Rand Paul is not a big fan of John Brennan’s, but then, who is? Paul revealed in 2012, the US intelligence had a double agent. The agent was planted in Yemen allowing us to gain control over a plot there. John Brennan then held a phone call in which he briefed reporters on the mission in Yemen.
One of the reporters, Richard Clarke, went on national television telling the world we had a spy in Yemen. This both endangered the mission and the life of the double agent. That sounds a lot like treason to me, Mr. Brennan.
The Kentucky Senator claimed that Brennan, then Obama’s top White House adviser on counter-terrorism, gave classified information to a group of former Obama advisers turned TV commentators about a Yemen terror plot that Washington had “inside control” of through a double-agent.
After Brennan’s briefing, one of the call’s participants, Richard Clarke, went on ABC and broadcast the government implying that there was a Western spy inside the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomb-making group.
John Brennan’s careless leak to former intelligence officials turned television commentators helped compromise an operation and risk the life of a double agent, and who knows what other objectives it also hindered or outright prevented. This is exactly why former intelligence officials who are now talking heads on television should not continue to have a security clearance.
Reuters reported in 2012: “At stake was an operation that could not have been more sensitive — the successful penetration by Western spies of AQAP, al Qaeda’s most creative and lethal affiliate. As a result of leaks, the undercover operation had to be shut down.”
Loose lips sink ships. Evidently, no one ever told Brennan that. Also remember, this is just what we know. How many other missions did he destroy with his big mouth? All the time and money went into the Yemen mission and Brennan forced intelligence to scrub the mission entirely.