Casablanca Reprise

Intelligence IG Fixed the Goalposts; Now Welcomes Hearsay 
By Ray McGovern

John Kiriakou and Ray made cameo appearances on Russian TV this morning discussing the “whistleblower” who, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, was “shocked, shocked to find” that unsavory activity was going on in the Washington CasaBlanca.

Whistling in the Dark 
https://youtu.be/_sutKosMw9o  (8 minutes)

RT/Intl presenter Murad Gazdiev out-Rachels Maddow with documentary evidence strongly suggesting chicanery by the man behind the curtain — Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson himself.

If the others behind the curtain pulled a trick on Atkinson and kept him whistling in the dark,  … well, does anyone ever quit on principle these days?

Was the IG himself a party to this?  Is there no limit to the depredations of these amateur miscreants?  Did they really think they could get away with this one?

AS for RT, small wonder the Establishment abhors RT’s attempts to “influence” people by reporting documentary information.

Neither John nor Ray are holding their breaths for a call from CNN, or MSNBC — or even, sadly, from Amy Goodman.

Red “Whistleblowing” Herrings

By Ray McGovern, September 27, 2019  

On CNLive yesterday evening (link below), Ray discussed the new “Ukraine-gate” whistleblower, who is reported to be a CIA officer who spent some time on detail to the White House. Ray begins with a brief discussion of the intelligence officer-policy maker nexus — particularly the need for the intelligence officer to keep abreast of the interests and needs of the policy maker without becoming seduced into active advocacy of this or that policy.

Ray outlines how Robert Gates placed on steroids the practice of inserting intelligence officers into policy departments, and offers short case studies, demonstrating the need to keep a respectful space between intelligence and policy — not to mention the invaluable credibility and trust that accrues to an intelligence officer who avoids the slightest appearance of policy advocacy.  In contrast, there has been serious mischief — and worse — when intelligence analysts, sitting side-by-side with policy makers, slip into the role of policy maker, blurring the lines and letting their own political/ideological views (and/or the views of those who “detailed” them) — intrude inappropriately on policy making.

Seconding CIA officers to policy making offices increases this risk severalfold.  The reported detailee “whistleblower” for Ukraine-gate needs to be scrutinized in this context.
Filing a complaint, based on hearsay, to the Inspector General of National Intelligence to investigate the president?  Really?  What did the “whistleblower” really have in mind?  Already discernible with the initial leaks of this story to the media was the stench of rotting red herring.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/27/watch-cn-live-tonight-with-katherine-gun-daniel-ellsberg-scott-ritter-ray-mcgovern-on-whistleblowing-the-iraq-war-and-impeachment-8-pm-edt/

 (Ray’s segment goes from minute 7:55 to 44:40; the whole CNLive video is worth watching.)

NYT Lack of Credibility is Largely of Its Own Making

NYT’s A. G. Sulzberger’s lament today ignores how reporting on “Russian interference” has brought NYT as much discredit as its pre-Iraq-war lies on WMD. Not to mention his father’s guaranteeing a W win in 2004 by sitting on reports of illegal surveillance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/opinion/press-freedom-arthur-sulzberger.html?te=1&nl=morning-briefing&emc=edit_MBE_p_20190924&section=longRead?campaign_id=51&instance_id=12596&segment_id=17273&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe&regi_id=69540701ion=longRead

Earlier NY Times Coverage of Biden, Corruption, Ukraine a Lot Different

On May 1, 2019 the Times published a far more balanced report on father and son Biden’s vulnerability to “conflict of interest questions.”  What a difference five months can make, once NYT writers “get the memo” on whitewashing Biden and blaming the exposure of his difficulties on Trump.

Readers may find it instructive to see what the Times said back then:
Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html?module=inline

If Biden’s Proven Corrupt, It’s Trump’s Fault

By Ray McGovern

The Joe Biden-friendly Establishment media has mounted a full-court press to “prove” that Biden is, well, not a crook.

The stakes are extremely high, Biden is vulnerable, and media players are using to a faretheewell the old adage about the best defense being a good offense.  The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street journal are desperately trying to steal the ball and get ahead in the publicity game.  But time is about to run out, and pre-emptive propaganda is unlikely to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. IF the facts do come out and IF they are reported, Biden’s presidential hopes may suffer a mortal blow.

When the corruption in which the former Vice President and his son Hunter were involved in Ukraine becomes more widely known, the press wants to be in position to “show” that it’s all the fault of President Donald Trump and his lawyers for trying to derail Biden’s candidacy by exposing him.  If past is precedent, the media will largely succeed.  The question is whether enough people will, nevertheless, be able to see through this all-too-familiar charade.

In an interview with the National Interest (See: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-ukraine-controversy-much-ado-about-nothing-82561 ), Joe Lauria put this episode in context:

“It was in February [2014] when Yanukovych was overthrown, and just a few months later (in May), Joe Biden’s son and a close friend of John Kerry’s stepson, they both join the board of this Ukrainian gas company. And the name of that was Burisma Holdings,” said Joe Lauria, editor of Consortium News and a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. “So just after an American-backed coup, you have Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and this John Kerry family friend joining the board of probably the largest private gas producer in Ukraine. They installed the new government, and as the bounty of this coup, Joe Biden’s son personally profited. He would not have gotten that job if Yanukovych was still in power,” Lauria told the National Interest.

Will U.S. voters have any way of putting these dots together, and also in discerning, for example, how much truth there may be in charges that Vice President Biden pressed hard for the ouster of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, who was canned after investigating corruption at Burisma Holdings Ukrainian gas company of which Hunter Biden was a board member?  If the truth does come out, no one will have to rely on remarks from the likes of Rudy Giulinai, one of Trump’s lawyers, who has called the episode “an astounding scandal of major proportions.”  That may be hyperbole but, still, the damage to Biden could be fatal.

And so, damage control is in full swing today at the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other “usual suspects,” with the NY Times winning the laurels with its Editorial Board, no less, weighing in with “What did Trump tell Ukraine’s president?” in addition to op-eds by Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Anne Applebaum, Greg Sargent and (my favorite), by George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal, “Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top.”

That title is correct.