Flynn stopped military plan Turkey opposed after being paid as its agent

[riversedge]

Is McFarland still on staff??




http://pics.mcclatchyinteractive.com/news/politics-government/h08vx6/picture151149692/alternates/FREE_1140/AP_17032738349708
Then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his deputy, K.T. McFarland, watch the daily news briefing at the White House on Feb. 1, 2017. Flynn told the briefing that the administration was putting Iran “on notice” after Iran tested a ballistic missile. Carolyn Kaster AP



May 17, 2017 7:27 PM


Flynn stopped military plan Turkey opposed – after being paid as its agent

By Vera Bergengruen


WASHINGTON

One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president.

Flynn didn’t hesitate. According to timelines distributed by members of Congress in the weeks since, Flynn told Rice to hold off, a move that would delay the military operation for months.

If Flynn explained his answer, that’s not recorded, and it’s not known whether he consulted anyone else on the transition team before rendering his verdict. But his position was consistent with the wishes of Turkey, which had long opposed the United States partnering with the Kurdish forces – and which was his undeclared client.

Trump eventually would approve the Raqqa plan, but not until weeks after Flynn had been fired.

Now members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation – from which he had received considerable cash – when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify.

We need to adjust our foreign policy to recognize Turkey as a priority. In this crisis, it is imperative that we remember who our real friends are.

Michael Flynn in an opinion piece for The Hill

But treason or not, Flynn’s rejection of a military operation that had been months in the making raises questions about what other key decisions he might have influenced during the slightly more than three weeks he was Trump’s national security adviser, and the months he was Trump’s primary campaign foreign-policy adviser.

...........

With word that the president may have asked FBI Director James Comey to drop any criminal probe of Flynn – failure to register as a foreign agent is a federal crime – there is renewed focus on getting to the bottom of what Flynn did, and what Trump knew.....................

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article151149702.html#storylink=cpy

[Skittles]

1. but.....her emails!