13 Shocking Facts About Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller

Talking heads act like Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is fair, impartial and unbiased.

But the facts are a wee bit different ...

Failure to Aggressively Prosecute the BCCI Scandal

The BBC noted:

[Mueller] is also known for leading the probe into the 1991 collapse of the Luxembourg-registered Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

Williams Safire wrote in the New York Times:

The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system.

 

For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the most evil of purposes -- while lawmen and regulators slept.

 

Now the fight among investigators is coming out into the open. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who gave impetus to long-contained probes, told a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John Kerry that he is getting no cooperation from the Thornburgh Justice Department.

 

Justice"s Criminal Division chief, Robert Mueller, tells me he will have a hatchet-burying session with the independent-minded D.A. next week, and vehemently denies having told British intelligence to stop cooperating with the Manhattan grand jury.

Mueller"s handling of the BCCI scandal as the point man for the Justice Department was widely criticized.  As noted by a Senate report written by Senators Kerry and Brown:

Over the past two years, the Justice Department"s handling of BCCI has been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reflecting similar criticism on the part of several Congressmen, including the chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Kerry; the chief Customs undercover officer who handled the BCCI drug-money laundering sting, Robert Mazur; his superior at Customs, Commissioner William von Raab; New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; former Senate investigator Jack Blum, and, within the Justice Department itself, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Dexter Lehtinen.

 

Typical editorials criticized Justice"s prosecution of BCCI as "sluggish," "conspicuously slow," "inattentive," and "lethargic." Several editorials noted that there had been "poor cooperation" by Justice with other agencies. One stated that "the Justice Department seems to have been holding up information that should have been passed on" to regulators and others. Another that "the Justice Department"s secretive conduct in dealing with BCCI requires a better explanation than any so far offered.

 

***

 

Under Assistant Attorney General Mueller, the Department assigned nearly three dozen attorneys to the case. During 1992, the Department brought several indictments, which remained narrower, less detailed and, at times, seemingly in response to the efforts of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of New York, the Federal Reserve, or both

 

***

 

Suddenly, on August 22, Dennis Saylor, chief assistant to Assistant Attorney General Mueller, called Lehtinen and, according to the US Attorney, "indicated to me that I was directed not to return the indictment."

The Senate Report also noted:

While the Justice Department"s handling of BCCI has received substantial criticism, the office of Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney of New York, has generally received credit for breaking open the BCCI investigation.

 

***

 

In going after BCCI, Morgenthau"s office quickly found that in addition to fighting off the bank, it would receive resistance from almost every other institution or entity connected to BCCI, including at various times, BCCI"s multitude of prominent and politically well-connected lawyers, BCCI"s accountants, BCCI"s shareholders, the Bank of England, the British Serious Fraud Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Squashing Warning Signs that May Have Stopped 9/11

Larry Klayman writes:

Robert Mueller first hit my radar ... just months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

 

***

 

I came to meet and later represent FBI Special Agents Robert Wright and John Vincent, of the agency’s Chicago Counter-Terrorism Field Office. During our meeting, both Special Agents Wright and Vincent revealed to me that they had been conducting a counterterrorism investigation of Saudi money laundering into and in the United States, and they both believed that a massive terrorist attack was imminent.

 

In the course of this investigation, both special agents had asked a fellow FBI agent who was undercover, one of Muslim descent, to be wired to turn up further evidence of this terrorist operation. The Muslim agent refused, indignantly telling both Wright and Vincent that Muslims don’t spy and rat on other Muslims. In shock, my soon-to-be clients reported this to their supervisors at the FBI, but no action was taken. To make matters worse, Wright’s and Vincent’s FBI supervisors quashed their investigation. They both believed that the order to kill the investigation came from the highest reaches of the FBI, and, upset it not outraged by this cover-up, Wright then decided to write a book detailing this breach of FBI honor.

 

The only way I could explain this cover-up was that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was sensitive to the ties between the family of President George W. Bush and the Saudi royal family.

 

***

 

Director Mueller, along with his “yes men” supervisors at the agency, not only quashed my clients’ investigation and ignored the disloyalty of the Muslim undercover agent, but then missed the warning signs leading up to September 11 – the biggest intelligence failure in American history, even surpassing Pearl Harbor.

 

But shamelessly, despite this historic intelligence failure and the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that ensued, Mueller later led an effort to drum both Special Agents Wright and Vincent out of the FBI, in part by attempting to remove their security clearances, as a “reward” for their candor.

FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley points out:

The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in.

But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.

Mueller was one of the people who dropped the ball and let 9/11 happen.

Allowing Escape of Saudi Persons Connected to Bin Laden

Right after 9/11, American airspace was closed down. Yet Mueller was one of the people who allowed relatives of Bin Laden and other persons of interest fly back to Saudi Arabia.

Entrapping Innocent People for P.R. Purposes

After dropping the ball, Mueller then went on to entrap innocent people for P.R. purposes.

And Rowley notes:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time.  FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

9/11 Cover Up

Rowley says:

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11.

In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style "minders" to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn"t say anything the FBI didn"t like. The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

Mueller"s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location. See this and this.

Harper’s notes:

Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me recently that Robert Mueller, then the FBI director (and now the special counsel investigating connections between Russia and the Trump campaign) made “the strongest objections” to Jacobson and his colleagues visiting San Diego.

 

Graham and his team defied Mueller’s efforts, and Jacobson flew west. There he discovered that his hunch was correct. The FBI files in California were replete with extraordinary and damning details …

 

***

 

Nevertheless, Mueller adamantly refused their demands to interview him, even when backed by a congressional subpoena, and removed Shaikh to an undisclosed location ‘for his own safety.’

Graham also wrote that the FBI also “insisted that we could not, even in the most sanitized manner, tell the American people that an FBI informant had a relationship with two of the hijackers.”

And Kristen Breitweiser - one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks - points out:

Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

Iraq War

Rowley notes:

When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

Torture

Rowley also points out:

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

Anthrax Frame-Up

Mueller also presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI"s investigation was "flawed and inaccurate". The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an "independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case."

The head of the FBI"s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups "greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation", that there were "politically motivated communication embargoes from FBI Headquarters".

The FBI"s anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins. On July 6, 2006, he filed a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

(j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

 

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.

In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this).

Unsure If Government Can Assassinate U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

Rather than saying "of course not!", Mueller said that he wasn"t sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

 

***

 

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

Crippled Investigations of Financial Fraud ... Helping to Allow the Great Recession

In a 2013 piece entitled "Mueller: I Crippled FBI Effort v. White-Collar Crime", the country’s top white collar crime expert, William Black – who put over 1,000 top S&L executives in jail for fraud, and is a  professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri - wrote:

The FBI never developed “an intelligence operation” “to analyze threats” of even epidemic fraud.

 

***

 

White-collar crime investigations and prosecutions are massive money makers that reduce the deficit, but Mueller, Holder, and Obama refuse to make these points and refuse to prosecute the elite bank fraudsters. On substantive and political grounds their actions are either inexplicable or all too explicable and support my readers’ belief that the FBI leadership no longer wants to investigate and prosecute the elite bank frauds.

This is important because:

• Fraud CAUSED the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis

• Numerous Nobel prize winning economists say that we need to prosecute fraud, or else the economy will never truly stabilize

• After the Great Depression, the government cracked down on Wall Street fraud.  But Mueller and other Bush and Obama administration officials let it slide

(There are a lot of people more responsible for the Great Recession - and for lack of reform afterwards - than Mueller.   For example, Mueller"s boss (the FBI is a part of the Department of Justice) made it more or less official policy not to prosecute financial fraud.   But this is another example of Mueller dropping the ball.

Spying on Americans

Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history.

As we noted in 2013:

NBC News reports:

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We have put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.

Remember, the FBI - unlike the CIA - deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.

On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN"s Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone fcompanies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

 

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

 

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

 

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored:

 

NSA whistleblowers say that this means that the NSA collects "word for word" all of our communications.

Colleen Rowley writes:

Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

Covering Up for Turkish Terrorists

Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups, who the ACLU described as "The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America", and who famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”, says that Mueller covered up a Turkish terror network.

Gagging Whistleblowers

Edmonds also said that Mueller gagged her and other whistleblowers.

Conclusion

Rather than being "above the fray",  Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.

As Coleen Rowley puts it:

Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

And:

It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.

"Not The Russians" - British MPs Blame Iran For "Brute Force" Hack

Yet another purported example of Russia-linked hackers infiltrating the email accounts of powerful government officials    has been conclusively debunked.

The Guardian is reporting that a June incident where the accounts of dozens of UK ministers of parliament were infiltrated by shadowy hackers has been traced back to Iran. The UK intelligence community’s initial conclusion – that the attacks originated in Russia – has been refuted by an as-yet-unpublished report on the incident compiled by British intelligence.

Indeed, the intelligence community’s initial assumption appears to be another example of investigators jumping to a conclusion before a thorough analysis of the evidence has been completed. In a way, it echoes the response by several US states last month to the revelation that hackers had attempted to compromise their voting systems. Some states, including California and Wisconsin, apparently assumed the attacks were linked to Russia, until DHS informed them that it had found no evidence to support this conclusion.

The June 23 cyberattack affected the accounts of dozens of MPs, including Prime Minister Theresa May and several senior other senior ministers. The network that was compromised is used by every MP for interactions with constituents, the Guardian reported.

Initially, UK intelligence determined that hackers had attempted to gain access to accounts protected by weak passwords – despite repeated warnings to choose strong, hard-to-crack passwords.

An anonymous “security source” cited by the Guardian said the hackers used unsophisticated “brute force” attacks where the hackers use specifically designed programs to test out hundreds of thousands of different passwords combinations. “It was a brute-force attack. It appears to have been state-sponsored. The nature of cyber-attacks means it is notoriously difficult to attribute an incident to a specific actor.”

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen added that the attack “absolutely” could leave some people open to blackmail. “Constituents want to know the information they send to us is completely secure,” he said.

Initially, suspicion had fallen upon foreign governments such as Russia and North Korea, both of which have been accused of orchestrating previous hacking attempts in the UK.

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, said the incident reinforced the notion that MPs need to take extra precaution when securing their data.

“We know that our public services are attacked, so it is not at all surprising that there should be an attempt to hack into parliamentary emails,” he said. “And it’s a warning to everybody, whether they are in parliament or elsewhere, that they need to do everything possible to maintain their own cybersecurity.”

Given the furor that erupted after DHS ordered US government agencies to immediately remove security software designed by Russia-based firm Kaspersky Labs, the revelation about Iran’s involvement in the UK hacks should give intelligence agencies – not to mention lawmakers who seemingly blame Russia for every incidence of cyber meddling uncovered by US intelligence – pause. After the WSJ reported that Kaspersky’s software was essentially being leveraged by the Russian government to create an international spy network, German intelligence announced that they had found no evidence to support this claim.

And while many have blamed Russia-linked hackers for last year’s hack of DNC emails, including emails sent by Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is reportedly offering President Donald Trump conclusive evidence that he says would debunk this claim.

However, Chief of Staff John Kelly has rebutted one Congressman’s attempts to bring the deal to President Trump. But as the multiple investigations into whether Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to sway the election in the president’s favor have apparently hit a wall, Assange’s evidence might be the key to silencing these suspicions, which have cast an unsubstantiated pall of illegitimacy over Trump’s first term in office.
 

Mueller Interviews "Trump Dossier" Author Chris Steele

Revelations about the status of the various investigations into whether the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Russian government are making increasingly little sense.

Yesterday, leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that they’d “hit a wall” in their efforts to verify the contents of the infamous “Trump dossier.”

As has been widely reported, the dossier - which contained several salacious allegations about Trump’s Russia ties - was commissioned by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and assembled by a man named Christopher Steele, allegedly a former operative who spent time in Russia on behalf of British intelligence.

Until today, Steele had remained a cypher; unwilling to meet with investigators, and beyond the reach of their subpoena power.

Senator Richard Burr’s revelation that the committee’s investigators had effectively given up on the dossier further supported this impression.

Now, a day after Reuters reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had assumed control of the FBI’s inquiry into the dossier, CNN is reporting that Mueller and his team caught up with Steele over the summer.

However, the contents of their discussion remain a mystery.

CNN has learned that the FBI and the US intelligence community last year took the Steele dossier more seriously than the agencies have publicly acknowledged. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, said in a January 2017 statement that the intelligence community had "not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable."

The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, and the FBI took Steele"s research seriously enough that they kept it out of a publicly-released January report on Russian meddling in the election in order to not divulge which parts of the dossier they had corroborated and how.

This contrasts with attempts by President Donald Trump and some lawmakers to discredit Steele and the memos he produced.

The implication, CNN asserts, is that investigators have corroborated some of the dossier’s claims.

But even if this does turn out to be true, CNN’s reporters were unable to confirm this with their sources. They also were unable to ascertain what Steele had said or whether he provided any useful information to help investigators corroborate the dossier’s claims. None of this stopped Jeff Zucker’s propaganda machine from venturing an educated guess:

“Specifically that some of the communications among foreign nationals mentioned in the memos did actually take place.”

In a notable divergence from its previous investigation "scoops", CNN left the most confusing and contradictory assertions for the end of its report. In this section, it reported that sources told the agency about an internal debate among the intelligence agencies about whether to include select allegations from the Trump dossier in a January report presenting the agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to interfere in the election.

Ultimately, the agencies decided against publishing details from the dossier after concluding that revealing what US intelligence has, or hasn’t, confirmed could jeopardize sources or reveal secret intelligence collecting methods, and this information remains classified. Trump was instead privately briefed on the allegations by then-FBI Director James Comey.

But if some of the dossier’s allegations have been corroborated, then why hasn’t anything been done?

Given the steady trickle of leaks from the intelligence agencies and the various investigations, we imagine these details would’ve been revealed by now.

Which prompts us to ask: Was the Steele interview a dud?

Mueller Takes Over "Trump Dossier" Probe After Intel Committee "Hits A Wall"

Now that the FBI and investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee have given up on trying to verify the contents, Reuters is reporting that the infamous "Trump Dossier" hot potato has passed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team.

According to Reuters, Mueller has taken over the FBI inquiry into the dossier after it was widely reported earlier this year that the FBI failed to verify its most salacious allegations, but still used it to justify launching an investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Three sources with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.

Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election.

The timing of the story is interesting, considering that only a few hours ago, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr admitted that the committee’s investigators had given up on trying to corroborate the document"s allegations.

During a public update about the status of the committee"s investigation, Burr said that the committee’s efforts to investigate the dossier’s allegations had “hit a wall” because it’s been unable to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

"Unfortunately, the committee has hit a wall," Sen. Burr says of Steele dossier https://t.co/T5uqoA85rO pic.twitter.com/QbxgCGr8yN

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 4, 2017

Without Steele’s cooperation, Burr said, the dossier’s contents and provenance, as well as the identity of its financial backers, appear impossible to verify up until it was first turned over the FBI in June 2016. The tacit suggestion here is that the only thing stopping investigators from publicly confirming that the dossier’s allegations have been debunked is the hope that Steel may one day come forward with the smoking gun that could lead to the downfall of a president…an eventuality that appears increasingly remote.

in case they forgot, Reuters reminds readers that its reporters had been briefed on the dossier’s contents before the election, but, like most media outlets at the time, decided not to report it because it couldn’t be verified.

Reuters added that since then, several US intelligence agencies have said they’re taking the allegations seriously.

In summary, Mueller’s “takeover” of the Russia dossier investigation is really just another hail mary in the hopes that Steele or somebody else will come forward with something, anything, that could verify the document’s assertions.

Coverup? FBI, DOJ Refuse To Comply With Congressional "Trump Dossier" Subpoena

In what looks like a naked coverup meant to obscure the fact that the Department of Justice"s decision to launch a criminal investigation into possible Russia-Trump collusion was based on a lie, Reuters reports that the DOJ and FBI are resisting a Congressional subpoena from to turn over documents that would reveal details about how the infamous "Trump dossier" factored into their decision to launch said investigation.

Despite receiving the subpoena from US Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, the FBI is steadfastly refusing to turn over the documents because the agency says they would purportedly compromise an ongoing criminal investigation (the FBI’s investigation into Mueller). More likely, the agency’s intransigence stems from fears that the one Russia collusion narrative that Democrats have actively worked to suppress could come back to haunt them.

The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas in August seeking “any and all documents” about both agencies’ dealings with former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, according to a letter seen by Reuters from committee chairman Devin Nunes, a Trump supporter.

Steele compiled the so-called Trump dossier, which Trump was told by FBI director James Comey contained salacious material about the businessman-turned president. Trump and his associates have said the dossier’s contents were false.

As we noted earlier this month when the subpoenas were first filed, the now-infamous Trump dossier was provided to the FBI even though it contained knowingly inaccurate allegations. Russia-born financier and Putin opponent Bill Browder revealed as much during an explosive piece of testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over the summer that was multilaterally ignored by the media, when he claimed that the document was indirectly financed by a “senior Russian government official.”

Unsurprisingly, Nunes and his fellow Republicans are spearheading the subpoena effort, while Democrats on the committee, including leading anti-Trumper Adam Schiff, have resisted their efforts at every turn, claiming the subpoenas are part of a plan to try and "discredit" the dossier"s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

To be sure, many of the claims Steele made in the dossier have already been discredited. For example, the FBI has found no evidence, for example, supporting the dossier’s its claim that an attorney for Mr. Trump went to the Czech Republic to meet Kremlin officials, U.S. officials said. The attorney has also denied the claim.

For their part, Republicans on the committee contend that understanding the genesis of the dossier, and whether it was created with the explicit intention of sabotaging Trump, is important.

Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee has also been battling with the Justice Department for months over its request to interview two FBI officials about Trump’s dismissal in May of Comey as FBI chief, according to letters from the committee and the department. On Sept. 22, it agreed that it would be “appropriate” for the officials to testify provided that it would be in a classified setting and did not interfere with Mueller’s inquiry.

Not unlike the Ring of Sauron from “The Lord of the Rings”, the Trump dossier has created problems for everyone who has touched it. Buzzfeed is being sued for defamation by an individual who was named in the dossier in a case that bears several eerie similarities to the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that killed Gawker. CNN published a series of embarrassing clarifications and retractions. Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele, has been widely criticized for its role in creating the document, and one of its founders was finally compelled to privately testify before a Senate committee after months of dragging his feet.

It has embarrassed the DOJ, which reportedly cited some of its unproven allegations as justification for launching a criminal probe into the Trump campaign – a probe that has dragged on for nearly nine months now, without producing anything that looks like actionable evidence against the president.

It’s long past time for the intelligence agencies to come clean about how the document factored into their thinking. Considering the volume of leaks meant to convey the implication of shadiness without providing anything in the way of actual evidence of collusion, it’s understandable why Trump’s loyalists in Congress want to expose the lies underpinning the collusion narrative.
 

Happy Birthday CIA: 7 Truly Terrible Things The Agency Has Done In 70 Years

Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

On Monday, President Trump tweeted birthday wishes to the Air Force and the CIA. Both became official organizations 70 years ago on September 18, 1947, with the implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.

After spending years as a wartime intelligence agency called the Office of Strategic Services, the agency was solidified as a key player in the federal government’s operations with then-President Harry Truman’s authorization.

In the seventy years since, the CIA has committed a wide variety of misdeeds, crimes, coups, and violence. Here are seven of the worst programs they’ve carried out (that are known to the public):

1.Toppling governments around the world

The CIA is best known for its first coup, Operation Ajax, in 1953, in which it ousted the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, reinstating the autocratic Shah, who favored western oil interests. That operation, which the CIA now admits to waging with British intelligence, ultimately resulted in the 1979 revolution and subsequent U.S. hostage crisis. Relations between the U.S. and Iran remain strained to this day, aptly described by the CIA-coined term “blowback.”

But the CIA has had a hand in toppling a number of other democratically elected governments, from Guatemala (1954) and the Congo (1960) to the Dominican Republic (1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1973). The CIA has aimed to install leaders who appease American interests, often empowering oppressive, violent dictators. This is only a partial list of countries where the CIA covertly attempted to exploit and manipulate sovereign nations’ governments.

2. Operation Paperclip

In one of the more bizarre CIA plots, the agency and other government departments employed Nazi scientists both within and outside the United States to gain an advantage over the Soviets. As summarized by NPR:

“The aim [of Operation Paperclip] was to find and preserve German weapons, including biological and chemical agents, but American scientific intelligence officers quickly realized the weapons themselves were not enough.

“They decided the United States needed to bring the Nazi scientists themselves to the U.S. Thus began a mission to recruit top Nazi doctors, physicists and chemists — including Wernher von Braun, who went on to design the rockets that took man to the moon.”

They kept this plot secret, though they admitted to it upon the release of Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America by Annie Jacobsen. In a book review, the CIA wrote that “Henry Wallace, former vice president and secretary of commerce, believed the scientists’ ideas could launch new civilian industries and produce jobs.” 

They praised the book’s historical accuracy, noting “that the Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was headed by Kurt Debus, an ardent Nazi.” They acknowledged that “General Reinhard Gehlen, former head of Nazi intelligence operations against the Soviets, was hired by the US Army and later by the CIA to operate 600 ex-Nazi agents in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany.”

Remarkably, they noted that Jacobsen “understandably questions the morality of the decision to hire Nazi SS scientists,” but praise her for pointing out that it was done to fight Soviets. They also made sure to add that the Soviets hired Nazis, too, apparently justifying their own questionable actions by citing their most loathed enemy.

3. Operation CHAOS

The FBI is widely known for its COINTELPRO schemes to undermine communist movements in the 1950s and anti-war, civil rights, and black power movements in the 1960s, but the CIA has not been implicated nearly as deeply because, technically, the CIA cannot legally engage in domestic spying. But that was of little concern to President Lyndon B. Johnson as opposition to the Vietnam war grew. According to former New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tim Weiner, as documented in his extensive CIA history, Legacy of Ashes, Johnson instructed then-CIA Director Richard Helms to break the law:

“In October 1967, a handful of CIA analysts joined in the first big Washington march against the war. The president regarded protesters as enemies of the state. He was convinced that the peace movement was controlled and financed by Moscow and Beijing. He wanted proof. He ordered Richard Helms to produce it.

“Helms reminded the president that the CIA was barred from spying on Americans. He says Johnson told him: ‘I’m quite aware of that. What I want for you is to pursue this matter, and to do what is necessary to track down the foreign communists who are behind this intolerable interference in our domestic affairs…’”

Helms obeyed. Weiner wrote:

“In a blatant violation of his powers under the law, the director of central intelligence became a part-time secret police chief. The CIA undertook a domestic surveillance operation, code-named Chaos. It went on for almost seven years… Eleven CIA officers grew long hair, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe.”

According to Weiner, “the agency compiled a computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. It began working in secret with police departments all over America.” Because they could not draw a “clear distinction” between the new far left and mainstream opposition to the war, the CIA spied on every major peace organization in the country. President Johnson also wanted them to prove a connection between foreign communists and the black power movement. “The agency tried its best,” Weiner noted, ultimately noting that “the CIA never found a shred of evidence that linked the leaders of the American left or the black-power movement to foreign governments.”

4. Infiltrating the media

Over the years, the CIA has successfully gained influence in the news media, as well as popular media like film and television. Its influence over the news began almost immediately after the agency was formed. As Weiner explained, CIA Director Allen Dulles established firm ties with newspapers:

“Dulles kept in close touch with the men who ran the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the nation’s leading weekly magazines. He could pick up the phone and edit a breaking story, make sure an irritating foreign correspondent was yanked from the field, or hire the services of men such as Time’s Berlin bureau chief and Newsweek’s man in Tokyo.”

He continued:

“It was second nature for Dulles to plant stories in the press. American newsrooms were dominated by veterans of the government’s wartime propaganda branch, the Office of War Information…The men who responded to the CIA’s call included Henry Luce and his editors at Time, Life, and Fortune; popular magazines such as Parade, the Saturday Review, and Reader’s Digest; and the most powerful executives at CBS News. Dulles built a public-relations and propaganda machine that came to include more than fifty news organizations, a dozen publishing houses, and personal pledges of support from men such as Axel Springer, West Germany’s most powerful press baron.”

The CIA’s influence had not waned by 1977 when journalist Carl Bernstein reported on publications with CIA agents in their employ, as well as “more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The CIA has also successfully advised on and influenced numerous television shows, such as Homeland and 24 and films like Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, which push narratives that ultimately favor the agency. According to Tricia Jenkins, author of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film & Television, a concerted agency effort began in the 1990s to counteract negative public perceptions of the CIA, but their influence reaches back decades. In the 1950s, filmmakers produced films for the CIA, including the 1954 film adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Researchers Tom Secker and Matthew Alford, whose work has been published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, say their recent Freedom of Information Act requests have shown that the CIA — along with the military — have influenced over 1,800 films and television shows, many of which have nothing to do with CIA or military themes.

5. Drug-induced Mind control

In the 1950s, the CIA began experimenting with drugs to determine whether they might be useful in extracting information. As Smithsonian Magazine has noted of the MKUltra project:

“The project, which continued for more than a decade, was originally intended to make sure the United States government kept up with presumed Soviet advances in mind-control technology. It ballooned in scope and its ultimate result, among other things, was illegal drug testing on thousands of Americans.”

Further:

“The intent of the project was to study ‘the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior,’ according to the official testimony of CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1977. The project was conducted in extreme secrecy, Turner said, because of ethical and legal questions surrounding the program and the negative public response that the CIA anticipated if MKUltra should become public.

“Under MKUltra, the CIA gave itself the authority to research how drugs could:’ ‘promote the intoxicating effects of alcohol;’ ‘render the induction of hypnosis easier;’ ‘enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion;’ produce amnesia, shock and confusion; and much more. Many of these questions were investigated using unwitting test subjects, like drug-addicted prisoners, marginalized sex workers and terminal cancer patients– ‘people who could not fight back,’ in the words of Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who introduced LSD to the CIA.”

Further, as Weiner noted:

“Under its auspices, seven prisoners at a federal penitentiary in Kentucky were kept high on LSD for seventy-seven consecutive days. When the CIA slipped the same drug to an army civilian employee, Frank Olson, he leaped out of the window of a New York Hotel.”

Weiner added that senior CIA officers destroyed “almost all of the records” of the programs, but that while the “evidence that remains is fragmentary…it strongly suggests that use of secret prisons for the forcible drug-induced questioning of suspect agents went on throughout the 1950s.”

Years later, the CIA would be accused of distributing crack-cocaine into poor black communities, though this is currently less substantiated and supported mostly by accounts of those who claim to have been involved.

6. Brutal torture tactics

More recently, the CIA was exposed for sponsoring abusive, disturbing terror tactics against detainees at prisons housing terror suspects. An extensive 2014 Senate report documented agents committing sexual abuse, forcing detainees to stand on broken legs, waterboarding them so severely it sometimes led to convulsions, and imposing forced rectal feeding, to name a few examples. Ultimately, the agency had very little actionable intelligence to show for their torture tactics but lied to suggest they did, according to the torture report. Their torture tactics led the International Criminal Court to suggest the CIA, along with the U.S. armed forces, could be guilty of war crimes for their abuses.

7. Arming radicals

The CIA has a long habit of arming radical, extremist groups that view the United States as enemies. In 1979, the CIA set out to support Afghan rebels in their bid to defeat the Soviet occupation of the Middle Eastern country. As Weiner wrote, in 1979, “Prompted by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter signed a covert-action order for the CIA to provide the Afghan rebels with medical aid, money, and propaganda.”

As Weiner detailed later in his book:

“The Pakistani intelligence chiefs who doled out the CIA’s guns and money favored the Afghan factions who proved themselves most capable in battle. Those factions also happened to be the most committed Islamists. No one dreamed that the holy warriors could ever turn their jihad against the United States.”

Though some speculate the CIA directly armed Osama bin Laden, that is yet to be fully proven or admitted. What is clear is that western media revered him as a valuable fighter against the Soviets, that he arrived to fight in Afghanistan in1980, and that al-Qaeda emerged from the mujahideen, who were beneficiaries of the CIA’s program. Stanford University has noted that Bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, a prominent Palestinian cleric, “established Al Qaeda from the fighters, financial resources, and training and recruiting structures left over from the anti-Soviet war.” Much of those “structures” were provided by the agency. Intentionally or not, the CIA helped fuel the rise of the terror group.

Weiner noted that as the CIA failed in other countries like Libya, by the late 1980s “Only the mujahideen, the Afghan holy warriors, were drawing blood and scenting victory. The CIA’s Afghan operation was now a $700-million-dollar-a-year-program” and represented 80% of the overseas budget of the clandestine services. “The CIA’s briefing books never answered the question of what would happen when a militant Islamic army defeated the godless invaders of Afghanistan,” though Tom Twetten, “the number two man in the clandestine service in the summer of 1988,” was tasked with figuring out what would happen with the Afghan rebels. “We don’t have any plan,” he concluded.

Apparently failing to learn their lesson, the CIA adopted nearly the exact same policy in Syria decades later, arming what they called “moderate rebels” against the Assad regime. Those groups ultimately aligned with al-Qaeda groups. One CIA-backed faction made headlines last year for beheading a child (though President Trump cut off the CIA program in June, the military continues to align with “moderate” groups).

*  *  *

Unsurprisingly, this list is far from complete. The CIA has engaged in a wide variety of extrajudicial practice, and there are likely countless transgressions we have yet to learn about.

As Donald Trump cheers the birthday of an agency he himself once criticized, it should be abundantly clear that the nation’s covert spy agency deserves scrutiny and skepticism — not celebration.

Republican Congressman Proposes Pardon Deal For Julian Assange

Late on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Julian Assange might be able to provide proof that there"s no truth to the Russia collusion narrative - even as Facebook"s claim it may have sold $100,000 worth of ads to Russians supposedly seeking to bolster Trump"s campaign has revived the narrative in the eyes of Trump"s political opponents.

According to WSJ, US congressman Dana Rohrabacher approached Trump"s Chief of Staff John Kelly this week and offered him a deal: in exchange for a presidential pardon, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange would share evidence that could refute the narrative of Russian hacking into the DNC servers which released a trove of emails revealing that the DNC favored Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary. The leaked emails were widely blamed by liberals (and, of course, Hillary Clinton herself) for helping Trump win the 2016 election.

If, on the other hand Assange provided no definitive evidence, there would be no deal.

“The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”

‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.

During the call, Rohrabacher pushed for a meeting between Assange and a Trump representative, preferably someone with direct communication with the president. While WSJ didn’t speculate about who Assange’s source might be, the Australian-born hacker has repeatedly hinted that he received the emails from deceased Democratic staffer Seth Rich. Rich was shot and killed last year during a robbery, according to the DC police, however, the circumstances of his death have fostered suspicions that he may have been murdered as revenge for the leaks.

Rohrabacher travelled to London unofficially early last month for a meeting with Assange. At the meeting, Rohrabacher said Assange offered him "firsthand" information purportedly proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. Rohrabacher is the chairman of the subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, which has jurisdiction over Russia-related issues within the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rohrabacher confirmed that he spoke to Trump’s chief of staff earlier this week, but declined to elaborate on the subject of their discussion. “I can’t confirm or deny anything about a private conversation at that level” the WSJ adds.

A Trump administration official confirmed to WSJ that Rohrabacher had spoken to Kelly about Assange, and that Kelly told him his proposal “was best directed to the intelligence community.” Trump was never made aware of the phone call, according to WSJ. For the record, that’s the same intelligence community that relied on an error-laden dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer to kick-start its investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign actively conspired with Russian agents to swing the vote to Trump.

Rohrabacher was understandably skeptical about involving the intelligence community, as Kelly had suggested.

“I would be happy to go with somebody you trust whether it is somebody at the FBI; somebody on your staff,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. The California congressman said he would be pleased to talk to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, but that the agency “has its limitations” and wanted “to cover their butt by having gone along with this big lie.” The CIA was one of the intelligence agencies that helped determine in January that emails from prominent Democrats were stolen by Russian intelligence and given to WikiLeaks.

Mr. Pompeo has said that WikiLeaks is akin to a foreign hostile intelligence service and is an adversary of the U.S. “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” Mr. Pompeo said in an April speech where he criticized the organization for stealing secrets from democratic governments all while receiving the backing of authoritarian states.”

AS WSJ further adds, US authorities have launched an investigation into the disclosure of classified material to WikiLeaks. The investigation was reportedly opened after the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US government documents in 2010. However, neither Assange nor his organization have never been publicly accused of wrongdoing. Assange has defended the group’s actions, saying they were important acts of journalism and that the American public had a right to know that the DNC essentially conspired to tilt the primary in Clinton’s favor.

Rohrabacher added that the WikiLeaks founder never formally asked him to seek a pardon on his behalf.  

“Mr. Assange explained that the ongoing attempts to bring a prosecution against WikiLeaks and its staff for its work documenting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are unconstitutional, widely condemned, should immediately cease and that the continuation is an abuse of process for improper purposes,” WikiLeaks said in a statement about the August meeting between Mr. Assange and Mr. Rohrabacher.

After the visit to London, Mr. Rohrabacher said in a statement that Mr. Assange “emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Trump has already made one controversial commutation - pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio - since taking office. Like Arpaio, Assange, who isn"t a US citizen and was not eligible to vote during the election, was vocal in his support of the Trump campaign. And Trump, for his part, has praised Wikileaks for its journalistic efforts.

But as Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to dig into the financial records of Trump"s inner circle, the administration would definitely benefit from Assange"s disclosure - particularly if it proves reliable enough to forestall, or even end, the multiple inquiries which have so far turned up little in the way of legitimate evidence that Trump associates conspired with Russian. Instead, the inquiry is largely being used as a vessel to funnel damaging leaks about the administration to the press.

In short, Assange who as recently as a few months ago was worried the CIA would do everything in its power to do away with him for good, may have found some last minute leverage.

And now we await a response from Trump, who we imagine would be keen to hear what Assange has to say - despite his chief of staff"s efforts to prevent the meeting.

UK: 23,000 Terrorists And Counting

Authored by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,

• Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups.


• For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalised young men and women.


• What seems not to be understood about "the religion of peace" is that "peace" comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a "Dar al-Harb", the "Abode of War," will no longer even exist.


• Since the beginning of March, 17,393 people have been listed as terror suspects. — French Senate report: "Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities", April 2017.

On May 26, four days after the major terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, British intelligence officials stated that they had identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the UK, all of them considered potential terrorist attackers. According to The Times,

About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a "residual risk".

The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of "former subjects of interest" and no longer subject to any surveillance.

A police officer stands guard near the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017, following a suicide bombing by an Islamic terrorist who murdered 22 concert-goers. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

The report adds that the two men who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in London, in 2013, had been known to the security services, just as Abedi and Masood were, but had been dropped to low priority.

David Anderson, QC, the former reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, noted concerns in his 2015 report about the "speed with which things can change" around suspects and "the difficulties in knowing how best to prioritise limited surveillance resources". Senior police have also spoken of the difficulty in identifying the triggers that might "reactivate" extremist behaviour.

Others had expressed similar concerns about how the jihadi ideology, based in radical religious belief, is so intensely ingrained that it never leaves individuals and may easily reactivate a desire to commit atrocities.

Ben Wallace, Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers clearly indicates just how serious the threat has become: "This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century," he said. "Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing."

One problem is that the police and MI5 lack enough resources to investigate any more than 3,000 suspects at a time, leaving the other 20,000 free to pass without surveillance and under the radar. According to a report issued this year by Her Majesty"s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), and detailed in The Guardian, budget cuts to the police forces in England and Wales have left law enforcement inadequately prepared:

In a stark message about the current state of policing, Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty"s Inspector of Constabulary, said the "disturbing" practices did not apply to the majority of forces but the watchdog could see the problems spreading if action was not taken.

"We"re leading to a very serious conclusion regarding the potentially perilous state of policing," she said. "It"s a red flag that we"re raising at this stage. A large red flag."

Ironically, this austerity-produced situation stands in stark contradiction to comments by one of the country"s leading security experts:

Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: "To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can"t go on as if this wasn"t happening."

In April, as Islamic State was facing defeat in Mosul and Raqqa, a small national study found that many young British Muslims believed that jihadists returning from Syria to the UK should be given a "second chance" and should "reintegrate" within society. This is estimated to be around 800 or 850 individuals. One person interviewed argued that:

When people feel isolated and angry because they are not being treated with respect and if they go out and fight in Syria and when they come back there is no help, then I promise you, you will see more terrorism because these young people will think why should I do anything when my own Government don"t care about me.

That appears to be a threat that ignores completely what sorts of crimes returnees may have committed abroad. As such individuals do return, they may well add significantly to the list of potential terrorists living in a country they had already found occasion to hate. In 2016, "the Government admitted [that] just 14 of nearly 400 returnee fighters have been jailed, raising fears the rest are living off the radar and may be vulnerable to radicalisation."

Adam Deen of London"s anti-radical Quilliam Foundation stated that:

What is important here is that the more Isis are under siege and the more territory they"re losing, the more they"re going to channel their efforts and energies into terrorism," he said in an interview with The Independent.

Those individuals that have managed to get back into the country will be activated or will be conspiring to commit some kind of terrorist act. That"s a major concern.

Britain is not alone in facing such potential threats, but it may have the largest population of potential terrorists.

There is confusion in Germany, for example, as to how many such individuals there are. According to a report from the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), the number of suspects is on the rise, but they list only 657 people as capable of carrying out an attack, alongside another 388 "relevant persons" who might lend assistance to perpetrators. Separate information, however, from the country"s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), stated that the number of radical Salafists in Germany had risen from 8,350 in 2015 to 10,100 in 2016 (with 680 classified as "dangerous"), and that hundreds of jihadis entered among the more than one million migrants welcomed into the country during the two previous years. Overall, however, the same agency estimates that 24,400 Islamists are active in Germany, a figures similar to that of the UK.

Things are little better in France, which, according to Gatestone author Yves Mamou, has a large but never-quantified Muslim population of at least six million. In April 2017, the French Senate published its "Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities" report, showing that since the beginning of March, 17,393 people had been listed as terror suspects. As in Britain, French authorities said that not all suspects are being constantly monitored; smaller numbers are investigated at regular intervals.

In May, the general secretariat of the international police organization, Interpol, published a list of Islamic State fighters who were thought to have already returned to Europe and may be planning suicide attacks in different countries:

Interpol has circulated a list of 173 Islamic State fighters it believes could have been trained to mount suicide attacks in Europe in revenge for the group"s military defeats in the Middle East.

The global crime fighting agency"s list was drawn up by US intelligence from information captured during the assault on Isis territories in Syria and Iraq

European counter-terror networks are concerned that as the Isis "caliphate" collapses, there is an increasing risk of determined suicide bombers seeking to come to Europe, probably operating alone.

The situation in the UK is, in some ways, the most alarming, not only because of cuts to the police budget. Cuts have also been made to the security and intelligence services, even more sharply since the June general election. Prior to that, on June 4, Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a speech the day after the London Bridge attack. Her speech included strong promises to tackle terrorism by introducing fresh measures to strengthen existing legislation.

While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.

Since the emergence of the threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, our country has made significant progress in disrupting plots and protecting the public. But it is time to say "Enough is enough".

She even named the ideological basis for the attacks:

while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism.

This was progress. Three days after that, May presented proposals for fresh legislation to clamp down hard on Islamic extremism. They included amendments to Britain"s 1998 Human Rights Act, which protects potential terrorists; tougher Terrorism Prevention Investigation Measures based on a 2011 Act, but in 2016 only used for six individuals; more deportations of suspects, and longer prison sentences, even though much radicalization takes place in prisons.

That was one day before the June 8 general election. May, overly confident that she would win handily and increase her majority in parliament, led a disastrous campaign that left her with a much reduced majority, forcing her to make an alliance with Northern Ireland"s controversial Democratic Unionist Party. Tim Worstall, writing for Forbes magazine, wrote:

"It would be both reasonable and fair to say that Theresa May has just run the worst British election campaign of modern times... Theresa May has in fact achieved something that no one in modern times has managed, to start a general election campaign 20 percentage points up and then arrive without even a parliamentary majority for her party. There simply isn"t anything to compare with this in the annals".

To make matters worse, the Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, came close to winning the election and performed considerately better than anyone might have thought a month earlier. Corbyn and his increasingly far-left party had been considered unelectable. Now, they were a force to contend with in the House of Commons.

Corbyn is the last person to be entrusted with Britain"s security. Addressing a Stop The War Coalition conference in 2011, he told the crowd: "I"ve been involved in opposing anti-terror legislation ever since I first went into Parliament in 1983". He has also opposed the UK"s involvement in all foreign wars: Sir Gerald Howarth, the former Tory defence minister, said: "Jeremy Corbyn has opposed every British military intervention and represents complete capitulation and weakness". He refused for many years to condemn IRA terrorism, preferring to condemn the British army posted there. He called terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah his "friends"; refused to denounce them as late as 2016, and only said he regretted his support for them after heavy pressure was put on him.

Since the election, Labour has made it clear that it opposes any changes in current human rights legislation, and claims that terrorism can be tackled through the laws presently in force. Given the strains the British government is now under, especially with weak negotiations for Brexit and May"s increasing unpopularity even within her party, the strong opposition within parliament is certain to weaken further attempts to block radicalism and terrorism, particularly where action against both involves (as it inevitably will) Muslims from various ethnic minority groups.

There has already been vehement opposition to the government"s core anti-radicalization program, Prevent, with schoolteachers, students, and others claiming it snoops on Muslim communities. Within the Labour party, Corbyn"s radical followers in the Momentum Movement are already planning to force the deselection of members of parliament who oppose Corbyn, unless the such MPs "get on board" by wholeheartedly supporting the leader and his far-left policies. As this takes place, the hard left will strengthen its grip on parliament and make it even more difficult for strong new legislation to be passed.

Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups. Following an enquiry commissioned by May"s predecessor David Cameron, the report was due for publication in 2016, but is unlikely now to be revealed for public scrutiny because it is deemed too "sensitive". The sensitivity derives from Saudi Arabia being exposed as a major financier of Islamic extremism worldwide, yet May and the UK government depend heavily on selling arms and other things to the Wahhabi kingdom.

According to the London-based Henry Jackson Society, in its short report on foreign funding of extremism,

The foreign funding for Islamist extremism in Britain primarily comes from governments and government linked foundations based in the Gulf, as well as Iran. Foremost among these has been Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s has sponsored a multimillion dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the West.

In the UK this funding has primarily taken the form of endowments to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have in turn played host to extremist preachers and the distribution of extremist literature. Influence has also been exerted through the training of British Muslim religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, as well as the use of Saudi textbooks in a number of the UK"s independent Islamic schools.

A number of Britain"s most serious Islamist hate preachers sit within the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology and are linked to extremism sponsored from overseas, either by having studied in Saudi Arabia as part of scholarship programmes, or by having been provided with extreme literature and material within the UK itself.

If the British government itself prefers to cover up such ties, opting to rescue its trade balance at the cost of endangering the lives of its own citizens, our concern for the future security of the country deepens immeasurably. The UK, like much of Western Europe and Scandinavia, stands at a crossroads. For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalized young men and women. Sometimes they have been watched, but almost none has been deported, almost none has been imprisoned, and almost none has been singled out, due to the pretense that "Islam is a religion of peace". In Islam, the whole world is divided into two parts" the Dar al-Islam [Abode of Islam] and the Dar al-Harb [Abode of War]. What seems not to be understood about "the religion of peace" is that "peace" comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a "Dar al-Harb", the "Abode of War," will no longer even exist.

Theresa May"s promise of tightened legislation to protect the British public was the right response to three major recent terror attacks. Yet fall-out from the election and May"s own wish to protect Saudi Arabia from scrutiny are likely to guarantee that the serious measures we so much need may never be implemented. When there are further attacks and more people die, who will step forward to give us the protection we need? Or by then will it be too late?