Exposing War Crimes

By Ray McGovern

In a Jan. 8 opinion piece for The New York Times, former NYT reporter Hedrick Smith included what amounts to a eulogy for his former colleague, the late Neil Sheehan to whom Dan Ellsberg turned to get the Pentagon Papers published. ( See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/neil-sheehan-pentagon-papers-vietnam.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article ). Hedrick Smith helped assemble and comment on the NYT reporting on what Ellsberg had given to Sheehan — for which they shared a Pulitzer Prize.

They should name The NY Times building after Neil Sheehan, for it was the best of Times, so to speak, for the Gray Lady.

More relevant today is this fact: Neil Sheehan is to Daniel Ellsberg as Julian Assange is to Chelsea Manning.  Ellsberg and Manning each needed some way to reveal U.S. war crimes (See, for example, https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2019/Shooters-walk-free-whistleblower-jailed,panor165.html .)

Here is how Hedrick Smith describes Sheehan’s (and his own) shock at reading what Ellsberg provided:

“But it was also a shock, a palpable body blow to open up documents day after day after day and see how often, how easily, how callously high government officials, civilian as well as military, had lied to or grievously deceived Congress, the media and the American public, and how, even as reporters wary of governmental deception, we had often understated reality. “With a sense of vindication, his sharp brown eyes bursting in anger and amazement, Neil would almost lunge at me as he charged bitterly: “Rick, these bastards in government have been lying to the American people for years and years and years, lying about a war and policies that they knew weren’t working and that they knew the American people would never stomach if they were told the truth. And now we’ve got the goods on them, in their own words, in their own documents. They can’t deny the truth any longer. The American people have a right to know the truth now. They have paid for this truth with blood and treasure, tens of thousands of lives lost and all that the money wasted when it could have been doing good in our own country.” [Emphasis added.]

Smith continues: “It was that powerful passion, that profound moral fervor about the people’s right to know the truth, however ugly, however awful, that marked Neil Sheehan as a unique reporter — and that made him uniquely able and morally empowered to tell the most compelling and important story of the Vietnam era.”

And so it was with Daniel Ellsberg and Neil Sheehan — but not, I am sorry to admit, with me.

In mid-1967, I knew the truth about how Gen. William Westmoreland was lying through his teeth.  My colleague CIA analyst Sam Adams told me that in a cable dated Aug. 20, 1967, Westmoreland’s deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, set forth the rationale for the deception. Abrams wrote that the new, higher numbers (reflecting Sam’s count, which was supported by all intelligence agencies except Army intelligence, which reflected the “command position”) “were in sharp contrast to the current overall strength figure of about 299,000 given to the press.”  Sam’s count was double that; he was proven right just five months later when the Viet Cong attacked en masse. Virtually every city, town, and village in South Vietnam (not to mention the U.S. embassy is Saigon, as well).

Abrams emphasized, “We have been projecting an image of success over recent months” and cautioned that if the higher figures became public, “all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.” [Emphasis added.]

To read more on this, see my apologia “Truth and Lives vs. Career and Fame at:  https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/20/truth-and-lives-vs-career-and-fame/

It was Julian Assange who devised a way that fearful analysts like me could get the truth out with verifiable documents — with the push of a computer key — no carbon paper, no mimeograph, no thermofax, no Xerox machine needed. Not to mention the reasonable prospect that a leaker could escape detention, while doing a courageous, patriotic, dangerous act.

Were WikiLeaks available in 1968, I think I might have summoned the courage to take advantage of the immediacy and anonymity it provides.  Easy to say in retrospect, but I believe I would have tried to obtain a copy of that damning cable from Gen. Abrams and given it to WikiLeaks.  The war dragged on for seven more years.

And so it is with those who could have blown the whistle on U.S. government ineptitude before the attacks of 9/11.  (See the LA Times:  WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?  http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/15/opinion/la-oe-rowley-wikileaks-20101015 .)

So they come after Julian Assange, as they tried to prosecute Dan Ellsberg, charging them under a century-old, probably unconstitutional “Espionage Act”.  Enough said.

Bomb Iran? What’s to Lose?

When Trump moves out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave on or before the 20th, he’ll want to go somewhere safe. If I were he, I’d head for Israel where he might be able to escape justice and Interpol. Netanyahu is likely to exact a price, however, as in, “If you attack Iran, you are welcome forever – your family too…”

Beware of a false flag casus belli to justify such an attack, as I warned in
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/15/pretexts-for-an-attack-on-iran/

Today’s Inauspicious Anniversary

Today marks the 8 month anniversary of the New York Times hiding the proof that Russians didn’t “hack” the DNC emails:
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf

Representative Schiff proves even better at hide-and-go-seek. He sat on CrowdStrike’s December 5, 2017 testimony until forced to publish on May 7, 2020. 
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/

Sanger Typical of Pundits Singing From Gov’t Songsheet

On the radio today (audio below), I critiqued NYT journalist/mercenary David Sanger for (a) his flagrant flat-facting of WMD into Iraq (2002-2005) and (b) his drivel on Russia “hacking” (2016-____). At the end, I included a comment from a despairing reader suggesting that, “God, too, is in on the Russia-gate scam.”

Jan 5, 2021

Julian Assange Will Walk Wednesday We Hope

Max Blumenthal, Eric Sirotkin, and I dissect Queen of Hearts Judge Baraitser’s surprise ruling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HGsIumntfs&feature=youtu.be

13 min was just enough time to flesh out my earlier tweet on why US gave Baraitser new instructions.

NYT Still Stoking Alarm At “Russian Hacking”

By Ray McGovern

Forget what Vice President Pence has suggested he might do this week regarding counting the votes for president and forget President Trump’s ominous military buildup near Iran, the Sunday NY Times two-column, above-the-fold lede tells us what we should really be worried about: “Scope of Russian Hacking Far Exceeds Initial Fears”.  The on-line title was “As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm”.  (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/politics/russian-hacking-government.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210103&instance_id=25598&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=69540701&segment_id=48247&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe .)

Forget, too, that this latest NYT indictment of Russia, does not substantially advance the story beyond the information available two weeks ago, when “neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done [was] known for certain in this latest scare story”.  (See:  https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/19/a-pandemic-of-russian-hacking/ .)

Although no evidence is adduced to show that Russia is behind this latest flurry of hacking, Russia no doubt sits toward the top of a long list of suspects.  The Times ominously quotes Suzanne Spaulding, a senior cyber official during the Obama administration, saying, in effect, Russia is the foregone conclusion:

“We still don’t know what Russia’s strategic objectives were,” she said, ”but we should be concerned that part of this may go beyond reconnaissance. Their goal may be to put themselves in a position to have leverage over the new administration, like holding a gun to our head to deter us from acting to counter Putin.”

The Sanger Sewing Machine

NYT Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger is listed first on the byline for Sunday’s story together with Nicole Perlroth and Julian Barnes. That should give us a clue, given Sanger’s record of sewing things out of whole cloth. In a word, Sanger enjoys an unenviably checkered record for reliability. Until we are shown more in the way of evidence attributing the recently discovered hacking to the Russians, we would do well to review his record.

Sanger’s reporting on Iraq before the war was as wrong as it was consequential.  Those who were alert at the time may remember that Sanger was second only to Judith Miller in spreading the party line on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 

Seldom do historians obtain documentary evidence of plans for a war of aggression, but on May 1, 2005 the London Times published a leaked paper (now known as the “Downing Street Minutes”) that recorded what Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the UK counterpart to the CIA), relayed to Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002 about what he was told by George Tenet at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002. (No one has challenged the authenticity of the minutes.)

“C (Dearlove) reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. … There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” [Emphasis added.]

With David Sanger and his colleague Judith Miller having cried wolf on WMD so many times over the prior two years, the Times decided it would be best to suppress the embarrassing revelation that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. So the Times ignored it for more than six weeks; then Sanger wrote an article to put the whole thing in perspective, so to speak.

The title of Sanger’s June 13, 2005 article was “Postwar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn’t Made” [Emphasis added.].  Those looking for a measure of Sanger’s credibility could do no better than read this masterpiece of deceptive circumlocution. (See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/politics/prewar-british-memo-says-war-decision-wasnt-made.html ) Here’s the lead paragraph:

WASHINGTON, June 12 – A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made “no political decisions” to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. …”

And those asking how Sanger could write that with a straight face need only to read the Downing Street Minutes, which are quite succinct and embarrassingly clear: ( See: https://www.timothyhorrigan.com/documents/downingstreetmemotext.html )

One could almost sympathize with Sanger, who had co-authoried a piece with Thom Shanker on July 29, 2002 in which WMD were flat-facted into Iraq no fewer than seven times. See: “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option of July 29, 2002” ( https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq-option.html .) That was about a week after CIA Director Tenet had briefed Dearlove on the fixing of the intelligence and the facts. It is a safe bet that Sanger’s sources in the intelligence community briefed him on what line to take on those (non-existent) WMD.

Years Later Still Drinking at the Government Trough

On July 26, 2016, Candidate Clinton reportedly approved a “blame-Russia” plan. According to a letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sept. 29, 2020, CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on “Russian intelligence analysis” regarding “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”.  (See:  (https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI’s%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf .)

The Russian intelligence analysis report was deemed important enough that on Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an “investigative referral” to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding it. (Such a referral usually indicates that a leak has occurred about a particularly sensitive issue or program. Thus, it is possible that the putative leaker wished to get the information out into the open.)

But it is one thing to leak, quite another to get an Establishment journalist to write about it without checking beforehand with the intelligence community for a nihil obstat. There has been no additional reporting about the “investigative referral”.  But if it was about a leak, the information never saw the light of day at the time.

July 26, 2016: The exact date timing may be coincidence, but on the same day Mrs. Clinton was alleged to have given the go-ahead for Russia-gate, Sanger co-authored an article with Eric Schmitt titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.” (See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html .):

“WASHINGTON American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”

There is much more that can be said about Sanger’s reporting on very consequential issues.  On Iran, for example, taking Sanger’s reporting at face value, one would think he never read the National Intelligence Estimate that helped prevent the war on Iran planned by Cheney/Bush for 2008.  I refer to the November 2007 NIE the unanimous, “high-confidence” key judgment of which was that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed such work.  That key judgment stands, but you would never know that from Sanger’s reporting.

Caveat emptor.  Let buyers and readers beware of chief Washington correspondents pushing deceptive, consequential drivel from anonymous “intelligence officials”. Perform due diligence; take time to look at the record of the sellers.

What I Learned Last Year

By Ray McGovern

— That Bill Casey, Reagan’s CIA Director, has largely succeeded in the objective he set forth at a cabinet meeting in Feb. 1981:
“We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete, when everything the American public believes is false.”

— The media is the cornerstone of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank) complex. Wall Street and Silicon Valley, of course, fit under that rubric — as does what has become of the Democratic (as well as the Republican) Party.

— “Trump Derangement Syndrome” also plays a significant role. The understanding accorded a broken clock — which is correct two times a day — is withheld from anything liar-in-chief Trump says. Accordingly, if he is correct in saying that he was spied upon, and that Russia-gate was a fraud (as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has proved), well, the very suggestion that Trump might be telling the truth — if only twice a day — is anathema. (Many are astute enough to realize that this has to do with politics, not truth.)

— The most “progressive” of analysts/editors can feign an inability to understand how the deep expertise of former NSA Technical Directors and other senior NSA analysts, the revelations of Edward Snowden, and the application of the very principles of physics allowed VIPS to prove, as with a theorem, that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked — QED. That was more than four years ago: (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/ .)

— Nevertheless, Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was able to hide the fact that there was no, repeat no, technical evidence that the Russians — or anyone else — hacked those DNC emails that were so embarrassing to the Clinton campaign. The head of CrowdStrike, Shawn Henry, testified to that under oath on Dec. 5, 2017; Schiff did not release his testimony until May 7, 2020, when he was forced to by the Director of National Intelligence. The NY Times has suppressed Henry’s testimony since May 7. What does that tell you? (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/ .)

— Simply stated: Russia-gate is too big to fail. The media, the sine qua non for the MICIMATT to succeed, rule the roost. To suggest that Establishment media and politicians are being flat-out dishonest on the “threat” and the frequent “attacks” from Russia is to put yourself, ipso facto, in “Putin’s pocket”. This is dangerous.

— The possible extradition of Julian Assange poses an extremely serious threat to the freedom of the press enshrined in the first amendment, but the corporate media do not give a rat’s patootie. As long as today’s journalists/stenographers keep feeding from the trough of the Security State, and criticize those who don’t as “conspiracy theorists”, they will continue to live high on the hog.

These thoughts, including Casey’s braggadocio, were brought into bas relief yesterday, as I read “Letters from an American”, the blog of Professor Heather Cox Richardson (See:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2020/comments#comment-957134 ). I wrote the following”

Professor Richardson writes:
“… Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn’t win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal….”

This is the prevailing narrative but it is seriously mistaken. The trust placed in “American intelligence services” by Establishment media and academe is stunningly misplaced. It seems nothing was learned from their noxious collaboration in adducing pre-Iraq-war “intelligence” that was “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even nonexistent” (Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, describing the bipartisan results of a five-year investigation). And, speaking of “non-existent”, the evidence for what Richardson writes about Russia-gate is equally “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even nonexistent”. It is, to put it politely, male bovine excrement consumed by the likes of NYT’s David Sanger (of WMD fame) and spit onto the pages of a paper that once bragged about publishing all the news that’s fit to print.

Here’s a small case study:

We no longer have to rely on what David Sanger is fed by “the American intelligence services” to figure out how blaming Russia got its big push. To experienced observers, what was happening was clear enough way back on the first day of the Democratic Party convention and the day that followed.

— July 25, 2016: writer/journalist Patrick Lawrence wrote this:
“How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal,” https://www.salon.com/2016/07/25/shades_of_the_cold_war_how_the_dnc_fabricated_a_russian_hacker_conspiracy_to_deflect_blame_for_its_email_scandal/ (For more on this, see: https://raymcgovern.com/2020/09/30/uh-oh-was-hrc-behind-the-russian-dnc-hack-canard/ )

— July 26, 2016: This day saw the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”, according to a letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sept. 29, 2020. (https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI’s%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf .)


In his letter Radcliffe indicates that, according to then-CIA Director John Brennan’s handwritten notes, Brennan briefed President Obama and other senior officials on this information, which came from “Russian intelligence analysis”. The Russian analysis was deemed serious enough that on Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding “U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.” James Comey testified on Oct. 30, 2020 that this does not “ring a bell”.
(https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/05/ray-mcgovern-comeys-amnesia-
makes-senate-session-an-unforgettable-hop-skip-jump-to-fraud/ )

— July 26, 2016: David Sanger, the NYT’s Chief Washington Correspondent, shows that he “got the Memo”. Sanger co-authors an article with Eric Schmitt titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.”
(See: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html .)
“WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”

About Sanger: those who were alert before the Iraq war may remember that David Sanger was second only to Judith Miller in spreading the party line on the existence of WMD in Iraq.  For example, Sanger apparently “got the Memo” from his intelligence leakers shortly after July 20, 2002, when then-CIA Director George Tenet told his British counterpart that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. …” (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-secret-downing-street-memo-xh9h29xhqzr )

Lapping up “intelligence” from sources in the intelligence community nine days later, Sanger’s sewing machine went into full swing weaving WMD out of whole cloth.  With co-author Thom Shanker, Sanger flat-facted WMD into Iraq no fewer than seven times in “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option on July 29, 2002”, of July 29, 2020 (http://nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq-option.html ).

Fast forward to 2016: In my view, Trump won in 2016 mostly because too many Americans saw Mrs. Clinton as a deeply flawed candidate.  Perhaps enough voters saw through the “Russia-hacked” diversion and actually read some of the DNC emails showing how Bernie was cheated out of the nomination — maybe enough disenchanted Bernie supporters to make a difference and give clown Trump the edge in key states.  Attentive voters (who read more than the Establishment media) could also see that Clinton was let off the hook by the same Security State seniors who did their best to sabotage Trump as candidate (and then succeeded in emasculating him as president).  But you will not read about this in what has become of the New York Times regurgitating leaks from “American intelligence services”.

Empathy

I’m trying to understand.  I am from New York City, was educated there, and I remember how much trust most of us put in the NY Times several decades ago. Most of my well educated friends still believe it publishes all the news that’s fit to print — and that if it’s not in the Times it didn’t happen and cannot be true.  And Trump Derangement Syndrome makes it virtually impossible for them to believe that anything Trump has claimed — like Russia-gate being a hoax — could possibly be true.

In addition, I am aware that my intelligence veteran friends and I enjoy the freedom of not having to teach, administer and mark exams, and navigate university bureaucracies.  I appreciate that, truly, just as I did during the many years I spent as a CIA analyst.

But still.  Well, let me put it this way: What are we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the work we have painstakingly put forward on these neuralgic issues? Chopped liver?

I close with Voltaire and John Adams:

“If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.”  Voltaire

“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.” John Adams

Why Russia Must Be Demonized

By Ray McGovern

Yesterday I had a chance to devote the first 7 minutes of an interview to explaining why the MICIMATT (including Wall St., Silicon Valley, & the Democratic Party) have all joined together to portray Russia (and now also China) as the enemies it desperately needs in order to “justify” spending more than half of the discretionary budget on “defense”. It is necessary, of course, to be able to “explain” — defense against what?

Ray on Critical Hour 12/29/2020

Is there any hope that Biden will extend an olive branch to President Putin? He could, but — unlike Trump — he knows quite well that the war machine would eat him alive.  Should a U.S. president wish to reduce tensions and make war less likely, that president must be able to move adroitly, step-by-step, sometimes in secret — as President Kennedy demonstrated. And look what happened to him.

I believe all successor presidents are quite aware of what happened to JFK, and why.  (The best book on this is James Douglass’s “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters”.)

The Security State (SS), with the FBI, CIA, & NSA in the lead, has just won big, even as the danger of exposure seemed to loom large.  ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2020/12/04/barr-kicks-durham-can-down-the-street/  and https://www.opednews.com/articles/1/FBI-Another-Fraud-on-the-by-Ray-McGovern-Assange_Fraud_Media_Russia-201230-938.html .)

The SS functions as enforcer for the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.  Improved ties with Russia are to be thwarted at all, repeat all, costs.

If extending genuine olive branches is out of the question, will Biden, during his proverbial “honeymoon period”, at least be able to extend the New START treaty limiting strategic arms?  Will even this small step be thwarted, lest it lead to a step-by-step relaxation in U.S.-Russia tensions?  The treaty expires on Feb. 5, 2021, so we’re likely to know soon enough.

In the full (13 min) interview I gave yesterday, I had time to do a short tutorial, citing a number of not well known “flat facts” — very unlike those to be found on the pages of the the Washington Post.

FBI: Another Fraud on the Court?

By Ray McGovern, Dec. 21, 2020

Can the FBI be trusted?  You decide, but only after you learn about the Bureau’s most recently revealed fraud on the court.

Establishment media are ignoring the latest FBI flip-flop (surprise, surprise); they are reporting instead that incoming president Joe Biden wants Christopher Wray to stay on as FBI director? What’s that all about?

Again, you decide after reading what follows.  The latest known FBI caper involves hiding materials regarding the neuralgic, (dont-even-think-about-it) issue of why the Democratic National Committee 27 year-old insider, Seth Rich, was murdered on July 10, 2016.

Media coverage of L’Affaire Rich has been so scant in recent years that some background seems needed to grasp the facts, their relevance, and the implications for the ever-increasing immunity enjoyed by the Security (aka Deep) State.  Those generally aware of some of the detail may find this background a helpful refresher. Those who wish to can scroll down for a discussion of the most recent episode of FBI malfeasance.

Context

— On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he had “emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”  Those emails had been copied in late May 2016 onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) and given to WikiLeaks.

— On July 10, 2016, Seth Rich was shot and killed.  The motive was said to be robbery, but nothing is known to have been taken from him.

— On July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic National Convention began, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails.

There was speculation at the time that Seth Rich was involved in the leak of the damaging emails (which showed how the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders), and that perhaps the leaker had been identified by DNC cyber-sleuths.

Adding fuel to the fire, on August 9 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange publicly implied that Rich may have been a WikiLeaks’ source. ( See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G21u6YnLoA ) That same day, WikiLeaks announced “a $20,000 reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich”.  (See: https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-20000-seth-rich-dnc-2016-8 )

An Insider, Not Russia

On Dec. 12, 2016, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) formally ruled out, on technical grounds, the possibility that the Russians “hacked” those DNC emails.  Drawing on the expertise of former technical directors at NSA, material revealed by Edward Snowden, and applying the principles of physics, VIPS concluded that:

“… the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone … with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.” (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/ )

A year later on Dec. 5, 2017, Shawn Henry, the head of the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike hired by the DNC (and highly touted by then-FBI Director James Comey) to do the forensics, testified under oath that there was “no concrete evidence” the emails were hacked — by the Russians or by anyone else.)  (See:  https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/ )

 AND

( https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf ). The supplementary “circumstantial” evidence that Mr. Henry adduced to blame Russia could not pass a smell test by anyone with a nose in working order.

But House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff did not release Henry’s testimony until May 7, 2020.  Establishment media picked up where Schiff left off and have been hiding Henry’s testimony since May 7.

Seth Rich

By almost all accounts, Seth Rich had excellent access to DNC computers. But the possibility that he played a role in leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and then paid for it with his life, proved too much for Official Washington to handle.  Besides, the “Russian hack” canard was not only a handy way to attribute Mrs. Clinton’s loss to Russian interference and to prove Donald Trump wrong on Russia.

It also proved a convenient way to divert attention from the fate that befell Rich.  What would happen to the Russia-did-it story that media hacks were pushing, if it became widely known that there was a simpler way to explain how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks. (Julian Assange had denied strongly that any state actor was involved.) 

Oddly, President Obama himself was not fully persuaded by the rump, misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” (written by “hand-picked” analysts from FBI, CIA, and NSA), that pinned the “hack” on Russia.  At his last press conference, less than two weeks after being fully briefed on the Assessment’s “high-confidence” findings, Obama pointed out that one of its conclusions — how the DNC emails reached WikiLeaks — was “inconclusive”. ( See: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/ ).

As to the killing of Rich, there was no official investigation worthy of the name — despite a host of anomalies and unanswered questions.  Those who did try to look into it, and were willing to raise speculative hypotheses anathema to the official narrative, were branded “conspiracy theorists”. The same thing happened to highly experienced scientists who applied the principles of physics and took advantage of highly relevant information revealed by Edward Snowden.  Here’s one telling example of swords drawn by pundit mercenaries enlisted to promote the Establishment narrative — the (Democratic) party line, if you will — on Russia’s 2016 “hack”.

Risen on “Rising”

Erstwhile investigative journalist James Risen, now apparently a self-styled expert on the forensics of hacking, brought up Seth Rich during an interview on “Rising” on Aug. 5, 2019.  Risen charged that VIPS’s widely respected former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney (primary author of the Dec. 12, 2016 VIPS Memo) had gone into “conspiracy theory mode”.

The charitable explanation is that Risen had not performed due diligence by doing his homework before the interview.  Had he taken the trouble to read the December 12, 2016 VIPS Memo (with its revealing embedded charts from Edward Snowden), Risen would have known that it is not a matter of what Binney and the other NSA alumni in VIPS believe, it is what theyproved in writing four years ago — proved, as in QED. (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OxZEhN9RBY

(The relevant part of Risen’s remarks runs from minutes 2:34 to 4:00.) Risen, by the way, is still at it ( See: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/assange-snowden-whistleblower-pardons-espionage/  AND  https://theintercept.com/2020/10/21/trump-presidency-summary/ ).

Question Most Awkward: If It Wasn’t the Russians …

By late last year, Seth Rich’s family was suing just about anyone who wrote or implied that Seth might have played a role in leaking the DNC emails.  As VIPS kept reporting new technical evidence that the culprit was not Russia, the avoid-at-any-cost, awkward question kept raising its ugly head. “If it wasn’t the Russians, then who gave those emails to WikiLeaks?”  There was only one known insider candidate, but mentioning his name could get you sued by a family with seemingly unlimited funds to pay lawyers close to the Democratic party.

There were even … dare I say conspiracy theorists? … like an erstwhile British investigative reporter in the mold of the latter-day James Risen, who implied that we were — whether witting, or duped — agents of the Kremlin.  And so began a witch hunt into the computers of those VIPS members most directly involved.  In the fall of 2019, several VIPS members were served highly intrusive subpoenas on the Russian hacking issue.

I shall confess that, for a couple of months I had a touch of subpoena envy.  Then, alas, I was served — not once but twice.  In my initial response last December to the first subpoena, I took some pains to lay out, as concisely as I could, what VIPS had proven and why.  And I added enough links to help anyone seriously interested in learning the longer story. Readers may wish to skim through my response to the first subpoena.  ( See: https://raymcgovern.com/?s=subpoena.)

FBI Comes Clean — John Ehrlichman-Style

The expression “modified limited hangout” coined by Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman seems an apt description for what the FBI did two weeks ago when it blithely reversed an earlier sworn FBI Declaration that it had no records on Seth Rich. Readers of the barren Establishment media will be surprised to learn that, after three years of denial — the last two under Director Christopher Wray — the FBI has now admitted that it does, after all, have thousands of records relating to Seth Rich.  Its “initial search” has identified “approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned”, as well as “leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching.”

The FBI also admitted to having custody of Seth Rich’s long-gone-missing laptop.  These confessions came in an unapologetic Dec. 9, 2020 letter to attorney Ty Clevenger  (See: Clevenger’s informative blog post, “FBI changes story, finally admits it has thousands of pages of documents about Seth Rich” at https://lawflog.com/?p=2410.)

In admitting to having thousands of records relating to Rich, the FBI ipso facto conceded that its Oct. 3, 2018 “Declaration”, sworn “under penalty of perjury”, was — at best — misleading. The FBI fall guy is David M. Hardy, who swore that he could find no records on Rich. (See: https://lawflog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Hardy-Declaration.pdf .) Hardy was FBI Section Chief, Record/Information Dissemination Section, Information Management Division.  Those working for Hardy — the Hardy Boys & Girls, if you will — number in the hundreds; they appear well trained in how not to find information responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests, when zero results are the objective.

Ty Clevenger’s client, Brian Huddleston, had filed an FOIA request on April 9, 2020 for information regarding Seth Rich and Seth’s brother Aaron but initially was stiff-armed by the FBI.  Now, eight months later, thousands of records are to be made available. But wait.

Still Slow-Rolling: FBI Wants 3 More Months

“Can’t wait to find out what those magically appearing records on Seth Rich reveal,” you may be saying to yourself.

Not so fast, says the FBI which explained in its letter to Clevenger how it intends to proceed:

“At this time, FBI anticipates processing only the pages where Seth Rich is mentioned, along with perhaps another page or two in each situation to provide context. The issue right now with this batch of documents is the amount of labor required to ingest all of the material so that the responsive pages will, first, be in a page format, secondly, can be identified from among the thousands of non-responsive pages, and finally, be processed. The FBI is also currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed.  As you can imagine, there are thousands of files of many types.”

Pouring more cold water on eager anticipation, the FBI letter added, “Unfortunately, these efforts are hampered by FBI FOIA office’s reduction to a 50% staffing posture due to Covid.”

And here is an additional wet blanket for those still waiting:

“In light of the status of this search and the work left to be done, we propose an additional three months [Emphasis added] to complete the tasks described above.  At that time, we will propose a production schedule and briefing schedule.” If that were not enough to dampen spirits, the FBI adds that it “will continue to evaluate the responsiveness of these files under the FOIA.”

And one can certainly anticipate copious redactions of any politically/bureaucratically/embarrassing material.

Waiting for Godot …

Director Wray seems to have ordered the Hardy Boys & Girls to continue dragging their feet.  Let’s see; three months will take us well into the Biden administration with the Democrats calling the shots.  If, as has been reported, Joe Biden lets Christopher Wray remain as FBI director, well, Godot is likely to arrive before any significant material on Seth Rich.

… and for John Durham

In his blog entry ( See: https://lawflog.com/?p=2410 ), Ty Clevenger includes a link to an important October 12, 2020 letter ( See: https://lawflog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020.10.12-Letter-to-Barr-Durham-redacted-v.1.pdf ) he sent to Attorney General William Barr, US Attorney John Durham (who for the past year and a half has been investigating the FBI inquiry into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia), and Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.  Clevenger writes that he has learned that “Durham will not be investigating whether former Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich provided DNC emails to WikiLeaks in 2016.” [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Clevenger says former FBI agent John Eckenrode explained to him that inquiry into a possible internal, non-Russian, source for the emails leaked to WikiLeaks does not have a direct bearing on Mr. Durham’s investigation.  Clevenger registered strong dissent, pointing out that “Robert Mueller himself acknowledged the possibility that the DNC emails were not transmitted remotely by email to Wikileaks, but were provided by hand delivery from someone originating in the United States.”

In his letter Clevenger notes: “Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike has testified under oath that Crowdstrike did not observe any exfiltration of emails from the DNC, but that had observed “preparation for exfiltration’, which would be consistent with a local download to a DNC user”.  Taking the gloves off, Clevenger claims that “the failure of the relevant agencies to investigate thoroughly the possibility of an internal source is an indication of the type of result-driven, error-ridden and highly damaging investigative work identified by Inspector General Horowitz in his review of various FISA abuses.”

Seymour Hersh Deposed

In his indictment of the Justice Department’s lackadaisical approach to the Seth Rich issue, Clevenger cites what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh asserted in a deposition in a pending court case.  Hersh stated that it was “absolutely true that his source told him that Seth Rich transmitted emails to Wikileaks and requested payment”.  Hersh described his source as “very, very knowledgeable”, someone “senior” in the intelligence community, and a person Hersh had known for over 30 years.

The information provided by Hersh’s source cries out for either confirmation or denial.  Such could readily come from the National Security Agency which collects everything on the Internet. Has NSA not been asked?

Hersh said during his deposition that he had not been contacted by anyone from Robert Mueller’s team, nor from Durham’s team, nor from the Attorney General’s office.  Clevenger added the following footnote, which speaks for itself:

“Likewise, no one from the Office of Special Counsel made any attempt to interview Julian Assange”, even though Assange had hinted that Seth Rich might have been a source for the DNC emails: “As far as I can determine, nobody from Mr. Durham’s team, the FBI, nor the Justice Department has made any attempt to interview Mr. Assange … even though Mr. Assange would know better than anyone else how and from whom he obtained the emails.”  VIPS called attention to this strange anomaly as soon as the Mueller report was released ( See: 

“VIPS Fault Mueller Probe, Criticize Refusal to Interview Assange”, https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/16/vips-fault-mueller-probe-criticize-refusal-to-interview-assange/ ). 

Attorney General William Barr, who jumped ship on Dec. 23, has left John Durham to an unenviable, uncertain future.  ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2020/12/04/barr-kicks-durham-can-down-the-street/ .) 

So, Were the “Investigations” a Sham?

Seems so, from the looks of it.  By all appearances, the top officials at the Justice Department, the FBI, and intelligence agencies who — for political purposes —  conjured up the “Russian hack”, emasculated Trump, and led the U.S. into a new Cold War with Russia will walk free.  Section Chief David Hardy may get a slap on the wrist or a letter of reprimand in his personnel file.  And it is a safe bet that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who committed an earlier fraud on the court, by altering a consequential email relating to a FISA application, is not likely to face much, if any, jail time.

Presumably, many senior law enforcement and intelligence officials eagerly await the arrival of President Joe Biden, who has zero incentive to hold them accountable for what they did over the last four years.  (As if any president would be courageous or foolish enough to try to hold them accountable, in any case).

Biden has been on the Washington scene for so many years that he does not need Sen. Chuck Schumer to warn him — as Schumer warned President-elect Donald Trump indirectly via Rachel Maddow on Jan. 3, 2017 — not to get crosswise with the “intelligence community”, noting that it has six ways to Sunday to get back at you. (See: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/schumer-trump-being-really-dumb-to-fight-with-intel-agencies-847022147815 .)

President Donald Trump’s weird combination of arrogance, ineptitude, and naïveté made him an easy target. As the years went by, it became clearer and clearer that the president was not really in charge. The Security State is riding higher than ever.  And that’s not good.