Thursday, October 31, 2019

RealClearInvestigations outs the impeachment whistleblower as a disgruntled millennial


RealClearInvestigations has revealed the name of the young man who filed the whistleblower report that has resulted in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. The man identified by RCI is Eric Ciaramella, a 2004 graduate of a Connecticut prep school and Yale University.
More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.

But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official's status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate" -- as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
Please take a few minutes and read the whole thing. RCI's Paul Sperry has done a very good job of getting the facts and timeline straight. He paints a very ugly partisan landscape.

Apparently, Ciaramella's name has been a very poorly kept secret inside the Beltway. Everyone on both sides of the aisle knows who he is. President Trump knows who he is. They've known for weeks. Why are we learning who he is just now? My opinion is that everyone is waiting for him to man up, own the hill he's willing to die on and take cross examination of his testimony like a man. Christine Blasey Ford did it. Why won't he? In fact...

He's not gonna have a choice, now. He can't retract his complaint and he's subject to subpoena. He will have to answer under oath.

RCI is no right-wing website. It's part of the RealClear family of web properties, headlined by RealClearPolitics. RCP is a highly regarded, middle-of-the-road news aggregator. Its "RCP Average" poll is the most frequently used indication of where public opinion really is on elections, current affairs and matters of controversy. It's where Americans can go to see a clear big picture and get views from all sides--Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, ad infinitum. I write all this to persuade the reader that there is none of the bias in RealClear that pollutes mass media today. This site is right-leaning. I am biased. RealClear is neither.

It should come as no surprise that a generation mocked for impatience and lacking basic common sense would produce a Ciaramella.

Millennials are also pretty bad about not thinking things through. Lacking real life experience, they're often unable to "play the tape forward." Playing a tape at all is as about as familiar to millennials as a telephone with a cord or a manual transmission. Playing the tape forward is a metaphor used by competent adults to contemplate the consequences of one's actions. A good playing forward usually results in a pause.

Ciaramella is a GS-13 CIA Analyst. GS-13's aren't even high enough on the feeding chain to fetch coffee for assistant deputy undersecretaries in DC. They're nobodies. I was a GS-12 who was offered a "promotion" to GS-13 in 2003 if I relocated to the Washington Metro area. I played the tape forward, declined and left federal service in 2006.

Ciaramella. Pronounced char-a-MELL-ah, the word is sure to be immortalized. It will most likely be synonymous with what elder generations used to call a "tattletale."

Ciaramella didn't like the way Donald sang the National Anthem in Kindergarten, so he ran and told the teacher that Donald was un-American. Then he tried to hide behind the teacher's skirt so he wouldn't have to face Donald's classmates as they defended his honor and patriotism.

He's just a little Ciaramella.

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