National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has claimed his third ‘Bannonite’ scalp on the National Security Council – 31 year old Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a relatively low-level CIA-trained Defense Intel Agency (DIA) officer Mike Flynn brought into the White House to head up the NSC – a role typically chosen by the CIA and filled with seasoned career employees.
Cohen-Watnick met Flynn while training at the Defense Clandestine Service, after which he went on to train at the CIA’s “Farm” (AKA Camp Peary). Cohen-Watnick went on to work for the DIA in Afghanistan with a GS-13 rank, after which he returned to DIA headquarters where he worked closely with Flynn.
From the beginning of the Trump presidency, Cohen-Watnick’s meteoric rise from relatively low-level DIA asset to the head of the NSC – a key interface between the White House and intelligence agencies – infuriated senior members within the U.S. Intelligence community. When H.R. McMaster tried to fire Cohen-Watnick in March following the resignation of Mike Flynn, President Trump personally intervened to save his job.
Trump, Bannon, and Kushner reportedly took a strong liking to Cohen-Watnick after a February meeting in the White House situation room, and Cohen-Watnick in turn proved himself a fierce Trump-loyalist, credited with unmasking unmaskers for the President.
His loyalty to the president ran deep. When Trump claimed, without evidence, that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in early March, Cohen-Watnick combed through old intelligence intercepts, seemingly in an attempt to vindicate him. He even leaked some of them to a friendly Republican in Congress, Rep. Devin Nunes. –Vox
Cohen-Watnick’s firing comes on the heels of Gen. John Kelly joining the Trump administration as new Chief of Staff, replacing recently fired Reince Priebus. Kelly’s first order of business was to demand that everyone in the White House, sans Trump, report to him. This doesn’t bode well for Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who has reportedly been in an ongoing war with H.R. McMaster for months.
Cohen-Watnick’s firing comes about a week after Derek Harvey, the NSC’s top Middle East official, was dismissed despite sharing Trump’s hawkish views on Iran. It comes less than a month after Rich Higgins, a member of the NSC’s strategic planning office, was dismissed for writing a memo alleging that “Islamists ally with cultural Marxists because, as far back as the 1980s, they properly assessed that the left has a strong chance of reducing Western civilization to its benefit.” –Vox
Former Breitbart Journalist Jordan Schachtel, who is definitely in the Bannon camp, writes a bitter assessment in Conservative Review:
He has been described as an “Iran hawk” who wanted to revamp counter-Iran efforts in the Middle East, and sought to reform the intelligence community to rein in the “deep state” of unaccountable bureaucrats with rogue agendas.
Cohen-Watnick is the latest Trump loyalist to be fired by Gen. McMaster, whose security council continues to be overwhelmingly staffed with Obama holdovers (almost all of whom have retained their positions).
In the past, McMaster has refused to fire the Obama holdovers. Now-fired Middle East NSC director Derek Harvey compiled a list of Obama holdovers and took that list directly to the president, who requested that McMaster follow through with Harvey’s recommendations. McMaster outright refused.
While the firing of Cohen-Watnick has dealt a blow to camp Bannon and the nationalist platform he rode in on, it’s easy to see why he had to go… If Trump wants anything close to a functional relationship with the CIA, the unqualified 31 year old “Iran Hawk” from the DIA – no matter how loyal – had to go.
It is unclear who will fill Cohen-Watnick’s position, however H.R. McMaster interviewed veteran CIA officer Linda Weissgold to fill the role in March after his first attempt at cleaning house.
The White House issued the following statement:
General McMaster appreciates the good work accomplished in the NSC’s Intelligence directorate under Ezra Cohen’s leadership. He has determined that, at this time, a different set of experiences is best-suited to carrying that work forward. General McMaster is confident that Ezra will make many further significant contributions to national security in another position in the administration.
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