What difference, at this point, does it make?
As the frantic attempts by die-hard Democrats, the media, and the CIA to prevent Donald Trump from being sworn into office reach a fever pitch, Hillary Clinton’s anguished cry seems like the only appropriate response. Trump won the election, he’s now announcing his Cabinet, and that’s the end of the matter.
Or is it only the beginning?
When the CIA targets a country for regime change, I wouldn’t bet the farm on the targeted government surviving. And while this isn’t quite Allende’s Chile, America’s increasing resemblance to a banana republic is augured in the CIA’s refusal to appear at a congressional oversight committee to explain leaks in the press charging that Russian intelligence actively worked to elect Trump. So who’s in charge here – the CIA or the people’s elected representatives?
The White House has joined the fray, implying that the PEOTUS is directly colluding with Moscow. White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated that Trump was “obviously” aware, “based on whatever sources were available to him,” that the Russians were behind the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta. Because, you see, Trump has a direct line to the Kremlin: after all, how else could the Russians issue their marching orders?
It’s unlikely, albeit possible, that this brouhaha is going to prevent Trump from taking office: the “Hamilton electors” campaign doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, in spite of the best efforts of Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter – gee, how did she become an elector, I wonder?
The game plan of “the Resistance” – yes, that’s what these drama queens call themselves – seems to be to block what the CIA and the neoconservative NeverTrumpers fear the most: Trump’s vow to turn US foreign policy around, align with Russia against Saudi-jihadist elements in the Middle East, and bring an end to the policy of “intervention and chaos,” as the President-elect put it in one of his “victory tour” speeches. Their strategy is to Russia-bait him into exhaustion, block his nominees to national security positions – Rex Tillorsen will face the McCain-Graham inquisition, to be sure – and utilize the media to unleash a tsunami of fake news designed to smear him as Putin’s poodle.
The first phase of this assault is slated to be endless congressional hearings on the subject of Russian “influence” in American politics: think of the old House Un-American Activities Committee. “Are you or have you ever been …?” And the outgoing administration is going to leave a turd in the icebox with the “report” on the whole matter ordered by President Obama to be placed on his desk before January 20.
Yet this whole ginned-up controversy is starting to come unglued, as congressional Republicans start to push back, both the FBI and the ODNI distance themselves from the CIA’s assessment, and even John Bolton challenges the narrative, calling into question the entire basis of the conspiracy theory at the heart of the “Putin did it” campaign. Technical experts are also raising their voices, pointing out the manifold holes in the publicly available case of those who claim to know that the Kremlin is behind an elaborate plot to upend the American political system. An excellent article in the Intercept asks such pertinent questions as why, if the Russians are so diabolically clever, did they leave Cyrillic comments on their cyber-trail? “Would a group whose ‘tradecraft is superb’ with ‘operational security second to none” really leave behind the name of a Soviet spy chief imprinted on a document it sent to American journalists?”
Speaking of American journalists: the media-industrial complex, which was clearly an arm of the Clinton machine during the election campaign, is steadfastly ignoring the biggest development in this ongoing story: Craig Murray, a close confidante of Julian Assange, has now revealed the real story of how both the DNC emails and the Podesta email archive were acquired by WikiLeaks.
Murray, the United Kingdom’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, says “Neither of the leaks came from the Russians. The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.” The leakers were “disgusted whistleblowers” disillusioned with the Clinton campaign’s sidelining of Bernie Sanders and what they viewed as the corruption of the Clinton Foundation.
According to Murray, while someone may have hacked the DNC and John Podesta, the fact is that hackers were not Assange’s source. In the Daily Mail version of this story, the British tabloid reports that Murray said he flew to Washington, D.C., and met a go-between “in a wooded area near American University,” which is in the northwestern part of the city. The hand-off of what is described as a “package” took place there, and the rest is history.
However, in an extensive interview with Antiwar Radio’s Scott Horton, Murray doesn’t say he personally received the materials, although he does say he took a trip to Washington in September that was somehow connected to this affair. He is firm in his contention that a) Both the DNC and Podesta leaks were the work of Americans, not Russians, and b) The leaks were separate, and the perpetrators were different people. Furthermore, Murray strongly implies that John Podesta — whose brother, Tony, is a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, and whose public relations firm, the Podesta Group, received $140,000 monthly payments from the Kingdom – was hacked by American intelligence officials, who were perhaps motivated by undue Saudi influence on the Clinton campaign. (Judge Andrew Napolitano has a similar take.) As for the DNC leaks, this too was, according to Murray, the work of Americans, although he is less explicit about their identity: the implication is that the individual or individuals who provided WikiLeaks with the emails supported Bernie Sanders, although this isn’t clear. (In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Julian Assange is asked about Murray’s story, and he basically refuses to answer: “I don’t want to go anywhere near that,” he says.)
Here is someone intimately involved with the WikiLeaks operation claiming to have significant knowledge of the leaks and their provenance. One would think the media would be eager to interview him, and get the biggest story to come down the pike in quite a while. Yet, so far, there has been almost no mention of Murray’s revelation in any major US media outlet, save for a few short pieces on Fox News and the Washington Examiner.
Why is that?
“What’s striking is that for all this subjective ‘analysis’ and cyber-sleuthing, no one is pointing to what should be the first suspicion in such a case: that the hacking of the DNC server was an inside job. Is it all that improbable that someone working for the DNC is a supporter of Bernie Sanders – or just someone who believes in elemental fairness – who saw how the DNC was rigging the game and used their access to supply WikiLeaks with the emails? As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told ‘Democracy Now’ in an interview, ‘If we’re talking about the DNC, there’s lots of consultants, lots of programmers’ with means, motive, and opportunity.
“Why isn’t this very broad hint by someone who’s in a position to know who was responsible admissible evidence? It’s being studiously ignored because it doesn’t fit the narrative that the media and the Democrats – or do I repeat myself – want to push on the public.”
Now that the Facebook/Legacy Media alliance is setting up mechanisms to filter out “fake news,” i.e. news and opinion they would rather you didn’t read or even know about, the truth is going to be even harder to get out there. Yes, both the Washington Post – which ran the PropOrNot smear as front page “news” – and ABC News are slated to be official “fact-checkers” who will rule on what sort of “fake news” you won’t be allowed to see.
This is why Antiwar.com is more vitally important than ever. Here is where you get the real news about what ‘s happening in the world: the full lowdown on what schemes the War Party is planning, both here and abroad. And that’s why I’m so jazzed by the success of our recent fundraiser, which went over the top the other day: thank you one and all!
Yes, after twenty-one years we’re still here,: and not only that, but – thanks to our readers and supporters – we’re going strong. We’ve made considerable progress, but we’ve still got a long way to go. The War Party may be wounded, but a wounded animal is even more dangerous than he might otherwise be – and so we’re ever-vigilant, watching them day and night – bringing you the truth 24/7, unfiltered and often before anyone else has reported it.
Again, thanks to all who contributed to our recent fundraiser – we couldn’t do our work without your support.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
