Detention but May Have to Return Next Week: Reason Roundup

Chelsea Manning was allowed to leave the federal detention center in Virginia. She had been held there since early March in an attempt to compel her testimony to a grand jury about Manning’s 2010 release to Wikileaks of a huge cache of government documents.

“Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center,” Manning’s lawyers said in a Thursday statement. But the whistleblower is still not in the clear:

Unfortunately, even prior to her release, Chelsea was served with another subpoena. This means she is expected to appear before a different grand jury, on Thursday, May 16, 2019, just one week from her release today.

“It is therefore conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court, and be returned to the custody of the Alexandria Detention Center, possibly as soon as next Thursday, May 16.

Chelsea will continue to refuse to answer questions, and will use every available legal defense to prove to District Judge Trenga that she has just cause for her refusal to give testimony.

On March 5, an Eastern District of Virginia judge denied Manning’s initial motion to quash a subpoena compelling her to testify before a grand jury and give testimony. The next day, Manning appeared before the grand jury but refused to answer any questions.

“Yesterday, I appeared before a secret grand jury after being given immunity for my testimony,” she said in a March 7 statement. “All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013. I responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.'”

Manning was found in civil contempt and, on March 8, taken to the Alexandria Detention Center. She was held in “administrative segregation,” which her lawyers describe as “conditions that amount to prolonged solitary confinement.”


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Luongo: Will Trump’s Vanity Destroy The Global Economy?

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Last year I asked the question Will Trump torch the global economy on the bonfire of his vanity?”

A year later we have the answer. It’s a resounding, “Yes.”

I wrote after Trump pulled out of the JCPOA:

Donald Trump wants regime change in Iran. His cancellation of the JCPOA was a decision born of his myopia. He has surrounded himself with people who reinforce his view and manipulate him via his vanity.

And the price of implementing his current plan will be a global debt crisis which no one will escape. …

He wants to remake America and the world in his image while undoing anything President Obama touched…

We have a leaked (yeah, right) memo explaining this is the plan. Nothing Trump has done since he’s been in office has been contra to this goal; overthrowing the theocracy in Iran…

In fact, it has been a step-wise move in this direction with each decision he’s made.

Today Trump has pushed this plan to its extreme. He’s fomented a trade war with China and threatened sanctions on anyone doing any business will Iran outside its border, now including all strategic metals.

He’s threatened Lebanon with extinction and Iraq as well. His foreign policy mouthpieces are making pronouncements and twisting arms.

And of this for the United States. He’s doing this for the basest of reasons. His ego. And, for him, that means doing everything to support his upcoming “Deal of the Century” between the Palestinian authorities and Israel. That it is the first step towards peace in the Middle East.

But it isn’t.

Israel leaked the terms of the Palestinian surrender yesterday. What was whispered to be a terrible plan is actually laughable if any of this is true.

Like Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Treaty this looks like a document written by one side as terms of surrender in a war whose outcome is very much in doubt.

The Kushner plan looks like every other “offer” Trump has put on the table in the last twelve months. Surrender or die.

  • A tripartite agreement will be signed between Israel, the PLO and Hamas, and a Palestinian state will be established that will be called “New Palestine” and will be established in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with the exception of the settlements. Israel would release Palestinian prisoners gradually over the course of three years under the deal.

  • The settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, would form part of Israel.

  • Jerusalem will not be divided but is to be shared by Israel and the “New Palestine” with Israel maintaining general control.

  • Palestinians living in Jerusalem would be citizens of the Palestinian state but Israel would remain in charge of the municipality and therefore the land. The newly formed Palestinian state would pay taxes to the Israeli municipality in order to be in charge of education in the city for Palestinians.

  • The status quo at the holy sites will remain and Jewish Israelis will not be allowed to buy Palestinian houses and vice versa.

  • Egypt will offer the new Palestinian state land to build an airport, factories and for agriculture which will service the Gaza Strip. Palestinians will not be permitted to live on this land.

  • A highway would be built to connect the Gaza Strip to the West Bank 30 metres above Israel. Funding for the project will mainly come from China, which will pay 50 per cent of the cost, with South Korea, Australia, Canada, the US and EU each paying a ten per cent each.

And for this ridiculous offer Trump is willing to hang the entire global economy and the future of civilization. And I say this with no amount of hyperbole because what’s the walk back from this at the end of Ramadan, when this deal will supposedly see the official light of day?

There is no walking this back. Just like Trump is stuck in his trade talks with China.

Trump backed himself into a corner with China, essentially demanding it give the U.S. ultimate say over its fiscal, monetary and trade policy.

The Chinese aren’t going to agree to that any more than the Palestinians are going to agree to a Palestinian State in name only, administered like a Native American reservation by Israel.

Lebanon is not going to accede to Pompeo’s demands to remove Hezbollah from its government. North Korea isn’t going to give up its nukes so the U.S. will allow it to trade with dollars. Negotiations with Trump are nothing of the sort.

They are terms of surrender.

And Trump, in full re-election mode, is running around telling his MAGApede followers, “China broke the deal.”

There never was any deal. There was a draft agreement China took back to Beijing and altered to suit the demands of any sovereign nation. And Trump threw a temper tantrum which is creating massive uncertainty all across the capital markets.

It’s not just about the Dow Jones, which Trump watches like a hawk. It’s about global currency and bond markets.

Trump refuses to understand that conducting foreign policy isn’t building a freaking casino. You can’t just walk away and negotiate with the guy who owns the lot next door.

And using threats of invasion, military intervention and hybrid warfare to impoverish people is not only insulting and barbaric, it’s counter-productive.

Everyone around the world now knows Trump’s game and are unimpressed. They are all willing to take a hit or two here. Trump keeps upping the ante.

But this exposes cracks in the global financial infrastructure. The most important point of failure is in Turkey, which the U.S. is attacking through the Turkish lira.

President Erdogan’s insistence on defying Trump’s edicts on Syria, Iran and Israel while building pipelines from Russia and buying Russian S-400s has led to a sustained attack on the currency.

But that, in turn, is pressuring Italy, as it has an enormous exposure to Turkey’s corporate debt markets. Things are getting real for Erdogan and the next step is for him to declare force majeureclose the capital account and default on a lot of this debt.

This could easily precipitate a sovereign debt crisis across Europe, as Rickards points out in the link above, comparable to 1997 in Thailand or 1999 in Russia.

But I think this one will be far worse since the global economy is so much more fragile today than then after a decade of insane monetary policy. The ECB and Bank of Japan have completely destroyed their sovereign bond markets. The Fed is now floating similar ideas of rate targeting the yield curve, which is just QE by another name.

And Trump’s advisory team is only focused on the geopolitics of the situation because Turkey cannot be lost to the Russia/China/Iran axis forming in Asia. They see the economic strangulation of Turkey, Iran and Venezuela as geopolitical tactics for regime change.

Do you think they see the bigger picture? Do you think they see the potential for global collapse or just a few people ‘getting their hair mussed?’

George C. Scott, Donald Trump or John Bolton?

We have to realize that speech is closer to truth than comedy.

If Bolton’s team do realize they are fomenting a monetary crisis on purpose then that should truly scare you.

Erdogan survived a coup against him fomented in a similar way to the one that just failed in Venezuela. He no longer trusts us or wants to be in an alliance with us. That will cost him and the Turkish people, given this situation.

Turkey is being prepared for the same balkanization that Syria and Libya have undergone.

The same thing goes for China and Russia and Iran. The trade war is a means by which to attack China’s fragile banking system, but that’s hard to do behind a closed capital account.

Fighting an economic war on all fronts eventually leads to an unstable global economy. It leads to people changing their trading habits and a meltdown of a world sustained only through egregious amounts of debt.

And it seems at this point Trump is willing to flirt with burning down the rest of the world to leave the U.S. in a somewhat better state than the rest after it’s all over.

It comes back to Trump’s ego and his obsession with solving the Gordian knots of geopolitics. People like John Bolton tell him how to achieve those goals through the most obnoxious means possible and Trump goes along with it because they are both bullies.

He wants the medal for peace in the Middle East, and Jared Kushner’s plan is the only path he has now. He’s pot-committed to it. The deal is stillborn given the terms of surrender on offer, however.

All of these people — the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Turkey, China, Iran and Russia — would rather eat dirt at this point then give Trump anything at all.

He complains that Iran won’t call him. Why should they? So he can insult them? The gross sense of entitlement in his demeanor precludes any negotiations.

If this deal wasn’t DOA it would have been presented by now. But the screws had to be tightened all the way, way beyond what is remotely reasonable. Because that’s all Trump knows. Double Down. Tweet more. Be a jackass.

What happens when this is rejected?

What happens when China shifts more of its oil purchases to Iran flaunting U.S. sanctions?

Will the U.S. seize Chinese company bank accounts?

What happens when Russia and the Syrian Arab Army wipe out the last of the U.S.’s proxies in Idlib and Hama while Turkey stands by and lets it happen?

Remember back in 2017 when Trump was threatening fire and brimstone on North Korea to get them to the bargaining table? Xi and Putin went along with it trying to help him get the wins he needed to solidify his power in D.C.

Trump snookered them, hired Bolton and Pompeo and the rest has been a clown show ever since.

Now he has no real relationship with any of them now. No one will deal with him seriously. And it’s not about the election next year. It’s about Trump and his unwillingness to actually make deals. So, we’re stuck with threatening the world with more beatings until morale improves.

These next few weeks are going to tell us whether China is ready to finally put chips on the table and call Trump’s bluff.

He’s pushed this gambit as far as he can go. Bolton likely assured him Iran and China would be ready to fold by now. He’s running out of time to have something, anything to campaign on in 2020 because he’s pushed the world to the brink of ruin to satisfy his immense ego.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2vYYapL Tyler Durden

Pompeo To Meet With Putin, Lavrov During Russia Visit

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a trip to Russia next week, according to the US State Department. 

They are set to discuss the “the full range of bilateral and multilateral challenges” while meeting in the southern city of Sochi on May 14. 

This will be the second Lavrov-Pompeo meeting this month – the first being May 6 talks in Finland which lasted an hour and paved the way for next week’s sit-down, according to Russia’s top diplomat. 

On May 3, President Trump and Putin had a 90-minute telephone conversation during which Trump says they discussed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. 

“We discussed, he sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse, but he knew that, because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever, so pretty much that’s what it was,” said Trump after the call. 

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Transitory? Consumer Prices Accelerate In April But Goods Costs Deflate

After producer prices rebounded in April, US consumer prices were expected to follow suit but while they did rise 2.0% YoY (slightly hotter than the 1.9% YoY gain in March), CPI was below expectations of a 2.1% rise.

This left both CPI and PPI annual gains at 2.0%…

Under the hood:

The report showed used-car prices slumped for a third month, dropping 1.3%, the most since September, while new vehicle prices rose 0.1%, less than the prior month.

Shelter costs, which make up about a third of total CPI, continued to underpin inflation. The index climbed 0.4% for a second-straight month, with owner’s-equivalent rent rising 0.3%. On a year over year basis, shelter costs rose 3.8%, the highest since Sept 2017.

Overall, Consumer Goods prices are now deflating, down 0.2% YoY as Services prices upticked to +2.8% YoY…

 

Fed Chair Powell has suggested the too-low inflation will prove temporary as it is driven by “transitory” factors, and today’s pick up in Core CPI (which rose a hotter than expected 2.1% YoY) may remove some of The Fed’s patience.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VjXDsI Tyler Durden

Bolton Held “Extremely Rare” Iran Meeting At CIA Headquarters

NBC has revealed that national security adviser John Bolton convened what was described as a “highly unusual” meeting at CIA headquarters last week to discuss Iran among top intelligence, diplomatic and military advisers.

The outside-the-norm nature of the meeting hearkens back to the Bush-Cheney White House’s direct intervention over Iraq intelligence in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, which involved the VP and his staff making multiple personal visits to CIA headquarters and Pentagon to pressure the intel analysts into conforming to a preferred “narrative”.

Such meetings, NBC noted, are typically held in the White House Situation Room, especially given the involvement of State Dept. and military leaders. “The six current officials, as well as multiple former officials, said it is extremely rare for senior White House officials or Cabinet members to attend a meeting at CIA headquarters,” the report said. 

“The meeting was held at 7 a.m. on Monday, April 29, and included CIA Director Gina Haspel, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, five of the officials said,” reported NBC.

The officials interviewed expressly denied the meeting was about the recent intelligence touted by Bolton as precipitating the carrier strike group deployment to the Persian Gulf region under CENTCOM, and did not provide details. 

CIA Director Gina Haspel, via the WSJ

The intelligence officials further said there could be two likely factors at play. Such rare meetings at CIA headquarters could involve briefings on “highly sensitive covert actions” or another scenario could involve deep disagreement at the highest levels over what the intelligence actually shows. 

As part of its report NBC identified “a seasoned intelligence officer, Mike D’Andrea” as overseeing the CIA’s Iran operations, who previously helped lead the hunt for bin Laden and al-Qaeda operatives.  

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JsBaao Tyler Durden