Derek Harvey was the key figure when it came to the Middle East. He was against the Iran Deal and the funding of Palestinian Authority terror. He called out Islamic Jihad. He tried to force out the Obama holdovers running our foreign policy.
And now he's gone.
McMaster's purge at the NSC continues. Flynn's people get forced out and replaced with establishment zombies. The Obama holdovers continue to run foreign policy. The swamp is now in full control of the NSC.
This one is a really big win for McMaster. And a great loss for America. It will set back our ability to fight Islamic terrorism. Iran, Al Qaeda and the Palestinian Authority are celebrating today.
President Trump can reverse his decision. Just as he overruled McMaster's bid to replace Ezra Watnick-Cohen, the guy who outed the Obama spying on Trump's people, with the woman who drafted the Benghazi talking points. Not to mention Mattis' plan to bring in Hillary's Secretary of Defense and the Muslim Broptherhood's favorite woman.
But Mattis and McMaster have forced out Derek Harvey. And it's up to President Trump to act. Or to let the McMaster-Mattis swamp control his foreign policy. And make sure it's Jeb Bush's foreign policy.
Derek Harvey, a top Middle East adviser to President Donald Trump, has been fired from his position at the National Security Council, effective today...
Two sources tell TWS that Harvey’s departure is not a direct result of the internecine staff fighting, but he was viewed by some top Trump aides as too close to Steve Bannon
Harvey has experience as an intelligence officer, as an analyst at military commands, American embassies, and in the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s viewed as an out-of-the-box thinker who has shown a keen knack for identifying threats before they’ve matured.
Here's how Bob Woodward described Harvey in his 2008 book The War Within:
"In the late 1980s, Harvey traveled throughout Iraq by taxicab—500 miles, village to village—interviewing locals, sleeping on mud floors with a shower curtain for a door. He [was] full of questions, intensely curious and entirely nonthreatening. After the 1991 Gulf War, when the CIA was predicting the inevitable fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Harvey, then a major, insisted that Hussein would survive because members of the Sunni community knew their fortunes were tied to his. He was right. Months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Harvey wrote an intelligence paper declaring that al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan posed a strategic threat to the United States."
Harvey hasn't been afraid to call out Islamic terrorism as a threat. And he was the point man for trying to force out the Obama holdovers.
That dispute was followed by a bigger one. Bannon and Trump, according to White House officials, pressed McMaster to fire a list of Obama holdovers at the National Security Council who were suspected of leaking to the press. The list of names was compiled by Derek Harvey, a former Defense Intelligence Agency colonel who was initially hired by Flynn. McMaster balked. He refused to fire anyone on the list and asserted that he had the authority to fire and hire National Security Council staff. He also argued that many of these appointees would be ending their rotation at the White House soon enough.
Instead the holdovers forced him out. McMaster and Mattis and Obama won. Again.
Harvey has been a firm opponent of the Iran Deal. He's not perfect on Islam, but he has emphasized the theological connection to Islamic terrorism. And he tried to halt the funding of Palestinian Authority terrorism.
Haaretz has learned that Harvey – whose appointment was reported Thursday in The Wall Street Journal – was one of the officials who earlier this week instructed the U.S. State Department to issue a statement saying it was reexamining the outgoing administration’s decision to transfer $221 million to the Palestinian Authority during President Barack Obama’s last hours in office.
A government source described Harvey as “the new Rob Malley,” referring to the former Obama administration official who was in charge of Middle East affairs at the outgoing NSC.
But while Malley’s background was mostly academic and diplomatic, Harvey spent most of his adult life either in uniform or working for the intelligence community.Harvey has also published articles and analyses, many of them critical of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
Harvey called to strengthen the U.S. relationship with Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. “Why won’t President Obama talk to Egyptian President Sisi [sic]? Sisi has taken on the threat of violent, intolerant Islamic jihadism at great personal risk. Obama will reconcile with the Castro brothers and Iranian Mullahs but won’t talk to a friend like President Sisi,” Harvey wrote.
"They're ignoring the intelligence — and I think Secretary Kerry, I hate to say it, must be smoking dope," Harvey was quoted as saying on "Newsmax Prime.""He is not paying attention to the intelligence and he does not understand the enemy with his statements."
The left hated Derek Harvey for his views.
Harvey shares Trump’s belief that in order for the United States to prevail in its fight against the self-declared Islamic State, al-Qaida, their various offshoots and a variety of other groups, American officials need to declare that the country is at war with “radical Islamic extremism” or the “radical jihadist agenda” or “militant Islam” — all of which he uses interchangeably. On his blog, which has been shut down since he joined the Trump administration, Harvey argued that Obama’s failure to do so hampered the effort against such groups.
It really is past time to drain the foreign policy swamp.