Ex-CIA chief: Flynn’s firm discussed removing cleric from US

Ex-CIA chief: Flynn’s firm discussed removing cleric from US

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former CIA Director James Woolsey has accused the Trump administration’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, of participating in a discussion with Turkish officials about possibly subverting the U.S. extradition process to remove a Turkish cleric from the United States.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Woolsey’s comments and posted a video interview with him late Friday. A Flynn spokesman said Friday that Woolsey’s claims are “false” and that “no such discussion occurred.”

In the Journal interview, Woolsey says he walked into the middle of a discussion between Turkish officials and members of Flynn’s firm, Flynn Intel Group, late in the evening of Sept. 19 at Essex House hotel in New York City.

Woolsey said the discussion generally involved removing cleric Fethullah Gulen from the U.S. without going through the lengthy extradition process, though he said it stopped short of outlining a specific plan to sweep the cleric out of the country. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought Gulen’s extradition from the U.S. after accusing the cleric of directing a failed coup last summer. The U.S. government has rebuffed that request, and Gulen, who has a green card and lives in Pennsylvania, has denied involvement.

Woolsey described the discussion as “brainstorming, but it was brainstorming about a very serious matter that would pretty clearly be a violation of law.” Though, Woolsey noted that the discussion “did not rise to the level of being a specific plan to undertake a felonious act.”

Verdict turns page in Penn State child molestation scandal

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Penn State is trying to turn the corner on the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal, but the former FBI director who authored a scathing report on it more than four years ago says more changes are needed, even after the conviction of the university’s former president.

A jury’s guilty verdict against Graham Spanier on Friday to a misdemeanor count of child endangerment made him the last of the three former high-ranking administrators to be held criminally culpable for how they handled a 2001 complaint about Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in a team shower.

Penn State issued a statement after the verdict, saying the justice system had produced “closure” in the criminal cases that began with Sandusky’s arrest in 2011. The school said Spanier’s conviction and guilty pleas by two other former top administrators indicated a “profound failure of leadership.”

But former FBI director Louis Freeh said Penn State needs “new leadership and vision” and called on Penn State President Eric Barron to resign.

“Pennsylvania taxpayers, the entire (Penn State) community and responsible political leaders should be ’appalled’ by Barron and his entire ’leadership’ team,” said Freeh.