Asked about his concern about the harm to our national security of the Discord leaks of classified information, President Biden downplayed the consequences.
"I’m not concerned about the leak because — I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence," Biden said to reporters in Ireland.
Biden’s comment minimizing the seriousness of the unprecedented leaks of national security intelligence is an outrageous example of the president’s complete blindness when it comes to any national security threat.
That blindness was on full display when Biden ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, making it impossible for the CIA to collect intelligence from human sources in Afghanistan on possible terrorist threats that likely would include biological weapons attacks on the U.S.
The president followed that with the bogus claim that the U.S. will be just as safe as before the withdrawal because of the Pentagon’s "over-the-horizon" capability.
Unless the CIA is capable of picking up threats by developing human assets on the ground in Afghanistan, all the weapons in the world will not pinpoint suitable targets.
In what has to be the most brainless remark uttered by a U.S. president, Biden justified the decision to withdraw without leaving behind a small contingent of troops as recommended by his military leaders by saying at a White House briefing:
"What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al-Qaeda gone? We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as getting Osama bin Laden. And we did."
The Pentagon immediately contradicted the president, saying al-Qaeda still exists in Afghanistan.
But even that shocking decision followed by an effort to blame former President Trump for his own bad judgment pales in comparison with Biden’s order to the U.S. Secret Service when he was vice president to keep the military aide with the nuclear football at least a mile behind his motorcade when touring in Delaware.
Even with no traffic, it would have been impossible for the military aide with the football to catch up with Biden as he toured Delaware, meaning he would have been unable to launch a counterstrike in the event of a nuclear attack by Russia, China, or North Korea.
If President Barack Obama had been taken out, the U.S. would have been obliterated by a nuclear attack because of Biden's unparalleled irresponsibility and lack of judgment.
As revealed in my book "The First Family Detail," Biden’s order to his Secret Service agents was all about image.
He wanted voters to think of him as a regular Joe who did not have a long motorcade when he visited his home state, which was at least once a week as Biden visits now.
In the same vein, Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was motivated by a desire to glorify himself with a speech declaring that he had ended the war before Sept. 11.
Biden’s effort to downplay the seriousness of the Discord breach dishonestly ignores the fact that the leaks help pinpoint how we have penetrated the leadership, defenses, and intelligence of other countries, especially Russia, drying up those sources for obtaining critical intelligence in the future and putting our human sources in danger, all much more damaging than whether the leaks reveal the latest information, as Biden tried to suggest.
To the extent that the leaks reveal how we have been spying on friendly countries and demonstrate that the U.S. cannot be trusted to maintain the secrecy of intelligence shared with us by those countries, the leaks will discourage and possibly end cooperation by many of our allies in the future.
Not to mention the fact that Biden’s comment downplaying the seriousness of the leaks will undoubtedly help to undermine a future prosecution of the leaker.
At trial, the leaker will be able to cite the fact that the president himself minimized on national TV the seriousness of this extraordinary breach of our national security.
Biden’s effort to downplay the seriousness of the Discord leaks underscores the remark by Robert Gates, former President Obama’s secretary of Defense: Joe Biden has been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
When the chief executive himself does not seem to understand the consequences of one of the most damaging national intelligence breaches in our history, our country is clearly in peril.
Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the author of "The Secrets of the FBI," and "In the President’s Secret Service." Read Ron Kessler's Reports — More Here.