The CIA analyst who triggered Trump’s first impeachment asks: Was it worth it?

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Posted on 10/20/2024 2:48:56 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

The young CIA analyst waited anxiously for Fiona Hill to pick up her phone. He had dialed her, he recalled, because he wanted to hear a familiar voice and make sure he wasn’t doing something “colossally stupid.”

Five years later Hill’s memories of the call are still vivid: the CIA analyst’s voice, which sounded uncharacteristically emotional; the annoying clatter of the Frappuccino machine inside the Starbucks where she was waiting for her morning coffee.

Hill stepped into the parking lot. She was on vacation in Hawaii, having just resigned a week earlier from her job in Donald Trump’s White House overseeing Russia, Ukraine and dozens of other European and Eurasian countries. She and the analyst had spoken often as part of their official duties.

Because they were talking on an unclassified phone line, the analyst had to be vague. In the weeks before Hill left government, she had become concerned that figures close to the president, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were trying to pressure Ukrainian officials for personal and political favors.

“Something else happened on that thing you were worried about,” the analyst told her. The time had come, he said, for him to do something “extreme.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Hill recalled muttering.

The CIA analyst would soon submit a meticulously sourced nine-page memo to the U.S. intelligence community inspector general that would spark Trump’s first impeachment. In Washington and around the world, the analyst would be known as “the whistleblower,” a moniker that he didn’t choose and has come to see as a burden.

In the half decade since his complaint kicked off a political firestorm, the analyst has declined all requests to speak publicly about his actions, even as he has reckoned privately with whether they...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

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