Wingnut Flynn - Updated

Click here for my earlier post, "Wingnut Flynn."

And click here for an article at The New Yorker, by Dana Priest, entitled "The Disruptive Career of Michael Flynn, Trump’s National-Security Adviser."

Digby at Hullabaloo noted one sentence in the article:

He had technicians secretly install an Internet connection in his Pentagon office, even though it was forbidden.

That's forbidden for a specific and sensible reason: The Internet is a minefield of hackers and miscreants of all types, and security would absolutely be compromised. How does this compare to Hillary's private server (which both Flynn and Trump say justifies sending her to prison)?

Flynn has been described as a brilliant tactician, but seriously flawed. Priest says:

In 2012, Flynn became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in charge of all military attachés and defense-intelligence collection around the world. He ran into serious trouble almost immediately. I’ve spoken with some two dozen former colleagues who were close to Flynn then, members of the D.I.A. and the military, and some who worked with him in civilian roles. They all like Flynn personally. But they described how he lurched from one priority to another and had trouble building a loyal team. “He made a lot of changes,” one close observer of Flynn’s time at the D.I.A. told me. “Not in a strategic way—A to Z—but back and forth.”

Flynn also began to seek the Washington spotlight. But, without loyal junior officers at his side to vet his facts, he found even more trouble. His subordinates started a list of what they called “Flynn facts,” things he would say that weren’t true, like when he asserted that three-quarters of all new cell phones were bought by Africans or, later, that Iran had killed more Americans than Al Qaeda. In private, his staff tried to dissuade him from repeating these lines.

Flynn’s temper also flared. He berated people in front of colleagues. Soon, according to former associates, a parallel power structure developed within the D.I.A. to fence him in, and to keep the nearly seventeen-thousand-person agency working. “He created massive antibodies in the building,” the former colleague said.

Flynn had been on the job just eighteen months when James Clapper told him he had to go. Clapper said that he could stay for another nine months, until his successor was vetted and confirmed, according to two people familiar with their conversation. Flynn was livid.

After he left government, Flynn followed the path of many other retired generals and got on the television and speaking circuit. He wrote a book with Michael Ledeen [!], a controversial neoconservative foreign-policy analyst, about defeating terrorism. Islam is not a religion, Flynn and Ledeen wrote, but a political ideology bent on destroying Judeo-Christian civilization. Flynn began saying that he had been fired because President Obama disagreed with his views on terrorism and wanted to hide the growth of ISIS. I haven’t found anyone yet who heard him say this while he was still in the military. In the past, I’ve asked Flynn directly about this claim; he has told me that he doesn’t have any proof—it’s just something he feels was true. (Flynn did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Click here for Michael Ledeen's Wikipedia entry; it's alarming. Just one paragraph:

Jonah Goldberg, Ledeen's colleague at National Review, coined the term "Ledeen Doctrine" in a 2002 column. This tongue-in-cheek "doctrine" is usually summarized as "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business," which Goldberg remembered Ledeen saying in an early 1990s speech.

More after the jump.




When Germany and France refused to support the U.S. in its invasion of Iraq, Ledeen speculated that it was because they were in cahoots with al-Qaida: See this article by Ledeen in the National Review.

Ledeen's quite a piece of work. Writing of Flynn and Ledeen's book, Digby, in an article at Salon, says:

In the introduction, [Flynn] wrote that radical Islamists “are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel.” The introduction continued, “Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela.”

The general expanded on his definition of the anti-Western alliance: “The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS and countless other terrorist groups.” “Suffice to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists and garden-variety tyrants,” he added.

The technical term for that absurd and paranoid worldview is “nutty as a fruitcake.” And what’s more frightening is that the man Flynn will now be working for can fit his own knowledge of world affairs in a shotglass.

Flynn has trouble controlling his rage:

As Flynn’s public comments became more and more shrill, McChrystal, Mullen, and others called Flynn to urge him to “tone it down,” a person familiar with each attempt told me. But Flynn had found a new boss, Trump, who enlisted him in the fight against the Republican and Democratic Party establishments. Flynn was ready. At the Republican National Convention, Flynn boiled over in front of an audience of millions. He led the crowd in chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!” His former colleagues say they were shocked by what they saw.



The lifelong intelligence officer, who once valued tips gleaned from tribal reporters, has become a ready tweeter of hackneyed conspiracy theories. He reposts the vitriol of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim commentators. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he tweeted in February, linking to a false claim that Islam wants eighty per cent of humanity enslaved or exterminated. “U decide,” he posted one week before the election, along with the headline from a linked story that appeared on a Web site called True Pundit: “NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w/Children, etc. . . . MUST READ!”

How can a reasonable, rational, level-headed person fall for such a vile and disgusting lie?

Flynn has said that Milo Yiannopoulos, a nasty, odious online troll at Breitbart, is "phenomenal," and "one of the most brave people that I've ever met." Really, what's that all about? It's further proof that Flynn flirts with the loathsome alt-right and frequents the darkest, murkiest corners of the Internet.

They say Trump is a savvy businessman who will surround himself with the best people; I don't think he's off to a great start. (And by the way, we've been bombarded by all things Trump for nearly a year and half now; can you name any of the "best people" he has surrounded himself with in his gigantic business enterprise, the Trump Organization? I can think of four: Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Jared.)