March 30, 2018

USA: Netflix Announced On Wednesday They Have Appointed Susan Rice, Former Obama Official, To Board Of Directors. What The Hell?!? 😦



FOX Business
written by Matthew Kazin
Wednesday March 28, 2018

Netflix has appointed Susan Rice, a former U.S. national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, to its board of directors, the company announced Wednesday.

"We are delighted to welcome Ambassador Rice to the Netflix board," Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings, said in a statement. "For decades, she has tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight and we look forward to benefiting from her experience and wisdom."

The former ambassador’s most recent government role was under former President Barack Obama, where she provided him with the daily national security briefing, and directed the staff of the National Security Council from 2013-2017. Prior to that, she was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from 2009-2013.

"I am thrilled to be joining the board of directors of Netflix, a cutting-edge company whose leadership, high-quality productions, and unique culture I deeply admire," Rice said in a statement.

Netflix has been attracting many high-profile names to its catalog, which could soon include Obama himself. The former president is reportedly in “advanced negotiations” with the streaming entertainment service where he and his wife, Michelle, would be paid to produce a series of shows, according to The New York Times.

Obama does not intend to use the platform – which boasts more than 117 million members in nearly 200 countries – to directly respond to President Donald Trump or other conservatives, a source familiar with the matter told the Times.

“President and Mrs. Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire,” Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to the former president, told the Times. “Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”


The Washington Times
written by Dan Boylan and Guy Taylor
Thursday June 22, 2017

House intelligence committee sources say career officials at the National Security Council are slow-walking the delivery of subpoenaed records on former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice’s handling of classified information and the “unmasking” of Trump campaign workers — material from the Russian hacking probe that middle-level NSC managers claim was transferred to President Obama’s library and could “remain closed to the public for five years.”

One source, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, called the transfer curious and appeared to reflect an effort by former administration officials to obscure evidence on whether Ms. Rice and other top officials in the Obama White House illegally tried to identify which Trump campaign and transition aides had been caught up in the U.S. intelligence intercepts of Russian interference in the presidential race.

The two high-level intelligence committee sources told The Washington Times that they are confident the panel’s investigators, despite the delays, will eventually get their hands on the records shipped to a heavily secure archive for Mr. Obama’s yet-to-be-built presidential library.

A spokesman at the National Security Council would not directly address questions on the Rice case, saying only that the council’s staff is “still in the process of reviewing record requests” to ensure that any “executive privilege concerns” are taken into account.

The spokesman, Michael N. Anton, said the intelligence committee subpoenas were not submitted directly to the NSC, but to other agencies within the U.S. intelligence community. He did not respond to a request for specifics on which agencies.

The Barack Obama Presidential Library in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, declined to comment Thursday on the handling of Ms. Rice’s documents.

Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been an outspoken proponent of the panel’s focus on the unmasking allegations. He also declined to comment.

Tom Fitton, president of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, said the sealing of unmasking records was an example of how U.S. intelligence agencies are stonewalling.

It was first revealed in a recent Freedom of Information Act exchange between Judicial Watch and the NCS that the records had been moved to the Obama library’s secure archive.

“Having to subpoena this information indicates the insanity of the situation when the nation’s top intelligence agencies are withholding information — basic information — that could bring to an end the controversy raging across this country,” Mr. Fitton said in an interview Thursday.

He said he is considering other legal options to obtain the records.

“We are having to sue to get basic information,” he said. “It is a shell game of documents being shifted over to the library. These documents are the smoking gun that investigators are looking for, and everyone knows it.”

Mr. Fitton said President Trump “could get the [Rice] records himself.”

“They are restricted access,” he said. “But there are ways that he could get them because they are executive branch records and he can get him.”

In March, Ms. Rice admitted to requesting the unmasking of the names of some Americans redacted in raw intelligence reports on the U.S. surveillance intercepts, but argued that the requests were well within her job duties as national security adviser and were in no way driven by political motivations to know which figures from the Trump campaign were being discussed.

Mr. Trump on Twitter has repeatedly complained that the unmasking efforts and the Obama White House’s handling of the Russian hacking probe have not received sufficient attention in the various investigations on Capitol Hill and by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

On May 31, Republicans and Democrats on the House intelligence committee issued a series of subpoenas related to the Russia investigations. Three of the subpoenas — sent to intelligence community agencies — sought records relating to alleged unmasking requests made by senior Obama administration figures, including Ms. Rice, CIA Director John O. Brennan and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.

Democrats want the probes to stay tightly focused on possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump and collusion between his associates and the Kremlin. The U.S. intelligence community has unanimously concluded that the Kremlin was behind an organized cyberattack campaign to interfere in the U.S. election and undermine the candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton last year.

But since the Russia probes launched earlier this year, Mr. Trump and his aides have argued that the real scandal lies elsewhere. They contend that senior Obama administration officials, including Ms. Rice, inappropriately unmasked and perhaps illegally leaked to the media the names of Trump campaign officials swept up in the hacking probe, and failed to take sufficient steps to stop the hacking once it was uncovered.

Judicial Watch sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the NSC in April seeking records concerning Ms. Rice’s communications on a range of subjects.

NSC Access Management Director John Powers responded on May 23 — roughly a week before the House intelligence committee began seeking the records.

“Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library,” Mr. Powers wrote. “You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”


A library with NO BOOKS or archives.

The Chicago Tribune
written by Lolly Bowean
October 8, 2017

Once the Obama Presidential Center is constructed, it will have a children’s play garden, sledding hill, green spaces for picnics and outdoor gatherings, basketball courts and even a recording studio, officials have said.

But what the space won’t have is all of former President Barack Obama’s manuscripts, documents, letters and gifts he collected during his time in office. While the Presidential Center is about four years from opening, a conversation has begun about what the facility will mean to scholars and to local research universities without those items.

Traditionally, Presidential Libraries are places where historians, academics and college students travel to dig through paperwork and hold the first drafts of speeches, letters and legislation in their hands. But without those papers on site, some have begun to ask whether the Obama Center can even attract researchers to the University of Chicago, Chicago State University or the University of Illinois. What will it mean to have those documents online rather than in a physical form for inspection? And with digital technology constantly changing, how will the National Archives and Records Administration ensure the documents will be placed online in a timely manner and accessible over time?

“All archivists are waiting to see how this will work, because we are all struggling with how to make things available digitally,” said Peggy Glowacki, a manuscripts librarian at the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “I think in this case it’s such a massive amount of material that it will be important to see how they are able to deliver it and make it easy to search.”

Currently, Obama’s papers are stored in a private facility — a handsome and sprawling, bright white brick building on a commercial strip on West Golf Road in suburban Hoffman Estates. Officials initially thought the papers would be kept in Chicago. But after they spent $300,000 to ship Obama’s documents to the Chicago region and about $223,000 a month to store and provide security for tens of millions of textual records, artifacts and audio visual materials here, they decided to ship them back to Washington once a decision is made on where to keep them permanently, a spokeswoman with the National Archives and Records Administration said.

The classified documents will be housed in an existing facility in Washington, D.C., the spokeswoman said. The non-classified papers will likely be placed in an existing NARA facility in a Washington suburb.

This much is clear: The archives won’t be taken to a newly constructed facility that would serve as a library.

Recently, in a lecture, Foundation CEO David Simas emphasized that the Obama Center will be unlike the actual presidential libraries across the country.

“This is going to be completely different,” he said. “What the president and first lady said … is they simply did not want a museum that served as a mausoleum, as a way to look back.”

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