Globe Trot: Trump team’s most seasoned intelligence expert quits

UNITED STATES: Former CIA Director James Woolsey abruptly quit the Trump transition team last night. The news surfaced shortly after President-elect Donald Trump named former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., as his pick to serve as director of national intelligence, and comes amid growing tension between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community.

When Woolsey joined the Trump campaign last September he said, “Mr. Trump understands the magnitude of the threats we face.”

Woolsey has served four previous administrations, and early on after 9/11 he drew attention to Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists and his weapons of mass destruction capability—rightly (contrary to pundits and journalists) pointing to the difficulty of finding stockpiles and to WMD vestiges moving to Syria (which history has proven). Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens tweeted this morning, “Another bad Trump sign. Woolsey one of the most talented and intelligent people around. Bill Clinton didn’t like him either-to JW’s credit.”

RUSSIA: Yesterday current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress there’s no question Russia tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election.

Trump’s criticism of intelligence officials is dividing the GOP on Capitol Hill, just ahead of confirmation hearings next week for Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state pick.

IRAQ: The World Bank estimates the cost to rebuild Syria alone is $180 billion (larger than the Marshall Plan’s $160 billion)—and so far the United States has dedicated about $1.1 billion toward humanitarian and stabilization efforts in areas being reclaimed from ISIS control, in Iraq primarily, and in Syria. In my latest WORLD Magazine report, none of that funding is going to displaced Christians and the areas where they once lived, even though their population has dropped by 80 percent since the U.S. war in Iraq began in 2003.

The most recent progress report from the UN Development Programme for Iraq (which includes U.S. funds) indicates it doesn’t plan to open any offices to coordinate reconstruction efforts in the historic Nineveh Plains.

NIGERIA: Another Chibok schoolgirl has been found—with her 6-month-old baby. With the remaining 276 girls captured by Boko Haram about to reach Day 1,000 of their captivity, there’s growing concern over government-military control of those who’ve so far been freed or escaped but have not been allowed to return to their families.

VENEZUELA: President Nicolas Maduro reshuffled his Cabinet, naming a hard-liner under U.S. investigation for drug trafficking as the country’s vice president.

Maduro, who refused aid from humanitarian organizations, is creating a racket out of Venezuela’s food crisis.

CHILE: On Santiago’s “spoon trail”:

“Treat them with dignity, don’t put up walls … empathize with them. … You have to look at them like you would look at your brother. Many of them are grateful that you look them in the eyes, that you greet them with affection. It’s a gesture that gives joy and inner hope that costs us nothing.”

CORRECTION: In Wednesday’s Globe Trot item on South Sudan, the Yida camp is not near Doro in Blue Nile state, but is in Unity state and houses mostly displaced Nuba. Yida was on my mind because the UN plans to close it, leaving 50,000 mostly Christian Sudanese stranded: “There is no food, water, healthcare, nothing,” a head of an aid organization working in the camp told me. “The people have been left, abandoned because [the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and their donors don’t want the people from Nuba there.”