American Commander: Former U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six Commander And Congressman Ryan Zinke Is Writing A Book On His Experiences

Kristina Wong at thehill.com offers a piece on former U.S. Navy SEAL and Congressman Ryan Zinke, who is writing a book on his experiences.

For Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), having the right military rules of engagement on the battlefield has become something of a mantra. 

He often says, "When you go to war, you have to make sure you have the right equipment, the right training and the right rules of engagement to win decisively."

As a Navy SEAL commander of thousands of special operations forces in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, during the worst of the Shiite insurgency, Zinke had to worry about those things all the time. 

Zinke said he saw, as technology moved into the battlefield, the temptation not only to monitor, but to control operations from afar.

"I saw the beginning of it, and how we transitioned from execution checklist to video, to now telemetry, to [unmanned aerial vehicles]," he told The Hill in a recent interview.

"And that's different from what we had previously. Our operations, more or less you reported an execution checklist by radio, but you were never controlled, you're always given a lot of latitude as the ground force commander and today, that's changed," he said.

"Those people that now are giving the authority to engage are political, they're not military," he said.

It's this perspective, as a Navy SEAL who served for 23 years on SEAL Team Six as a gold team commander, task force commander and a ground force commander, that will be captured in a new book coming this summer, titled "American Commander." 

Zinke is co-penning the book with the author of "American Sniper," Chris McEwen, who immortalized the story of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who was commonly known as the U.S. military's most lethal sniper. Zinke met McEwen through Kyle, who Zinke was a mentor to. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/271607-navy-seal-congressman-pens-book-with-american-sniper-author 

Former CIA Spy: Obama Doing ‘Lousy Job’ In Fight Against ISIS

Kristina Wong at thehill.com offers an interview with former CIA offical Henry Crumpton.

Henry “Hank” Crumpton, the former CIA official who led a covert team of operators in Afghanistan after 9/11, believes the Obama administration is doing a “lousy job” in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

“I don’t think they understand the kind of war they need to fight,” Crumpton told The Hill in a recent interview.

“They’re waging the war they want to fight but not the one that will lead to success.” 

“It’s very safe politically; they want to control everything in Washington,” said the 58-year-old former spy who is legendary for masterminding the overthrow of the Taliban in 90 days after 9/11.
Crumpton, who joined the CIA in 1981 and spent nearly a quarter century fighting terrorism, advocates a field-based approach to fighting terrorists, rather than the risk-averse, Washington-centric approach pursued today.

He believes that getting more intelligence agents out in the field and empowering local Iraqi communities is crucial to defeating ISIS.

You can read the rest of the piece:

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/policy-strategy/243694-former-cia-spy-obama-doing-lousy-job-in-fight-against-isis

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with Henry Crumpton via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/11/the-art-of-intelligence-lessons-from.html

Army PFC Bradley Manning Convicted Of Espionage And Theft, Acquited Of Aiding The Enemy Charge - Verdict Signals A Stern Warning Against Leaks

 

Kristina Wong at the Washington Times offers a piece on the conviction of Army PFC Bradley Manning.

A military court Tuesday convicted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning of violating the Espionage Act for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, a verdict that legal analysts say likely will have a chilling effect on others considering revealing government secrets.

While Manning, 25, was acquitted of the most serious charge — aiding the enemy, which carried a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole — he still faces up to 136 years in prison when he is sentenced at Fort George G. Meade, Md. The sentencing hearing, which starts Wednesday, is expected to last most of August.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, did not reveal her reasoning in her ruling, but David Schanzer, a former Justice Department official, said the verdict makes clear that the leakers’ intent does not matter in prosecuting them for revealing state secrets.

“If you receive a security clearance, you don’t get the right to decide when, or when it’s not, OK to leak information. The reasons that you leak are irrelevant,” said Mr. Schanzer, associate professor and director of the Triangle Center of Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. “No individual employee, especially lower-level employees like Bradley Manning, has a really complete picture of what the national security interest is.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/30/bradley-manning-verdict-signals-a-stern-warning-ag/?page=all#pagebreak

Attorney General Holder And FBI Director Mueller Were Mum On Petraeus For Weeks

Shaun Waterman and Kristina Wong at the Washington Times report on Congressional leaders who are asking questions about what the Obama administration knew about former CIA Director Petraeus's prior to the presidential election. 

Congressional leaders are calling on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. (seen above in his official DOJ photo) and FBI  Director Robert S. Mueller III to explain why their agencies kept information about former CIA Director David H. Petraues extramarital affair from the White House, Congress and the U.S. intelligence community as the scandal expanded and ensnared the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan..

Lawmakers also said they intend to call on Mr. Petraeus to testify about the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya as soon as this week.

The Pentagon inspector general Tuesday opened an investigation of Marine Gen. John Allen after the FBI  found “inappropriate” emails among tens of thousands he had sent to a Florida socialite during a cybercrime probe that uncovered Mr. Petraeus affair and forced his resignation last week.

Mr. Holder knew that the FBI investigation had stumbled across evidence of Mr. Petraeus' affair weeks ago “but chose not to disclose it until after the presidential election — yet another example of Mr. Holder's politicized leadership of the Justice Department,” Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, said in a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/13/pentagon-opens-ig-probe-allen-emails/