MCCAIN ERA ENDS IN SE­NATE

The Washington Times Weekly - - Geopolitic­s -

Se­nate Ma­jor­ity Leader Mitch McCon­nell an­nounced Wed­nes­day that Sen. Jim In­hofe will suc­ceed the late Sen. John McCain as chair­man of the pow­er­ful Se­nate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee.

“I am deeply hon­ored that my col­leagues have se­lected me to lead the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee,” the Ok­la­homa Repub­li­can said.

“Amer­ica is fac­ing new and un­prece­dented threats that are dif­fer­ent from any­thing we’ve seen be­fore,” he said in a state­ment. “As chair­man, it will be my pri­or­ity to ad­dress th­ese threats while main­tain­ing a staunch com­mit­ment to ser­vice mem­bers and their fam­i­lies, as well as con­tinue the bi­par­ti­san tra­di­tion of rig­or­ous ac­count­abil­ity and over­sight of the De­fense De­part­ment.”

The com­mit­tee voted to ap­prove the chair­man­ship, and a full Se­nate vote is ex­pected by the end of the week. The sen­a­tor has been on the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee since 1995.

McCain headed the com­mit­tee since 2015 and used the chair­man­ship to shape for­eign, de­fense and mil­i­tary poli­cies in an­nual de­fense autho­riza­tion acts.

Mr. In­hofe, who has been the act­ing Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee chair­man since last year, is more con­ser­va­tive than McCain and is closer to Pres­i­dent Trump.

The sen­a­tor is ex­pected to work closely with De­fense Sec­re­tary Jim Mat­tis, who is seek­ing to re­form the U.S. mil­i­tary with the goal of us­ing ad­vanced tech­nol­ogy and re­struc­tur­ing to pro­duce a more lethal and ag­ile force.

“I’m happy that our col­leagues on the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee have of­fi­cially cho­sen Sen. In­hofe to serve as their next chair­man,” Mr. McCon­nell said in a floor speech. “Jim In­hofe filled in for Sen. McCain dur­ing a dif­fi­cult year. He rose to the oc­ca­sion and helped lead the com­mit­tee in pass­ing cru­cial leg­is­la­tion that hon­ored the ex­am­ple of his pre­de­ces­sor and the vol­un­teers who de­fend our nation.” re­cruit Amer­i­cans with ac­cess to clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion.

That’s the con­clu­sion of Wil­liam Evan­ina, di­rec­tor of the DNI Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and Se­cu­rity Cen­ter, who told Reuters re­cently that LinkedIn was alerted to what he termed China’s highly ag­gres­sive agent re­cruit­ment ef­forts.

The se­nior coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cial, a former CIA coun­ter­spy, said LinkedIn should fol­low the ex­am­ple of Twit­ter, Google and Face­book and purge fake ac­counts con­nected to Iran’s and Rus­sia’s spy agen­cies.

In­hofe

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