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Forum: Worsening U.S.-Russian Relations — Reverse Them with New Paradigm, or Face Nuclear War
https://laroucheorganization.nationbuilder.com/forum_worsening_u_s_russian_relations_reverse_them_with_new_paradigm_or_face_nuclear_war
February 13, 2021 1:00 PM 
Remarks by Ray: min 51:32 to 1:06:54. (Text of remarks included below.)

RAY: Thank you, Dennis. It’s a good idea; it’s a very good idea to be discussing these things in this kind of forum. You won’t find any such discussion in what we call “major media” in our country.

Let me do just a little bit of an historical review; it won’t take long.

I’ve always been puzzled to think why Russia and China all of a sudden became our major enemies again. Here’s President George W. Bush, just about 18 years ago:

“Today, the world’s great powers are united by common values. Russia is reaching for its democratic future and a partner in the war on terror. The Chinese leaders? We welcome their peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement.”

That sounds pretty rapprochement-ish, or détente-ish, or let’s live on this planet together-ish. So, what happened? Well, there are a lot of people who make a lot of money producing and selling arms; that’s the short answer. My acronym is no longer just the MIC, the military-industrial complex; I use an acronym that—remember this—rhymes with Mickey Mouse. That’s the way you remember it.

It’s the MICIMAT—the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex. Why do I shout (all-caps MEDIA)? Because media is the lynchpin. Without media, you can’t do this. Who owns the media? The MICIMAT. OK. So, that’s the basic thing that we have to contend with. That’s what sort of came to the fore as President Putin started making Russia a repaired country after the devastation of Yeltsin in the 1990s.

So, what would I say next? I would say that despite all the anti-Russian rhetoric, there was one shining moment where Mr. Putin came to Mr. Obama’s aid and pulled his chestnuts out of the fire. I don’t know what motivated Obama, but he didn’t want to have an open U.S. military war on Syria. It’s quite enough to spend billions of dollars on covert actions and funding insurgents; but he didn’t want to be attacking Syria, because he had sense enough to know what that would mean over the longer term.

So, what did he do? When that faux chemical attack occurred outside Damascus on the 21st of August 2013, all hell broke loose. John Kerry said, Bashar al-Assad did this. He said it 25 times in one speech.

What did Obama do? Obama cut Kerry out of the consultations; he went to St. Petersburg for a summit, and he talked to Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin said, look, we can get you out of this mess without a war. We have persuaded the Syrians to give up these residual chemical weapons they have for destruction under UN supervision on a U.S. ship specially outfitted for destroying chemical weapons. What do you think, Mr. Obama? He said, you could do that? He said, yeah. Watch tomorrow. The Prime Minister of Syria is going on TV. Sure enough, that’s the way it worked out.

Now, why do I mention all that? That was sort of the zenith, the acme of a potential détente in U.S.-Russian relations. What happened? Well, we know what happened. We’re talking early September 2013. Five to six months later, the Victoria Nulands of our government fomented what was aptly called “the most blatant coup in history”; it having been advertised on YouTube 2.5 weeks before. And Ukraine was turned into turmoil. After that, there was the MH17, where John Kerry got up and said, we have the information. We know who shot that plane down; we know where it was shot from, and we know exactly when it was shot. We have technical information to prove that.

Well, actually, he never came through with that technical information, and all of our allies in Europe were afraid to ask him. So, what did they use that for? Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. Our European allies, even though they couldn’t sell their apples to Russia, went right along docilely as sheep, as they usually do. So, that was the zenith; THIS was the low point in U.S.-Russian relations. What follows from that, of course, we all know.

After the Ukraine coup, and you might listen to this, because this may be new to some of you. There’s one intelligence organization in our government called the Defense Intelligence Agency. Sometimes, it acts independently; sometimes it looks at the facts, interprets them, and tells it like it is. Listen carefully to the main conclusion to the December 2015—a year after Ukraine—National Security Strategy of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“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 believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-standing, long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

How does Navalny fit into that? We can discuss that later, perhaps. This was signed by Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The date? December 2015. Wow! Somebody told it like it was—like it is. Does anybody have any confusion about why DIA was later frozen out of all these assessments having to do with how bad President Putin is, and how he supposedly orchestrated the defeat of Hillary Clinton?

Does anyone know now, or could kind of figure out why DIA, who had primary responsibility for keeping track of the GRU, which was accused of all manner of evil things, why DIA was frozen out of those deliberations, and the deliberations were limited to a handful—James Clapper’s word—of “handpicked” analysts? Well, DIA didn’t qualify, because DIA had a ridiculous record of telling the truth sometimes..

What does this all mean? This Admiral Richard, who’s blithely shooting his mouth off about the likely use of nuclear weapons, that’s really dangerous. If you read Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine—well, let me put it this way—if you haven’t read Dan Ellsberg’s book, you really need to! Not only does he talk about the Navy submarine captain, Vasili Arkhipov, who is single-handedly responsible for us being able to be together today, or virtually together. But he talks about during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the former commander of the Strategic Air Command, the fellow who was in the position that Admiral Richard is now in, sent a bomber into Soviet air space. When Kennedy learned about that, he said, “Oh my God!” Right at the height of this thing, SAC wasn’t supposed to do that! Why did SAC do that?

You’ve got to read Dan Ellsberg’s book and see how crazy these guys are. How they think Putin and the Russians are the devil incarnate. That’s how you figure that out. What happened, of course, was that Kennedy tried to slough if off, saying well, you know, there’s always one guy who doesn’t get the word.

But they were on tenterhooks for a while until the Russians said, “Could you tell these cowboy pilots not to do that anymore?” So, there’s precedent for getting right up to the brim. Now, with the timing for response to a perceived attack reduced because of these supersonic weapons and so forth, it’s labil [unstable/delicate/dangerous], as the Germans would say.

Last thing I’ll say is this. Oliver Stone happens to be a friend of mine, and as you know, Oliver has interviewed Mr. Putin more times than most other correspondents. He told me this: He said that after one interview, and this was not recorded, but Oliver remembers it quite distinctly, and you will see why. He said that after one of these conversations, Mr. Putin somewhat exasperated said something along the lines of, “Now Russians are thought of like Jews before World War II” (period, end quote.)

Well, those who have a modicum of knowledge about Jews and their plight before World War II, people who were blamed for just about everything. Well, you can perhaps understand Putin’s exasperation — including Hillary Clinton attributing possible blame to Russia for the Jan. 6 disturbances in the capital of our country—I mean, it’s more than exasperation; it’s a mindset that is inevitable, when you’re the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.

So, what I mean to say here is that, with Mr. Biden, against all this history, I have a glass-half-full attitude. Why would I say that? Well, number one, he has appointed as head of the CIA, Bill Burns. Bill Burns was ambassador to Moscow; Bill Burns knows the equities, he knows his history. He knows that Moscow, in the person of Sergey Lavrov warned him, explicitly, against trying to include Ukraine in NATO, and Georgia, too. As a matter of fact, his cable, courtesy of WikiLeaks, starts out by saying [adopting Russian accent]: “Mr. Burns, do you know what Nyet means?” [laughs] Burns said, “Yes, well, I think so!” He said, “Well, Nyet means Nyet! and that’s our red line.” No Ukraine admission into NATO, and the same for Georgia.

Now, two months later, NATO approved the beginning of the acceptance of the application of Ukraine and Georgia to become a member of NATO. So, it’s not as though Burns is coming at this as a sort of sophomore. He’s a senior, and that’s a good thing. He knows about the Russians.

In that same cable, I would add, he says in a very undiplomatic way, because you don’t say this to the Secretary of State, because you know where she stands (this happened to be Condoleezza Rice). He says, “You know, the real way the Russians look at Ukraine, look how far Kiev is from Moscow. You know, they have their own strategic interests here.” And sotto voce, “They’re entitled to have their own strategic interests, OK?” So he says that in the cable from Moscow.

So, one thing that Mr. Biden can expect is knowledgeable, hopefully honest assessments from the CIA of all places.

What next? Well, Biden’s quick re-upping to the New START Treaty, five-year extension right off the bat. Now, New START—look, I was in Moscow for the first SALT [Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty] agreement, May 1972. So I know how meaningful these agreements were. This (new START) was the only one left, and instead of fooling around with it, Biden says, “We’re in,” OK?

Now, that move is worth 18,000 Navalnys, and 13,000 pretended bounties, and 6,000 alleged hacks. That’s a big move. And not only that, but as the readout of the conversation between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin was, from the U.S. side, it said, we agreed that maybe we’d move down this road toward other arms control agreements. Wow!

Now, for the people who see merit in demonizing Russia, that’s a big problem. And Biden will have to deal with that. Whether he can deal with it successfully or not—Trump couldn’t. Obama couldn’t.

But, you know, Biden’s almost as old as I am, for God’s sake! He knows a lot about the misery he caused on Iraq and other things. There’s always a chance for growth; and besides that, he’s a one-term President, so I see that he has more leeway than most people, and that’s why I have a glass-half-full attitude. Give him some time, and we’ll see how things turn out.

Thank you very much.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/William-Binney-Diane-Roark-Ray-McGovern-Set-for-Talkback-After-A-GOOD-AMERICAN-Screening-at-Symphony-Space-20171103

High irony, indeed, that a documentary titled “A GOOD AMERICAN” would find it so difficult to appear before a good American audience.  Could someone be hiding something?

The film shows how malfeasance by the National Security Agency played a huge role in failing to prevent 9/11 and how NSA succeeded in covering that up.  That’s right; NSA had enough specific intelligence to prevent 9/11.  Ultimately, that is the main reason why most Americans have been kept in the dark about “A Good American” since this documentary by Austrian filmmaker Friedrich Moser was released almost three years ago.

Additional Background:

Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, ‘a Good American,’ resigned from the NSA in October 2001, after 30 years with the agency where he was widely acknowledged as one of its best mathematicians, innovators, and problem solvers.  Binney quit when he saw Bush, Cheney, and the NSA director had chosen to respond to new challenges on electronic communications by adopting illegal, indiscriminate mass-surveillance programs.  These programs not only clearly violated the 4^thamendment, but also left the country still more vulnerable to terrorists while diverting billions to private contractors with political connections.

After his resignation, Binney, and colleagues who had worked with him, faced retaliation from the NSA, including guns-drawn dawn raids at their homes in 2007.

Binney continues to be an articulate, deeply knowledgeable critic of unconstitutional mass electronic surveillance, refusing to be intimidated by the NSA despite the risks.

Film director Freidrich Moser tells Binney’s story from his early days as an intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War to his service as a code breaker during the Cold War to his visionary, groundbreaking creation of a program for conducting effective electronic surveillance consonant with the 4^th amendment and rule of law.

Binney and his fellow whistleblowers tell the story of how Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA, sidelined their demonstrably effective collection program in favor of a multibillion-dollar boondoggle called Trailblazer, which Binney and his team warned would never work.  They were proved correct, but only after contractors burned through a few billion dollars.

Oliver Stone called “A Good American” a “prequel to his own film Snowden,” and that’s true in more ways than one. Snowden cited the persecution of Binney and his colleagues as a warning that if he did not go directly to the media, his attempt to expose what he called “turnkey tyranny” would be thwarted.

Live-streamed into the hall in Berlin, where Binney was given the 2015 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, Snowden made it very clear, saying, “Without Bill Binney, there would be no Ed Snowden.”

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At http://agoodamerican.org/trailer one can rent ‘A Good American’ for a 72-hour streaming period for $0.99, or so it seems.

A Good American

At the World Beyond War conference on Sept. 23 at American University, Daniel Ellsberg (via Skype), David Swanson, and Ray compared notes on Vietnam following a screening of Episode 7 of Oliver Stone’s and Peter Kuznick’s “The Untold History of the United States.”  Ray saw the Vietnam War from the perspective of Washington; he was principal analyst for Soviet policy toward China and Vietnam during the 1960s and a close associate of CIA analyst Sam Adams.

34 minutes; and

6 minutes

 

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Videos of all the presentations at World Beyond War conference, Sept. 22 – 24, 2017 can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/user/worldbeyondwar

 Former NSA Technical Director William Binney gave an excellent interview to WBAI radio’s Randy Credico on January 31. What Bill has to say should be REQUIRED LISTENING for those who feel a need for a cogent explanation, in understandable, non-technical language, of how NSA has been playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights. Bill says the snooping has progressed to the point where the initials NSA now stand for “New Stasi Agency,” because NSA has become the East German Stasi (secret police) on steroids. Those who have seen the 2006 Academy Award winning “The Lives of Others” (Das Leben der Anderen) are likely to have a fuller understanding of the scarcely believable capabilities of today’s NSA and the effects that Stasi-like monitoring are already having on society. (For those who have not seen this film, it may be time you do.)

 

Randy Credico’s questions tease out the brutally succinct comments that are “typical Bill Binney,” dealing with questions – some of them naive — raised over recent months and years. Why should I care about “parallel construction?” for example; or “What, me worry? I have nothing to hide.” Binney tackles these head on. Ray uses some of the highlights – like “parallel construction” for further comment below:

 

http://nuarchive.wbai.org/mp3/wbai_170131_170002randyCrelof.mp3

Binney’s segment runs from minute 33:30 to 58:20. (It is preceded by an interesting interview of UK Ambassador Craig Murray – also worth a listen.)

 

Bulk collection, enabled by technology advances and “authorized” by secret “legal authorities,” effectively neuters the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution, while violating the 1^st (right to free association) and the 5^th (right against self-incrimination), as well. Forget the large file rooms full to the ceiling with stacks of the paper folders used by the old Stasi and J. Edgar Hoover. Today’s data is accurate, timely, complete – and much easier to share and to store. Mind-boggling as it may be, NSA can “collect all,” and scan, read, store it all, as well. And it does.

 

Binney makes reference to then FBI Director Robert Mueller’s acknowledgement six years ago that the U.S. was collecting and storing information on U.S. persons. In March 2011 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee Mueller said: “We 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.” And that’s not all Mueller acknowledged.

 

Parallel Construction

 

Under “parallel construction,” NSA shares data from its 4^th Amendment-violating, bulk-collection to enable law enforcement to play fast and loose with the 5^th amendment as well. Illegally acquired bulk collection is shared not only with the police, but also with the FBI, CIA, IRS, DHS, DEA et al. Using the data as tip-off, law enforcement then undertakes to use law-conforming police tactics to arrest, try, convict. Those aware of the illegal provenance of the tip-off evidence are prohibited from telling the accused, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, or jury about the information initially used to “construct” an ostensibly legal case.

 

Thus, as Bill points out, perjury is a major part of “parallel construction,” as well as infringement on the 5^th amendment right to due process. He describes the program as “a perjury program run by the Department of Justice,” and notes that the indiscriminate, bulk collection of the wherewithal for the “parallel construction” was “approved” by a secret interpretation of Executive Order 12333, Section 2.3(c) which reads: “Information obtained in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, international narcotics or international terrorism investigation”

 

Parallel construction itself, though, is hardly a secret. Reuters revealed it in 2013. Ray wrote about it in June 2014 after he had a unique opportunity before a large audience at Georgetown University to ask former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who had been in charge of the “parallel construction” program, how he could legally justify it. Mueller explained that “various authorities” had been granted. The user-friendly audience moaned at Ray’s impertinent question. He was asking the FBI Director on what basis he justified violating the Constitution and the law; Mueller’s explanation citing “various authorities” seemed good enough for the vast majority of the audience.

 

How NSA Can Secretly Aid Criminal Cases

 

See Something, Say Something; “New Stasi Agency”-style.

 

Binney comments on current NSA procedures requiring workers to tattle on one another if they see, or think they see, an insider threat. This does not make for a good working atmosphere among colleagues, Bill quips. As for ex-NSA whistleblowers, some current employees of NSA who have tried to contact people like Tom Drake have been summarily fired. Bill explained that this is why he avoids trying to make any such contact, lest it risk the jobs and livelihood of former colleagues.

 

Ray knows only a few still “on the inside,” so this is not a major problem for him. Many of his fellow retirees who are “back on contract” have not returned his calls or emails for many years now. Sadly, this includes a former colleague and friend who, with other CIA alumni, took part in the founding meeting of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (See: samadamsaward.ch.) and in presenting its first annual award in 2003). This colleague/friend is even older than Ray, but may be still “back on contract,” so he will remain nameless.) Another former colleague, now a senior CIA official, told Ray that, having bumped into him and exchanged pleasantries at wake for an analyst in Ray’s branch in the 70s, he now “had to report the contact to Security,” since Ray is now a “journalist.”

 

Storage

 

For those familiar with how much data can be put on a thumb drive, minds will boggle at how much more storage space is being built – like would you believe 2.5 million square feet right there with NSA and Fort Meade?

 

The Sam Adams Award

 

On January 22, 2015 in Berlin, Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence gave William Binney its 14^th annual award, presenting him with the traditional Sam Adams corner-brightener candlestick holder in symbolic recognition of his courage in shining light into dark places.

 

 

His award citation read, in part:

 

“Bill Binney represents the patriotic side of a duel between two unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful and ruthless state and Bill, an official who would not break his solemn oath to defend its Constitution. … On both sides of the Atlantic we hear the mantra: ‘After 9/11/2001 EVERYTHING CHANGED;’ just like ‘everything changed’ after the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin on 2/27/1933. That event led many Germans into what the writer Sebastian Haffner called “sheepish submissiveness” — with disastrous consequences.

 

“As a young German lawyer in Berlin at the time, Haffner wrote in his diary one day after the Reichstag fire that Germans had suffered a nervous breakdown. ‘No one saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from now on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened, and one’s desk might be broken into. What was missing, wrote Haffner, was ‘a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour or trial.’

 

“These traits were NOT missing in Bill Binney. Nor were they missing in Edward Snowden, whose patriotic risk-taking opened the way for Bill and his colleagues to expose the collect-it-all fanatics and the damage they do to privacy everywhere.”

 

However, we learned at the award ceremony in Berlin that, ironically, it was the other way around; it was Binney who “opened the way” for Snowden – something low-key Bill knew but kept quiet about. It fell to Ed Snowden himself, as he was streamed into Bill’s awards ceremony, to set the record straight: “Without Bill Binney there would be no Ed Snowden,” he said.

 

Ed explained that it was Binney’s outspoken condemnation of NSA abuses that helped embolden Ed to blow the whistle and make available to Bill and others documentary evidence showing how close the American people were/are to what Ed called “turnkey tyranny.”

 

Waxing biblical, one might put it this way: Binney begat Snowden; Snowden begat – well, it’s hard to be sure. It does seem altogether possible, though, that Snowden begat the insider(s) who leaked to WikiLeaks the emails showing how Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders; paid the Saudis back handsomely for their huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation; and told Wall Street it had nothing to fear from her “inevitable” presidency. It is a safe guess that Ed Snowden’s willingness to risk everything to show how close the U.S. is to “turnkey tyranny,” has already inspired – and will “beget” – still other whistleblowers.

Are There More Truth-Tellers?

 

Surely, there are some courageous patriots – and potential whistleblowers – still in the ranks of NSA and other intelligence agencies today. They, like Binney and Snowden – not to mention other courageous colleagues like Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake – may honor their oath to defend the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and domestic and take some risk to thwart the slide toward Stasi-type tyranny.

 

A good way for them to begin would be to tell us what to think about former President Barack Obama’s parting shot about “Russian hacking.” Although the “mainstream media” missed this, at Obama’s last press conference (Jan. 18), he admitted that: “the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked. (Emphasis added)

 

So Obama went out the door with inconclusive conclusions and admitted that there remains a gaping gap between “Russian hacking” and WikiLeaks. It appears that NSA does not know who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Is Binney correct in saying that NSA would certainly know about anything “hacked” and sent over the blanket-covered network? Does this prove that leaking was involved, and not hacking – by the Russians or anyone else? This, after all is what Bill Binney – and Ambassador Craig Murray, a friend of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, and Assange himself – have been saying for many months.

 

Ray has been pointing out that, in professional intelligence analysis of highly technical issues, appropriate weight is traditionally given to highly experienced technical experts with a proven record for reliability – as opposed to reporters from, say, the New York Times. Thus, it remains a puzzle why even solid analysts like James Carden wait – as he did in an otherwise excellent recent article – until paragraph 45 (of 50) to mention Binney as author of what Carden labels “an alternative theory” on the Russian hacking story. Carden quotes from a Jan. 5 op-ed in the Baltimore Sun in which Binney says: “It is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack.”

A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco?

 

Just before Mr. and Mrs. Obama got on the departing helicopter, Ray made a stab at decoding the ex-president’s Delphic remark, two days before, in: “Obama admits gap in Russian Hack Case.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/

But Ray is no longer an “insider,” and technically (no pun intended) neither is Bill Binney. Bill quit NSA in 2001, as soon as he learned that the programs he devised were being changed to enable gross violation of Americans’ 4^th Amendment right to privacy. Bill can give interviews to alternative media and appear in documentaries (see below), and Ray can be skunk at picnics – as when he asked questions of congressmen like Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee (See the following two-minute clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdOy-l13FEg ), but, again, neither Bill nor Ray are “insiders” like the ones in whom Schiff says he places great confidence.

 

Needed: Another Patriot

 

Will an inside whistleblower rise to the occasion and clarify the evidence – or lack of evidence – regarding the all important gap – or a link — between Russian hacking and WikiLeaks? And, please, this time let’s not resort to the Rumsfeld aphorism that worked so well with the “WMD” in Iraq – “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

 

This is not to beat a dead horse; the horse is very much alive. Extremists like Sen. John McCain have characterized Russian hacking as an act of war, and a very strange bi-partisan assortment of neocons’/Republican Russia-haters’/Hillary-defeat-explainers’ knives are out for Mr. Putin – and for President Trump. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters is now suggesting impeachment proceedings based on the evidence-free notion that Trump assisted the Russian hacking that eased him into the presidency.

 

A Decent Newspaper Gets Burned; Kahl’s Kool Aid

 

The only recent sign of hope came this morning, when Germany’s leading newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, revealed that Bruno Kahl, head of the German Intelligence, was aping his U.S. counterpart, CIA Director John Brennan, late last year in claiming that the BND had evidence that Russia manipulated the voting for Trump, adding that the Kremlin is interfering in similar ways in Germany. Kahl read from the same script as Brennan and the U.S. “mainstream media,” telling the Sueddeutsche in November: “The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process as such.”

 

Apparently, the Sueddeutsche felt burned when it learned the truth after drinking Kahl’s Kool Aid and publishing it in November. Today the SZ was the first to publish the conclusion of a yearlong joint inquiry by the German equivalents of the CIA and FBI, which have been searching for evidence of Russian interference in Germany’s domestic affairs. “We have not found any smoking gun,” a German cabinet source told the newspaper.

 

Like the almost dead horse in Washington, however, the German steed remains kicking. Chancellor Angela Merkel has sent the two spy agencies back to the drawing board. Her office has ordered a new inquiry, this one led by a joint “psychological operations group,” to investigate Russian news agencies’ coverage in Germany. Ray did a short interview on this earlier today: (See: https://youtu.be/A8vjhA9oGzk )

 

The “Sources and Methods” Canard

 

As for the facile, all-too-familiar excuse – used by Adam Schiff, for example – that one cannot risk compromising “sources and methods,” there are many effective ways to protect them and still disclose key information, when the situation requires. Ronald Reagan, for example, insisted that a TOP SECRET encoded communication between Libyan operatives responsible for a lethal bombing in Berlin be divulged, in full knowledge the U.S. intelligence capability to intercept and decrypt such communications would be blown (for higher national purpose). See:

A Demand for Russian ‘Hacking’ Proof

 

If potential whistleblowers need still more inspiration/courage, it will be readily available this month, as movie theaters begin to show “A Good American,” featuring Bill Binney and a handful of his courageous colleague whistleblowers – playing themselves. ( agoodamerican.org/ ) Oliver Stone has given the film high marks, describing it earlier as a “powerful prequel to SNOWDEN.” (Note to NSA employees: remember not to use your own credit card to purchase a ticket.)

 

We have now wandered a bit from the Bill Binney’s interview on WBAI last week. It may be appropriate to close with a 200 year-old warning from Goethe, a quote that Bill managed to slip into that interview:

 

“No one is more a slave than he who thinks himself free, but is not.”

 

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein*.