A newly issued Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) report on Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security advisor, supports a former National Security Council (NSC) staff member’s contention that a multi-front attack is being waged against President Trump by globalist, leftist and Islamist forces, including at the highest levels of the bureaucracy.
In fact, the ZOA report suggests the attack is coming in part from McMaster himself.
Earlier this year, Rich Higgins, then-director for strategic planning at the NSC, penned a brilliant memo describing the all-out assault against President Trump and his national security agenda, and making recommendations for countering and defeating it.
Higgins, a former Defense Department official in both the Combatting Terrorism and Technical Support Office and Irregular Warfare Section and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, argued in the memo that narratives pushed by globalists, the Left and Islamists are “entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies.”
The entrenched upper levels of McMaster’s National Security Council (NSC) bureaucracies were not amused.
Higgins was dragged into the White House counsel’s office to discuss the memo. On July 21, 2017, he was fired by McMaster’s deputy.
According to one report on the incident, “Higgins’s bosses at the NSC were not pleased with the memo, sources say, the creation of which was not part of Higgins’s job.”
How would these sources explain why a strategic plan to counter forces working against the President’s national security agenda is not part of the job of a President’s National Security Council director of strategic planning?
Answer: Perhaps because the sources are among the forces working against the President’s national security agenda.
Specifically, a former NSC senior official told The Daily Caller:
Everything the president wants to do, McMaster opposes. Trump wants to get us out of Afghanistan—McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to get us out of Syria—McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to deal with the China issue—McMaster doesn’t. Trump wants to deal with the Islam issue—McMaster doesn’t. You know, across the board, we want to get rid of the Iran deal—McMaster doesn’t. It is incredible to watch it happening right in front of your face. Absolutely stunning.
Which brings us to the ZOA report, which found Gen. McMaster appointed “officials who are holdovers from the Obama administration, who favor the Iran nuclear deal and are hostile to Israel—officials who are diametrically opposed to President Trump’s policies.”
Specifically, the report singles out Kris Bauman, “protégé of hostile-to-Israel, Iran-deal negotiator John Kerry,” who it says supports among other things “‘engaging’ genocidal terrorist organization Hamas.”
Likewise, the report names Dina Habib-Powell, “someone without any background in national security” who according to Politico “has strong relationships with senior Democrats including outgoing Obama White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett” and who “has been called Huma Abedin’s ’Republican doppelganger.’”
Finally, the report flags Linda Weissgold, whom McMaster tried to hire but whom President Trump personally overruled, and who “authored the Obama administration’s infamous Benghazi “talking points”—which falsely blamed a video for triggering the Benghazi attacks, instead of blaming radical Islamist terrorist groups responsible for them.”
More generally, the report quotes Caroline Glick’s charge that McMaster “allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. [McMaster] has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes’ and Valerie Jarrett’s people in place.”
ZOA also documents the staff members including Higgins whom McMaster has purged from NSC, all of whom “are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds.” According to one news report:
The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama’s landmark Iran deal, the controversial détente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord.
The list of those purged includes:
- Steve Bannon himself, arguably the staff member most closely aligned with President Trump’s campaign promises, whom McMaster managed to remove from NSC’s Principals Committee;
- K.T. McFarland, “a staunch Iran deal opponent, opponent of the Islamist global jihad against western civilization;”
- Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who “exposed the Obama administration’s eavesdropping on Trump officials;”
- Adam Lovinger, “a pro-Trump national security strategist on loan from the Pentagon;”
- Derek Harvey, who reportedly crafted a plan for exiting the Iran Deal; and of course,
- Higgins.
The report goes on to note that McMaster is expected to fire more “senior Trump allies” going forward; another news item suggests there are “a list of at least four other senior NSC officials McMaster intends to target.” The common thread: “‘They’re taking out people who were chosen to best implement the president’s policy that he articulated during the campaign.’”
Predictably given these personnel choices, the report found that Gen. McMaster’s own “ideology is antagonistic to the President’s policies.”
For instance, the report says, McMaster not only “aggressively urged maintaining” the Iran Deal that President Trump pledged to “rip up” and called “the worst deal ever negotiated,” but pushed for its recertification, and even “refuses to publish the side deals Obama signed with the Iranians and then hid from the public.”
Likewise, the report finds, McMaster refuses to call out radical Islamic terrorism, one of President Trump’s key talking points in his campaign. Indeed, according to respected foreign policy expert Michael Ladeen:
McMaster has instructed his staff to avoid using the phrase ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ and tried to remove it from the president’s recent speech in Warsaw, Poland (Trump put it back in). According to a recent rumor, the NSC declined to schedule a talk on radical Islamic terrorism by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the country’s most respected authorities, reportedly because one of McMaster’s appointees, Mustafa Javed Ali, accused [the former Muslim] of ‘Islamophobia.”
McMaster claims that jihadis are “not religious people” but instead seek to “cloak their criminal behavior under some false idea of a religious war.” Not only is that a 180-degree turn from President Trump’s stance that the problem is “radical Islamic terrorism,” it sounds remarkably like Barack Obama’s claim that “there’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do.” Not coincidentally, it also sounds remarkably like Hillary Clinton’s claim that “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing to do whatsoever with terrorism.”
The report points out that McMaster served as a Consulting Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which is partially financed by iconic globalist leftist George Soros, the nation of Bahrain, which has provided one quarter ($32.5 million) of IISS’ budget over the years, and “multinational corporate firms doing billions of dollars of business in Iran.”
Moreover, according to a piece cited by ZOA, McMaster “expressed great reluctance to work with Israel on counterterror efforts, as he shut down a joint U.S.-Israel project to counter the terrorist group Hezbollah’s efforts to expand Iran’s worldwide influence.”
McMaster likewise was of the view that Israel’s “reasonable security measures” taken after jihadi Temple Mount violence were “just another excuse by the Israelis to repress the Arabs,” a senior defense official told Conservative Review.
Finally, ZOA underscores that McMaster signed an official letter granting Obama national security advisor Susan Rice “unfettered, continuing access to classified information and that waived her ‘need-to-know’ requirement”—which was after it had been revealed that Rice had made dozens of requests to unmask Trump team members in intelligence documents.
Thus according to ZOA, McMaster and his team oppose President Trump on Iran, Israel, China, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, the Paris Climate Accord, ‘Islamophobia,’ Hezbollah, the Temple Mount, Obama eavesdropping, unmasking, leaks and calling out radical Islamic terrorism.
Instead of President Trump’s America First approach to these problems, team McMaster is pushing globalist, leftist, and even Islamist narratives.
Based on his personnel choices, his statements, and his actions, McMaster is walking proof that Higgins was right: Those narratives are “entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies.”
Want to drain the Swamp, Mr. President?
Start with McMaster.
Christopher C. Hull, Ph.D., the author of Grassroots Rules (Stanford University Press, 2007), a book about presidential politics, is a former chief of staff to a Republican Member of Congress whose clients have included two major national security think tanks.