Was the FBI Pressured To Give A Top White House Adviser A Security Clearance?

FILE - In this Feb. 16, 2016 file photo Deputy National Security Adviser For Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes speaks in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. An advocacy group recently identified by the White House as part of its “echo chamber” gave National Public Radio $100,000 to help it report on the Iran nuclear program and related issues. It also funded reporters at The Nation and fellow liberal media outlet Mother Jones, and partnered with the Center for Public Integrity. The group’s quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help the Obama administration sell the Iran nuclear deal received attention this month after a candid profile of Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s closest aides. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

Now we are beginning to understand more about the White House’s laissez faire attitude toward Hillary Clinton hillbilly file server and Russian and Chinese hacking efforts. They simply view classified information as a joke.

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A top White House national security adviser and key proponent of the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran is the focus of a congressional inquiry following disclosures the FBI may have denied him top-level security clearances, according to communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser who led the administration’s efforts to mislead Congress about the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, is under scrutiny in the wake of disclosures he was declined interim clearance status by the FBI in 2008, when the administration was moving into the White House.

Since that time, Rhodes has emerged as a key adviser to President Obama and a major player in the administration’s efforts to create a self-described pro-Iran deal “echo chamber” to mislead Congress and Americans about the terms of the Iranian nuclear agreement.

In case you aren’t familiar with the “echo chamber” reference, it refers to Ben Rhodes using a coterie of friendly and malleable reporters to carry out what amounted to a government-funded and -sanctioned, covert propaganda campaign to lie about the nature of the Iran nuclear deal. Rhodes has always been an Iranian lackey and seems to have had several fingers involved in the decision to abstain from a UN vote condemning Israel.

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This is the caption from the very administration friendly Associated Press photo that accompanies this story

In this Feb. 16, 2016 file photo Deputy National Security Adviser For Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes speaks in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. An advocacy group recently identified by the White House as part of its “echo chamber” gave National Public Radio $100,000 to help it report on the Iran nuclear program and related issues. It also funded reporters at The Nation and fellow liberal media outlet Mother Jones, and partnered with the Center for Public Integrity. The group’s quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help the Obama administration sell the Iran nuclear deal received attention this month after a candid profile of Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s closest aides.

During the transition, Rhodes was denied an interim clearance by the FBI. How do we know this? Thanks to John Podesta’s email:

ben-rhodes-clearance

How do you get to be the only one of 187 interim security clearances denied. And yet… and yet somehow he still got a final clearance. Allegedly.

Rhodes, an integral member of the president’s inner circle, currently holds all relevant security clearances related to his leading role in the White House, according to one government official who spoke to the Free Beacon about the matter on background.

Rhodes was granted full security clearance before Obama’s 2008 inauguration, the source disclosed.

The source cast doubt on the integrity of the Podesta emails, which are believed to have been hacked by Russian agents seeking to influence the U.S. election and politics.

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Consider for a moment that of the 20,000+ pages of emails leaked from John Podesta voluntarily giving his password to a hacker, that this single email is the only one that has been doubted. What are the odds? What this actually tells us is that more likely than not Rhodes never received a clearance and was given access to it anyway because he was just too important to be made to play by the rules.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on security clearances but I’ve held them at the Top Secret/Codeword level. I’ve known of people to get an interim clearance and not get a final clearance. I’ve never heard of anyone being denied an interim and actually getting a final clearance.

Representatives Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) wrote in a recent letter to FBI Director James Comey asking “WTF, we mean WT F-ing F?” (Letter) The insinuate that either Rhodes never had a clearance or that the FBI was strongarmed into granting him one he was not entitled to receive.

“For the FBI to evidently find something in Mr. Rhodes’ background that led it to potentially deny him a security clearance only to have Mr. Rhodes work at the highest levels of the Obama administration shakes the entire clearance process to the core. “Mr. Rhodes has working in the White House for the past seven years and is the architect of the Iran deal ‘echo chamber,’ as he recently described himself.”

“We can only hope the FBI was ultimately satisfied with its ability to investigate Mr. Rhodes and felt that it had sufficient freedom to decide whether or not to grant Mr. Rhodes a security clearance.”

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This is a lawless regime composed of men without any sense of honor, integrity, or propriety. They were a clear and present danger to the republic for eight years and I dearly hope there is a harsh accounting awaiting them in the days and weeks to come. The deserve, to the person, to be hounded from public life and imprisoned to the greatest extent possible.

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