Tag Archives: James Comey

If You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria, though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them — except for a general “shut up, already” motif. For the record, I’m far more interested in the hysteria itself than the Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian Facebook trolls.

The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern, because it appears more and more to have been engineered by America’s own intel community, its handmaidens in the Dept of Justice, and the twilight’s last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks sketchy at best. This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest economy, and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances with Russia.

The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly through the FBI, now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, due out shortly.

The record of misbehavior and “collusion” between the highest ranks of the FBI, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of international blackmail peddlars is a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the muddy mule track of Trump “collusion” with Russia. It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as The New York Times sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, “La-la-la-la-la….”

It now appears that Mr. McCabe’s statements post-firing tend to incriminate his former boss, FBI Director James Comey — who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour for his self-exculpating book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

A great aura of sanctimony surrounds the FBI these days. Even the news pundits seem to have forgotten the long, twisted reign of J. Edgar Hoover (1924 – 1972), a dangerous rogue who excelled at political blackmail. And why, these days, would any sane American take pronouncements from the CIA and NSA at face value? What seems to have gone on in the RussiaRussiaRussia matter is that various parts of the executive branch in the last months under Mr. Obama gave each other tacit permission, wink-wink, to do anything necessary to stuff HRC into the White House and, failing that, to derail her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness.

The obvious lesson in all this huggermugger is that the ends don’t justify the means. I suspect there are basically two routes through this mess. One is that the misdeeds of FBI officers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Intel agency executives get adjudicated by normal means, namely, grand juries and courts. That would have the salutary effect of cleansing government agencies and shoring up what’s left of their credibility at a time when faith in institutions hangs in the balance.

The second route would be for the authorities to ignore any formal response to an evermore self-evident trail of crimes, and to allow all that political energy to be funneled into manufactured hysteria and eventually a phony provocation of war with Russia. Personally, I’d rather see the US government clean house than blow up the world over an engineered hallucination.

Release of Nunes memo throws anti-Russia campaign into disarray

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By Andre Damon

Source: WSWS.org

The Democratic Party was thrown into disarray Friday after the publication of a classified memo exposing as a factionally-motivated witch-hunt the investigation by leading intelligence agencies into the Trump administration’s alleged collusion with Russia.

The so-called Nunes memo, which Democratic lawmakers, US intelligence agencies, and major newspapers had been seeking to block for days, alleges that the FBI under the Obama administration used discredited sources and withheld key information to initiate a wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Cater Page.

The Democrats responded to the prospective release of the Nunes memo with undisguised hysteria, declaring that it threatened National Security and was insufficiently deferential to the US intelligence agencies. Now that the memo has been released, Democrats’ claim that it contains sensitive national security secrets has been exposed as lies.

The memo, written by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, claims that the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court authorization to wiretap Page in the fall of 2016 based on a memo compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele.

The so-called Steele dossier, which was released to the public last year, made lurid allegations that Russian government officials had recordings of Trump engaging in “perverted sexual acts” with prostitutes “which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB [Russian intelligence service].” According to the Nunes memo, FBI director James Comey called the Steele Dossier “salacious and unverified” in congressional testimony in June 2017.

In perhaps its most explosive passage, the memo alleges that Andrew McCabe, a deputy FBI director who just stepped down this past week, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in December that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought… without the Steele dossier information.”

In addition, the FISA application “ignored or concealed [Steele’s] anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations,” i.e. the fact that his “research” had been funded by the Clinton campaign.

The Republican memo does not specify what information was collected by the wiretap, or whether it captured any conversations with Trump.

The contents of the memo are another demonstration of the manufactured and partisan character of the anti-Russia campaign and the Democrats’ allegations that Trump “colluded” with Russia. What is playing out is a partisan battle between two criminal and reactionary factions of the state apparatus, centering ultimately around differences over foreign policy.

The release of the memo once again underscores the fact that the US intelligence agencies have massively intervened in US politics. This is true not only with regard to the concocted narrative about “collusion” between Trump and Russia, but equally so with James Comey’s public announcement about re-opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the presidential vote, which Clinton claimed may have cost her the election.

The memo has undermined the aura of professional impartiality that the Democrats and their semi-official news outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have sought to cultivate around the so-called “intelligence community.”

The real fear of Democrats is that the exposure of the anti-Russia campaign will undermine the credibility of the FBI. “The selective release and politicization of classified information sets a terrible precedent and will do long-term damage to the intelligence community and our law enforcement agencies,” declared Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Friday.

Schiff added, “If potential intelligence sources know that their identities might be compromised when political winds arise, those sources of vital information will simply dry up, at great cost to our national security.”

But all such arguments about “national security” have been rendered absurd by the release of the document, which contained no sensitive information besides the wrongdoing of the FBI and the Democrats—including Schiff himself.

In an editorial published Friday, ahead of the document’s publication, the New York Times accused congressional Republicans of “undermining the credibility of the law enforcement community,” which they had “once defended so ardently.”

It was left to the satirical news website the Onion to point out the obvious absurdity of such arguments:

Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States. “Making this memo public will almost certainly impede our ability to conduct clandestine activities operating outside any legal or judicial system on an international scale,” said Wray, noting that it was essential that mutual trust exist between the American people and the vast, mysterious cabal given free rein to use any tactics necessary to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens or subvert religious and political groups.

Responding to the Democrats’ allegations that the publication of the document would threaten “national security,” journalist Glen Greenwald tweeted, “What conceivable argument is there that any part of the Nunes Memo could jeopardize national security?”

The Times editorial effectively argues that no documents critical of the actions of the US intelligence apparatus should be published. To make this point, the Times quotes Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who argued against the release of the memo on the grounds that the public would “see this release as proof that selective classification is used more often to deceive them than to protect them.”

But it is, of course true that “selective classification” is used to deceive the American people. This was demonstrated by the release of the classified Pentagon Papers in 1971, which documented how flagrantly and extensively the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

As The Post, the recently-released film by Stephen Spielberg effectively documents, the New York Times and Washington Post made the decision at the time to defy the Nixon administration and publish the Pentagon Papers, rejecting the spurious argument that their publication would harm “national security.”

The editorial published in the Times Friday reads like a cruder version of the arguments put forward by the Nixon White House to block the release of the Pentagon Papers. If one were to take the editorial at face value, one would conclude that, if the Times had the Nunes memo in its sole possession, it would never have published it.

The Times has become little more than a mouthpiece for the US intelligence agencies, whose aim is to prevent the dissemination of any information that they see as harmful to the interests of the American ruling class and the capitalist state.

Stormy Weather

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

For those of us who are not admirers of President Trump, it’s even more painful to see the Democratic opposition descend into the stupendous dishonesty of the Russian Collusion story. When the intelligentsia of the nation looses its ability to think — when it becomes a dis-intelligentsia — then there are no stewards of reality left. Trump is crazy enough, but the “resistance” is dragging the country into dangerous madness.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the evidence in the public record that the FBI misbehaved pretty badly around the various election year events of 2016. And who, besides Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, and Dean Baquet of The New York Times, can pretend to be impressed by the so far complete lack of evidence of Russian “meddling” to defeat Hillary Clinton? I must repeat: so far. This story has been playing for a year and a half now, and as the days go by, it seems more and more unlikely that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is sitting on any conclusive evidence. During this time, everything and anything has already leaked out of the FBI and its parent agency the Department of Justice, including embarrassing hard evidence of the FBI’s own procedural debauchery, and it’s hard to believe that Mr. Mueller’s office is anymore air-tight than the rest of the joint.

If an attorney from Mars came to Earth and followed the evidence already made public, he would probably suspect that the FBI and DOJ colluded with the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic Party to derail the Trump campaign train, and then engineer an “insurance policy” train wreck of his position in office. Also, in the process, to nullify any potential legal action against Clinton, including the matter of her email server, her actions with the DNC to subvert the Sanders primary campaign, the Steele dossier being used to activate a FISA warrant for surveillance of the Trump campaign, the arrant, long-running grift machine of the Clinton Foundation (in particular, the $150 million from Russian sources following the 2013 Uranium One deal, when she was Secretary of State), and the shady activities of Barack Obama’s inner circle around the post-election transition. There is obviously more there there than in the Resistance’s Russia folder.

I don’t even understand why Robert Mueller ever had credible standing to preside over this special investigation. He is, after all, the close friend and once-mentor of the figure who is very likely the fulcrum in any case against Trump: James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump — theoretically to obstruct justice, the keystone in the effort to find an impeachable offense.

I’m not comfortable acting as a supporter or defender of Trump, but I’m even less comfortable with the appearance of a rogue security and law enforcement apparatus gone blatantly political. The so far poorly-explained antics at the FBI and DOJ reflect badly on all vested authority in the country — and especially for any faction that pretends to be on the side of justice. This is a much larger problem than the public debate seems to recognize. We are not far from a point where nobody will be able to believe anything official in this land.

I remain convinced that this circus of scandal and counter-scandal will not necessarily be resolved by the legal machinery, at least not in any meaningful time frame that would allow the political establishment to pull its head out of its ass and actually start paying attention to the public interest. Rather, the circus tent will just blow down in the financial crisis that is spinning toward the US mainland like a superstorm. Mr. Trump now has full, gold-plated ownership of the parabolic stock market, a shuddering bond market, a wobbling currency, and an implacable debt quandary. These are conditions that can blow a society up for real.

Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’

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The mainstream U.S. media sells the mythical integrity of fired FBI Director Comey and special Russia-gate prosecutor Mueller, but the truth is they have long histories as pliable political operatives, writes ex-FBI official Coleen Rowley.

By Coleen Rowley

Source: Consortium News

Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.

Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.

TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.

Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, “that the system had been blinking red.” Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed “criminal negligence” in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)

Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to “roll out” their misbegotten “war on terror,” which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism.

Unfulfilled Promise

I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI’s pre 9/11 failures.

A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney’s ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.

Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

A History of Failure

Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.

Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders, which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfill) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.

Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo’s singular theories of absolute “imperial” or “war presidency” powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a “state of emergency.”

The Comey/Mueller Myth

What’s not well understood is that Comey’s and Mueller’s joint intervention to stop Bush’s men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.

The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn’t. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.

Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

Neither Comey nor Mueller — who are reported to be “joined at the hip” — deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like “G-men” with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.

It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

 

Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled “Questions for the FBI Nominee” was published on the day of James Comey’s confirmation hearing. This piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley’s Huffington Post page.)

Related Video:

Relevant links:

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20020603,00.html

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/us/nationalspecial3/fbi-agent-testifies-superiors-didnt-pursue-moussaoui.html

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/68973:the-iraq-effect-war-has-increased-terrorism-sevenfold-worldwide

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3322308/Number-people-killed-terrorists-worldwide-soars-80-just-year.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/politics/full-text-of-fbi-agents-letter-to-director-mueller.html

https://oig.justice.gov/special/0306/full.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/us/immigrants-suit-over-detention-after-9-11-is-revived.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/1970/01/19/one-lingering-question-for-fbi-director-robert-mueller/613uW0MR7czurRn7M4BG2J/story.html

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/

https://www.mintpressnews.com/anthrax-russiagate-muellers-special-counsel-appointment-raise-concern/228317/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-jan-june07-patriotact_03-09/

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/DOJ/story?id=4444329

https://www.aclu.org/news/fbi-counterterrorism-unit-spies-peaceful-faith-based-protest-group

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/questions-for-the-fbi-nominee.html

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/25/fbi-director-james-comey-who-signed-off-on-waterboarding-is-now-losing-sleep-over-an-iphone/

http://www.newsweek.com/ali-soufan-breaks-his-silence-77243

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/19/gregg-jarrett-why-robert-mueller-should-resign-as-special-counsel.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/10/want-a-special-prosecutor-to-replace-james-comey-history-might-change-your-mind/?utm_ter4091053795m

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/03/the-flawed-record-of-special-prosecutors-who-create-as-much-controversy-as-they-resolve/?utm_term=.29989d7a3635

Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State

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By Mike Whitney

Source: Information Clearing House

Why is it a “conspiracy theory” to think that a disgruntled Democratic National Committee staffer gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails, but not a conspiracy theory to think the emails were provided by Russia?

Why?

Which is the more likely scenario: That a frustrated employee leaked damaging emails to embarrass his bosses or a that foreign government hacked DNC computers for some still-unknown reason?

That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?

Former-DNC employee, Seth Rich, not only had access to the emails, but also a motive. He was pissed about the way the Clinton crowd was “sandbagging” Bernie Sanders. In contrast, there’s neither evidence nor motive connecting Russia to the emails. On top of that,  WikiLeaks founder, Julien Assange (a man of impeccable integrity) has repeatedly denied that Russia gave him the emails which suggests the government investigation is completely misdirected. The logical course of action, would be to pursue the leads that are most likely to bear fruit, not those that originate from one’s own political bias. But, of course, logic has nothing to do with the current investigation, it’s all about politics and geopolitics.

We don’t know who killed Seth Rich and we’re not going to speculate on the matter here.  But we find it very strange that neither the media nor the FBI have pursued leads in the case that challenge the prevailing narrative on the Russia hacking issue. Why is that? Why is the media so eager to blame Russia when Rich looks like the much more probable suspect?

And why have the mainstream news organizations put so much energy into discrediting the latest Fox News report, when– for the last 10 months– they’ve showed absolutely zero interest in Rich’s death at all?

According to Fox News:

“The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich’s computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time….

Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator who spoke to Fox News….

“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.” (“Family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich blasts detective over report of WikiLeaks link”, Fox News)

Okay, so where’s the computer? Who’s got Rich’s computer? Let’s do the forensic work and get on with it.

But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren’t interested in such matters because it doesn’t fit with their political agenda. They’d rather take pot-shots at Fox for running an article that doesn’t square with their goofy Russia hacking story. This is a statement on the abysmal condition of journalism today. Headline news has become the province of perception mandarins who use the venue to shape information to their own malign specifications, and any facts that conflict with their dubious storyline, are savagely attacked and discredited. Journalists are no longer investigators that keep the public informed, but paid assassins who liquidate views that veer from the party-line.

WikiLeaks never divulges the names of the people who provide them with information. Even so, Assange has not only shown an active interest in the Seth Rich case, but also offered a $20,000 reward for anyone providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rich’s murder. Why? And why did he post a link to the Fox News article on his Twitter account on Tuesday?

I don’t know, but if I worked for the FBI or the Washington Post, I’d sure as hell be beating the bushes to find out. And not just because it might help in Rich’s murder investigation, but also, because it could shed light on the Russia fiasco which is being used to lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings. So any information that challenges the government version of events, could actually change the course of history.

Have you ever heard of Craig Murray?

Murray should be the government’s star witness in the DNC hacking scandal, instead, no one even knows who he is. But if we trust what Murray has to say, then we can see that the Russia hacking story is baloney. The emails were “leaked” by insiders not “hacked” by a foreign government. Here’s the scoop from Robert Parry at Consortium News:

“Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a “disgruntled” Democrat upset with the DNC’s sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community….He (Murray) appears to have undertaken a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25 visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University. ….

Though Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some legal or physical danger…Murray also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

“The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn’t conclude that they both have the same source,” Murray said. “In both cases we’re talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information…

Scott Horton then asked, “Is it fair to say that you’re saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?”

“I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah,” Murray responded. “In both cases they are leaks by Americans.”

(“A Spy Coup in America?”, Robert Parry, Consortium News)

With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Russia hacking case, you’d think that Murray’s eyewitness account would be headline news, but not in Homeland Amerika where the truth is kept as far from the front page as humanly possible.

Bottom line: The government has a reliable witness (Murray) who can positively identify the person who hacked the DNC emails and, so far, they’ve showed no interest in his testimony at all.  Doesn’t that strike you as a bit weird?

Did you know that after a 10 month-long investigation, there’s still no hard evidence that Russia hacked the 2016 elections?  In fact, when the Intelligence agencies were pressed on the matter, they promised to release a report that would provide iron-clad proof of Russian meddling.  On January 6, 2017, theDirector of National Intelligence, James Clapper, released that report. It was called The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).  Unfortunately, the report fell far-short of the public’s expectations. Instead of a smoking gun, Clapper produced a tedious 25-page compilation of speculation, hearsay, innuendo and gobbledygook.  Here’s how veteran journalist Robert Parry summed it up:

“The report contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks….The DNI report…as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof. Further, the continued use of the word “assesses”….suggests that the underlying classified information also may be less than conclusive because, in intelligence-world-speak, “assesses” often means “guesses.” (“US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia ‘Hack’”, Robert Parry, Consortium News)

Repeat: “the report contained no direct evidence”, no “actual proof”, and a heckuva a lot of “guessing”. That’s some “smoking gun”, eh?

If this ‘thin gruel’ sounds like insufficient grounds for removing a sitting president and his administration, that’s because it is.  But the situation is even worse than it looks,  mainly because the information in the assessment is not reliable. The ICA was corrupted by higher-ups in the Intel food-chain who selected particular analysts who could be trusted to produce a document that served their broader political agenda. Think I’m kidding? Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Fox News:

“On January 6, 2017, the U.S. Intelligence Community issued an “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) that found Russia deliberately interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump’s candidacy…  (but) there are compelling reasons to believe this ICA was actually a politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments…… to ensure this one reached the bottom line conclusion that the Obama administration was looking for. …

….Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained in his testimony that two dozen or so “seasoned experts” were “handpicked” from the contributing agencies” and drafted the ICA “under the aegis of his former office” …  While Clapper claimed these analysts were given “complete independence” to reach their findings, he added that their conclusions “were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me.”

This process drastically differed from the Intelligence Community’s normal procedures.  Hand-picking a handful of analysts from just three intelligence agencies to write such a controversial assessment went against standing rules to vet such analyses throughout the Intelligence Community within its existing structure.  The idea of using hand-picked intelligence analysts selected through some unknown process to write an assessment on such a politically sensitive topic carries a strong stench of politicization….

A major problem with this process is that it gave John Brennan, CIA’s hyper-partisan former director, enormous influence over the drafting of the ICA.  Given Brennan’s scathing criticism of Mr. Trump before and after the election, he should have had no role whatsoever in the drafting of this assessment.  Instead, Brennan probably selected the CIA analysts who worked on the ICA and reviewed and approved their conclusions….

The unusual way that the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was drafted raises major questions as to whether it was rigged by the Obama administration to produce conclusions that would discredit the election outcome and Mr. Trump’s presidency.”

(“More indications Intel assessment of Russian interference in election was rigged”, Fox News)

Repeat: “A politicized analysis that violated normal rules for crafting intelligence assessments.” That says it all, doesn’t it?

Let’s take a minute and review the main points in the article:

1–Was the Intelligence Community Assessment the summary work of all 17 US Intelligence Agencies?

No, it was not. “In his May 8 testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, Clapper confirmed …(that) the ICA reflected the views of only three intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA and FBI – not all 17.”

2–Did any of the analysts challenge the findings in the ICA?

No, the document failed to acknowledge any dissenting views, which suggests that the analysts were screened in order to create consensus.

3– Were particular analysts chosen to produce the ICA?

Yes, they were “handpicked from the contributing agencies” and drafted the ICA “under the aegis of his former office” (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.)

4– Was their collaborative work released to the public in its original form?

No,  their conclusions “were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me.” (Clapper) This of course suggests that the document was political in nature and crafted to deliver a particular message.

5–Were Clapper’s methods “normal” by Intelligence agency standards?

Definitely not. “This process drastically differed from the Intelligence Community’s normal procedures.”

6–Are Clapper and Brennan partisans who have expressed their opposition to Trump many times in the past calling into question their ability to be objective in executing their duties as heads of their respective agencies?

Absolutely. Check out this clip from Monday’s Arkansas online:

“I think, in many ways, our institutions are under assault, both externally — and that’s the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system,” said James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence. “I think as well our institutions are under assault internally.”

When he was asked, “Internally, from the president?” Clapper said, “Exactly.” (Clapper calls Trump democracy assailant”, arkansasonline)

Brennan has made numerous similar statements. (Note: It is particularly jarring that Clapper– who oversaw the implementation of the modern surveillance police state– feels free to talk about “the assault on our institutions.”)

7–Does the ICA prove that anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections?

No, it doesn’t.  What it shows is that –even while Clapper and Brennan may have been trying to produce an assessment that would ‘kill two birds with one stone’, (incriminate Russia and smear Trump at the same time) the ICA achieved neither. So far, there’s no proof of anything.   Now take a look at this list I found in an article at The American Thinker:

“12 prominent public statements by those on both sides of the aisle who reviewed the evidence or been briefed on it confirmed there was no evidence of Russia trying to help Trump in the election or colluding with him:

The New York Times (Nov 1, 2016);
House Speaker Paul Ryan (Feb, 26, 2017);
Former DNI James Clapper , March 5, 2017);
Devin Nunes Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, March 20, 2017);
James Comey, March 20, 2017;
Rep. Chris Stewart, House Intelligence Committee, March 20, 2017;
Rep. Adam Schiff, House Intelligence committee, April 2, 2017);
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senate Intelligence Committee, May 3, 2017);
Sen. Joe Manchin  Senate Intelligence Committee, May 8, 2017;
James Clapper (again) (May 8, 2017);
Rep. Maxine Waters, May 9, 2017);
President Donald Trump,(May 9, 2017).
Senator Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, indicated that his briefing confirmed Dianne Feinstein’s view that the President was not under investigation for colluding with the Russians.”
(“Russian Hacking and Collusion: Put the Cards on the Table”, American Thinker)

Keep in mind, this is a list of the people who actually “reviewed the evidence”, and even they are not convinced. It just goes to show that the media blitz is not based on any compelling proof, but on the determination of  behind-the-scenes elites who want to destroy their political rivals. Isn’t that what’s really going on?

How does former FBI Director James Comey fit into all this?

First of all, we need to set the record straight on Comey so readers don’t get the impression that he’s the devoted civil servant and all-around stand-up guy he’s made out to be in the media. Here’s a short clip from an article by Human Rights First that will help to put things into perspective:

“Five former FBI agents…raised concerns about his (Comey’s) support for a legal memorandum justifying torture and his defense of holding an American citizen indefinitely without charge. They note that Comey concurred with a May 10, 2005, Office of Legal Counsel opinion that authorized torture. While the agents credited Comey for opposing torture tactics in combination and on policy grounds, they note that Comey still approved the legal basis for use of specific torture tactics.

“These techniques include cramped confinement, wall-standing, water dousing, extended sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, all of which constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in contravention of domestic and international law,” the letter states.

Those signing the letter to the committee also objected to Comey’s defense of detaining Americans without charge or trial and observed, “Further, Mr. Comey vigorously defended the Bush administration’s decision to hold Jose Padilla, a United States citizen apprehended on U.S. soil, indefinitely without charge or trial for years in a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina.” (“FBI Agents Urge Senate Judiciary Committee to Question Comey on Torture, Indefinite Detention”, Human Rights First)

Get the picture?

Comey is a vicious political opportunist who doesn’t mind breaking a few legs if it’ll advance his career plans. I wouldn’t trust the man as far as I could throw him. Which isn’t far.

American Thinker’s Clarice Feldman explains why Comey launched his counter-intel investigation in July 2016 but failed to notify Congress until March 2017, a full eight months later. Here’s what she said:

“There is only one reasonable explanation for FBI Director James Comey to be launching a counter-intel investigation in July 2016, notifying the White House and Clapper, and keeping it under wraps from congress. Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political purposes — wittingly, or unwittingly.” (“Russian Hacking and Collusion: Put the Cards on the Table”, American Thinker)

Are we suggesting that the heads of the so called Intelligence Community are at war with the Trump Administration and paving the way for impeachment  proceedings?

Yep, we sure are. The Russia hacking fiasco is a regime change operation no different than the CIA’s 50-or-so other oustings in the last 70 years. The only difference is that this operation is on the home field which is why everyone is so flustered. These things are only suppose to happen in those “other” countries.

Does this analysis make me a Donald Trump supporter?

Never.  The idea is ridiculous. Trump might be the worst US president of all time, in fact, he probably is. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other nefarious forces at work behind the smokescreen of democratic government. There are. In fact, this whole flap suggests that there’s an alternate power-structure that operates completely off the public’s radar and has the elected-government in its death-grip. This largely invisible group of elites controls the likes of  Brennan, Clapper and Comey. And, apparently,  they have enough influence to challenge and maybe even remove an elected president from office. (We’ll see.)

And what’s more surprising, is that the Democrats have aligned themselves with these deep state puppetmasters.  They’ve cast their lot with the sinister stewards of the national security state and hopped on the impeachment bandwagon. But is that a wise choice for the Dems?

Author Michael J. Glennon doesn’t think so. Here’s what he says in the May edition of Harper’s Magazine:

“Those who would counter the illiberalism of Trump with the illiberalism of unfettered bureaucrats would do well to contemplate the precedent their victory would set. …

American history is not silent about the proclivities of unchecked security forces, a short list of which includes the Palmer Raids, the FBI’s blackmailing of civil rights leaders, Army surveillance of the antiwar movement, the NSA’s watch lists, and the CIA’s waterboarding. …. Who would trust the authors of past episodes of repression as a reliable safeguard against future repression?”

(“Security Breach– Trump’s tussle with the bureaucratic state”, Michael J. Glennon, Harper’s Magazine)

“Who?”

The Democrats, that’s who.

 

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

The Russian Hacking Fiasco

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By Mike Whitney

Source: CounterPunch

There’s no proof that Russia hacked the US elections.

There’s no proof that Russian officials or Russian agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign.

There’s no proof that Russia provided material support of any kind for the Trump campaign or that Russian agents hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails or that Russian officials provided Wikileaks with emails that were intended to sabotage Hillary’s chances to win the election.

So far, no one in any of the 17 US intelligence agencies has stepped forward and verified the claims of Russian meddling or produced a scintilla of hard evidence that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 elections.

No proof means no proof.  It means that the people and organizations that are making these uncorroborated claims have no basis for legal action, no presumption of wrongdoing, and no grounds for prosecution. They have nothing. Zilch.  Their claims, charges and accusations are like the soap bubbles we give to our children and grandchildren. The brightly-colored bubbles wobble across the sky for a minute or two and then, Poof, they vanish into the ether. The claims of Russia hacking are like these bubbles. They are empty, unsubstantiated rumors completely devoid of substance. Poof.

It has been eight months since the inception of this unprecedentedly-pathetic and infinitely-irritating propaganda campaign, and in those eight months neither the media nor the politicos nor the Intel agents who claim to be certain that Russia meddled in US elections, have produced anything that even remotely resembles evidence. Instead, they have trotted out the same lie over and over again ad nauseam from every newspaper, every tabloid and every televised news program in the country. Over and over and over again. The media’s persistence is nearly as impressive as its cynicism, which is the one quality that they seem to have mastered. The coverage has been relentless, ubiquitous, pernicious and mendacious. The only problem is that there’s not a grain of truth to any of it. It is all 100 percent, unalloyed baloney.

So it doesn’t matter how many Democratic senators and congressmen disgrace themselves by lighting their hair on fire and howling about “evil Putin” or the imaginary “threats to our precious democracy”. Nor does it matter how many hyperbolic articles appear in media alleging sinister activities and espionage by diabolical Moscow Central.  It doesn’t matter because there is have absolutely zero solid evidence to support their ludicrous and entirely politically-based claims.

Whether Russia was involved in the US elections or not, is a matter of pure speculation. But speculation is not sufficient grounds for appointing a special prosecutor, nor are the lies and misinformation that appear daily in our leading newspapers, like the dissembling New York Times, the dissembling Washington Post and the dissembling Wall Street Journal. The call for a special prosecutor is not based on evidence, it is based on politics, the politics of personal destruction. The Democrats and the media want this tool so they can rummage through whatever private information or paperwork anyone in the Trump administration might possess. So while they might not dig up anything relevant to the Russia hacking investigation, they will certainly gather enough sordid or suspicious information to annihilate the people in their crosshairs. And that’s precisely what the special prosecutor provision is designed to do; it provides the  administration’s rivals with the weapons they need to conduct a massive fishing expedition aimed at character assassination and, ultimately, impeachment.

But, why?

Because Donald Trump had the audacity to win an election that was earmarked for establishment favorite and globalist warmonger-in-chief, Hillary Clinton. That’s what this witch hunt is all about, sour grapes.

But why has Russia been chosen as the target in this deep state-media scam? What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?

That’s easy. Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world. It’s the Great Game all over again, only this time-around, Uncle Sam is in the drivers seat not the Queen of England.

But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan.

Russia.

Russia has stopped Washington’s murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off.  US elites aren’t used to obstacles.

For the last quarter of a century– since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the world had been Washington’s oyster. If the president of the United States  wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him?

Nobody.  Because Washington owns this fu**ing planet and everyone else is just a visitor.

Capisce?

But now all that’s changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington’s landbridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.

The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way.  It’s that simple. Their global strategy is in a shambles because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.

So now Russia must pay. Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian. And, most of all, Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun, including the firing of a completely worthless sack of sh** FBI Director, James Comey, who– at various times in his career– “approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration….including  torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.” (ACLU)

This is the low-down, good-for-nothing scalawag that the Democrats are now defending tooth in nail.

It’s pathetic.

Russia has become the all-purpose punching bag because Washington’s plans for global domination have gone up in smoke.

The truth is,  Putin’s done us all a big favor.

 

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

DISMISSED: Trump Fires Scandal Plagued FBI Director James Comey – What Does It Mean?

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Image (from Land Destroyer Report): The FBI has an impressive portfolio of intentionally created, then foiled terror plots. Its methods include allowing suspects to handle both real and inoperable weapons and explosives. These methods allow the FBI to switch entrapment cases “live” at any moment simply by switching out duds and arrests with real explosives and successful attacks. Because the FBI uses “informants,” when attacks go live, these confidential assets can be blamed, obfuscating the FBI’s involvement.

By Shawn Helton

Source: 21st Century Wire

US President Donald Trump has accepted a recommendation to ‘dismiss’ FBI director James Comey. Was this a reprisal for the suddenly widened Russia-gate probe into the White House or was there something else at play within the operations of the deep state?

Comey was at the center of a political controversy over much of the last year during the US presidential election cycle in 2016, and well into 2017. Throughout 2016, the former FBI director opened, closed and reopened (only to close again) a probe into Hillary Clinton, her email server and looking into accusations leveled at the Clinton Foundation, while also entertaining a dubious Russian probe into the Trump administration alleged ‘connections to Russia’ that helped mine various stories, including a so-called ‘dossier‘ regarding the newly elected president in early 2017.

In recent years, there have been many highly questionable actions under Comey’s leadership at the FBI, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting incident – who’s main suspect was previously interviewed by the FBI, as well as a highly questionable ‘ISIS inspired’ shooting event in Garland, Texas linked to an FBI informant case run out of Phoenix, Arizona, and the federal agency’s dramatic encroachment on public privacy following a suspicious San Bernardino mass shooting.  These are only just a few examples…

Grabien News highlights a list of scandals that were either attached to Comey or perpetuated under his watch:

“Here are 10 of Comey’s biggest embarrassments at the FBI:

1. Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again.

2. Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found).

3. The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban — but didn’t intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented. 

4. During the Obama Administration, the FBI claimed that two private jets were being used primarily for counterterrorism, when in fact they were mostly being used for Eric Holder and Robert Mueller’s business and personal travel. 

5. When the FBI demanded Apple create a “backdoor” that would allow law enforcement agencies to unlock the cell phones of various suspects, the company refused, sparking a battle between the feds and America’s biggest tech company. What makes this incident indicative of Comey’s questionable management of the agency is that a) The FBI jumped the gun, as they were indeed ultimately able to crack the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone, and b) Almost every other major national security figure sided with Apple (from former CIA Director General Petraeus to former CIA Director James Woolsey to former director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden), warning that such a “crack” would inevitably wind up in the wrong hands.

6. In 2015, the FBI conducted a controversial raid on a Texas political meeting, finger printing, photographing, and seizing phones from attendees (some in the group believe in restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic).

7. During its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material, the FBI made an unusual deal in which Clinton aides were both given immunity and allowed to destroy their laptops. 

8. The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son’s radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview. 

9. The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen — during which Mateen admitting lying to agents — the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case. 

10. CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming, but actually had an undercover agent traveling with the Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. The FBI has refused to comment on why the agent on the scene did not intervene during the attack.”

It’s important to remember that Comey is not the only FBI director who bears responsibility for the controversial aspects of 2013’s Boston Bombing. Under FBI director Robert Mueller “Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions” prior to allegedly being involved in what many researchers have described as a false flag terror event in Boston. A questionable event that has arguably been used as a pretext to further clamp down on individual rights in the US.

We should also be reminded that the FBI has been routinely caught foiling their very own ‘terror plots’ over the past several years.

In recent years, the investigative tactics of various intelligence agencies have come into question, none perhaps more dubious then the Newburgh FBI sting that involved entrapping four men to participate in a fabricated event created by the bureau. Here’s a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others into a fake terror plot:

“The “Newburgh Four” now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.

Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh’s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.

Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot – including $250,000 to one man – and free holidays and expensive cars.

As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. “There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?” said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.”

The reputation of the FBI has suffered greatly in the recent past as well as over the past couple of decades. Incidentally, the FBI is on record as ‘handling’ Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian army officer who was a prized undercover operative thrust into confidential informant status and person who played a key role in the 1993 WTC bombing.

All of this has happened under the watchful eye of the FBI…

Over last summer, 21WIRE observed some curious connections between the Clinton Foundation and FBI director James Comey, as well as his questionable handling of other cases related to the Clinton family. Here’s the following passage to consider in light of the new information related to the Clinton investigation:

“Many will also be unaware that before Comey was installed by the Obama Administration as FBI Director, he was on the board of Director at HSBC Bank – a bank implicated in international money laundering, including the laundering of billions on behalf of international drugs and narcotics trafficking cartels.Forbes also points out where Comey was also at the key choke-point during the case involving dodgy auditor KPMG which followed on by the HSBC criminal case:

“If Comey, and his boss Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, had made a different decision about KPMG back in 2005, KPMG would not have been around to miss all the illegal acts HSBC and Standard Chartered SCBFF +% were committing on its watch. Bloomberg reported in 2007 that back in June of 2005, Comey was the man thrust into the position of deciding whether KPMG would live or die for its criminal tax shelter violations.”

Is this just a surface effort by the White House to clean the slate for an agency perpetually embroiled in controversy?

More from RT below…

Trump fires FBI Director James Comey

RT

President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey at the recommendation of US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to a White House announcement.

“The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,” said President Trump.

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,” Trump told Comey in a letter.

The letter announcing the termination was hand-delivered to FBI headquarters by Keith Schiller, a Trump security aide, according to several reports citing a White House official.

A search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.

The firing of Comey comes days after he testified to Congress on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

RT continues here…

Comey’s Quixotic Quest to Prove Russian Involvement in Elections

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By Wayne Madsen

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey may be physically imposing at 6 feet, 8 inches tall. However, when it comes to his oratorical skills, or, in his case, the lack thereof, Comey is nothing more than a «snake oil» salesman trying to market fanciful conspiracies masked as fact. Trying to emulate one of his predecessors, J. Edgar Hoover, Comey said that when it comes to protecting the democratic process, Russia is «the greatest threat to any nation on earth, given their intention and their ability». Comey’s rhetoric is right out of the pages of the Cold War and Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist «witch hunts». Comey engaged in McCarthyite tactics by referring to WikiLeaks as «a conduit for the Russian intelligence services».

It is hard to tell whether President Trump agrees with Mr. Comey. Trump has indicated that it is within his power to fire Comey, but has given no further indication as to whether the FBI director will serve out the traditional ten-year term. There is one thing for certain. Comey may not want to appear as a right-wing, Cold War-mentality neoconservative, but his professional and personal history indicates that when it comes to Russia-bashing, it is in his blood. Comey supported and donated to the presidential campaigns of the psychotically anti-Russian John McCain, as well as the neocons’ darling Mitt Romney.

After leaving the Justice Department in 2005, Comey became General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest contractor. When it comes to war-making, Lockheed Martin has profited handsomely from ensuring that military tension remains a hair-trigger from war from the Baltic region and the Balkans to the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. Feeding the «war-porn» addicts in the U.S. Congress, including the likes of Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas, improves the bottom line of Lockheed Martin, a firm in which Mr. Comey likely still has a significant personal financial stake.

Comey and his neocon friends have decided that the best way to challenge the anti-globalist populist wave that is sweeping the world is to deploy a wide brush and paint every sovereigntist political campaign and leader – both left and right – as Russian «tools» and Kremlin «agents». It worked for Hoover during the Cold War when he decided that the best way to avert the attention of the American public away from his friends in organized crime and his own well-known homosexuality was to claim that «Communists» had infiltrated every sector of American society. In his attempt to fill Mr. Hoover’s high-heeled shoes, Comey accuses Russia of being the greatest threat to free elections on earth.

One only need examine the record of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency since its creation in 1947 to find out that it has been the United States that has been the greatest threat to free and fair elections around the globe. When it comes to election interference, no country – Russia, China, the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, or North Korea – holds a candle to the boys at Langley. In 1948, a CIA full-court press of bribes, threats, and infiltration ensured the defeat of the Communist Party by the U.S.-supported Christian Democrats in the Italian general election. This same template was used again and again by Washington in countries ranging from Chile and Nicaragua to Australia and Russia.

Now, the CIA, headed by the neo-Cold Warrior and right-wing religious extremist Mike Pompeo, and its allies, are trying to turn the tables in suggesting that Russia has been able to almost singlehandedly affect the U.S. presidential campaign, the «yes» vote in the European Union Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, the French presidential election, and the «no» vote in the Italian constitutional reform referendum. There is a major problem with this thinking. If Russia were as powerful as claimed by the Comey, Pompeo, and others, Austrian nationalist Norbert Hofer, not the anti-Russian emigré from Estonia, Alexander Van der Bellen, would have won the Austrian presidential election. And it would have been the Dutch Freedom Party nationalist Geert Wilders, not the globalist Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who would have been the victor in the Netherlands election.

If Russia’s intentions were as malignant as claimed by the neocons and the Cold Warriors, a dubious Russian-backed coup operation in Montenegro would have been successful and not a failure. When it comes to coup-making and putsches, it is Langley that excels, especially with its own unlimited funds, coupled with those of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros, at its disposal. It is American fingerprints that have been found in successful and aborted «color revolutions» in Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia, and the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was joint CIA-Soros funds that gave rise to the bloody «Arab Spring» uprisings in Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. The Arab Spring template has been moved by the globalist power centers to create havoc in socialist Venezuela, with their eyes soon to be set on Bolivia.

The strategy of the globalists and their puppets, such as Comey, Lindsey Graham, and others, is to demonize as «Russian agents» those who pose a threat to the «world order» fashioned by the CIA, Wall Street, and the Pentagon. Therefore, leftist anti-globalists like British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, French leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and U.S. Independent Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are given the same McCarthyite «Russian agent» labels, as have Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Alternative for Germany leader Frauke Petry.

Globalist politicians – left and right – now routinely engage in claims of Russia involvement in their nations’ political processes to mask their own ineffective leadership. In January of this year, Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said he could not rule out «Russian interference» in Sweden’s 2018 general election. There is little doubt that if Löfven loses, he will blame it all on «the Russians».

The New York Times suggested that Russia was financially backing Mr. Wilders in the Netherlands election but the paper paid scant attention to the fact that Israel is the Dutch opposition leader’s biggest financial «sugar daddy». It is amazing that the tools of the globalists, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, did not claim that Russia interfered in the February 5, 2017 general election in the Principality of Liechtenstein, because an anti-EU and anti-migrant party, «Die Unabhängigen», («The Independents»), came in third, beating a traditional third party.

Mr. Comey testified about intelligence proof he has confirming Russian interference in the U.S. election. Let’s examine the history of U.S. intelligence «proof». It includes intelligence reports from a phony Iraqi defector named «Curveball» that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, fake signals intelligence intercepts on a non-existent North Vietnamese naval attack on the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, phony intelligence reports on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi committing mass executions of Libyans in 2011, fake reports on Iranian nuclear weapons development after it ended its weapons program in 2003, and, more recently, a dubious intelligence dossier from a mid-level former British MI-6 employee who successfully shopped «dirt» to the Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton campaigns on Trump and «golden shower» parties in Moscow. The dossier, embraced by Comey, is said to «prove» Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. British «dossiers» on just about everything, from the Number 10 «dodgy dossier» on Saddam Hussein’s weapons to the «dirty dossier» on Trump, are about as credible as everything else in the British tabloids. Comey should read Harry Potter books, not FBI and CIA intelligence reports, if he wants to wallow in fiction.