(WMR)—President Obama billed his administration as the “most transparent” in the history of the United States. After six years, the Obama White House has become a micro-managing executive and, according to Washington insiders, is about to become even more secretive.
The team of National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Obama’s chief policy adviser Valerie Jarrett have dictated major defense and national security policy without fully including the input of the Department of Defense. This is due to the fact that Rice and Jarrett have secretly worked closely with the Republican leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives to ensure that major issues, for example, the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), take into account the desires of the hawkish elements of the GOP leadership in Congress. Ironically, it was a Republican, outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who objected to the White House strategy of secretly negotiating Middle East and Ukraine policies with the Republicans in Congress.
After the humiliating drubbing of the Democrats in the mid-term election last month, the White House strategy of dealing privately with the Republicans in Congress is due to be expanded, according to Washington sources. White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough and Jarrett are establishing the same secret negotiating process with the incoming Republican-led Senate leadership and the increased GOP majority in the House to hammer out changes to everything from Obamacare and the Keystone XL pipeline to U.S. trade policy and America’s relationships with Israel and Iran.
The final two years of the Obama White House will be marked by White House secret panels of longtime Democratic Party insiders, including a number of corporate-friendly “Third Way” advocates. They will attempt to shield the Obama White House from pressure from the Democratic Party’s base group of supporters in the labor unions, environmental movement, and other progressive causes, while delivering to the Republican Congress a number of compromises that will be weighted toward GOP interests.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
