From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Journalist Glenn Greenwald replied with a story about how U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson changed his tune on a dime about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on American communications without a warrant. The journalist made the caveat that he is not assuming blackmail was responsible for Johnson’s behavior.

Tucker Carlson shared during an interview released Wednesday that a “longtime intel official” told him that intelligence agencies control the “big pornography sites” for blackmail purposes.

Carlson added that he thinks dating websites are controlled as well, presumably referring at least to casual “hook-up” sites like Tinder, where conversations are often explicitly sexual.

“Once you realize that, once you realize that the most embarrassing details of your personal life are known by people who want to control you, then you’re controlled,” Carlson said.

He went on to suggest that this type of blackmail may explain some of the strange, inconsistent behavior of well-known figures, “particularly” members of Congress.

“We all imagine that it’s just donors” influencing their behavior, Carlson said. “I think it’s more than donors. I’ve seen politicians turn down donors before.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald replied with a story about how U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson changed his tune on a dime about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on American communications without a warrant. The journalist made the caveat that he is not assuming blackmail was responsible for Johnson’s behavior.

Greenwald told how he had seen Johnson grill FBI Director Christopher Wray about his agency’s spying and “could just tell that he felt passionately about (this),” prompting Greenwald to invite Johnson on his show, before anyone had any idea he might become Speaker of the House.

“One of the things we spent the most time on was (the need for) FISA reform,” Greenwald told Carlson, noting that the expiration of the current iteration of the FISA law was soon approaching. He added that Johnson was “determined” to help reform FISA and that it was in fact “his big issue,” the very reason he was on Greenwald’s show to begin with.

Johnson said regarding FISA, “We cannot allow this to be renewed; it’s a great threat to American democracy; at the very least, we need massive, fundamental reform” according to Greenwald.

Johnson became House Speaker about two months to three months later, and Greenwald was excited about the FISA reform he thought Johnson would surely help bring about.

“Not only did Mike Johnson say, ‘I’m going to allow the FISA renewal to come to the floor with no reforms.’ He himself said, ‘It is urgent that we renew FISA without reforms. This is a crucial tool for our intelligence agencies,’” Greenwald reounted.

He noted that Johnson was already getting access to classified information while in Congress, wondering at Johnson’s explanation for his behavior at the time, which was that he was made aware of highly classified information that illuminated the importance of renewing FISA and the spying capabilities it grants, as is.

Greenwald doesn’t believe one meeting is enough to change the mind of someone who is as invested in a position as Johnson was on FISA reform.

“I can see someone really dumb being affected by that … he’s a very smart guy. I don’t believe he changed his mind. So the question is, why did he?” Greenwald asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I know that the person that was on my show two months ago no longer exists.”

Theoretically, there are many ways an intelligence agency could coerce a politician or other person of influence into certain behaviors, including personal threats, threats to family, and committing outright acts of aggression against a person.

A former CIA agent has testified during an interview with Candace Owens that his former employer used the latter tactic against him and his family, indirectly through chemicals that made them sick, when he blew the whistle on certain unethical actions the CIA had committed.

“This is why you never hear about CIA whistleblowers. They have a perfected system of career destruction if you talk about anything you see that is criminal or illegal,” former CIA officer Kevin Shipp said.

As a form of coercion, sexual blackmail in particular is nothing new, although porn sites make the possibility much easier. In her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” investigative journalist Whitney Webb discusses not only how the intelligence community uses sexual blackmail through people like Jeffrey Epstein but how it was used by organized crime before U.S. intelligence even existed.

National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Morgan Murphy

As wars tend to do, the battle over Ukraine continues to escalate.

It was reported this week that North Korean soldiers in the conflict total 10,000 thus far and that Russia has rewarded Pyongyang by sending its excellent air defense systems to the Korean Peninsula in exchange.

Last month, the National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, warned that any North Korean troops fighting in the conflict would be, “fair game and fair targets.”

His green light delivered this week when “a high-ranking North Korean military officer [became] a casualty” according to a Wall Street Journal story on Thursday. That strike was allegedly conducted with British Storm Shadow missiles.

Just these recent events further entangle the U.S., U.K., North Korea, South Korea, and China within the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

But the week’s biggest Ukraine news rattled many Americans — the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to strike targets within Russia with the American-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).

“The missiles will speak for themselves,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy boasted.

They sure will. First of all, the U.S. doesn’t have many of the $1.3 million missiles to lob around. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo warned an audience at the Brookings Institute this week that the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine are “now eating into stocks … and to say otherwise would be dishonest.”

I’ve met and been briefed by Admiral Paparo, who is one of the most positive and straight-talking flag officers in our military. If he is publicly ringing the warning bell, U.S. policy leaders should take heed.

Putin did not take the news of the ATACMS well. In response, he announced the use of a hypersonic ballistic missile on Thursday, carefully noting that it didn’t carry a nuclear warhead. The unspoken part: next time, it might.

What’s the goal in Biden’s escalation? It seems the White House is trying to prevent the inevitable or blame Trump for Ukraine’s upcoming defeat.

What they won’t admit is that the metrics of the war are not in Ukraine’s favor, and frankly never have been. No supersonic missile will change the immutable: Russia boasts a population five times Ukraine’s and when it comes to war materiel, Russia is winning. Despite Biden’s attempt to hobble the Russian economy, Putin’s war industry is outproducing the West by three times in the basic munitions needed to prosecute a land battle.

But aren’t Russians dying en mass on the battlefield?

Western leaders keep touting Russia’s high death toll, which estimates now place at 600,000. To military strategists here in the United States, such a human cost is unimaginable. Add up every American combat death going back 160 years through the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, and even the Union combat deaths in the Civil War, and the number does’t reach what Russia has lost in the past 1,000 days.

American and NATO leaders are foolish to underestimate Russian resolve.

Since its initial blundering and poorly-executed invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has recovered from its mistakes, Russian public support for the war remains high, and the Russian economy hasn’t fallen apart. Putin may have lost the virtue-signaling battle of Ukrainian flag lapel pins, but make no mistake: he’s on a path to win the war.

Biden’s deputy Pentagon press secretary, Sabrina Singh, says don’t worry. On Thursday she told reporters the administration was sending as much American weapons and support to Ukraine as it can muster, “in the weeks and months ahead left of this administration. So, that’s what we’re really focused on.”

What did she make of Putin’s nuclear threat?  “I mean, you know, we’ve seen this type of, you know, dangerous, reckless rhetoric before from President Putin,” Singh said.

“I mean, you know?” No, we don’t know. The world hasn’t seen nuclear threats like this since Harry S. Truman demanded Japan surrender.

For anyone worried about the state of our national security, January 20th can’t come quickly enough.