Bannon & Kushner overrule McMaster on Flynn's NSA pick

Ezra Cohen-Watnick was brought onto Trump’s transition team and then the NSC by a leading critic of the CIA: retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Trump rejects push to oust NSC aide

Bannon and Kushner prevail on the president to override his national security adviser and keep a Flynn protégé.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and ELIANA JOHNSON

President Donald Trump has overruled a decision by his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, to sideline a key intelligence operative who fell out of favor with some at the Central Intelligence Agency, two sources told POLITICO.

On Friday, McMaster told the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence programs, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, that he would be moved to another position in the organization.

The conversation followed weeks of pressure from career officials at the CIA who had expressed reservations about the 30-year-old intelligence operative and pushed for his ouster.

But Cohen-Watnick appealed McMaster’s decision to two influential allies with whom he had forged a relationship while working on Trump’s transition team — White House advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. They brought the matter to Trump on Sunday, and the president agreed that Cohen-Watnick should remain as the NSC’s intelligence director, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-national-security-mcmaster-overrule-236065


Experience is apparently is a detriment in SCROTUS' intel agencies as well as in State Dept. (I won't even mention Russiagate)