‘Russian Talking Points’ Look an Awful Lot Like Well-Documented Facts

(CN) — Things aren’t looking great for the Democratic establishment, which recently admitted that it stacks its primaries against progressive candidates and is currently engaged in a desperate, hail Mary lawsuit against WikiLeaks for its factual publications about the party. So of course you know what that means. That’s right! It’s time for Democratic pundits to begin down-punching Jill Stein. […]

It Turns Out Fake News Isn’t Spread by Russia or Bots — People Are Just Lazy Idiots

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — As non-Republicans continue their search for scapegoats to blame for Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss to Donald Trump, a major focus of Trump skepticism has been ‘fake news’ allegedly peddled by Russia to electioneer the 2016 vote. To their credit, 13 trolls thought to be working for the Russian government were recently uncovered in a […]

Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel Are Symptoms of a Much Deeper Problem

(RPI Op-ed) — President Trump’s recent cabinet shake-up looks to be a real boost to hard-line militarism and neo-conservatism. If his nominees to head the State Department and CIA are confirmed, we may well have moved closer to war. Before being chosen by Trump to head up the CIA, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo was one of […]

With the CIA’s Mike Pompeo Now in Charge of US Foreign Policy, Anything Is Possible

(MEMO Op-ed) — The appointment of Mike Pompeo as the new US Secretary of State by Donald Trump will not signal a change in Washington’s Middle East policy. It doesn’t mean that America will no longer endorse the alliance between the Saudi and Israeli governments. Nor does it, despite Donald Trump’s admiration, mean that America will switch […]

‘Progressive’ Journalists Jump on the Russiagate Bandwagon

(CN Op-ed) — Jane Mayer of The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks are the latest progressives to jump on the anti-Trump, pro-Russiagate bandwagon. They have made it crystal clear that, in Mayer’s words, they are not going to let Republicans, or anyone else, “take down the whole intelligence community,” by God. Odd? Nothing is too […]

It Turns Out Fake News Isn’t Spread by Russia or Bots — People Are Just Lazy Idiots

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — As non-Republicans continue their search for scapegoats to blame for Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss to Donald Trump, a major focus of Trump skepticism has been ‘fake news’ allegedly peddled by Russia to electioneer the 2016 vote. To their credit, 13 trolls thought to be working for the Russian government were recently uncovered in a […]

Former CIA Analyst of 27 Years: ‘Nunes Memo’ Reveals Felony Crimes at FBI and DOJ

(CN Op-ed) — The long-awaited House Intelligence Committee report made public today identifies current and former top officials of the FBI and the Department of Justice as guilty of the felony of misrepresenting evidence required to obtain a court warrant before surveilling American citizens. The target was candidate Donald Trump’s adviser Carter Page. The main points of what is […]

Why Democrats Love Bush Now

The renewed popularity of George W. Bush among Democrats may reflect a growing tolerance of war among American voters. (CN) — Will Ferrell returned to his familiar role last weekend as George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live, doing a bit on the recent news that the 43rd US president is now enjoying soaring popularity among Democrats. It was a […]

Is Dr. Swain’s Op-Ed for “The Hill” Blocked by SPLC?

“Right now, it looks like the SPLC has the power to block a well-researched article that questions its credibility.”  From Dr. Swain’s facebook page on January 11, 2018

 

The post Is Dr. Swain’s Op-Ed for “The Hill” Blocked by SPLC? appeared first on Oath Keepers.

Oprah 2020 Is Not the Answer

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — On Sunday evening at the annual Golden Globes award ceremony in Los Angeles, Oprah won hearts and minds with a rousing speech about speaking truth to power and advancing the position of women in society.

It was an objectively powerful oration, and social media was promptly flooded with calls for Oprah to be the country’s next president. The newfound Oprah 2020 campaign drew support not only from NBC News, which eventually deleted a tweet referring to her as “our future president,” but also famous neoconservative war hawk Bill Kristol, who unleashed a Twitter storm of support for the beloved American icon.

Oprah: Sounder on economics than Bernie Sanders, understands Middle America better than Elizabeth Warren, less touchy-feely than Joe Biden, more pleasant than Andrew Cuomo, more charismatic than John Hickenlooper.#ImWithHer

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 8, 2018

And, of course: Oprah came from infinitely more challenging circumstances than Trump, is wealthier than Trump, has read more books than Trump, is more stable than Trump, and isn"t under investigation by the Justice Department unlike Trump.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 8, 2018

Oprah did rightly speak out against the 2003 Iraq war (though Kristol claims, partially correctly, that she supported regime change), and as an individual, she is a wonderful example of human connection, kindness, and compassion. But her political thought process remains entrenched in many of the same problems that have created the dire national situation and international political crises the United States now faces.

During the 2016 election, Oprah made it clear she supported Hillary Clinton, even if she wasn’t her most enthusiastic backer. “You don’t have to like her,” she urged voters as she warned against the dangers of a Trump presidency. She supported Barack Obama in both of his presidential campaigns, placing herself squarely in the spectrum of mainstream political ideology.

But more important than the need to break away from his left-right, two-party paradigm is the need for people to stop relying on a leader to rule over them altogether. This mentality has given us Donald Trump, and it has disempowered individuals not only from taking control over their own lives but also working to improve society as a whole.

Placing our hopes for civilization and fates in the hand of another person — even Oprah — by putting them at the head of government perpetuates the mentality that we can’t support ourselves, instead opting to outsource our own responsibility to an external control system. Further, doing so is yet another exercise in imposing views on others who do not have an opportunity to consent. The very same people cheering Oprah’s potential candidacy are outraged at Donald Trump’s presidency, populating a resistance movement that insists he is “not [their] president.” Would they also respect the views of others who don’t want Oprah (or Obama or Hillary or anyone else) as their president?

I never consented to Donald Trump’s presidency, and I won’t consent to Oprah. And chasing solutions from a corrupted system that has served to exploit people around the world while perpetuating extraordinary violence and instability isn’t the solution, anyway.

We would do far better to actively work to free ourselves from this system by investing in cryptocurrencies to undermine financial institutions’ hegemony, growing our own food to undermine Big Agriculture, choosing to use alternative forms of energy to avoid state-sanctioned sources that destroy the environment, and donating our time and resources to organizations and individuals that need it. We could even grind this system of perpetual war, corporate welfare, and increasingly authoritarian law enforcement to a halt by simply refusing to fund it.

History has shown that electing a person to solve our society’s problems, rather than confronting them ourselves, not only fails to fix them but also almost always manages to make them worse.

Perhaps we should respect each other’s individual freedom to not be ruled over by someone of our choosing, instead deciding to lift each other up ourselves rather than expecting a violent institution to do it for us.

Rather than wanting to forcibly impose Oprah as an authority figure over hundreds of millions of people, perhaps we should simply strive to be like Oprah — to empower ourselves to escape staggering circumstances, to be kind to others, and to give as much as we can to those in need.

Op-ed / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Will Trump Supporters in the Freedom Movement Realize They Were Duped?

What will it take for Trump supporters to admit they were duped like Obama supporters before them?

(AP) — One of the most surprising (and disappointing) effects of the Trump presidency has been the shift of certain “independent” and ” alternative” media outlets from truth seekers to establishment supporters.

We have seen several once great outlets become part of the divide and conquer put forth by the powers-that-wish-they-were. It’s been one year of the Trump administration and I think it’s quite clear that any perceived benefits are vastly outweighed by the negative actions of the administration. Some indy and alt outlets saw that Trump was a deceiver from the get go, but others somehow fell prey to the deception. Some have since abandoned the Trump train, picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and rejoined the fight for liberty.

Now, of course, there are the diehards who will inevitably stick with Trump through his entire presidential career no matter what policy he takes, even when in contradiction with not only his own words, but with the principles previously espoused by these die hard followers. Just as with Obama (and Bush, Clinton, etc. before him) some of the supporters have such a level of cognitive dissonance that they are literally incapable of having a rational discussion without a flood of emotion and panic which shuts down all reason and critical thinking. It’s best to walk away when you recognize this stage.

However, if you are a Trump supporter and you’re still reading this, I’d like to offer four pieces of evidence showing where Trump has displayed authoritarian behavior. Let me preface this by stating that attempts at defending Trump by claiming “he is only carrying on what Obama did”, or, “it’s not his fault”, etc. will be dismissed outright. However, if you have something substantial – a legitimate reason you can put forth for supporting him – I will consider it. I won’t support him by any means (he needs some serious help), but perhaps I’ll have a more full understanding of my fellow human. So here you go…

The Border is Turning Into a Surveillance and Police State

Under the guise of “border security” and “fighting illegal immigration” the Trump administration has granted the Customs and Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wide ranging powers which violate constitutionally guaranteed protections (and rights that all people should have). The expansion is not about catching illegal immigrants, but establishing a “biometric wall” with facial and retinal scanning for ALL people leaving and entering, armed surveillance towers, automatic license plate readers, and other forms of surveillance.

The Trump administration is already facing lawsuits over their use of secretive handheld devices which gather biometric data from immigrants. In addition, the authorities have already been stealing people’s phones and laptops. This is only going to increase under the rest of Trump’s presidency and it will expand further and further into the mainland United States. Activist Post has previously reported on efforts to monitor social media and establish a “threat assessment” for all visa applicants.

Trump Administration Supports the Deep State

For all the raving about Trump “draining the swamp” and removing the “Deep State” elements from the CIA, FBI, and federal government at large, the Trump administration is actually fighting to save these elements.

For one, Trump was never an anti-establishment candidate. That’s the same BS the media sells every four years. Second, Trump is fighting to save the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts and controversial section 702. According the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Section 702 of FISA “allows the NSA to collect emails, browser history and chat logs of Americans. Section 702 also allows other agencies, like the FBI, to search through that data without a warrant. Those searches are called ‘backdoor searches.’”

Check this article for full details, but suffice to say, the FISA Court is a glaring example of The Deep State. A secret court run by secret judges who interpret the law behind closed doors and who refuse to publicly release their findings or their interpretation. The court is only one of many tools at the hands of The Deep State and the Trump administration is doing its best to allow the program to continue.

Detaining an American Citizen Without Trial/Lawyer for Over 3 Months

For the last three months the Trump administration has been holding an American citizen who is “suspected” of fighting with ISIS in a secret prison in Iraq. Now, I know many Trump supporters will have no sympathy for this man, but that’s my point. He is an American citizen and he has only been accused of fighting with ISIS, not charged because there is a lack of evidence.

Despite the Trump admin’s best efforts, a federal judge recently ruled that the man must be given access to a lawyer. If we let them do this to this man it is only a matter of time before it spreads to other Americans in different situations that might be even less black and white. If we truly value liberty for all people, we must be consistent when standing up for rights of all people or you are a hypocrite.

Trump Administration is Continuing and Expanding Drone Kill List

This is an area where Trump is actually extending a secret program started by the Obama administration. Specifically, the secret kill list and rules which allow for the assassination of American citizens. It may sound like fantasy or “fake news”, but the Obama administration created a secret list of potential targets, including American citizens.

Recent reports allude to the fact that the Trump administration is loosening the already flimsy protections established by the Obama admin. These protections were reportedly put in place to minimize injury and deaths of civilians. Not to mention that Trump has increased the amount of airstrikes in his first year, leading to more civilian deaths than during the Obama administration. I am no fan of Obama, but Trump is definitely the new Drone King.

If you made it this far, please ask yourself what differentiates this man from the last warmonger? Surveillance, police state, war, loss of civil liberties, divisive rhetoric, friends with Goldman Sachs and other banksters, and a defender of the Deep State.

Is this the Trump you voted for? It’s time for the free hearts and critically thinking minds of the world to reject the “independent” and “alternative” media who continue to support the Trump administration. Remember, the enemy of my enemy (or in this case, the perceived enemy of my enemy) is not always a friend. We can defeat the new world order, the deep state, the elite, the ruling class, etc., but we will not do it by believing narratives pushed by the deadstream corporate media and the co-opted alt-media.

We must continue to seek truth and accountability while remaining consistent with our principles and values.

By Derrick Broze / Republished with permission / Activist Post / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Ron Paul: Just Say No to Jeff Sessions

(RPI) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions kicked off the New Year by reversing the Obama-era guidance for federal prosecutors to limit their enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. In what is almost certainly not a coincidence, Sessions’ announcement came days after California’s law legalizing recreational marijuana sales went into effect. Sessions’ action thus runs counter to the wishes of the majority of the people in the most populous US state, as well the people of the 28 other states (and DC) that have legalized some form of marijuana use.

Federal laws criminalizing marijuana and other drugs have failed to reduce drug use. However, they have succeeded in giving power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats what was, before 9-11, the go-to justification for violating our civil liberties. The federal war on marijuana has also wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Far from reducing crime, outlawing drugs causes crime by ensuring criminals will control the market for drugs. Outlawing drugs also provides incentives for drug dealers to increase the potency, and thus the danger, of drugs, as higher potency products take up less space and are thus easier to conceal from law enforcement.

The US Constitution does not give the federal government any authority to criminalize marijuana. Thus, the question of whether marijuana is legal is one of the many issues reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. If the Constitution gives Congress the power to ban marijuana, then why was it necessary to amend the Constitution to give Congress the power to ban alcohol?

Sessions’ usurpation of state marijuana laws is the type of federal intrusion into state issues usually opposed by conservatives. Sadly, too many conservatives are just as willing to sacrifice constitutional government and individual liberties for the war on drugs as they are for the war on terror.

Conservative hypocrisy is especially strong when it comes to medical marijuana. Many Americans have used medical marijuana for conditions such as cancer and glaucoma. Yet many conservatives who (properly) decry Obamacare’s mandate forcing every American to purchase health insurance cheer Jeff Sessions’ effort to deprive suffering individuals of the medical treatment of their choice. Cruel paternalism in healthcare policy is often associated with progressives, but unfortunately conservatives are just as guilty.

States that have legalized medical marijuana have fewer deaths related to opioid abuse. These states have also experienced a decrease in crime and black market activity. This is perhaps because some have found medical marijuana a viable alternative to opioids.

Laws outlawing marijuana criminalize peaceful behavior that, while potentially harmful to the individual, does not violate the rights of others. Therefore, these laws, like all laws authorizing government force against peaceful, if immoral, actions, are incompatible with a free society. Once again we see the hypocrisy of conservatives who decry progressives’ war on tobacco and fatty foods, yet support jailing marijuana users.

Federal laws outlawing marijuana violate the Constitution, justify violations of civil liberties, and increase violence. By criminalizing nonviolent behavior voluntarily chosen by individuals, drug laws undermine the moral principles underlying a free society.

President Trump should fire Jeff Sessions and replace him with someone who respects the Constitution and individual liberty. Also, officials from states with legal medical or recreational marijuana should refuse to cooperate with those tasked with enforcing federal marijuana laws. If President Trump and state officials stand up for liberty, the people will join them in saying no to Jeff Sessions.

Op-ed by Ron Paul / Republished with permission / RPI / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

4 Reasons Why Democrats Shouldn’t Be Celebrating Doug Jones’ Win in Alabama

(ANTIMEDIA) Birmingham, Alabama — The people of Alabama have spoken. Doug Jones will become the first Democrat to represent the Heart of Dixie in the United States Senate in over 20 years.

Tuesday night’s election signaled a change in American politics, in our nation’s ideals, and the hope for our future. The blue team won and sent a message bellowing across the political stratosphere that if Alabama can go Democrat, the rest of the country could soon succumb to the youthful and progressive values of the party. Roy Moore and the Grand Old Party were rejected by one the reddest states in the union. Surely, the left’s time has come. Or has it?

Sorry for the bubble bursting reality check, but once the emotions of Moore’s defeat fade into history, Jones’ victory won’t mean a whole lot for the Democrats. Sure, Moore won’t become one of two voices in the U.S. Senate for almost 5 million Alabamians. If that was your ultimate and only goal, congratulations. Many Republicans, including Mitt Romney, also wanted Jones to win, but bipartisan high-fives are certainly not a victory for Democrats in the divisive world of politics. For those who believe Jones’ win marks the beginning stages of a progressive revolution, all you really achieved was a single night of cheers alongside other naive voters.

For Doug Jones’ election triumph to mean anything moving forward, he has to win reelection in 2020. That’s right, he doesn’t get six years in office, as is the normal term for a U.S. senator. He gets less than two due to Jeff Sessions appointment as Attorney General, which led to Alabama holding a special election. There’s good news, though Democrats. Doug Jones did win once, and he can replicate those results and procure victory in 2020. Here’s how:

Doug Jones will need to behave more like a moderate Republican than a progressive democrat. Doug Jones will be free to cast his votes in the Senate as he chooses, and he’ll possibly vote along Democratic lines to be a wrench in Trump’s agenda. But if he has any political aptitude and ambition to win in 2020, he will have to bend to and placate conservative voters who sat out Tuesday’s election. This is probably not what Democrats were voting for. Jones even actually campaigned on expanding an already bloated military budget and for increasing the size of the military-industrial complex without any resistance from his supposed war-weary electoral base.

Doug Jones will need Republican money. Surprise! A large portion of money that went towards negative advertisements against Jones’ opponent were paid for with Republican dollars. The Senate Leadership Fund is a political PAC that put over $2 million into the coffers of Moore’s primary opponent and current (although temporary) U.S. Senator Luther Strange. The SLF also spent $4.3 million in negative ads against fellow Republican Roy Moore during the election. In total, $7.1 million was spent in negative ads against Moore via PAC donations over the course of his campaign.

Doug Jones will need de facto endorsements from Republicans, as well as celebrities in his corner.  Not only did Alabama’s other sitting U.S. Senator, Richard Shelby, not endorse his fellow Republican in the race, but he also publicly stated he could not even vote for Moore. Instead, he chose to write-in a candidate on his ballot sheet. University of Alabama graduate and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also publicly decried Moore and urged members of the GOP to withhold their support on election day. Many other Republican figures around the country also spoke out against Moore, including Paul Ryan, Mike Lee, and John McCain.

Celebrities from around the nation joined the pile-on and expressed their disgust with Roy Moore, offering their support to Doug Jones. Actress Alyssa Milano even traveled to Alabama to canvass for Jones. When the soon-to-be senator seeks reelection in 2020, all eyes won’t be on Alabama as was the case with the special election. It will take place on the same day as a presidential election, which will more than likely include Donald Trump. That election will by far overshadow any vote taking place for a Senate seat in Alabama. Other than local names, there will not be any celebrities going out of their way herald Doug Jones. He won’t be running against an accused pedophile (I can only assume that, who really knows at this point in world events), and no one outside state lines will care. Jones will be forgotten by the masses who just praised his election.

An accused murderer or pedophile will more than likely need to be the Republican nominee. I mean, the GOP just nominated an accused pedophile, and Jones, by the narrowest of margins, was able to beat him. Roy Moore was one the worst political candidates to ever run for office in the modern political era. He had multiple major scandals, he was twice-ousted from office as Chief Justice of Alabama, he had sexual assault accusations made by minors against him, and he made various inflammatory statements. Roy Moore should not have been nominated for dog catcher much less a U.S. senator, and Doug Jones was only narrowly barely able to secure a win.

Ultimately, Doug Jones didn’t truly win anything Tuesday night, nor did the Democratic party. In actuality, different factions simply banded together to ensure Roy Moore would not be the victor, and Doug Jones just happened to be his opponent. Doug Jones isn’t a political savior or a progressive hero. He’s lucky. He’s lucky the GOP didn’t run an actual dogcatcher instead of Moore.

As long as he wasn’t running around Chuck E. Cheese trying to pick up dates, we’d have Senator Dogcatcher soon to be sworn into office.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Good News: Majority of Young Americans Want a New Political Party

(RPI) — Do we need a third major political party? I often joke that I’d be happy if we actually had a second party, as when it comes to the big issues – war, monetary policy, civil liberties – the Republicans and Democrats are more alike than different. Perhaps that’s why a recent NBC News poll has found that nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed do not believe either the Republicans or Democrats are doing a good job and that a third major political party is needed.

I think this is an encouraging sign. I suspect the NBC News poll result reflects the fact that young people are not as easily hoodwinked by the mainstream media and by the two-party duopoly charade in Washington. This generation has grown up with the Internet and the abundance of alternative media that challenges what really is a one-party system in the United States. They have been exposed to many new ideas, including good ones like libertarianism and non-interventionism.

Currently, mainstream politics in the US is all about power – how to get it and how to keep it – and not at all about philosophy or ideology. It is about selling out principles at every turn in order to chalk up another point in the “win” column. On issues like war and spending, it’s incredible how easily the two major parties are able to “compromise.”

A serious effort to create a new political party could be very exciting, but only if that new party is based on real ideas rather than simply the desire for power. Creating a viable third party will not be easy. While there is plenty written in the media about foreign collusion in US elections, the real collusion is between the Republican and Democratic Parties to prevent new parties from joining them on the national stage and the ballot.

Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washington’s one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

I would still like to have some hope for the Libertarian Party, but to really fill its role as a challenger to our two party system (that is actually a one party system) it would need a major overhaul. It would need to actually embrace the core libertarian principles of non-aggression and non-intervention in the affairs of others.

At the end of my 2008 presidential campaign, I brought together the candidates of the “minor” political parties and proposed that we agree on some basic principles regardless of whether we are libertarians, conservatives, progressives, or greens. Among those was the idea that we should never go to war unless we were directly attacked or threatened, that the Federal Reserve should not be allowed to benefit the rich by creating money out of thin air, and that we should not endorse deficit spending.

If a new party could come together and agree on these basic principles while agreeing to disagree on other, less important priorities, we could begin a formidable movement toward peace and prosperity.

Let us hope that this NBC News survey provides the inspiration to a real pro-peace, pro-prosperity movement in the United States. I have much confidence in the youth of our country!

Op-ed by Ron Paul / Republished with permission / RPI / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

What the Media Isn’t Telling You About the Indictment of Mike Flynn

The Russia-gate prosecutors have taken the scalp of ex- National Security Adviser (and retired Lt. Gen.) Flynn for lying to the FBI. But this case shows how dangerously far afield this “scandal” has gone.

(CN) — Russia-gate enthusiasts are thrilled over the guilty plea of President Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador, but the case should alarm true civil libertarians.

What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.

In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.

For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the U.S. government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn’s prosecution represents a troubling precedent.

Though Flynn clearly can be faulted for his judgment, he was, in a sense, a marked man the moment he accepted the job of national security adviser. In summer 2016, Democrats seethed over Flynn’s participation in chants at the Republican National Convention to “lock her [Hillary Clinton] up!”

Then, just four days into the Trump presidency, an Obama holdover, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates, primed the Flynn perjury trap by coming up with a novel legal theory that Flynn – although the national security adviser-designate at the time of his late December phone calls with Kislyak – was violating the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering with U.S. foreign policy.

But that law – passed during President John Adams’s administration in the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts – was never intended to apply to incoming officials in the transition period between elected presidential administrations and – in the past 218 years – the law has resulted in no successful prosecution at all and thus its dubious constitutionality has never been adjudicated.

Stretching Logic

But Yates extrapolated from her unusual Logan Act theory to speculate that since Flynn’s publicly known explanation of the conversation with Kislyak deviated somewhat from the transcript of the intercepts, Flynn might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

Yet, that bizarre speculation would require that the Russians first would have detected the discrepancies; secondly, they would have naively assumed that the U.S. intelligence agencies had not intercepted the conversations, which would have negated any blackmail potential; and thirdly, the Russians would have to do something so ridiculously heavy-handed – trying to blackmail Flynn – that it would poison relations with the new Trump administration.

Yates’s legal theorizing was so elastic and speculative that it could be used to justify subjecting almost anyone to FBI interrogation with the knowledge that their imperfect memories would guarantee the grounds for prosecution based on NSA intercepts of their communications.

Basically, the Obama holdovers concocted a preposterous legal theory to do whatever they could to sabotage the Trump administration, which they held in fulsome disdain.

At the time of Flynn’s interrogation, the Justice Department was under the control of Yates and the FBI was still under President Obama’s FBI Director James Comey, another official hostile to the Trump administration who later was fired by Trump.

The Yates-FBI perjury trap also was sprung on Flynn in the first days of the Trump presidency amid reverberations of the massive anti-Trump protests that had arisen across the country in support of demands for a “#Resistance” to Trump’s rule.

Flynn also had infuriated Democrats when he joined in chants at the Republican National Convention of “lock her up” over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and other alleged offenses. So, in targeting Flynn, there was a mix of personal payback and sabotage against the Trump administration.

The Legal Construct

The two-page complaint against Flynn, made public on Friday, references false statements to the FBI regarding two conversations with Kisylak, one on Dec. 22, 2016, and the other on Dec. 29, 2016.

The first item in the complaint alleges that Flynn did not disclose that he had asked the Russian ambassador to help delay or defeat a United Nations Security Council vote censuring Israel for building settlements on Palestinian territory.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Russia-gate investigators “learned through witnesses and documents that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.

“Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, took the lead in those efforts. Mr. Mueller’s team has emails that show Mr. Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said,” according to the Times.

Breaking with past U.S. precedents, President Obama had decided not to veto the resolution criticizing Israel, choosing instead to abstain. However, the censure resolution carried with Russian support, meaning that whatever lobbying Flynn and Kushner undertook was unsuccessful.

But the inclusion of this Israeli element shows how far afield the criminal Russia-gate investigation, headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, has gone. Though the original point of the inquiry was whether the Trump team colluded with Russians to use “hacked” emails to defeat Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the criminal charge against Flynn has nothing to do with election “collusion” but rather President-elect Trump’s aides weighing in on foreign policy controversies during the transition. And, the first initiative was undertaken at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, not Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The second item, cited by Mueller’s prosecutors, referenced a Dec. 29 Flynn-Kislyak conversation, which received public attention at the time of Flynn’s Feb. 13 resignation after only 24 days on the job. That phone call touched on Russia’s response to President Obama’s decision to issue new sanctions against the Kremlin for the alleged election interference.

The complaint alleges that Flynn didn’t mention to the FBI that he had urged Kislyak “to refrain from escalating the situation” and that Kislyak had subsequently told him that “Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.”

The Dec. 29 phone call occurred while Flynn was vacationing in the Dominican Republic and thus he would have been without the usual support staff for memorializing or transcribing official conversations. So, the FBI agents, with the NSA’s transcripts, would have had a clearer account of what was said than Flynn likely had from memory. The content of Flynn’s request to Kislyak also appears rather uncontroversial, asking the Russians not to overreact to a punitive policy from the outgoing Obama administration.

In other words, both of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations appear rather unsurprising, if not inconsequential. One was taken at the behest of Israel (which proved ineffective) and the other urged the Kremlin to show restraint in its response to a last-minute slap from President Obama (which simply delayed Russian retaliation by several months).

Double Standards

While Flynn’s humiliation has brought some palpable joy to the anti-Trump “Resistance” – one more Trump aide being taken down amid renewed hope that this investigation will somehow lead to Trump’s resignation or impeachment – many of the same people would be howling about trampled civil liberties if a Republican bureaucracy were playing this game on a Democratic president and his staff.

Indeed, in the turnabout-is-fair-play department, there is some equivalence in what is happening over Russia-gate to what the Republicans did in the 1990s exploiting their control of the special-prosecutor apparatus in the first years of Bill Clinton’s presidency when interminable investigations into such side issues as his Whitewater real-estate deal and the firing of the White House travel office staff plagued the Clinton administration.

Similarly, Republicans seized on the deaths of four U.S. diplomatic personnel on Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, to conduct a series of lengthy investigations to tarnish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure and raise questions about her judgment. Democrats understandably called these attacks partisan warfare in legal or investigative garb.

What I have heard from many Hillary Clinton supporters in recent months is that they don’t care about the unfairness of the Russia-gate process or the dangerous precedents that such politicized prosecutions might set. They simply view Trump as such a danger that he must be destroyed at whatever the cost.

Yet, besides the collateral damage inflicted on mid-level government officials such as retired Lt. Gen. Flynn facing personal destruction at the hands of federal prosecutors with unlimited budgets, there is this deepening pattern of using criminal law to settle political differences, a process more common in authoritarian states.

As much as the Russia-gate enthusiasts talk about how they are upholding “the rule of law,” there is the troubling appearance that the law is simply being used to collect the scalps of political enemies.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

You Won’t Believe What Putin Did to Europe

The Russiagate hysteria has jumped the Atlantic with Europeans blaming Russia for Brexit and Catalonian discontent. But what about Israeli influence operations or, for that matter, American ones.

(CN) — Ever since the U.S. government dangled $160 million last December to combat Russian propaganda and disinformation, obscure academics and eager think tanks have been lining up for a shot at the loot, an unseemly rush to profit that is spreading the Russia-gate hysteria beyond the United States to Europe.

Now, it seems that every development, which is unwelcomed by the Establishment – from Brexit to the Catalonia independence referendum – gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia!

The methodology of these “studies” is to find some Twitter accounts or Facebook pages somehow “linked” to Russia (although it’s never exactly clear how that is determined) and complain about the “Russian-linked” comments on political developments in the West. The assumption is that the gullible people of the United States, United Kingdom and Catalonia were either waiting for some secret Kremlin guidance to decide how to vote or were easily duped.

Oddly, however, most of this alleged “interference” seems to have come after the event in question. For instance, more than half (56 percent) of the famous $100,000 in Facebook ads in 2015-2017 supposedly to help elect Donald Trump came after last year’s U.S. election (and the total sum compares to Facebook’s annual revenue of $27 billion).

Similarly, a new British study at the University of Edinburgh blaming the Brexit vote on Russia discovered that more than 70 percent of the Brexit-related tweets from allegedly Russian-linked sites came after the referendum on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union. But, hey, don’t let facts and logic get in the way of a useful narrative to suggest that anyone who voted for Trump or favored Brexit or wants independence for Catalonia is Moscow’s “useful idiot”!

This week, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of seeking to “undermine free societies” and to “sow discord in the West.”

What About Israel?

Yet, another core problem with these “studies” is that they don’t come with any “controls,” i.e., what is used in science to test a hypothesis against some base line to determine if you are finding something unusual or just some normal occurrence.

In this case, for instance, it would be useful to find some other country that, like Russia, has a significant number of English speakers but where English is not the native language – and that has a significant interest in foreign affairs – and then see whether people from that country weigh in on social media with their opinions and perspectives about political events in the U.S., U.K., etc.

Perhaps, the U.S. government could devote some of that $160 million to, say, a study of the Twitter/Facebook behavior of Israelis and whether they jump in on U.S./U.K. controversies that might directly or indirectly affect Israel. We could see how many Twitter/Facebook accounts are “linked” to Israel; we could study whether any Israeli “trolls” harass journalists and news sites that oppose neoconservative policies and politicians in the West; we could check on whether Israel does anything to undermine candidates who are viewed as hostile to Israeli interests; if so, we could calculate how much money these “Israeli-linked” activists and bloggers invest in Facebook ads; and we could track any Twitter bots that might be reinforcing the Israeli-favored message.

No Chance

If we had this Israeli baseline, then perhaps we could judge how unusual it is for Russians to voice their opinions about controversies in the West. It’s true that Israel is a much smaller country with 8.5 million people compared to Russia’s 144 million, but you could adjust for those per capita numbers — and even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that Israel’s interference in U.S. policy-making still exceeds Russian influence.

It’s also true that Israeli leaders have often advocated policies that have proved disastrous for the United States, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement of  the Iraq War, which Russia opposed. Indeed, although Russia is now regularly called an American enemy, it’s hard to think of any policy that President Vladimir Putin has pushed on the U.S. that is even a fraction as harmful to U.S. interests as the Iraq War has been.

And, while we’re at it, maybe we could have an accounting of how much “U.S.-linked” entities have spent to influence politics and policies in Russia, Ukraine, Syria and other international hot spots.

But, of course, neither of those things will happen. If you even tried to gauge the role of “Israeli-linked” operations in influencing Western decision-making, you’d be accused of anti-Semitism. And if that didn’t stop you, there would be furious editorials in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media denouncing you as a “conspiracy theorist.” Who could possibly think that Israel would do anything underhanded to shape Western attitudes?

And, if you sought the comparative figures for the West interfering in the affairs of other nations, you’d be faulted for engaging in “false moral equivalence.” After all, whatever the U.S. government and its allies do is good for the world; whereas Russia is the fount of evil.

So, let’s just get back to developing those algorithms to sniff out, isolate and eradicate “Russian propaganda” or other deviant points of view, all the better to make sure that Americans, Britons and Catalonians vote the right way.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

CIA Narrative on WikiLeaks Dominates Media Coverage of Trump Jr. Correspondence

(SP) — The CIA contends WikiLeaks is not a media organization but rather a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Response by the U.S. press to a report from The Atlantic on correspondence between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. wholly adopted the CIA’s narrative, even though the public still lacks proof of such cooperation.

Moreover, although The Atlantic report merely shows communications between a Trump campaign official and WikiLeaks, it was treated as significant confirmation of Russian collusion.

Former CIA director Leon Panetta appeared on CNN and said the correspondence was “another additional piece of evidence related to the activities of either [Trump] family members or members of his campaign working with the Russians in one way or another.” Panetta maintained there was no question WikiLeaks was a cutout for the Russian government.

“The basic message that should have gone out to all campaign individuals is do not interact with the Russians,” Panetta added, when asked what the Trump campaign should have done when contacted by WikiLeaks. “Do not interact with a foreign adversary that could very well come in and try to influence this election.”

“This is yet another level interest by the campaign in foreign assistance and not just any foreign assistance but foreign assistance tied to the Kremlin,” Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN.

When host Wolf Blitzer asked Schiff to be precise on the relationship between the Kremlin and WikiLeaks, Schiff answered, “Well, the Kremlin, well, was certainly using WikiLeaks to publish these documents. I think it gave them a certain level of deniability that the more direct cutouts like Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks that could be traced right back to the Kremlin would ultimately not provide them. But nonetheless, WikiLeaks is a sophisticated actor.”

“I fully believe that they knew exactly where they were getting this information about and were more than happy to coordinate with the Russians. I don’t think that this is an issue so much of they’re being useful idiots as opposed to witting participants. There is a division of opinion, I think, among members about just how witting or useful they were. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter was this was clearly one of the outlets the Russians were using for publication.”

Tony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, also appeared on CNN and stated, “WikiLeaks was basically a cutout. That is, everything that was exfiltrated from the DNC to the Clinton campaign was apparently passed on to WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks put it out. So this is pretty close to a direct connection.”

He conceded it is not publicly known “exactly what the cooperation/coordination was between Russia and WikiLeaks,” but argued this correspondence fit into a pattern of WikiLeaks aiding and abetting Russia’s attempts to favor one candidate over another in the election.

During “Anderson Cooper 360,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reminded viewers that he was not certain if WikiLeaks had wittingly collaborated with Russia, but later said, “It certainly has the appearance and smell and feel of a developing conspiracy” and the Trump campaign should have viewed WikiLeaks the same as CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Former deputy of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Philip Mudd took a slightly different tack. “Let’s be clear: WikiLeaks published thousands of stolen U.S. government documents that were classified by the U.S. government.”

“Regardless of whether this is illegal, for the son of a U.S. candidate to willingly cooperate in a conversation with an organization that publishes stolen U.S. classified information is an ethical breach. He should never have done this regardless of whether it’s illegal,” Mudd suggested.

A day after the report, Samantha Vinograd, who was part of the National Security Council under Obama, took a massive leap on CNN. “This is a really good day for Vladimir Putin.”

She was responding to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony, but she also contended all the conversation about when Trump Jr. was or was not in contact with WikiLeaks “accomplishes Vladimir Putin’s goal of undermining confidence in our institutions.”

“It’s clear that Donald Trump Jr., for example, was in touch with an organization that Mike Pompeo has called a ‘non-state hostile intelligence service.’ That organization, the intelligence community agrees, received information from the Russian government. So it’s clear to me that Donald Trump Jr. was an intelligence target of the Russian services, and he fell for it.”

The incorporation of the CIA narrative into coverage was not unique to CNN. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow insisted this was an admission that Trump Jr. helped Russia’s allies distribute their stolen materials.

David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for the liberal Mother Jones, reacted, “More Trump-Russia collusion!”

Ed Krassenstein, an entrepreneur and journalist with over a half million followers on Twitter (who has “#ImpeachTrump” in his bio), wrote, “The Wikileaks Correspondence with Don Jr. confirms that Julian Assange & Wikileaks are agents of the Russian government & that they are not the ‘neutral’ party that many people make them out to be. This changes everything & reinforces the allegations that Trump colluded w/ Russia.”

But what The Atlantic report by Julia Ioffe shows is WikiLeaks recognized the Trump campaign could be useful to their goal of pushing out the release of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Likewise, the Trump campaign recognized WikiLeaks may have some value because it was capable of being such a thorn in the side of Clinton and Democrats, which it had been since it published disclosures from Chelsea Manning in 2010.

At worst, it shows Trump Jr. ignored a warning on October 7 from U.S. security agencies because he continued to reply to WikiLeaks messages. However, the warning only said the disclosures were “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.” It was not an official report that rested upon conclusive evidence like the U.S. intelligence community report released in January.

That report did not prove WikiLeaks was wholly compromised by the Russian government. New York Times reporter Scott Shane wrote, “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission.”

It claimed with “high confidence” the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, used the “Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release U.S. victim data” to WikiLeaks. Yet, it did not prove that WikiLeaks had any idea this material was coming from hackers tied to the Russians.

When Assange commented on the intelligence community’s assessment and called it “embarrassing,” he accused agencies of deliberately obscuring the timeline. He said they do not know when the Democratic National Committee was hacked.

“The U.S. intelligence community is not aware of when WikiLeaks obtained its material or when the sequencing of our material was done or how we obtained our material directly. So there seems to be a great fog in the connection to WikiLeaks,” Assange maintained.

There are several former intelligence professionals, a few with whistleblowing pasts, who have questioned the veracity of the report. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, disputes the “theology” around the alleged Russian hacking.

Challenging officials like Schiff, Ritter contends, “There simply isn’t any hard data in the public domain to back up these statements of fact. What is known is that a persona using the name Guccifer 2.0 published documents said to be sourced from the DNC on several occasions starting from June 15, 2016. Guccifer 2.0 claims to have stolen these documents by perpetrating a cyber-penetration of the DNC server.

“However, the hacking methodology Guccifer 2.0 claims to have employed does not match the tools and techniques allegedly uncovered by the cybersecurity professionals from CrowdStrike when they investigated the DNC intrusion.”

Ritter also points out that malware at the center of allegations was “available on the open market, making it virtually impossible to make any attribution at all simply by looking at similarities in “tools and techniques.” Virtually anyone could have acquired these tools and used them” in the way they were deployed against the DNC. Plus, Russia would not have used an open source tool in its professional hacking, or “offensive intelligence,” operations.

The Nation Magazine was hammered for publishing a report based on conclusions by these former U.S. intelligence professionals that questioned the dominant narrative pushed aggressively by agencies, such as the CIA. To its credit, it stood by the publication saying it was “troubled by the paucity of serious public scrutiny of the January 2017 intelligence community assessment.”

“This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations,” editor-in-chief Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote. “To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their ‘judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.’”

The narrative around WikiLeaks collaborating with Russia as an agent of the Kremlin remains one that lacks concrete evidence. Even officials, current and former, who comment on television, find themselves saying, “I believe,” not “I know,” or, “We know.”

There is so much hysteria around the Trump administration and the investigation into its connections with Russians or Russian intermediaries that there is little space for sober examinations of evidence to demonstrate what could be true and what could not possibly be the case no matter how much Americans want to believe Trump is a puppet of Putin so impeachment proceedings can start immediately.

The focus on an alleged Trump-Russia conspiracy that so far lacks the facts necessary to connect dots distracts attention from pressing issues of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. It does as much if not more to embolden Putin because he can be pleased U.S. officials are still chasing trails of smoke in every which way imaginable. And to the extent that it demonizes an outfit that has published documents which reveal key truths about the inner workings of the U.S. government, this is a gift that keeps on giving to the national security state.

After all, WikiLeaks published a 2010 Red Cell memorandum from the CIA that analyzed the wide perception that the U.S. exports terrorism. It released a CIA report from 2009 that examined the effects of strikes against “high value targets.” In publishing over a half million U.S. diplomatic cables, it brought attention to the CIA’s use of diplomats to spy on officials from the United Nations.

There is a reason why the CIA sees WikiLeaks as “hostile.” WikiLeaks is largely opposed to the agency and consistently has exposed the organization to greater scrutiny. But that does not make it a Kremlin-backed outfit. It simply makes it an adversarial press operation that unlike many news organizations has no interest in protecting the interests of spy agencies.

By Kevin Gosztola / Republished with permission / Shadow Proof / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Mocking Trump Doesn’t Prove Russia Is Guilty of Hacking Democrats’ Emails

President Trump is getting mocked for “trusting” Vladimir Putin’s denial about “meddling” in U.S. politics — and not accepting Official Washington’s groupthink — but ridicule isn’t evidence.

(CN) — If the bloody debacle in Iraq should have taught Americans anything, it is that endorsements by lots of important people who think something is true don’t amount to evidence that it actually is true. If endorsements were the same as evidence, U.S. troops would have found tons of WMD in Iraq, rather than come up empty.

So, when it comes to whether or not Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year and slipped them to WikiLeaks, just because a bunch of people with fancy titles think the Russians are guilty doesn’t compensate for the lack of evidence so far evinced to support this core charge.

But the reaction of Official Washington and the U.S. mainstream media to President Trump saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed sincere in denying Russian “meddling” was sputtering outrage: How could Trump doubt what so many important people think is true?

Yet, if the case were all that strong that Russia did “hack” the emails, you would have expected a straightforward explication of the evidence rather than a demonstration of a full-blown groupthink, but what we got this weekend was all groupthink and no evidence.

For instance, on Saturday, CNN responded to Trump’s comment that Putin seems to “mean it” when he denied meddling by running a list of important Americans who had endorsed the Russian-guilt verdict. Other U.S. news outlets and politicians followed the same pattern.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a big promoter of the Russia-gate allegations, scoffed at what Trump said: “You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies?”

The Washington Post’s headline sitting atop Sunday’s lede article read: “Trump says Putin sincere in denial of Russian meddling: Critics call that ‘unconscionable.’”

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and another Russia-gate sparkplug, said he was left “completely speechless” by Trump’s willingness to take Putin’s word “over the conclusions of our own combined intelligence community.”

Which gets us back to the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” and its stunning lack of evidence in support of its Russian guilty verdict. The ICA even admitted as much, that it wasn’t asserting Russian guilt as fact but rather as opinion:

“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”

Even The New York Times, which has led the media groupthink on Russian guilt, initially published the surprised reaction from correspondent Scott Shane who wrote: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”

In other words, the ICA was not a disposition of fact; it was guesswork, possibly understandable guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. And guesswork should be open to debate.

Shutting Down Debate

But the debate was shut down earlier this year by the oft-repeated claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the assessment and how could anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies concluded!

However, that canard was finally knocked down by President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who acknowledged in sworn congressional testimony that the ICA was the product of “handpicked” analysts from only three agencies – the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

In other words, not only did the full intelligence community not participate in the ICA but only analysts “handpicked” by Obama’s intelligence chiefs conducted the analysis – and as we intelligence veterans know well, if you handpick the analysts, you are handpicking the conclusions.

For instance, put a group of analysts known for their hardline views on Russia in a room for a few weeks, prevent analysts with dissenting viewpoints from weighing in, don’t require any actual evidence, and you are pretty sure to get the Russia-bashing result that you wanted.

So why do you think Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan put up the no-entry sign that kept out analysts from the State Department and Defense Intelligence Agency, two entities that might have significant insights into Russian intentions? By all rights, they should have been included. But, clearly, no dissenting footnotes or wider-perspective views were desired.

If you remember back to the Iraq WMD intelligence estimate, analysts from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, known as INR, offered unwelcome dissenting views about the pace of Iraq’s supposed nuclear program, inserting a footnote saying they found it too difficult to predict the fruition of a program when there was no reliable evidence as to when – not to mention if – it had started.

DIA also was demonstrating an unusually independent streak, displaying a willingness to give due consideration to Russia’s perspective. Here’s the heterodox line DIA took in a major report published in December 2015:

“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab Spring and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

So, not only did the Jan. 6 report exclude input from INR and DIA and the other dozen or so intelligence agencies but it even avoided a fully diverse set of opinions from inside the CIA, FBI and NSA. The assessment – or guesswork – came only from those “hand-picked” analysts.

It’s also worth noting that not only does Putin deny that Russia was behind the publication of the Democratic emails but so too does WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange who has insisted repeatedly that the material did not come from the Russians. He and others around WikiLeaks have strongly suggested that the emails came as leaks from Democratic insiders.

Seeking Real Answers

In the face of Official Washington’s evidence-free groupthink, what some of us former U.S. intelligence analysts have been trying to do is provide both a fuller understanding of Russian behavior and whatever scientific analysis can be applied to the alleged “hacks.”

Forensic investigations and testing of relevant download speeds, reported by members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), have undermined the Russia-did-it groupthink. But this attempt to engage in actual evaluation of evidence has been either ignored or mocked by mainstream news outlets.

Still, the suggestion in our July 24 VIPS memo that President Trump ask current CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take a fresh look at the issue recently had some consequence when Pompeo contacted VIPS member William Binney, a former NSA Technical Director, and invited him to explain his latest research on the impossibility of the Russians extracting the Democratic emails via an Internet hack based on known download speeds.

In typically candid terms, Binney explained to Pompeo why VIPS had concluded that the intelligence analysts behind the Jan. 6 report had been making stuff up about Russian “hacking.”

When news of the Binney-Pompeo meeting broke last week, the U.S. mainstream media again rejected the opportunity to rethink the Russia-did-it groupthink and instead treated Binney as some sort of “conspiracy theorist” with a “disputed” theory, while attacking Pompeo’s willingness to discuss Binney’s findings as “politicizing intelligence.”

Despite the smearing of Binney, President Trump appears to have taken some of this new evidence to heart, explaining his dispute with open-mouthed White House reporters on Air Force One who baited Trump with various forms of the same question: “Do you believe Putin?” amid the new jeering about Trump “getting played” by Putin.

Trump’s demeanor, however, suggested increased confidence that the Russian “hacking” allegations were the “witch hunt” that he has decried for months.

Trump also jabbed the press over its earlier false claims that “all 17 intelligence agencies” concurred on the Russian “hack.” And Trump introduced the idea of a different kind of “hack,” i.e., Obama’s political appointees at the heads of the agencies behind the Jan. 6 report.

Trump said, “You hear it’s 17 agencies. Well it’s three. And one is Brennan … give me a break. They’re political hacks. … I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, you have [FBI Director James] Comey. Comey is proven to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.”

Later, in deference to those still at work in intelligence, Trump said, “I’m with our [intelligence] agencies as currently constituted.”

While Trump surely has a dismal record of his own regarding truth-telling, he’s not wrong about the checkered record of the triumvirate of Clapper, Brennan and Comey.

Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.

In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA’s unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper’s testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, “My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize.” Despite the deception, he was allowed to stay as Obama’s most senior intelligence officer for almost four more years.

Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian “interference” in the U.S. election to NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about “the historical practices of the Russians.” Clapper said, “the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”

Brennan, who had previously defended torture as having been an effective way to gain intelligence, was CIA director when agency operatives broke into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was investigating CIA torture.

Former FBI Director Comey is infamous for letting the Democratic National Committee arrange its own investigation of the “hacking” that was then blamed on Russia, a development that led some members of Congress to call the supposed “hack” an “act of war.” Despite the risk of nuclear conflagration, the FBI didn’t bother to do its own forensics.

And, by his own admission, Comey arranged a leak to The New York Times that was specifically designed to get a Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate Russia-gate, a job that fell to his old friend Robert Mueller, who has had his own mixed record as the previous FBI director in mishandling the 9/11 investigation.

There are plenty of reasons to want Trump out of the White House, but there also should be respect for facts and due process. So far, the powers-that-be in Washington – in politics, the media and other dominant institutions, what some call the Deep State – have shown little regard for fairness in the Russia-gate “scandal.”

The goal seems to be to remove the President or at least emasculate him on a bum rap, giving him the bum’s rush, so to speak, while also further demonizing Russia and exacerbating an already dangerous New Cold War.

The truth should still count for something. No one’s character should be assassinated, as Bill Binney’s is being now, for running afoul of the conventional wisdom that Trump – like bête noire Putin – never tells the truth, and that to believe either is, well, “unconscionable,” as The Washington Post warns.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He was a CIA intelligence analyst for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

By Ray McGovern / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

FEMA Is Failing America After These Massive Hurricanes — and I Know Why

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) Recently, I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about groups like the Cajun Navy, which rescued hundreds of people during Hurricane Harvey. The organization formed spontaneously in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and is stimulating a new and much-needed conversation. When you compare the voluntary provision of important public services by the “Cajun Navies” of the world to those provided by government agencies like FEMA, it’s hard to deny how much better the voluntary organizations perform.

Based on many of the discussions I’ve been having about recent events, it is obvious that many people realize something important is almost “hiding in plain sight.” ‘We the People’ already provide each other with most of the services we rely on, but this fact often goes unnoticed. Whether it’s the production and supply of food, clothes, electrical power, houses, systems and modes of transportation, medical treatments, or most modern forms of communication — all public services on which we depend — We the People are responsible for most of them.

And yet almost half of the country’s resources go to the government.

Common sense says we should send more resources to those who can do the best work with them. Yet when it comes to the public services, that common sense seems lacking.

Whenever we simply increase the amount we are sending to a government program or agency to deliver a public service, we are skipping the critical step of identifying the best way of doing something before we do it – or doing more of it.

In almost every other area of life, when we want to improve outcomes, we look at methods of delivery. If we did this for the services the public relies on, we would all do better.

The provision of public services by the government has some unique and fundamental flaws. For example, the guaranteed supply of potentially unlimited revenue (through taxation) reduces the accountability of those who spend it, creating an imbalance between inputs and outcomes. This contributes to ever-increasing waste and inefficiency over time. FEMA had a $13.9 billion budget in 2016 yet was expected to run out of money even before superstorm Irma hit Florida as this year’s hurricane season was just beginning. And that’s after $6.7 billion was allocated to disaster relief in the 2017 budget.  In contrast, volunteer organizations have been performing many of the same functions of FEMA even more effectively without taking any tax dollars from the public to do so. Amazingly, the Cajun Navy does its life-saving work without taxpayer funds.

The fact that the Cajun Navy arrived on the scene quicker than FEMA and saved more lives on a shoestring budget begs a profoundly important question: How much more good could be done by the “Cajun Navies” of the world if they had even a small fraction of the resources the “FEMAs” have?

The Cajun Navy is just another example of Americans coming together and putting their differences aside to help each other in times of need. It’s truly a beautiful thing to witness. As Charlie Chaplin famously said in the film The Great Dictator, “We all want to help one another; human beings are like that.”

The good news is that we are already spending more than enough to do the good we would like to see done – if only a small fraction of those resources were redirected to those who do better with them so they could give those most in need the best possible assistance.

A model for this has already been implemented with excellent results.

In Arizona, residents are able to redirect some of their tax dollars to organizations that do better in supporting the causes they believe in. Arizona’s “charitable tax credit” allows each taxpayer to redirect up to $400 (recently doubled from $200) of their individual state income tax liability to a nonprofit in their local area that serves the poor more effectively than does the government. Taxpayers receive a dollar-for-dollar credit for donations, so if they have a tax bill of $1,000 from the state of Arizona but have sent $400 to their favorite local charities, they only owe the state $600.

Whether we are responding to catastrophic events such as hurricanes or the basic, everyday needs of our communities, doesn’t it make the most sense to ensure those who do the most good have the resources they need to do even more good? If we do, the sky will be the limit for the “Cajun Navies” out there in both number and effectiveness.  Given the uncertain environment we live in, why would we want to do anything less than put ourselves in the best possible position to meet tomorrow’s needs or to deal with the next emergency — whatever it may be?

There are countless examples of harm done by the wasting of resources by those who have no real incentive to deploy them carefully. How about New York City spending $2 million on a bathroom, the GSA spending more than $800,000 at a conference in Vegas, and the Pentagon fudging its own accounts by $6.5 trillion? The list goes on and on.

Recognizing all of this, the We Do Better project is about finding organizations that do better in each community, ensuring that those who need help know where and how to get it, and empowering communities to send their resources where they will do the most good.

In Arizona, where the charitable credit was implemented, local charities in several communities formed tax credit coalitions to publicize the credit, making it easier for donors to give and for beneficiaries to find them. This increased cooperation among charities has had the wonderful side effect of making them more effective in helping people who were facing multiple challenges at once (such as food insecurity, homelessness, and addiction), hugely improving human outcomes and the strength of the community’s social safety net.

Doing the most good means being morally committed to better human outcomes rather than ideologically committed to a particular method of achieving them.  Let us start measuring our compassion not by our good intentions, the efforts we make, or even the money we spend – but by the good we do for each other.

As Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

We already do better. We can do more of that.

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This article was submitted by Jason Casella of We Do Better, a voluntary aid organization.