'He is running a cabal': White House leaker says Steve Bannon runs 'shadow NSC' with no paper trail

[DonViejo]

DAVID EDWARDS
31 JAN 2017 AT 09:28 ET

Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief political strategist, has taken control of domestic and national security police, according to a Trump administration source.

An intelligence official who spoke to Foreign Policy magazine painted a picture of a White House that was in disarray and being run without checks and balances or even a complete paper trail.

Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/he-is-running-a-cabal-white-house-leaker-says-steve-bannon-runs-shadow-nsc-with-no-paper-trail/

[dhol82]

1. Wow! This seems to be escalating exponentially.

[KittyWampus]

2. Bannon needs to be removed.

[hedda_foil]

6. Bannon needs to be carried out with the rest of the trash.

I was going to say that won't happen but on reflection realized that it's possible if not likely. It would require both Ivanka and Jared always being in the room and whispering in Trump's ear that Bannon is trying to steal Donnie's precious power for his own self aggrandizement.

Nobody but Ivanka and Jared working in tandem would have a chance of success, and one of them would be required to forget about taking Friday nights and Saturdays off for the Sabbath because Bannon uses that time to sway Twitler to his ideas.

Would they do it? Unlikely. Would it won email? Also unlikely. But it's possible.

[GliderGuider]

3. This is dire.

The Bannonites are doing it this way because they don't expect to be there long. This is not a Presidential administration of any sort. It's a thinly disguised "Special Ops" project designed to break America.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. At this point, our best hope is that Bannon quickly goes the way of his former employer's namesake.

In all honesty, they do both look like they take equally good care of themselves.





If anything, Bannon actually looks worse off.

[Mika]

5. Now that we are hearing that staffers on the hill helped write the illegal Muslim ban...

... w/o informing their bosses ... it's a coup.

[haele]

7. No "paper trail" includes accessible electronic records.

But there is a trail, just not on "official" government network-linked devices, and probably on everyone's personal phone notes/task apps - which I suspect means all records are probably in some public Cloud that Giuliani has rented, him being such a "Cyber Security expert" and all.

Otherwise, how's any of them going to remember what happening from one day to the next, or able to track the progress of their tactics and strategies? I doubt any of them can keep all the various plans, resources or personnel they're trying to execute, exploit, or influence clear in their brains; they need to have records and analysis available to keep them on target.

Such secrecy may seem to be the most secure for conspirators, but it is still highly exploitable when there isn't really someone capable right there handling things.

The option I'm worried about is if Putin has people running things from Russia, and these White House "NSC" meetings are nothing more than daily marching order briefs from the Kremlin. That's a bit harder for any white hat patriots who are actually interested in preserving the U.S. Constitution to capture and exploit.

Haele