President Donald Trump and his CIA director are mulling a pitch to create a private global spy network, accountable only to them, in order to counter the activities of "Deep State" enemies, The Intercept reported.
The proposal's authors — former Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Iran-Contra provocateur Oliver North, and former CIA operative John Maguire, who also served on Trump's transition team, The Intercept reports.
The report comes on the heels of a separate but similar Buzzfeed report that Trump and CIA Director Mike Pompeo are considering private spies to run counterintelligence and covert and propaganda efforts around the world.
Further, The Intercept reported that some involved with the proposal have even reached out to major Trump donors to seek financing for the private operations.
"Pompeo can't trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him," a former senior intelligence official told The Intercept. "It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books. The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly."
Pompeo has embraced the plan and asked the White House to approve it, The Intercept reports.
Not so, a National Security Council spokesman told The Intercept.
"I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or [White House] at all," Michael Anton told The Intercept. "The White House does not and would not support such a proposal."
The Intercept reports that the motivation behind the proposals is to protect Trump.
Maguire, now an operative with intelligence contractor Amyntor Group, allegedly told two others that national security adviser H.R. McMaster is part of the deep state against the president, The Intercept reported.
"John [Maguire] was certain that the deep state was going to kick the president out of office within a year," a source told The Intercept. "These guys said they were protecting the president."
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