Howdy Australia!! - America's top spy says the White House whistleblower did the right thing - Trump is caught on audio wishing for the deaths of White House whistleblowers - Why are bags of US cash heading towards South America? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

America's top spy, acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Maguire, testified before Congress that the whistleblower who raised a red flag over Donald Trump's 25 July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had "acted in good faith" when filing the complaint.  Maguire, who was only named to the post by Trump a month ago, told the committee: "I have every reason to believe they have done everything by the book and followed the law."  In the potentially damning phone call, Zelensky asked for US military hardware to deal with Russian separatists; Trump then repeatedly pressed Zelensky to come up with non-existent evidence against Trump's Democratic party rival former Vice President Joe Biden.  Contacting a foreign government to solicit information for personal gain is really, really illegal.

But the complaint goes even further, saying that the whistleblower had learned "from multiple US officials that senior White House had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call."  Sources told the whistleblower that White House lawyers ordered them to take the electronic transcript and records of the phone call, and move them to a separate computer system that was reserved for classified information of a sensitive nature.  The source continued, "This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call", because of their belief "that they had witnessed (Trump) abuse his office for personal gain."  

Meanwhile, Donald Trump stunned a room full of experienced foreign service employees by demanding to know who in his administration gave information to the whistleblower, calling those people "close to a spy" and suggesting they should be murdered.  The Los Angeles Times obtained an audio recording of the incident, in which Trump states: "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart?  Right?  The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now."  Some of the White House staffers and US workers at its United Nations mission tried to laugh it off. 

After that audio got out, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff denounced Trump for "witness intimidation", which is extremely illegal in the US.  "(Trump's) suggestion that those involved in the whistleblower complaint should be dealt with as 'we used to do' for 'spies and treason' is a reprehensible invitation to violence against witnesses in our investigation," the California Democrat tweeted, "All Americans must denounce such witness intimidation."  

There's no evidence that Trump actually knows the whistleblower's identity.  But the New York Times reported it is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who was "detailed to work at the White House at one point" but has since returned to the agency.  That really doesn't narrow it down too much, considering that a million people work in the US intelligence operations.  Representative Schiff says the source will testify, once security is locked down to protect "his or hers" identity - especially from the White House and US Justice Department.

ANYWAY...

Former French President Jacques Chirac is dead at age 86.  His career highlights include taking France into the Euro and championing European unity; uniting an overwhelming coalition to soundly defeat the far-right in the 2002 election; and opposing the US-led Iraq War and keeping French troops out of it.  He was also besot with numerous corruption scandals and was given a two-year suspended prison term in 2007.  Still, most are remembering him as a great statesman.

Abortion is finally legal across Australia, after New South Wales - the last state to ban it - finally decriminalized it yesterday.

Nine months after the last failed attempt at regime change, The US is turning back to Venezuela, this time trying to restore unity to a fragmenting conservative opposition by unleashing US$52 Million in funding to self-declared "interim president" and opposition leader Juan Guaido.  The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) claims the cash will be used towards independent media, civil society, the health sector and the opposition-controlled National Assembly (which is led by Guaido).  Critics, relying on decades of evidence, say USAID has a long history of funneling its money toward political trickery, and fear that some of this dosh will probably be to buy off military officers to foment another attempt at a coup.  

At least 20 people are dead after that quake in the Molucca Islands in Indonesia.

A Tesla Police Car in Fremont, California had to give up on a high speed chase because someone forgot to plug it in the night before.  According to officials, the officer was pursuing a vehicle headed down to the South Bay when the car began to run low on battery power.  The suspect got away and his vehicle was found abandoned a short ways down the road in San Jose.  Fremont PD bought the used Model S five months ago as part of a program to reduce its carbon footprint.