Is John Brennan the Mastermind Behind Russiagate?
Mike Whitney • February 13, 2018
The
report (“The Dossier”) that claims that Donald Trump colluded with
Russia, was paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
The company that claims that Russia hacked DNC computer servers, was paid by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
The
FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Trump’s alleged connections to
Russia was launched on the basis of information gathered from a report
that was paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
The
surveillance of a Trump campaign member (Carter Page) was approved by a
FISA court on the basis of information from a report that was paid for
by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
The
Intelligence Community Analysis or ICA was (largely or partially) based
on information from a report that was paid for by the DNC and Hillary
Clinton campaign. (more on this below)
The
information that was leaked to the media alleging Russia hacking or
collusion can be traced back to claims that were made in a report that
was paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
The
entire Russia-gate investigation rests on the “unverified and
salacious” information from a dossier that was paid for by the DNC and
Hillary Clinton Campaign. Here’s how Stephen Cohen sums it up in a
recent article at The Nation:
“Steele’s dossier… was the foundational document of the Russiagate narrative…from the time its installments began to be leaked to the American media in the summer of 2016, to the US “Intelligence Community Assessment” of January 2017….the dossier and subsequent ICA report remain the underlying sources for proponents of the Russiagate narrative of “Trump-Putin collision.” (“Russia gate or Intel-gate?”, The Nation)
There’s
just one problem with Cohen’s statement, we don’t really know the
extent to which the dossier was used in the creation of the Intelligence
Community Assessment. (The ICA was the IC’s flagship analysis that was
supposed to provide ironclad proof of Russian meddling in the 2016
elections.) According to some reports, the contribution was significant.
Check out this excerpt from an article at Business Insider:
“Intelligence officials purposefully omitted the dossier from the public intelligence report they released in January about Russia’s election interference because they didn’t want to reveal which details they had corroborated, according to CNN.” (“Mueller reportedly interviewed the author of the Trump-Russia dossier — here’s what it alleges, and how it aligned with reality”, Business Insider)
Bottom line: Despite the denials of former-CIA Director John Brennan, the dossier may have been used in the ICA.
In
the last two weeks, documents have been released that have exposed the
weak underpinnings of the Russia investigation while at the same time
revealing serious abuses by senior-level officials at the DOJ and FBI.
The so called Nunes memo was the first to point out these abuses, but it
was the 8-page “criminal referral” authored by Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham that gave
credence to the claims. Here’s a blurb from the document:
“It
appears the FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded
by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order
to conduct surveillance of an associate of the opposing presidential
candidate. It did so based on Mr. Steele’s personal credibility and
presumably having faith in his process of obtaining the information. But
there is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially
misled the FBI about a key aspect of his dossier efforts, one which
bears on his credibility.”
There
it is. The FBI made a “concerted effort to conceal information from the
court” in order to get a warrant to spy on a member of a rival
political campaign. So –at the very least– there was an effort, on the
part of the FBI and high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice,
to improperly spy on members of the Trump team. And there’s more. The
FBI failed to mention that the dossier was paid for by the Hillary
campaign and the DNC, or that the dossier’s author Christopher Steele
had seeded articles in the media that were being used to support the
dossier’s credibility (before the FISA court), or that, according to the
FBI’s own analysts, the dossier was “only minimally corroborated”, or
that Steele was a ferocious partisan who harbored a strong animus
towards Trump. All of these were omitted in the FISA application which
is why the FBI was able to deceive the judge. It’s worth noting that
intentionally deceiving a federal judge is a felony.
Most
disturbing is the fact that Steele reportedly received information from
friends of Hillary Clinton. (supposedly, Sidney Blumenthal and others)
Here’s one suggestive tidbit that appeared in the Graham-Grassley”
referral:
“…Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company “received this report from REDACTED US State Department,” that the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who “is in touch with REDACTED, a contact of REDACTED, a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to REDACTED.”It is troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.” (Lifted from The Federalist)
What
are we to make of this? Was Steele shaping the dossier’s narrative to
the specifications of his employers? Was he being coached by members of
the Hillary team? How did that impact the contents of the dossier and
the subsequent Russia investigation?
These
are just a few of the questions Steele will undoubtedly be asked if he
ever faces prosecution for lying to the FBI. But, so far, we know very
little about man except that he was a former M16 agent who was paid
$160,000 for composing the dubious set of reports that make up the
dossier. We don’t even know if Steele’s alleged contacts or
intermediaries in Russia actually exist or not. Some analysts think the
whole thing is a fabrication based on the fact that he hasn’t worked
the Russia-scene since the FSB (The Russian state-security organization
that replaced the KGB) was completely overhauled. Besides, it would be
extremely dangerous for a Russian to provide an M16 agent with
sensitive intelligence. And what would the contact get in return?
According to most accounts, Steele’s sources weren’t even paid, so there
was little incentive for them to put themselves at risk? All of this
casts more doubt on the contents of the dossier.
What
is known about Steele is that he has a very active imagination and
knows how to command a six-figure payoff for his unique services. We
also know that the FBI continued to use him long after they knew he
couldn’t be trusted which suggests that he served some other purpose,
like providing the agency with plausible deniability, a ‘get out of jail
free’ card if they ever got caught surveilling US citizens without
probable cause.
But
that brings us to the strange case of Carter Page, a bit-player whose
role in the Trump campaign was trivial at best. Page was what most
people would call a “small fish”, an insignificant foreign policy
advisor who had minimal impact on the campaign. Congressional
investigators, like Nunes, must be wondering why the FBI and DOJ devoted
so much attention to someone like Page instead of going after the “big
fish” like Bannon, Flynn, Kushner, Ivanka and Trump Jr., all of whom
might have been able to provide damaging information on the real target,
Donald Trump. Wasn’t that the idea? So why waste time on Page? It
doesn’t make any sense, unless, of course, the others were already being
surveilled by other agencies? Is that it, did the NSA and the CIA have a
hand in the surveillance too?
It’s
a moot point, isn’t it? Because now that there’s evidence that
senior-level officials at the DOJ and the FBI were involved in
improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the opposite party,
the investigation is going to go wherever it goes. Whatever restrictions
existed before, will now be lifted. For example, this popped up in
Saturday’s The Hill:
“House Intelligence Committee lawmakers are in the dark about an investigation into wrongdoing at the State Department announced by Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Friday. …Nunes told Fox News on Friday that, “we are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation. That investigation is ongoing and we continue work toward finding answers and asking the right questions to try to get to the bottom of what exactly the State Department was up to in terms of this Russia investigation.”…Since then, GOP lawmakers have been quietly buzzing about allegations that an Obama-era State Department official passed along information from allies of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that may have been used by the FBI to launch an investigation into whether the Trump campaign had improper contacts with Russia.“I’m pretty troubled by what I read in the documents with respect to the role the State Department played in the fall of 2016, including information that was used in a court proceeding. I am troubled by it,” Gowdy told Fox News on Tuesday.” (“Lawmakers in dark about ‘phase two’ of Nunes investigation”, The Hill)
So
the State Department is next in line followed by the NSA and, finally,
the Russia-gate point of origin, John Brennan’s CIA. Here’s more
background on that from Stephen Cohen’s illuminating article at The
Nation:
“….when, and by whom, was this Intel operation against Trump started?In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017, John Brennan, formerly Obama’s head of the CIA, strongly suggested that he and his agency were the first, as The Washington Post put it at the time, “in triggering an FBI probe.” Certainly both the Post and The New York Times interpreted his remarks in this way. Equally certain, Brennan played a central role in promoting the Russiagate narrative thereafter, briefing members of Congress privately and giving President Obama himself a top-secret envelope in early August 2016 that almost certainly contained Steele’s dossier. Early on, Brennan presumably would have shared his “suspicions” and initiatives with James Clapper, director of national intelligence. FBI Director Comey… may have joined them actively somewhat later….When did Brennan begin his “investigation” of Trump? His House testimony leaves this somewhat unclear, but, according to a subsequent Guardian article, by late 2015 or early 2016 he was receiving, or soliciting, reports from foreign intelligence agencies regarding “suspicious ‘interactions’ between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents.”In short, if these reports and Brennan’s own testimony are to be believed, he, not the FBI, was the instigator and godfather of Russiagate.” (“Russiagate or Intelgate?”, Stephen Cohen, The Nation)
Regular
readers of this column know that we have always believed that the
Russiagate psyops originated with Brennan. Just as the CIA launched its
disinformation campaigns against Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi, so
too, Russia has emerged as Washington’s foremost rival requiring a
massive propaganda campaign to persuade the public that America faces a
serious external threat. In any event, the demonizing of Russia had
already begun by the time Hillary and Co. decided to hop on the
bandwagon by blaming Moscow for hacking John Podesta’s emails. The
allegations were never persuasive, but they did provide Brennan with
some cover for the massive Information Operation (IO) that began with
him.
According to the Washington Times:
“It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama’s, who provided the information — what he termed the “basis” — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer….Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians.”
It
all started with Brennan. After Putin blocked Brennan’s operations in
both Ukraine and Syria, Brennan had every reason to retaliate and to use
the tools at his disposal to demonize Putin and try to isolate Russia.
The “election meddling” charges (promoted by the Hillary people) fit
perfectly with Brennan’s overall strategy to manipulate perceptions and
prepare the country for an eventual confrontation. It provided him the
opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, to deliver a withering
blow to Putin and Trump at the very same time. The temptation must have
been irresistible.
But
now the plan has backfired and the investigations are gaining pace.
Trump’s allies in the House smell the blood in the water and they want
answers. Did the CIA surveil members of the Trump campaign on the basis
of information they gathered in the dossier? Who saw the information?
Was the information passed along to members of the press and other
government agencies? Was the White House involved? What role did Obama
play? What about the Intelligence Community Assessment? Was it based on
the contents of the Steele report? Will the “hand-picked” analysts who
worked on the report vouch for its conclusions in or were they coached
about what to write? How did Brennan persuade the reluctant Comey into
opening a counterintelligence investigation on members in the Trump
campaign when he knew it would be perceived as a partisan attempt to
sabotage the elections by giving Hillary an edge?
Soon the investigative crosshairs will settle on Brennan. He’d better have the right answers.
Soon the investigative crosshairs will settle on Brennan. He’d better have the right answers.
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