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| Questions and Comments backfire@ofthisandthat.org |
ofthisandthat Commentary |
Copyright © 2010 ofthisandthat.org.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
May 21, 2017
Trumped-up claims against Trump
By Ray McGovern and William Binney
Source: The Baltimore Sun
The Washington establishment rejoiced last week over what seemed to be a windfall
"gotcha" moment, as President Donald Trump said he had fired FBI Director James
Comey over "this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia." The president labeled it a
"made-up story" and, by all appearances, he is mostly correct.
A few days before his firing, Mr. Comey reportedly had asked for still more resources
to hunt the Russian bear. Pundit piranhas swarmed to charge Mr. Trump with trying to
thwart the investigation into how the Russians supposedly "interfered" to help him win
the election.
But can that commentary bear close scrutiny, or is it the "phony narrative" Senate
Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas claims it to be? Mr. Cornyn has quipped that,
if impeding the investigation was Mr. Trump's aim, "This strikes me as a lousy way to
do it. All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue."
Truth is, President Trump had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for
his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to "Russia-gate"
— like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to
precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn. Mr. Flynn was caught "red-
handed," so to speak, talking with Russia's ambassador last December. (In our
experience, finding the culprit for that leak should not be very difficult; we suspect Mr.
Comey already knows who was responsible.)
In contrast, Mr. Comey evinced strong determination to chase after ties between
Russia and the Trump campaign until the cows came home. In the meantime, the
investigation (already underway for 10 months) would itself cast doubt on the
legitimacy of Mr. Trump's presidency and put the kibosh on plans to forge a more
workable relationship with Russia — a win-win for the establishment and the
FBI/CIA/NSA "Deep State"; a lose-lose for the president.
So far, it has been all smoke and mirrors with no chargeable offenses and not a
scintilla of convincing evidence of Russian "meddling" in the election. The oft-cited,
but evidence-free, CIA/FBI/NSA report of Jan. 6, crafted by "hand-picked" analysts,
according to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is of a piece with
the "high-confidence," but fraudulent, National Intelligence Estimate 15 years ago
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But what about "Russia hacking," the centerpiece of accusations of Kremlin
"interference" to help Mr.Trump?
On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents — ignored by
mainstream media — showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to
break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale
signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks
calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of
millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5
billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and
would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving"
the Russians hacked.
It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of
several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and
Mr. Clapper — the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free
memorandum of Jan. 6.
Mr. Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House
Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the
Democratic National Committee computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but
chose to rely on the those done by DNC contractor Crowdstrike. Could this be
explained by Mr. Comey's fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI
Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? Did this play a role in
Mr. Trump's firing of Mr. Comey?
President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the Deep State
and its media allies over the evidence-free accusations of his colluding with Russia.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, publicly warned him
of the risk earlier this year. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six
ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Mr. Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow
on Jan. 3.
If Mr. Trump continues to "take on" the Deep State, he will be fighting uphill, whether
he's in the right or not. It is far from certain he will prevail.
Ray McGovern (rrmcgovern@gmail.com) was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed
the president's daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national
security officials from 1981-85. William Binney (williambinney0802@comcast.net)
worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military
and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still
used by NSA.
Trumped-up claims against Trump
By Ray McGovern and William Binney
Source: The Baltimore Sun
The Washington establishment rejoiced last week over what seemed to be a windfall
"gotcha" moment, as President Donald Trump said he had fired FBI Director James
Comey over "this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia." The president labeled it a
"made-up story" and, by all appearances, he is mostly correct.
A few days before his firing, Mr. Comey reportedly had asked for still more resources
to hunt the Russian bear. Pundit piranhas swarmed to charge Mr. Trump with trying to
thwart the investigation into how the Russians supposedly "interfered" to help him win
the election.
But can that commentary bear close scrutiny, or is it the "phony narrative" Senate
Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas claims it to be? Mr. Cornyn has quipped that,
if impeding the investigation was Mr. Trump's aim, "This strikes me as a lousy way to
do it. All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue."
Truth is, President Trump had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for
his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to "Russia-gate"
— like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to
precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn. Mr. Flynn was caught "red-
handed," so to speak, talking with Russia's ambassador last December. (In our
experience, finding the culprit for that leak should not be very difficult; we suspect Mr.
Comey already knows who was responsible.)
In contrast, Mr. Comey evinced strong determination to chase after ties between
Russia and the Trump campaign until the cows came home. In the meantime, the
investigation (already underway for 10 months) would itself cast doubt on the
legitimacy of Mr. Trump's presidency and put the kibosh on plans to forge a more
workable relationship with Russia — a win-win for the establishment and the
FBI/CIA/NSA "Deep State"; a lose-lose for the president.
So far, it has been all smoke and mirrors with no chargeable offenses and not a
scintilla of convincing evidence of Russian "meddling" in the election. The oft-cited,
but evidence-free, CIA/FBI/NSA report of Jan. 6, crafted by "hand-picked" analysts,
according to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is of a piece with
the "high-confidence," but fraudulent, National Intelligence Estimate 15 years ago
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But what about "Russia hacking," the centerpiece of accusations of Kremlin
"interference" to help Mr.Trump?
On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents — ignored by
mainstream media — showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to
break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale
signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks
calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of
millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5
billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and
would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving"
the Russians hacked.
It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of
several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and
Mr. Clapper — the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free
memorandum of Jan. 6.
Mr. Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House
Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the
Democratic National Committee computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but
chose to rely on the those done by DNC contractor Crowdstrike. Could this be
explained by Mr. Comey's fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI
Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? Did this play a role in
Mr. Trump's firing of Mr. Comey?
President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the Deep State
and its media allies over the evidence-free accusations of his colluding with Russia.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, publicly warned him
of the risk earlier this year. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six
ways from Sunday at getting back at you," Mr. Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow
on Jan. 3.
If Mr. Trump continues to "take on" the Deep State, he will be fighting uphill, whether
he's in the right or not. It is far from certain he will prevail.
Ray McGovern (rrmcgovern@gmail.com) was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed
the president's daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan's most senior national
security officials from 1981-85. William Binney (williambinney0802@comcast.net)
worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military
and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still
used by NSA.