Former Obama CIA Chief Backs Nikki Haley
Michael Morell, a retired CIA chief, mobilized one of the most overt and controversial efforts by intelligence officers to shape a recent presidential election.
In October 2020, former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael J. Morell organized a letter from 51 former spy chiefs that declared the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop to contain “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The authoritative intervention helped temporarily discredit evidence that Hunter introduced his father to his Ukrainian business client, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, which directly contradicted the Biden campaign’s claims that Hunter never lobbied his father. Twitter and Facebook limited users’ ability to share Post’s reporting over concerns that it was the result of a disinformation effort.
Last year, the House Judiciary Committee released a report showing that Morell played a central role in interfacing with the Biden campaign to gather signatures for the intelligence official “disinformation campaign” letter. In closed testimony, Morell confirmed his intention in organizing the letter was to help the Biden campaign. The investigation also showed that Morell had written an email to John Brennan, another former Obama CIA chief, in which he noted that the Hunter Biden letter was designed to “give the [Biden] campaign, particularly during the debate,” a “talking point to push back on [President] Trump on this issue.”
Subsequent reporting confirmed the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop emails.
More recently, a different laptop has been on Morell’s mind. In a February 11 interview on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ program, Morell strongly criticized both President Biden and former President Trump regarding their handling of classified materials. Morell noted precedent for punishing high-level officials, such as when former President Clinton’s second CIA director, John M. Deutch, was permanently stripped of his security clearance for storing classified materials on his home laptop.
Morrell is now backing Nikki Haley.
Federal Election Commission records show that Morell, who served in senior intelligence roles under President Barack Obama and George W. Bush, gave the former South Carolina governor and Ambassador to the United Nations $1,000 in November.
Morell did not respond to a request for comment on the donation. We also asked whether he planned to formally endorse Governor Haley’s campaign through an opinion column, as he did for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August 2016.
Haley, who has called for strikes against Iran’s leadership, as well as escalating U.S. military confrontations with Russia, China, and countries throughout the Middle East, is now a favorite of many D.C. establishment interests. Jon Lerner, one of Haley’s closest campaign strategists, is a member of the Vandenberg Coalition, a neoconservative group founded at the beginning of Biden’s presidency which is attempting to revive support for greater U.S. military engagement overseas. Last October, one of the authors profiled the group and its attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election.
Despite limited voter support, major donor interests continue to support the former U.N. ambassador’s bid.
The FEC records suggest many high-ranking former intelligence and national security officials are backing Haley, who has consolidated support among most Republicans seeking an alternative to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary.
Another interesting former intelligence official backing Haley’s presidential bid is Douglas Feith, who served as under secretary for defense policy for Bush after spending more than a decade lobbying for weapons manufacturers and foreign governments, including that of Turkey. Feith was a driving force in exaggerating evidence that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, the primary narrative used to justify the unprovoked U.S. invasion.
Feith, who is currently listed as a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, donated $3,300 to Haley’s campaign.
Morell’s donation to Haley listed his primary employer as Beacon Global Strategies, an influence firm that helps corporations and various interests navigate government policies. Beyond Beacon’s controversial work supporting the controversial Israeli phone-hacking company NSO Group, several Beacon advisors are affiliated with an intelligence contractor which accidentally revealed its data brokerage and “persona management” agreements last month. Orbis Operations, which sells “situational awareness” training and capabilities to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, has counted at least two Beacon affiliates as members of its board, including Morell as chair and former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers as a director. (Morell did not respond to a request for comment on his current affiliation with Orbis.)
Beacon is led in part by Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff for CIA director Leon Panetta, who played a similar role to Morell in the 2016 presidential campaign. During the height of the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Bash released a letter signed by several national security officials and diplomats that expressed grave concerns that Sanders had “troubling” views that would endanger national security. Perhaps the most influential signatory was Nicholas Burns, who now serves as President Biden’s Ambassador to China.
Many of the same players — including Morell, Vickers, and Panetta — also signed a widely reported letter in September 2021 which claimed that “Recent congressional antitrust proposals that target specific American technology firms would degrade critical R&D priorities [and] allow foreign competitors to displace leaders in the U.S. tech sector”. As was reported by POLITICO, all twelve officials had financial ties to major U.S. tech firms.
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Great reporting Jack! When you see Morrell’s hubris you realize how much power the Director of the CIA wields.
Thank goodness for a well oiled propaganda machine or this would look like a Banana Republic!