Monday, March 21, 2016

Trump Identifies Former Blackwater Executive as Part of His National Security Advisory Team

Donald Trump revealed part of his foreign policy advisory team today at a meeting with the Washington Post editorial board.

According to WaPo, Trump began the hour-long meeting by pulling out a list of some of his foreign policy advisers:
“Walid Phares, who you probably know. Ph.D., adviser to the House of Representatives. He’s a counter-terrorism expert," Trump said. "Carter Page, Ph.D. George Papadopoulos. He’s an oil and energy consultant. Excellent guy. The honorable Joe Schmitz, [was] inspector general at the Department of Defense. General Keith Kellogg. And I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do. But that’s pretty representative group.”

Trump said he plans to share more names in the coming days.
Phares was appointed as foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Page previously was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations where he focused on the Caspian Sea region and the economic development in former Soviet states.

Papadopoulos directs the London Center of International Law Practice’s center on international energy law and security.

Kellogg, a former Army lieutenant general, is an executive vice president at Virginia-based CACI International, a Virginia-based intelligence and information technology consulting firm was chief operating officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq.

Schmitz served as inspector general at the Department of Defense during the early years of George W. Bush's administration and has worked for Blackwater Worldwide.

WaPo described Trump's positions as "unabashedly non-interventionist."

  -RW

(ht Jay Stephenson)

1 comment:

  1. Devil's advocate- there is no guarantee all of them are full on warmongering, especially after the disasters of W. Who knows.

    ReplyDelete