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Removing Vindman
One of the benefits of being retired is that I have a lot of time to follow world events. One of the drawbacks of being retired is that I have a lot of time to follow world events. I honestly think I may have spent too much time in the last five months watching and reading about the whole Ukraine mess. I think I understand the chronology and have a pretty good understanding of the motivations of the actors involved.
Today, LTC Alexander Vindman got reassigned, his brother removed, and Amb. Sondland fired. Immediately and reflexively, LTC Vindman became a martyr to some on the left. But, as I like to do, I quote Uncle Joe Biden, “Come on, man.” Some call it a purge. But how on earth can President Trump ever rely on Vindman as a member of the National Security Council staff?
Beyond the evident truth that Vindman thinks he is a policymaker, rather than a policy advisor, how can his advice ever be devoid of suspect motives? Imagine some crisis or policy meeting in the situation room and the principals look across the table and see Vindman. Could they ever suspend their doubts about his contributions? I say this even acknowledging that whatever he says there may be appropriate and entirely correct. He went outside his chain of command to report a phone call in which his superiors saw no wrongdoing. He testified about his disagreement with the elected official’s policy. His history can’t be put aside, so he has to go.
I spent almost forty years working in the far less contentious world of television production. If I ever disagreed with a producer about a replay or a visual effect, when there was time the good producers would listen to my objection and take it into account. But the decision was theirs, not mine. If I continued to object or took it further, his job wasn’t in jeopardy, mine was. The thing about live sports production that’s exciting is that you have seconds to do it. The production crew has to mesh to get it right instantly. There’s no time for debate. There’s probably not an employee anywhere that hasn’t sometime felt he knew better than his boss. But a subordinate has to know his position in the chain of command.
I knew where I stood. Apologists for Vindman may not understand how he, rightly or wrongly, could never be trusted again.
Published in General
De boss ain’t always right, but he is always de boss.
Phone communications with foreign leaders are by their nature classified information. (I don’t know the level, but it must be high.) I can’t just share classified information with you even if I know that you have the requisite security clearance. It isn’t up to me to decide whether or not to “read you in.” There are procedures to be followed. Once it has been decided that there is sufficient reason to tell you, it will be recorded that you know too. That way, when Boris and Natasha are busted with the information in their possession, the FBI knows who to sweat.
Vindman’s got a mouth on him. No clearance for him anymore. And I suppose that the National Security Council doesn’t have a lot of gigs for folks who aren’t cleared.
This is the part that doesn’t sit well with me, at least with the information I have. Is there any evidence that Yevgeny has moved to undermine executive policy?
I sure wouldn’t want to get fired because someone didn’t want my sister working for them. It was bad enough for her in school to get punished because certain teachers disliked me.
I call it a purge too, and it’s about dang time. If you pull out the stopper and the sink doesn’t drain, you have to use the plunger . . .
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/vindmans-twin-brother-in-charge-of-nscs-process-reviewing-book-approvals/
Yevgeny was in charge of the NSC Process reviewing Bolton’s book pre-publication.
There is a rumor that Yevgeny was why Bolton’s manuscript ended up with the NYT.
Bolton has said he did not leak his manuscript and that something must have gone wrong in the pre-publication process.
Yevgeny’s removal may be confirmation of this, though I would appreciate a statement from the WH confirming it. I’m sure something will be forthcoming once the Impeachment Mayhem has settled and stock of the situation has been taken.
And twin brothers shouldn’t have been working in the same national security-sensitive work. Too many opportunities for shady actions.
Certainly if these two were on the NSC staff during the Obama Administration they should have been gone long ago. If they came on after the NSC Director was a Trump appointee, this should tell the President how important it is to get the right people close to him.
What does this whole situation tell us about why the previous administration was so determined to get rid of General Flynn before he took over as NSC Director?
I always wondered how any Intelligence agency would have twin brothers working for them. I wouldn’t even have a single twin of two brothers/sisters working. This is not high school, @amyschley. We are talking about an agency that works to secure the safety of 300 million people. I do not care if there are no diversity hires or if there is a lack of concern for the hurt feelings of a single set of twins.
Mr. Vindman was, from what I saw, way too sanctimonious to be trusted. This last three years has dropped the veil from our Federal Government. I do not know how President Trump can have any trust at all in those working around him. From the very beginning, calls he made with the leaders of both Australia and Mexico were leaked in their entirety. Has that ever happened before?
P.S.
Devin Nunes is not in the military. He is an ordinary citizen like the rest of us. And it is perfectly fine to address this character as “Mr.”
Likewise, after all that has transpired, it is strange that any of these people would want to remain in their now former positions.
And 62 year old multi-millionaire Sondland is the only one who was actually fired, the others were reassigned.
I can’t help but feel that it comes down to the same issue of doubt, or put another way, trust. I don’t know if or how he advised his brother or what part he might have played in leaking the phone call to the whistleblower. It’s easy to imagine some contact between the two on the subject. They are twin brothers who worked in the same shop, who reportedly even carpooled to work together and have offices next to each other. Yevgeny is the person responsible for ethics at the NSC. When Trump gave an order not to participate with the then as yet unauthorized House inquiry, I would be interested in knowing any official advice Yevgeny may have given to any party. He did attend his brother’s public testimony (supporting his brother, as he should have).
The NSC serves at the pleasure of and to advise the president on the most sensitive events in the world. Even if you distrust the president, and obviously many do, he has to be able to trust his staff. I would suspect he started planning his move off the NSC as soon as his brother reportedly began talking to Mr. Ciaramella.
This is all that matters.
My view is that, depending on the position, there should automatically be a lot of “firings” when a new administration comes in.
This is the kind of information I was wanting to know about, because that does paint a much different picture. We’re not talking about sacking a brother who’s in a different federal department working on completely unrelated stuff, but someone who logically is involved in the whole debacle. He’s not being sacked because he’s Alexander Vindman’s brother, but because he was down in the muck with him. Perfectly fine with me. And yes, I absolutely agree that there should not be blood relatives working together in the same federal department.
I knew a naturalized US citizen born in Hong Kong who was denied a clearance because his grandparents still lived in Shenzhen (on the mainland).Very close connections either to people who are known security risks or who even might be pressured by an autocratic regime is very bad.
Just noticed the original post had a picture added, title slightly changed, and was lightly reformatted (the middle paragraph split). It’s certainly better. Thanks. But I am curious as a somewhat novice poster how it happens and by whom.
Almost always, those sorts of things are done by an editor when the post is scheduled for promotion to the Main Feed. In this case, @jongabriel. You’ll get a notification when it appears on the Main Feed, and as that is public, you can share the link with others.
The rare exception is when a moderator like myself tries to fix weird formatting caused by writing the post in another program and pasting it in. The most common such problem is when the text box doesn’t recognize a hard return, causing the entire post to appear on the Member Feed. On very rare occasions, we may have to edit a Code of Conduct violation out of an original post.
Thanks. Curiosity sated.
(Added: Curiosity Sated sounds like some bizarro world Bond girl name.)
One of my posts was lightly worked over. Punctuation fixed and a few changes in my phrasing.
Made me look litterut.
According to this story, the Vindmans are creatures of John Bolton. They came to the NSC in 2018. Curioser and curioser.
https:/amgreatness.com/2020/01/30/the-vindman-twins-are-creatures-of-john-bolton/
Here’s a comment I just put on @seawriter‘s post on writing books after failing politics:
Here’s the book I want to see. It is said in some quarters that America under George H.W. Bush, as part of the USSR breakup, induced or coerced the German reunification and in return committed to reduced EU and NATO influence in Eastern European nations bordering Russia. It doesn’t appear as if America has honored that commitment.
‘The truth is that a generation of prominent “liberal” American, born-again Russia-hawks – Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the whole DNC apparatus, and the MSNBC corporate media crowd – wielded State Department, NGO, and economic pressure to help catalyze a pro-Western coup in Ukraine during and after 2014. Their opportunism seemed, to them, simple, and relatively cost-free, at the time, but has turned implacably messy in the ensuing years.
In the process, the Democrats haven’t done themselves any political favors, further sullying what’s left of their reputation by – in some cases – colluding with Ukrainians to undermine key Trump officials; and consorting with nefarious far-right nationalist local bigots (who may have conspired to kill protesters in the Maidan “massacre,” as a means to instigate further Western support for the coup).’
That quotation is from:
Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)
2/06/2020
Beyond Ukraine: America’s Coming (Losing) Battle for Eurasia
I think Ukraine/Russia will certainly be the defining issue of President Trump’s first term and I’m glad he got Bolton and his people out because, in my opinion, they were wrong on policy toward Ukraine and Russia.
It was the same for me working for the Department of Energy. I disagreed with some policies of every President I served under, not just Clinton and Obama. However, I had a job to do and I did it.
Forgive me please for an entirely frivolous digression that has absolutely nothing to do with the original post, but I can’t help but hear the dialogue in my head.
”Moneypenny, who is this woman in the photo?”
”Why, James, that’s Curiosity, Curiosity Sated.”
”She’s . . .” Just then the intercom buzzed and M’s voice interrupted Bond’s thoughts.
And now back to our rather more serious discussion. Sorry.
I have been in leadership positions throughout my life. I have always been accessible to my staff and willing to discuss any gripes or disagreements with policy. What I would not tolerate is someone going behind my back and undermining my authority. Vindman is rightfully removed from his position. No president should have deal with underlings who are not onboard with his policies. The leftovers of the Obama administration should have resigned with the accession of Trump. These people are acting in opposition to the will of the people who elected the president to office, and they have no place in the current government structure.
I was surprised to learn that in our Lutheran synod, it is apparently common that when a church hires a new lead pastor, a lot of the ministry staff gets replaced. This is has not ever been the case in our church, thankfully. Probably because we’re a larger church and a lot more replacements would have to be hired.
I don’t think I agree with that policy anyway. (Neither do those in leadership at our church, thankfully.)
That’s interesting. I’m not sure how I’d research such a thing (a real tell all book would be helpful), but I have always felt in some vague way that we became too hands off after the collapse of teh USSR, that we somehow mishandled the time after that and squandered opportunity to build something good with the new Russia. It’s only ever been vague and I’m likely wrong in some easily provable way, but it’s always been a nagging feeling. Interesting is all.
I think we will eventually see in detail why the theme in the movement against Trump has been Russia all along. It must be related to this commitment of the Democrats to the Obama Administration support of the coup in Ukraine against the pro-Russia regime. Democrats have never been as anti-Russia before as they have become under Trump. There may well be some cash flows returning American tax dollars into the hands of those who were supportive of the Ukraine coup.
The link that @oldphil posted is very interesting. The Vindman twins appear to be wholly the responsibility of John Bolton who was notorious for the scrutiny he gave his appointees concerning their ideological compatibility. I promise I hadn’t read the article before commenting on the LTC’s sanctimonious attitude and the impropriety of hiring twins to serve in such close capacity in a secure division of the government. The article claims exactly that. But the intrigue of the swamp is omnipresent. Bolton also previously had hired a woman named Mira Ricardel as his second at the NSA. She fought with just about everyone, including Generals Mattis and Kelly. Mattis, she claimed, was a Democrat. It was when Ms. Ricardel got into it with Melania’s staff that the Bolton clone went too far. Melania told someone close to get rid of her…and thus the President fired Ricardel. So here we are. Bolton is fired, Ricardel is fired, Mattis is fired, and Kelly is fired. I could go on, but the bottom line is Trump is acquitted and prosperity abounds the land.
Indeed. In many cases they’re more anti-Russia now that the USSR has collapsed and the Cold War is long over. I’m no Russia fan, but there’s no need to gin up a real war. I’m all for clarity and honesty, but I’m also for forbearance and extended hands. Talking softly while carrying a big stick. They are the opposite and it’s dangerous in a material way.
I’d be shocked if that weren’t the case in all aspects of US spending overseas or domestically. It’s the ultimate pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it will never run out because we’ll always print more! That’s definitely how local politics works (at least here in Chicago, but I suspect everywhere).
And the reason it is so sensitive? Perhaps those cash flows are going to members of both Partys.
Well, Curiously Sated might have taken your digression in a tangential direction.