Bounty Hunters and Resignations.

I’ve been listening to the news off and on all day today and the story about how Putin offered the Taliban money for killing US soldiers is dominating the news. The Supreme Court cases that are also big news are getting buried by it.

The press secretary says Trump knew nothing about it. Or maybe he wasn’t paying attention. The former intelligence analysts turned pundits are getting more and more agitated with every new twist while White House allies are busily kicking sand in everyone’s faces.

So what is the truth? I don’t know except this side story I have picked up that seems to be, let’s say, interesting.

Supposedly, the whole thing started to come to light back in January. Now, January was a busy month for everyone. That’s when Covid started taking off in China and the president was impeached. There were a couple of other things that happened as well.

The national security council’s Russia expert was abruptly escorted off the White House grounds due to “security matters”. His name was Andrew Peek. Here’s the article on his quick resignation and a little bit about his background at the State Department:

While at the State Department, Peek served as a deputy assistant secretary focusing on Iran and Iraq.

Prior to this, he was a US Army intelligence adviser to now-retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who commanded the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan at the time.

Not much was written about Peek’s quick departure at the time. It’s almost like no one wanted to shine a light on it. That should be significant because Peek’s predecessor was Tim Morrison who resigned on October 31, 2019. And what’s special about Morrison is he took over from…

Fiona Hill.

Yes, that Fiona Hill of the thick Northumbrian accent and the no-nonsense just the facts testimony on the Ukraine matter.

So, to recap:

Fiona Hill was the NSC Russia expert until July 2019.

Tim Morrison was NSC Russia expert from July 2019 to October 2019.

Andrew Peek was NSC Russia expert from November 2019 to January 2020.

And Tom Williams was acting NSC Russia expert from January 2020 to June 2020. Yep, he just resigned. No reason given. He just left to return to his job at the Pentagon about a week ago.

In less than a year, the NSC has had four Directors of Europe and Russia. For some reason the last three abruptly resigned. Morrison had a job lined up before he resigned but it was still sudden.

Who knows what’s been going on in Afghanistan. The smoke has yet to clear and more smoke is being generated hourly. What I’m interested in is what is going on with the Russia experts at the NSC. Four of them leaving in less than a year is something you can’t make up, folks. If I were an intrepid reporter into Russian intrigue, I’d want to find out why they’re all leaving. .

I’ll bet it would be very clarifying.