Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There's No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source

[Amaryllis]

If there was any question about who is largely in charge of national security behind the scenes at the White House, the answer is becoming increasingly clear: Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, a far-right media outlet, and now White House advisor.

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.

The intelligence official, who said he was willing to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt when it took office, is now deeply troubled by how things are being run.

“They ran all of these executive orders outside of the normal construct,” he said, referring to last week’s flurry of draft executive orders on everything from immigration to the return of CIA “black sites.”

After the controversial draft orders were written, the Trump team was very selective in how they routed them through the internal White House review process, the official said.

Lots more:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/steve-bannon-is-making-sure-theres-no-white-house-paper-trail-trump-president/

[bettyellen]

1. Trump does the same thing - no emails of his own, won't ever give up his phone, deletes records and

Now even Tweets.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Ban Bannon

[center][font size = "+2"]Ban Bannon[/font][/center]

[Eyeball_Kid]

3. "uh.. Hey guys... uh... what did we talk about last week. Anybody remember?

Uh... let's see... I think it was... oh, yeah. It was Yemen. We were talking about Yemen last week, right guys? Hey. Anyone take notes?... Oh. I forgot. We don't take notes. Anyone record... no... no recordings... Well... Hey... Anyone got a newspaper with them? Let's look at the headlines. No. Let's turn on Fox. They're saying something about... something. Maybe they have something on Yemen."

[Eyeball_Kid]

4. Just when you thought things couldn't get any darker...

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. here's a guy who thinks a coup is in progress, and has compelling facts

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028569754

[UCmeNdc]

5. Dictatorship

[Hassin Bin Sober]

7. Well, paper trails are what got his pals the Nazis in trouble.

[0rganism]

8. America going dark

he's pulling the switch now

the coming chaos will be used to justify the worst atrocities imaginable

[Bill USA]

9. "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics" - Ornstein (AEI) & Mann (Brookings)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html?utm_term=.a184133bd290

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
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