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[Dec 21, 2017] In Unexpected Move, Trump Enacts Obama-era Law Opening US Arms Sales To Ukraine

Notable quotes:
"... the same week that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling Trump like "an asset". ..."
Dec 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

Though WaPo's Josh Rogin characterizes the decision as intended to appease hawks while seeking to avoid broader conflict escalation based on "limited arms sales" (and not approving some of the heavier weaponry sought by Kiev), the move is likely to further ratchet up tensions with Russia, which is ironic for the fact that the decision comes the same week that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling Trump like "an asset".

Or perhaps we will be assured this is just more 4-dimensional chess playing between Trump and Putin to prove that not Putin but the Military Industrial Complex is once again "unexpectedly" in charge?

[Dec 21, 2017] Sic Semper Tyrannis HARPER WHY ISN'T JAMES CLAPPER BEHIND BARS

Notable quotes:
"... Clapper, during his tenure as DNI, lied to Congress when directly asked if the intelligence community was spying on millions of innocent American citizens. His lies were exposed with the release of the Edward Snowden documents. ..."
"... More recently, Clapper again lied to Congress, in claiming that the intelligence community findings about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections were compiled by all 17 member agencies. In later testimony in May 2017, he belatedly admitted that the report was compiled by the FBI, the CIA and the NSA, and that the authors had been hand-picked to conduct the study. ..."
"... There has been a trend in the recent presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush II, Obama) to use highly suspect legal interpretations to evade legal restrictions imposed by laws. Clapper is by no means an isolated example, he is just more visible. ..."
"... Using Clapper as an example, he defended his lying by saying that he gave a truthful (or the least untruthful) answer according to his definition of "collection of data". According to him, collection of data meant that the data was actively examined by the intelligence personnel, not just passively collected and stored for later use. So, in his view, data is only being "collected" if it's actively used and to the best of his knowledge, there was no illegal use of the data ..."
"... Similarly, Bush administration famously decided to redefine torture to exclude enhanced interrogation techniques. Obama administration redefined "imminent threat of violent attack" to mean any threat for purposes of assassinating American citizens. Obama also changed the meaning of "military coup" to mean "only those military coups that are recognized as such by the administration". None of these act have been challenged in court, so their legality is still quite dubious ..."
"... I've only ever heard rumors about Clapper but it dovetails with the Colonel's and others' previous descriptions: an inveterate liar and ass-kissing social climber. The optics remain terrible. It does nothing but further the perception that, whether right or wrong, there exists a two-tiered system of justice in the US. ..."
"... "an inveterate liar and ass-kissing social climber." SWMBO says that "incompetent" should be added to your encomium. I have "form" with this fellow. I found him to be very insecure, jealous and envious of his subordinates (sigh), and afflicted with a strange animosity for anyone who could possibly be called a WASP. ..."
"... Nevertheless my main complaint about him from the long ago is that he destroyed DIA as a world class strategic intelligence agency. He came from USAF with a deep disdain for anything that was not air targeting and files about air defense weapons. He drove the carefully educated and selected corps of ME analysts out of the agency. ..."
"... Lying to Congress is not something that Congress or the DOJ actually cares about because the hearings are a places where speeches are made by Congresscritters and the questions are merely the hooks upon which the speeches are hung ..."
"... Perhaps it's an instance of injelititis, as first described by C. Northcote Parkinson in Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration: Incompetence and jealousy interacting to reinforce each other according to the formula I squared times J cubed. ..."
"... The criminal laws in this country are sufficiently broad and deep in scope that an aggressive prosecutor can always find an excuse to bring charges against anyone, especially if the target is involved in high level business or politics. Google "three felonies a day" if you need more detail. ..."
"... This is entirely intentional. Those whom the establishment wants punished are punished, and those whom the establishment does not want punished are not punished (but can be, should they stray into the first category). ..."
"... the average prosecutor is a glorified politician, and like other politicians, prosecutors are acutely sensitive to establishment concerns. ..."
"... HRC provides a instructive example. It is abundantly obvious that she violated the law; the fact that Comey was forced to misstate the law regarding specific intent* as known to every first year law student merely shows that he was trying desperately seeking a way not to bring charges. They didn't even bother trying to question The Queen so as to ensure that Her Majesty did not perjure herself or lie to investigators and thus force them to deliver another rationale not to bring charges. ..."
"... "Why isn't James Clapper behind bars?" isn't the right question. That ship's long sailed and isn't coming back i.e. one justice systems for ordinary people, another for the indispensable is well ingrained into the fabric of the U.S. polity. ..."
"... On the lying to Congress over the data collection, I will opine the reason for the lack of prosecution: It's because the laws passed by Congress specifically approve the data gathering, laws passed after 9/11, signed by George W Bush, who proudly proclaimed "we intent to get everything" in reference to date in his first SOTU address to standing applause. ..."
"... On the other hand, he is the only prominent government figure to let us know about the Russian threat to our pure American Reich: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/ss-oberfuhrer-james-clapper-subhuman-russians-genetically-driven-meddle-us-democracy ..."
"... Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators: John Brennan, CIA director; Susan Rice, National Security Advisor; Samantha Power, UN Ambassador; James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence; James Comey, FBI director; Andrew McCabe, Deputy FBI director; Sally Yates, deputy Attorney General, Bruce Ohr, associate deputy AG; Peter Strzok, deputy assistant director of FBI counterintelligence; Lisa Page, FBI lawyer; and countless other lessor and greater poobahs of Washington power, including President Obama himself. ..."
Dec 21, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

17 December 2017 HARPER: WHY ISN'T JAMES CLAPPER BEHIND BARS? One of the biggest failures of the United States Congress, IMHO, has been the refusal to hold Executive Branch officials accountable when they lie to Congress on vital matters of national security. And no case angers me more than that of James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, who held a series of high-level intelligence positions during his long career as an Air Force officer.

Clapper, during his tenure as DNI, lied to Congress when directly asked if the intelligence community was spying on millions of innocent American citizens. His lies were exposed with the release of the Edward Snowden documents. While several individual Members of Congress called for his resignation and a few even dared to demand his prosecution for contempt of Congress, nothing happened.

More recently, Clapper again lied to Congress, in claiming that the intelligence community findings about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections were compiled by all 17 member agencies. In later testimony in May 2017, he belatedly admitted that the report was compiled by the FBI, the CIA and the NSA, and that the authors had been hand-picked to conduct the study. According to Robert Parry in Consortium News, one of the FBI agents who participated in the study was Peter Strzok, a Trump-hater and Hillary Clinton partisan who was fired by Robert Mueller last July after an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General revealed his biases.

I recall comments over the years by Col. Lang about his personal experiences with Clapper while at the DIA in the early 1990s. I am interested in Col. Lang's and others' comments and observations.

blowback , 17 December 2017 at 06:11 PM

All Clapper's actions may have been for nothing - the Trump-Putin Love In is on a roll:

Putin thanked Trump for CIA tip-off which helped Russia prevent terror attack

https://www.rt.com/news/413459-putin-trump-cia-information/

Trump to Putin: US was glad to save many lives in Russia by helping foil major terrorist attack|

https://www.rt.com/usa/413471-trump-russia-foil-terror/

voislav , 17 December 2017 at 06:33 PM

There has been a trend in the recent presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush II, Obama) to use highly suspect legal interpretations to evade legal restrictions imposed by laws. Clapper is by no means an isolated example, he is just more visible.

Using Clapper as an example, he defended his lying by saying that he gave a truthful (or the least untruthful) answer according to his definition of "collection of data". According to him, collection of data meant that the data was actively examined by the intelligence personnel, not just passively collected and stored for later use. So, in his view, data is only being "collected" if it's actively used and to the best of his knowledge, there was no illegal use of the data .

Clapper's defence is predicated on allowing that such redefinition of a common term like collection is reasonable and therefore there was no intent to deceive. I am sure he had a similar reasoning for what "compiled" means in the context of the 17 agency report.

Similarly, Bush administration famously decided to redefine torture to exclude enhanced interrogation techniques. Obama administration redefined "imminent threat of violent attack" to mean any threat for purposes of assassinating American citizens. Obama also changed the meaning of "military coup" to mean "only those military coups that are recognized as such by the administration". None of these act have been challenged in court, so their legality is still quite dubious .

This weaseling removes the effective checks on the executive power. Clapper is just an example in a larger pattern by the recent administration officials of using similar or even more brazen techniques to evade their legal responsibilities. This situation is bound to escalate until the judiciary and the courts put a stop to it by prosecuting such behaviour. The problem is that there is little incentive for a new administration to prosecute such behaviour by past administrations as they like the expanded executive power themselves and have historically had no interest in restricting it.

Huckleberry , 17 December 2017 at 07:35 PM
Because we are ruled by an alien elite through a constellation of unaccountable institutions protected by a collection of corrupt and completely interchangeable officeholders who supposedly represent the interests of an obese, drug-addled and digitally-distracted mob of useless eaters.

And because too many of the best among of us have been shamed into silence and inaction through a series of blood libels (slavery, genocide, patriarchy) that have been used to condition our children into hating themselves, their parents and their civilization.

The Porkchop Express , 17 December 2017 at 07:56 PM
I've only ever heard rumors about Clapper but it dovetails with the Colonel's and others' previous descriptions: an inveterate liar and ass-kissing social climber. The optics remain terrible. It does nothing but further the perception that, whether right or wrong, there exists a two-tiered system of justice in the US.

Draw a penis in the sky with a fighter jet and you will be held accountable.

Lie to the public about mass surveillance and there's a cushy board position along with image rehabilitation in store for you.

A bit of hyperbole but, still, there's about a million other examples like this from the last two decades or so. Not just in government, either. Media, Business, Entertainment, Education, etc... Elites/Borg will be facing a reckoning sooner or later if there isn't any modification in behavior, or at the very least the perception of a modification of their behavior.

MRW , 18 December 2017 at 12:13 AM
I recall comments over the years by Col. Lang about his personal experiences with Clapper while at the DIA in the early 1990s. I am interested in Col. Lang's and others' comments and observations.
I'm interested in them as well. Just to enjoy what this sonofabitch thought he was getting away with, because every time he talked (on TV in public like the grand poobah he pretended he was) he acted as if he were telling us the truth and was derisive in his comments.

I never bought a goddam thing this oily SOB came up with.

blue peacock , 18 December 2017 at 01:46 AM
"HARPER: WHY ISN'T JAMES CLAPPER BEHIND BARS?"

Good question. Any ideas why?

Divadab , 18 December 2017 at 07:05 AM
Why should we expect people who lie as a default position to care if their man Clapper lies to them? They consider hearings, speeches, etc. to be public theatre to gull the masses and Clapper a particularly avuncular actor in the show. The proles like that folksy aw shucks Clapper persona.

The people who will 'get' Clapper are certainly not elected officials, imho.

turcopolier , 18 December 2017 at 09:20 AM
Pork Chop

"an inveterate liar and ass-kissing social climber." SWMBO says that "incompetent" should be added to your encomium. I have "form" with this fellow. I found him to be very insecure, jealous and envious of his subordinates (sigh), and afflicted with a strange animosity for anyone who could possibly be called a WASP.

Nevertheless my main complaint about him from the long ago is that he destroyed DIA as a world class strategic intelligence agency. He came from USAF with a deep disdain for anything that was not air targeting and files about air defense weapons. He drove the carefully educated and selected corps of ME analysts out of the agency. At the end of the first Gulf War DIA's analysis "bestrode the world." It was the gold standard. He destroyed that. pl

Bill H , 18 December 2017 at 10:11 AM
Lying to Congress is not something that Congress or the DOJ actually cares about because the hearings are a places where speeches are made by Congresscritters and the questions are merely the hooks upon which the speeches are hung .

No one listens to or cares about the answers except insofar as a careless answer can be used to impale the answerer, such as publicly impaling a general for using the wrong honorific in calling the Senator "Ma'am" instead of by the title that she "worked very hard for many years to earn."

It can, of course, be used more harshly to severely punish an out of favor minion for crimes about which the "deep state" actors actually do care but which are not on any law books, such as not adequately promoting the official story line.

Babak Makkinejad , 18 December 2017 at 11:26 AM
Harper:

Your complaint could be equally made about UK government or the French government.

I mean, after all the detailed analysis that David Habakkuk has supplied on this forum in regards to both the murder of Litivenk as well as the Steel Dossier, why aren't any heads rolling in the United Kingdom (or does none need the Privy Council to step in to cleanup that mess?).

Indeed, the gravity of the latter, being nothing less than enabling the mouthing a soft coup in the United States, thus potentially destabilizing a linchpin of global security, resulting in the deaths of perhaps millions, would warrant, in my opinion, the merciless application of Hara kiri to all those involved.

Yet nothing has happened.

The Twisted Genius , 18 December 2017 at 11:27 AM
Harper,

Clapper never made the 17 intel agencies claim. That was Clinton and a lot of MSM types. The report itself was very clear on who produced it.

"This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI ), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies."

Clapper is as Colonel Lang describes him. My only run in with him was when he tried to "reorganize" Defense HUMINT in an attempt to weasel his way back into a government position. The effort was pretty damned transparent to me. And his bold-faced lie about not spying on US citizens was exceedingly stupid and duplicitous. He was told this question would be asked before the testimony and he still managed to royally screw the pooch.

Patrick Armstrong -> blue peacock... , 18 December 2017 at 11:38 AM
Plan A: Because President Clinton and the compliant media would cover for him.
Plan B: Because we'll get President Trump out and the compliant media will cover for him.
Plan C.....
TV , 18 December 2017 at 11:53 AM
Clapper is a swamp creature. When did the swamp start indicting it's loyal minions? Dems, Republicans, Intel. Community, lobbyists, bureaucracy - all facing a common threat; Trump and the "deplorables."
ex-PFC Chuck said in reply to turcopolier ... , 18 December 2017 at 12:05 PM
Perhaps it's an instance of injelititis, as first described by C. Northcote Parkinson in Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration: Incompetence and jealousy interacting to reinforce each other according to the formula I squared times J cubed.
Sid Finster , 18 December 2017 at 01:48 PM
The criminal laws in this country are sufficiently broad and deep in scope that an aggressive prosecutor can always find an excuse to bring charges against anyone, especially if the target is involved in high level business or politics. Google "three felonies a day" if you need more detail.

This is entirely intentional. Those whom the establishment wants punished are punished, and those whom the establishment does not want punished are not punished (but can be, should they stray into the first category).

This is not to suggest that a shadowy cabal of 1%ers get together and hold a secret email vote as to who gets voted off the island, so to speak. Rather, the average prosecutor is a glorified politician, and like other politicians, prosecutors are acutely sensitive to establishment concerns.

HRC provides a instructive example. It is abundantly obvious that she violated the law; the fact that Comey was forced to misstate the law regarding specific intent* as known to every first year law student merely shows that he was trying desperately seeking a way not to bring charges. They didn't even bother trying to question The Queen so as to ensure that Her Majesty did not perjure herself or lie to investigators and thus force them to deliver another rationale not to bring charges.

However, had charges been brought against HRC, the Great and Good of this country would have thrown a collective hissy fit, a cri du coeur of "You can't do that! Don't you know who she is?" so to speak.

*specific intent refers to the intent to commit a crime, rather than the intent to do the act complained of. If you are accused of theft, the prosecutor need only show that you take property, knowing that the property was not yours, not that you knew that doing so was "theft" or otherwise illegal.

I actually called a former prosecutor that I know to determine whether I recalled the principle correctly, and he conceded that I did.

LeaNder said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 18 December 2017 at 02:15 PM
That's how I recall it too, TTG. Surfaced for me in one of the much watched election campaign debates as a claim by Clinton. ...

But generally I am very, very much with Mrs Lang: "SWMBO says that 'incompetent' should be added to your encomium.!"

As I recall it was the most disconcerting statement for me the outsider at the time. On the other hand I cannot remember it drew much attention here in the post debate discussions. Only gained momentum as focus of attention later.

But I am still undecided, if I should consider it a deliberately misleading, manipulating statement chosen to score a debate point. Or if it simply showed her incompetence.

Anyway: a complete consent within 17 agencies sounded definitively more like a information dictatorship. Never mind there was a DNI.

Emad , 18 December 2017 at 02:48 PM
Harper,

"Why isn't James Clapper behind bars?" isn't the right question. That ship's long sailed and isn't coming back i.e. one justice systems for ordinary people, another for the indispensable is well ingrained into the fabric of the U.S. polity.

The right question is what the plebs can do about it, knowing that "official" accountability is all but dead.

J , 18 December 2017 at 07:07 PM
Looks like Finnish government is eager to put a thumb in their apparent Intelligence leaking dam. Finland's Largest Newspaper Faces Treason Charges For Publishing Leaked Files On Spy Ops Targeting Russia

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-18/finlands-largest-newspaper-faces-treason-charges-publishing-leaked-files-spy-ops-tar

Mark Logan , 18 December 2017 at 07:14 PM
Harper,

On the lying to Congress over the data collection, I will opine the reason for the lack of prosecution: It's because the laws passed by Congress specifically approve the data gathering, laws passed after 9/11, signed by George W Bush, who proudly proclaimed "we intent to get everything" in reference to date in his first SOTU address to standing applause.

An effort to prosecute Clapper for lying about what they themselves have no excuse not to be aware of could backfire rather badly on Congress. The legal can of worms for Justice in pursuing such prosecution would be impressive as well.

Congress passed these laws and lacks the stones to retract them. And We The People refuse to punish them for it. I have no liking of Clapper...but I believe if we prosecute him while not changing those laws, laws which clearly state the government has the legal power to collect this data, We The People would be hypocrites.

The Porkchop Express -> turcopolier ... , 18 December 2017 at 08:13 PM
Colonel

You have "form"? I'm not familiar with that expression. Out of curiosity, what does it mean precisely?

Max said in reply to turcopolier ... , 18 December 2017 at 10:14 PM
I remember those midnight telephone calls.
Crosley Bendix , 18 December 2017 at 10:14 PM
On the other hand, he is the only prominent government figure to let us know about the Russian threat to our pure American Reich:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/ss-oberfuhrer-james-clapper-subhuman-russians-genetically-driven-meddle-us-democracy
blue peacock , 19 December 2017 at 02:51 AM
David Stockman on Russiagate. It seems he is speaking for a lot of people who are beginning to ask what is really going in Washington DC. Do we have a case of national security institutions run amok?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-18/russiagate-witch-hunt-stockman-names-names-deep-states-insurance-policy

There was a sinister plot to meddle in the 2016 election, after all. But it was not orchestrated from the Kremlin; it was an entirely homegrown affair conducted from the inner sanctums---the White House, DOJ, the Hoover Building and Langley----of the Imperial City.

Likewise, the perpetrators didn't speak Russian or write in the Cyrillic script. In fact, they were lifetime beltway insiders occupying the highest positions of power in the US government.

Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators: John Brennan, CIA director; Susan Rice, National Security Advisor; Samantha Power, UN Ambassador; James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence; James Comey, FBI director; Andrew McCabe, Deputy FBI director; Sally Yates, deputy Attorney General, Bruce Ohr, associate deputy AG; Peter Strzok, deputy assistant director of FBI counterintelligence; Lisa Page, FBI lawyer; and countless other lessor and greater poobahs of Washington power, including President Obama himself.

turcopolier -> Max... , 19 December 2017 at 07:54 AM
Max

Good to see you here old friend. pl

Wagenfeld Russ , 19 December 2017 at 08:16 AM
Max,
It is indeed good to see you here.
Russ
turcopolier , 19 December 2017 at 08:33 AM
old DIAers

The "best" thing he ever said to me was that I reminded him of his father. That, obviously, was not a compliment. pl

turcopolier , 19 December 2017 at 09:07 AM
Porkchop
British cop show talk. Means "a record" in americanspeak. pl
The Porkchop Express -> turcopolier ... , 19 December 2017 at 10:20 AM
Duly noted, thanks.
robt willmann , 19 December 2017 at 12:19 PM
The problem of lying before Congress points up the two parts of the issue: 1) the law, and 2) the process, procedure, people, and organizations (PPPO) through which the law is applied and enforced.

Unfortunately, even if "the law" is carefully and precisely worded, the PPPO can make it meaningless and worthless.

Since a Congressional hearing is a federal proceeding and is on federal property, the federal criminal law applies. As far as perjury and its sister -- obstruction of justice -- are concerned, here are two papers from the Congressional Research Service you can read to get a good understanding of the federal law in this area.

The first one is "Perjury Under Federal Law: A Brief Overview", from 2014, and is 21 pages--

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/98-808.pdf

The second one basically includes the article on perjury. It is entitled "Obstruction of Justice: An Overview of Some of the Federal Statutes That Prohibit Interference with Judicial, Executive, or Legislative Activities", and is also from 2014 by the same author. It covers areas in addition to perjury, is comprehensive, and is 89 pages--

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34303.pdf

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc287910/?q=RL34303

Who is responsible to investigate, file charges, and prosecute perjury, obstruction of justice, and other legal violations before Congress? The short and slightly general answer is the Department that Calls Itself Justice.

In any consideration of people who hold themselves out as being from the "intelligence" community who may be observed tap dancing before Congress, names such as former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden, former NSA director Keith Alexander, and John O. Brennan could well be in the mix.

For example, here is a little video of U.S. Representative Henry "Hank" Johnson (Dem. Georgia) back in 2012 asking Keith Alexander a few basic questions. This bit of testimony could be a funny parody and comedy sketch, were it not so real and outrageous--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYNXVgYhPOc

https://www.congress.gov/member/henry-johnson/J000288

Robert said in reply to J ... , 19 December 2017 at 02:06 PM
If you are getting your information from ZeroHedge you should take the time to learn more about its history and who owns the domain and site.
Here http://nymag.com/guides/money/2009/59457/
And here http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=5728
Richardstevenhack -> Robert... , 19 December 2017 at 02:06 PM
I slogged through the seven pages of the NY Mag piece and find it to be the standard "he said, she said" hit piece which slaps mocking statements in between alleged facts to basically declare the whole subject unworthy of anyone's time because it's all "conspiracy theory".

In short, it's crap. Don't bother reading it.

[Dec 21, 2017] Former Intel chief Putin is handling Trump like 'an asset' by Olivia Beavers

Notable quotes:
"... "I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively." ..."
"... Clapper took aim at the news that Putin called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture." ..."
"... He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible." ..."
"... The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he found the message to be contradictory. ..."
"... Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security, intelligence and foreign policy officials filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen," the brief reads. ..."
Dec 18, 2017 | thehill.com

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be handling President Trump Donald John Trump House Democrat slams Donald Trump Jr. for 'serious case of amnesia' after testimony Skier Lindsey Vonn: I don't want to represent Trump at Olympics Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans think senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia MORE like "an asset."

"I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president," Clapper said on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," clarifying that he means this "figuratively."

Clapper took aim at the news that Putin called Trump on Sunday to thank him and the CIA for sharing information that helped prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, describing the move as a "rather theatric gesture."

He said the U.S. and Russia have shared such intelligence "for a long time" and it seemed over the top for Putin to call Trump " for something that goes on below the radar and is not all that visible."

The former intelligence chief said Putin likely learned to recruit assets to help with his interests when he served as an officer in the KBG, which was the Soviet Union's main security agency.

"You have to remember Putin's background. He's a KGB officer, that's what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president," he continued.

The remarks come after Trump said the U.S. is in competition with "revisionist" powers like Russia and China in a policy release about national security, while also stating in a speech that he wants to form a "great partnership" with them. Clapper said he found the message to be contradictory.

He also pointed to his previous experiences of trying to share intelligence with the Kremlin, stemming back to the early 1990s, describing the attempts as a "one-way street."

Clapper's remarks on CNN come after he and over a dozen other former national security, intelligence and foreign policy officials filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit earlier this month against the Trump campaign and Republican operative Roger Stone. The brief details how Russia uses "active measures" and "actors" to spread disinformation and influence politics worldwide. "These actors include political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen," the brief reads.

"They range from the unwitting accomplice who is manipulated to act in what he believes is his best interest, to the ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to the knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance Russian operations and objectives," it continues.

[Dec 20, 2017] Paul Clapper should resign for 'lying to Congress'

Notable quotes:
"... During a hearing in March, Clapper said the NSA does not "wittingly" collect bulk information on all Americans. After Snowden leaked a trove of NSA documents, it was revealed that the agency collects metadata from all U.S. phones. Clapper has since apologized for the statement ..."
"... And I really think that in order to restore confidence in our intelligence community, I think James Clapper should resign," Paul said ..."
"... Paul said both Clapper and Snowden have broken the law, but suggested that Snowden could be considered a whistle-blower since a judge ruled earlier this week that the collection program appeared to be unconstitutional. ..."
"... Paul said the report released Wednesday by a group of advisers to President Obama recommending curbs to the NSA is an acknowledgement that the agency needs to be reined in ..."
Dec 19, 2013 | thehill.com

Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard Paul Lexington mayor launches bid for Congress Trump-free Kennedy Center Honors avoids politics Meet the Iran hawk who could be Trump's next secretary of State MORE (R-Ky.) on Wednesday called on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign his post.

Paul also floated the idea of prosecuting Clapper for perjury.

Paul said Clapper's misleading testimony to a Senate panel earlier this year about a National Security Agency program that collected phone records has hurt the United States far worse than anything leaker Edward Snowden has done.

"I find really that Clapper is lying to Congress is probably more injurious to our intelligent capabilities than anything Snowden did because Clapper has damaged the credibility of the entire intelligence apparatus, and I'm not sure what to believe anymore when they come to Congress," Paul said in an interview with CNN.

Paul has been consistently critical of Clapper and the surveillance program since its public disclosure this year.

During a hearing in March, Clapper said the NSA does not "wittingly" collect bulk information on all Americans. After Snowden leaked a trove of NSA documents, it was revealed that the agency collects metadata from all U.S. phones. Clapper has since apologized for the statement .

" And I really think that in order to restore confidence in our intelligence community, I think James Clapper should resign," Paul said .

When asked if the Justice Department should file criminal charges against Clapper, Paul said that if they do not, "you're just encouraging people to lie to us."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, said Clapper was put in a tough spot in an open hearing, but he should not resign.

"I don't think he should," Chambliss said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I've known Jim Clapper for years and years. He is a man of integrity, and he has done a good job."

Paul said both Clapper and Snowden have broken the law, but suggested that Snowden could be considered a whistle-blower since a judge ruled earlier this week that the collection program appeared to be unconstitutional.

"But at the same time, there is some question whether or not you can be a whistle-blower in our society, and whether you can release information that you think that the government is breaking the law, and that is the argument here, and now it's been upheld by a federal court saying that the government is breaking the law," he said.

Paul said the report released Wednesday by a group of advisers to President Obama recommending curbs to the NSA is an acknowledgement that the agency needs to be reined in .

"I think even the president's own team now is coming up with recommendations that acknowledge that the president has allowed this to get away from himself," Paul said.

[Nov 29, 2017] Brennan and Clapper Elder Statesmen or Serial Fabricators by Mike Whitney

Brennan is probably one of the key figures in color revolution against Trump that was launched after the elections...
Looks like both Brennan and Clapper suffer from the acute case of Anti-Russian paranoia along with Full Spectrum Dominance hallucinations.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the leaders of this campaign. ..."
"... The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations ..."
"... So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions? ..."
"... There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact." ..."
"... Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria. ..."
"... In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." . ..."
"... Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference" in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News) ..."
"... So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it? ..."
"... Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program ..."
"... So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA ..."
"... As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say. ..."
"... From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper. ..."
"... Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington establishment will never allow to happen. ..."
"... What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons. ..."
"... Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. ..."
"... Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it. ..."
"... Professional liars. But, there was some question/doubt about this? ..."
"... As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. ..."
Nov 27, 2017 | www.unz.com

Mike Whitney November 17, 2017

On Sunday, Former CIA Director John Brennan and Former National Intelligence Director (NID) James Clapper appeared on CNN's morning talk show, State of the Union, to discuss Donald Trump's brief meeting with Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. The two ex-Intel chiefs were sharply critical of Trump and wondered why the president did not "not acknowledge and embrace" the idea that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. According to Brennan, Russia not only "poses a national security problem" for the US, but also "Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy, and our whole process."

Naturally, CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, never challenged Brennan or Clapper on any of the many claims they made regarding Russia nor did he interrupt either man while they made, what appeared to be, carefully scripted remarks about Trump, Putin and the ongoing investigation.

There were no surprise announcements during the interview and neither Brennan or Clapper added anything new to the list of allegations that have been repeated ad nauseam in the media for the last year. The only time Tapper veered off course at all was when he asked Brennan whether he thought "any laws were broken by the Trump campaign? Here's what Brennan said:

I'm just a former intelligence officer. I never had the responsibility for determining whether or not criminal actions were taken. But, since leaving office on the 20th of January, I think more and more of this iceberg is emerging above the surface of the water, some of the things that I knew about, but some of the things I didn't know about, in terms of some of the social media efforts that Russia employed. So, I think what Bob Mueller, who, again, is another quintessential public servant, is doing is trying to get to the bottom of this. And I think we're going to find out how large this iceberg really is.

In other words, after an arduous 12 month-long investigation involving both Houses of Congress, a Special Counsel, and a small army of high-paid Washington attorneys, the only straw Brennan has found to hold on to, is a few innocuous advertisements posted on Facebook and Twitter that had no noticeable impact on the election at all. That's a very weak foundation upon which to build a case for foreign espionage or presidential collusion. It's hard not to conclude that the public has been seriously misled by the leaders of this campaign.

The Intel bosses continue to believe that they can overcome the lack of evidence by repeating the same claims over and over again. The problem with this theory is that Brennan's claims don't match the findings of his own "Gold Standard" report, the so called Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA which was published on January 6, 2017 and which supposedly provides rock solid evidence of Russian meddling. The greatly over-hyped ICA proves nothing of the kind, in fact, the report features a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations. Here's the money-quote from the report:

Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.

So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin was involved in the elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgments should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is "incomplete or fragmentary", and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to 'educated guesswork.' Is Brennan confused about the report's findings or is he deliberately trying to mislead the American people about its conclusions?

Here's Brennan again on Sunday:

I think Mr. Trump knows that the intelligence agencies, specifically CIA, NSA and FBI, the ones that really have responsibility for counterintelligence and looking at what Russia does, it's very clear that the Russians interfered in the election. And it's still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it, and also push back hard against Mr. Putin. The Russian threat to our democracy and our democratic foundations is real.

There appears to be a significant discrepancy between Brennan's unshakable belief in Russian intervention and the findings of his own "hand picked" analysts who said with emphatic clarity: "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."

Why is it so hard for Brennan to wrap his mind around that simple, unambiguous statement? The reason Brennan's intelligence analysts admit that they have no proof, is because they have no proof. That might sound obvious, but we have to assume that it isn't given that both Houses of Congress and a Special Counsel are still bogged down in an investigation that has yet to provide even a solid lead let alone any compelling evidence.

We also have to assume that most people do not understand that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the massive investigations that are currently underway. (What probable cause?) Adds placed in Facebook do not constitute hard evidence of foreign espionage or election rigging. They indicate the desperation of the people who are leading the investigation. The fact that serious people are even talking about social media just underscores the fact that the search for proof has produced nothing.

These investigations are taking place because powerful elites want to vilify an emerging geopolitical rival (Russia) and prevent Trump from normalizing relations with Moscow, not because there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. As the Intel analysts themselves acknowledge, there is no proof of criminal wrongdoing or any other wrongdoing for that matter. What there is, is a political agenda to discredit Trump and demonize Russia. That's the fuel that is driving the present campaign.

Russia-gate is not about 'meddling', it's about politics. And Brennan and Clapper are critical players in the current drama. They're supposed to be the elder statesmen who selflessly defend the country from foreign threats. But are they or is this just role-playing that doesn't square with what we already know about the two men? Here's thumbnail sketch of Clapper written by former-CIA officer Ray McGovern that will help to clarify the point:

Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.

In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA's unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper's testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, "My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize." .

Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian "interference" in the U.S. election to NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about "the historical practices of the Russians." Clapper said, "the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ("Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt", Ray McGovern, Consortium News)

So, Clapper concealed information that could have slowed or prevented the rush to war in Iraq. That's a significant failing on his part that suggests either poor judgment or moral weakness. Which is it?

He also lied about spying on the American people. Why? Why would he do that? And why should we trust someone who not only spied on us but also paved the way to war in Iraq?

And the rap-sheet on Brennan is even worse than Clapper's. Check out this blurb from Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian:

"Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program

Obama then appointed him as his top counter-terrorism adviser . In that position, Brennan last year got caught outright lying when he claimed Obama's drone program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year .

Brennan has also been in charge of many of Obama's most controversial and radical policies, including "signature strikes" in Yemen – targeting people without even knowing who they are – and generally seizing the power to determine who will be marked for execution without any due process, oversight or transparency .." ("John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination", Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian)

So, Brennan supported kidnapping (rendition), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and targeted assassinations (drone attacks). And this is the man we are supposed to trust about Russia? Keep in mind, the jihadist militants that have been tearing apart Syria for the last six years were armed and trained by the CIA Brennan's CIA

These radical militias have been defeated largely due to Russian military intervention. Do you think that this defeat at the hands of Putin may have shaped Brennan's attitude towards Russia?

Of course, it has. Brennan never makes any attempt to conceal his hatred for Putin or Russia.

As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can't trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is 'thrown out' because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say.

Which is why the Russia-gate narrative is beginning to unravel.

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 [email protected] .

Curmudgeon , November 23, 2017 at 6:46 pm GMT

What!!!! Someone from the management of an intelligence agency lying? I'm shocked!
Dan Hayes , November 25, 2017 at 7:51 am GMT
From the presented evidence: Serial Fabricators! I have much more confidence in the veracity of used car salesmen than that of Messrs. Brennan and Clapper.
m___ , November 25, 2017 at 8:22 am GMT
Fake news, and stale news. By when an algorithm of Goolag to "clean" the internet of current house-hold garbage?
Carroll Price , November 25, 2017 at 1:24 pm GMT
Becoming friends with Russia, the only potential enemy available, would destroy the MIC. A real possibility the Washington establishment will never allow to happen.
Che Guava , November 25, 2017 at 1:58 pm GMT
@WorkingClass

What is that having to do with the content of Mr. Whitney's good article? Mr. Whitney, to me you are of the quarter or less of Counterpunch writers who are to making sense most of the time. . . . and am always liking your writing style. Trump could have been or be a great pres. of your nation, but between dropping advisors for no good reason, becoming frightened and drawing away from his desire for rapprochement with the Russian Federation, worst of all, from this distant perspective, to appointing his daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors. Both are overpriveleged morons.

Chris Bridges , November 25, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT
Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister. He is an extreme leftist and there should be an investigation into how this wacko was allowed to join the CIA – he openly admits voting for CPUSA chief Gus Hall in 1976. Brennan is, besides, a resentful CIA failure.

He was denied entry to the elite Directorate of Operations (or couldn't cut the mustard and was banished from it) and spent his career stewing away in anger as a despised analyst at CIA headquarters.

Brennan spent his time at CIA attempting to undermine the organization.

Pompeo should have reversed every single thing he did the minute he took office, starting with firing every CIA employee brought into the Agency by Brennan (this can be done – CIA employees have no Civil Service protection). That Brennan is still at large after his outrageous involvement in the phony Russia dossier is an indictment of Jeff Sessions, Trump, the DOJ and the FBI. He could be indicted on a host of Federal charges if somebody had the guts to do it.

Michael Kenny , November 25, 2017 at 2:56 pm GMT
The umpteenth version of a now standard article.

We all know that the Russiagate narrative isn't starting to unravel and this and other (wholly untrustworthy) internet authors' claims are not proved by simply repeating them over and over again (to borrow a phrase!). In fact, Russiagate is expanding. It has gone from mere Russian interference in the election to dubious financial transactions between wealthy Americans, including Trump, and, to put it very politely, "dubious" Russians. It has also expanded to Europe.

What is emerging, therefore, is a collusion between wealthy Americans, no doubt with major investments in Russia, US internet sites, probably financed by the aforementioned wealthy Americans, dubious Russian financiers, Putin, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage and no doubt others to manipulate, perhaps rig, elections and referenda in the US and Europe. It's not about politics. It's about money and conflicts of interest.

We also get the now standard argument that Trump is just dying to "normalize" relations with Russia but is being held back by some dastardly group or other. As we all know, of course, "normalizing relations with Moscow" in Orwellian translates into English as "capitulating to Putin in Ukraine". Putin's frantic attempts to get Trump to let him win in Syria is why this old line is suddenly back on the table.

Finally, the idea of the Russian Federation as an emerging geopolitical rival is amusing. That country has existed as a sovereign state only for about 25 years and is merely the largest piece of wreckage from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a world that is slowly being dominated by China, Russia is a very minor player.

Beefcake the Mighty , November 25, 2017 at 3:07 pm GMT
Professional liars. But, there was some question/doubt about this?
DESERT FOX , November 25, 2017 at 3:15 pm GMT
Brennan and Clapper are agent provocateurs for the Zionists who control the U.S. government and the 17 gestapo agencies which in fact are controlled by dual citizen Zionists ie ISRAEL.

Brennan and Clapper are under Zionist control and thus are traitors to the constitution of America and should be tried and sent to prison for life.

jacques sheete , November 25, 2017 at 5:25 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

It's not about politics. It's about money and conflicts of interest.

And since when are the three not related?

It's too bad that good people, like MW, need to waste their time and energy investigating and publishing what's obviously state sponsored utter rubbish designed to support some of the money bag crowd in one way or another.

Why does it even need to be stated that most of what's supposed to be a big deal to us prols, peasants and piss ants is nothing but propaganda, and of a particularly transparent and low grade variety,even?

Clyde , November 25, 2017 at 5:30 pm GMT
@Chris Bridges

Clapper is a befuddled old fool and can be safely ignored. Brennan is something far more sinister.

Clapper told some whoppers while he was head of all our intelligence agencies under Obama. But you are correct that Brennan is far more toxic. He was this way under Obama and post-Obama. He has been one of the biggest Trump saboteurs. And most effective. One ugly customer!

Colleen Pater , November 25, 2017 at 5:31 pm GMT
@Curmudgeon

Why should we care if the russians spent billions on trying to exert their influence on us, we do it we have an alphabet soup of projects to do exactly that and god knows what else to every nation on earth.In fact we do it to our own people these social websites and "news" sites universities media etc are nothing but one huge propaganda machine intended to render democracy nothing more than a distraction so elites can go about doing what they want.

jilles dykstra , November 25, 2017 at 6:20 pm GMT
Long ago, when car radio's still had antennae long enough to receive long wave transmissions, I often listened to BBCW radio, 848 Mhz.
I still remember the statement 'you can always tell when a politician lies, he then moves his lips'.
jilles dykstra , November 25, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT
@Michael Kenny

Capitulating to Putin in Ukraine. The assertion is that the CIA spent five billion dollar in Ukraine in order to overthrow the legitimate democratic government. Of course nobody can prove the assertion. What is crystal clear is that the members of EU parliament Verhofstadt, Van Baalen and Timmermans held speeches in Kiev urging the people to overthrow the government.
Their speeches could be seen live on tv, or were rebroadcast.

Timmermans held the crocodile tears speech at the UN about the MH17 victims. How, why, and through whom over 300 people were killed in Ukraine airspace we do not know until now. All there is is vague insinuations towards Russia, the country for which the disaster was a disaster, EU sanctions all of a sudden were possible.

That the political annexation by the west failed is best seen in E Ukraine, where the wealth is, in gas and oil. A son, and a son in law, of Biden, and Kerry were promised well paid jobs as CEO's of companies who were to exploit the E Ukrainian wealth, they are still waiting for the jobs.

Roger n Me , November 25, 2017 at 7:24 pm GMT
I remember when they actually prosecuted for someone for lying to Congress. Unfortunately, it was a former baseball player named Roger Clemons over the vitally important question of whether or not he had taken steroids. Obviously a vital question that every sports tabloid wants to know.
Cyrano , November 25, 2017 at 7:27 pm GMT
I just hope that the Russians realize that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. I hope that they'll choose the next US president wisely.

There is real danger there is -- now that we know that the Russians can elect pretty much anyone in the US – that come the next elections, some charismatic, possibly independent candidate, might seduce the Russians with promises of improved ties, and after they elect him, he might turn to be a real wacko job who might end up not only worsening the ties between the superpowers, but he might end up destroying the world. Be cautious, Russians.

I.F. Stoned , November 25, 2017 at 7:36 pm GMT
If we want to talk about meddling in the election ..

Lets compare CNN giving hours and hours of free and very favorable air time to the Hillary campaign?

versus

A news website paying for a handful of thousand dollar adds on Twitter?

I remember studies that showed that during the crooked, corrupt and rigged Democratic Primaries, that there was a large disparity in favorable stories about Hillary versus the number that were favorable for Bernie. And CNN happily seemed to give lots of airtime to any Hillary surrogate who wanted to red bait and smear Bernie as a socialist.

We saw the same sort of disparity in the amount of favorable coverage of Trump vs Hillary. Likewise, any Hillary surrogate who wanted to spread the official campaign message that Trump was a racist, was a fascist, and said some rude things about women was always welcome on the CNN airwaves.

And, just recently, we had the web page editor for the NYT state publicly that they deliberately tilted their web page stories to convince voters to vote against Trump.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg if we want to talk about how the American corporate (aka mainstream) media tried very hard to tilt the whole election towards putting the Crooked Clintons back into the White House.

But, OMG, the story in the same corrupt media is that awful and evil RT spend a whole thousand dollars on an ad trying to promote their website.

Vikki , November 25, 2017 at 7:44 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

As to the US spending $5 billion of US taxpayers money to 'destabilize Ukraine', we can prove that. Or at least we can take the word of a US official that this was true. Hillary's Assistant Secretary of State said this publicly at the National Press Club on Dec 13, 2013 . a few months before the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine.

Bottom , November 25, 2017 at 7:55 pm GMT
@Colleen Pater

Hillary is the one who spend BILLIONS trying to become President. The only thing that so far has been traced to Russia is a few hundred thousand in Twitter Ads that otherwise served the legitimate purpose of trying to promote the web news sites. And most of those ads didn't concern political stories, but instead stories about cute puppies to draw clicks.

Adrian E. , November 25, 2017 at 8:57 pm GMT
The interesting development is that, after no proof for the "Russian hacking" allegations could be found, they turned to simple ads (for amounts that are extremely small compared to what the campaigns spent) and social media postings. This was accompanied by loosening the criteria, they did not even pretend any more that they had indications that these social media activities were connected to the Russian state, they just had to be "Russia-linked". In the case of Twitter, this includes anyone who has ever logged in from Russia, uses Cyrillic signs in the account metadata (that could also be connected with a number of other countries), logged in from a Russian IP address, paid something with a Russian credit card etc., and only one condition had to be fulfilled for an account to be counted as "Russia-linked".

Of course, with such a large country, there are certainly some social media activities that are "linked" with it. There can be many reasons – people who travel, migrants in both directions, or simply Russians with an interest in US politics. From what is known, the ads and postings were so diverse – some right-wing and pro-Trump, some leftwing or critical of Trump, and many not directly linked to the elections – and distributed over a large time with many after the elections that it does not seem too unlikely as a result of social media activities of random people who have some connection with Russia.

Of course, we may speculate in each case, why someone posted something or bought an ad. But before speculating, it would be necessary to have data about ads and social media postings linked to other countries. For example, it could be determined with the same criteria which ads and postings were Brazile-linked, Germany-linked, and Philippines-linked. Probably, there, a similar random collection would emerge. Only if there is something special about the Russia-linked ads and postings, it would even make sense to speculate about the reasons.

We don't know whether these "Russia-linked" ads and social media positings were just random activities by people related to Russia (e.g. about 2% of the US population have Russian as their native language, some may not have many contacts with Russia any more and don't travel there regularly, but others do) or whether a part of them was the result of an organized campaign, but in any case, from what was written in the media, the volume of these social media activities does not seem to be very large (but in order to judge that, social media activities linked to other countries with the same criteria would be needed).

What I find hilarious is how people sometimes try to insert a collusion angle even if it is not about hacking, but about social media ads and postings. This becomes completely absurd. Then, the idea is that Russians contacted the Trump campaign in order to find out which ads they should buy and what they should post on social media. Why should they do so? If the Trump campaign had ideas about what to post and what kind of ads to buy, why didn't they just do it themselves or via an American company? What would be the point of the Trump campaign spending $564 million on the campaign, but then do a small part of the campaign via Russians who then spent a few thousand dollars for buying ads and posting messages the Trump campaign had advised them to via "collusion"? After all, if they had done it themselves or via an American intermediary, there would be nothing nefarious or suspicious about this, this idea that for a very small part of their campaign, they colluded with Russians and told them what to post and which ads to buy almost sounds as if they deliberately wanted to behave in a strange way that could then fit a preconceived collusion narrative. And even if they had outsourced some small part of their campaign to a Russian company for some odd reasons, would that make it nefarious?

I think the Russiagate theorists should at least make sure that their theories don't violate basic principles of common sense. If they want to use the hacking story, the involvement of Russian secret services might theoretically make sense – it might not be so easy for the Trump campaign to hack servers themselves (though phishing is hardly something so sophisticated that only secret services can do it, we're not talking about something like Stuxnet), and something illegal would be involved. That is a theory that could in principle make sense, the only problem is, that no evidence for this is available (and the Russians are certainly not the only ones who might have had an interest in these mails, another plausible theory is that it was an insider who disliked how the Clinton campaign took over the DNC early on and created better conditions for Clinton than for Sanders, and it could have been any hacker who, for some reason disliked Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and Podesta). If the Russiagate theorists switch over to simple social media activity because there is no evidence for Russian secret services being responsible for giving e-mails to Wikileaks, they also have to sacrifice the whole "collusion" part of the story. It might be that some Russians used social media in an organized way, but to invent a story that the Trump campaign "colluded" with Russians for a small part of their social media election campaign hardly makes sense.

The only condition under which it might somehow make sense would be if someone thought Russians are intellectually vastly superior to Americans and know much better what potential voters care about, and their capabilities are even vastly above Cambridge Analytics. Then, it might somehow make sense for the Trump campaign to hand over a part of the social media activities to Russians, and this might somehow be seen as an unfair advantage – but again, if, with that assumption, the Russians are intellectually so vastly superior that can have a significant influence with very small amounts of money and works while the Trump and Clinton campaigns spend billions, why would they have to "collude" with the Trump campaign, people who would be intellectually so much below them according to that assumption? Maybe real genius for targeting potential voters only emerges when Americans and Russians with complementary abilities collaborate? In any case, it is already very difficult just to construct a version of that theory that does not violate basic principles of common sense.

Fred D , November 26, 2017 at 12:24 am GMT
Mind controlled Moron
WHAT , November 26, 2017 at 2:19 am GMT
@Michael Kenny

"Let him win in Syria"?

Dude, it`s like the first legit amusing line from you. Now bring another!

robt , November 26, 2017 at 3:11 am GMT
@Cyrano

Sarcasm is probably the only way to deal with it. I find myself all the time asking people if they are serious or joking. Sadly, many claim they are serious.
Currently it seems that peaceful and productive relations with a foreign power are Bad Things.
Mr Putin did amusingly say one time to a ditzy US 'journalist':
"Have you all lost your minds over there?"

Cyrano , November 26, 2017 at 3:54 am GMT
@robt

I really truly believe that the only way to force the stupids who came up with that ridiculous story about "Russia influencing the elections" – to drop it – is to make incessantly fun of them until they finally realize how really truly stupid they are.

exiled off mainstreet , November 26, 2017 at 5:03 am GMT
@DESERT FOX

The facts support this viewpoint, including the dual citizen element of it. By the way, I oppose the death penalty except if it is applied to major serial war criminals. I recognize that all legal systems are too corrupt to be given the power of life and death, and that this is particularly true of the US system, which sets the benchmark for corruption. The corruption of the US political system, meanwhile, is revealed by the fact that this absurd Russiagate story is still being peddled and is accepted as received wisdom despite the manifold evidence proving its absurd falsity. What the article shows is that Clapper and Brennan are serial war criminals and that their latest gambit threatens our very existence. We would be better off if the utopia of a legal system incorruptible enough to allow for the death penalty did exist in the US rather than the corrupt system allowing somebody like Mueller to act extra-legally on this absurd basis was continuing in operation. By the way, the Canadian satellite media is still publishing stories trying to resuscitate the Steele dossier paid by the DNC and the yankee government as factual. The whole thing would be comical if it were not deadly serious. Those still backing the story publicly are either dangerously deluded or criminal themselves.

Sarah Toga , November 26, 2017 at 5:10 am GMT
Does Brennan have that dark calloused spot on his forehead yet from use of his "prayer rug" ?
DESERT FOX , November 26, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet

The U.S. gov is a criminal organization ran by criminal for criminals and sexual perverts and pedophiles , if interested, read these two books , THE FRANKLIN COVERUP by the late John DeCamp and THE TRANCE FORMATIO of AMERICA by Cathy Obrien and see their interviews on YouTube, the books can be had on amazon.com.

The books reveal a shocking look at the top ones in the demonrat and republicon parties, and I do mean shocking.

Anon , Disclaimer November 26, 2017 at 6:40 pm GMT
@Carroll Price

The US, Russian Federation, and the Nuland-Kagan revolution in Kiev in 2014:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-italian-documentary-bombshell-evidence-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators/5619684

"The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) last week, still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media.

The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the "job is done", they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger. The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. "There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges." – witnesses Nergadze.

The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos.
"I listened to the screams," recalls Revazishvili. "There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart."

Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who "used and abandoned" them."

Well that was a clear picture of a sausage-making during the US-sponsored regime change in Ukraine. The neo-Nazi in the US-supported "government" in Kiev came about naturally.

Anon , Disclaimer November 26, 2017 at 6:43 pm GMT
@Carroll Price

An addition to the previous post.
The Maidan revolution and its neo-Nazi consequence makes an amazing monument to the Kagans' clan:

"Thousands of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists marched in Kiev, Thursday, celebrating the 106th birthday of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader Stepan Bandera [famous Nazis collaborator]. Among the main organisers were representatives of Right Sector and Svoboda." https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a7_1420142767#gDHooVSL6b0yQ1SG.99

"Members of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov volunteer battalion and their ultranationalist civilian sympathizers have conducted a torchlit procession in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, held under the slogan "coming after you!" http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_72571.shtml

"A leader of Ukrainian Jewry condemned the hosting in Lviv of a festival celebrating a Nazi collaborator on the anniversary of a major pogrom against the city's Jews." http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Ukraine-city-to-hold-festival-in-honor-of-Nazi-collaborator-498159

The wide-spread desecration of Jewish cemetries by Ukrainian thugs (a post-Maidan phenomenon) has spilled to Poland: "Yet another case of vandalism by Ukrainian nationalists is on the record in Poland. This time, an old Jewish cemetery in Kraków became the target of thugs from the neighboring state. The graves of Polish Jews who died over a century ago were destroyed by those hot-blood Ukrainians." https://www.reddit.com/r/antisemitism/comments/5npnj5/ukrainian_nationalists_stand_behind_desecration/

"Vandals desecrated the Korinovskaya Jewish Cemetery in Kiev. They destroyed two entire sections: 27 and 28. These acts of vandalism are very systematic: every night they destroy one or two headstones. According to the elderly women who look after the place, these vandals are usually drunken youths who come there to wreak destruction. The Zaddik of Chernobyl is buried in this cemetery. These vandals destroyed his gravestone, smearing Satanic Cult symbols on it."

http://antisemitism.org.il/article/58386/ukraine-8211-desecration-jewish-cemetery-kiev

[Nov 28, 2017] Obama-Appointed Federal Inspector Threatened By Clinton Campaign Over Email Investigation

Looks like people stating that Bill and Hillary were really Bonnie and Clyde of Washington political scene were right...
Notable quotes:
"... An Obama appointed government watchdog central to the Hillary Clinton email investigation says that he, his family and his office faced an 'intense backlash' from Clinton allies, who threatened him over findings that Clinton mishandled classified information. ..."
"... Former Inspector General Charles McCullough III told Fox News Chief Intel correspondent Catherine Herridge that he was under intense pressure from senior officials on the left – with one Clinton campaign official threatening that he and another government investigator would be immediately fired under a Hillary Clinton presidency: ..."
"... "It was told in no uncertain terms, by a source directly from the campaign, that we would be the first two to be fired - with [Clinton's] administration. That that was definitely going to happen. " –Charles McCullough III ..."
"... McCullough was recommended to Obama by then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who told McCullough that Clinton's conduct was "extremely reckless," adding "the campaign will have heartburn about that." ..."
"... After the Clapper meeting, McCullough said his team was marginalized. "I was told by senior officials to keep [Clapper] out of it," he said, while acknowledging he tried to keep his boss in the loop. ..."
"... Instead of informing the American public that radical Islam was responsible for the attack, the Obama administration fabricated a story – peddling the lie that anger over an anti-Islamic YouTube video resulted in the attack, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of an innocent man . ..."
"... What's interesting about that, is an anonymous 4chan poster known as "FBI Anon" - whose breadcrumbs of information have been largely correct, posted on July 2, 2016 that Clinton had "SAP level programs on her server, which if made public, would literally cause an uprising and possibly foreign declarations of war." ..."
"... Then, on October 16, 2016 - three weeks before former FBI Director Comey cleared Clinton, "FBI Anon" elaborated on SAP programs and made an unverified claim about Clinton: ..."
"... Special Access Program is an intelligence program classified above top-secret. They are held on closed servers at secret locations. The only way to get one is if you are specifically read on to a program, have a need to know, then you must physically go to a location and pass through several layers of security to even look at the program. A good example in non-classified terms would be the locations and operations of our intelligence operatives around the glove, or our missile silo locations. SAP is granted on a need to know basis, and Hillary did not have any need to know any of the programs on her server. All I can tell you about the SAPs is that Hillary had them, and she did not have proper authority to have any of them. They were leaked to her by someone, and she did sell them to overseas donors. Possessing them alone makes her guilty of treason." - FBI Anon ..."
"... As the Clinton campaign geared up for the 2016 election, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Hillary's inner circle was already starting to spin the investigation – writing in an August 2015 email that "Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified." ..."
"... This is getting juicy. Wonder what big event(s) is happening to bring this about today?? ..."
"... The whole government is sleazy. They all use secondary and tertiary communications to handle the shit they don't ever want brought before a committee (ie the people). ..."
"... Threatening retaliation against a Federal Inspector General isn't even a crime any more, I don't think. ..."
"... Looks like "obstruction of justice". Where's the MSM? ..."
"... "Hillary has been distressed,biting her nails lately" I don't think so. The woman is a pure psychopath. Noone (even his most ardent supporters) can truthfully deny that Trump is a narcissictic asshole. That's ok, and even admirable by some. But this bitch is pure evil with no conscience and a lust for power and money unequalled in our lifetime. ..."
Nov 28, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Nov 28, 2017 10:46 AM 0 SHARES Content originally published at iBankCoin.com,

An Obama appointed government watchdog central to the Hillary Clinton email investigation says that he, his family and his office faced an 'intense backlash' from Clinton allies, who threatened him over findings that Clinton mishandled classified information.

Former Inspector General Charles McCullough III told Fox News Chief Intel correspondent Catherine Herridge that he was under intense pressure from senior officials on the left – with one Clinton campaign official threatening that he and another government investigator would be immediately fired under a Hillary Clinton presidency:

"It was told in no uncertain terms, by a source directly from the campaign, that we would be the first two to be fired - with [Clinton's] administration. That that was definitely going to happen. " –Charles McCullough III

As a refresher, over 2,100 classified emails were sent over Clinton's personal server, which was used exclusively for government business. Despite this, former FBI Director James Comey – who had drafted Clinton's exoneration letter months before reviewing evidence in the case – recommended that the DOJ not prosecute the case.

McCullough was recommended to Obama by then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who told McCullough that Clinton's conduct was "extremely reckless," adding "the campaign will have heartburn about that."

Via Fox News:

He [McCullough] said Clapper's Clinton email comments came during an in-person meeting about a year before the presidential election – in late December 2015 or early 2016. "[Clapper] was as off-put as the rest of us were."

After the Clapper meeting, McCullough said his team was marginalized. "I was told by senior officials to keep [Clapper] out of it," he said, while acknowledging he tried to keep his boss in the loop.

Egregious violations

In January 2016, McCullough told Republicans on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees that emails classified above "Top Secret" had been passed through the former secretary of state's private, unsecure server – such as an email about Benghazi she sent to daughter Chelsea Clinton (using pseudonym Diane Reynolds ) on the night of September 11th, 2012 from '@clintonemail.com' which not only divulged highly classified military intel over a non-government server vulnerable to foreign surveillance – it also revealed that the Obama administration knew that an "Al Queda-like group" was responsible for the attack.

One wonders what Chelsea's security clearance was at the time?

Instead of informing the American public that radical Islam was responsible for the attack, the Obama administration fabricated a story – peddling the lie that anger over an anti-Islamic YouTube video resulted in the attack, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of an innocent man .

Hillary knew it was an "Al Qeda-like group" hours after it happened when she told Chelsea ("Diane Reynolds") top secret information. pic.twitter.com/LiOJj3jck1

-- ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) July 15, 2017

What's interesting about that, is an anonymous 4chan poster known as "FBI Anon" - whose breadcrumbs of information have been largely correct, posted on July 2, 2016 that Clinton had "SAP level programs on her server, which if made public, would literally cause an uprising and possibly foreign declarations of war."

Then, on October 16, 2016 - three weeks before former FBI Director Comey cleared Clinton, "FBI Anon" elaborated on SAP programs and made an unverified claim about Clinton:

A Special Access Program is an intelligence program classified above top-secret. They are held on closed servers at secret locations. The only way to get one is if you are specifically read on to a program, have a need to know, then you must physically go to a location and pass through several layers of security to even look at the program. A good example in non-classified terms would be the locations and operations of our intelligence operatives around the glove, or our missile silo locations. SAP is granted on a need to know basis, and Hillary did not have any need to know any of the programs on her server. All I can tell you about the SAPs is that Hillary had them, and she did not have proper authority to have any of them. They were leaked to her by someone, and she did sell them to overseas donors. Possessing them alone makes her guilty of treason." - FBI Anon

Turncoat?

In response to McCullough's findings, Democrats turned their backs on the Obama-appointed Inspector General for doing his job."All of a sudden I became a shill of the right," McCullough said, adding "And I was told by members of Congress, 'Be careful. You're losing your credibility. You need to be careful. There are people out to get you.'"

McCullough told Fox of "an effort certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here."

Damage Control

As the Clinton campaign geared up for the 2016 election, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Hillary's inner circle was already starting to spin the investigation – writing in an August 2015 email that "Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified."

McCullough was critical of this response, telling Fox "There was an effort certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here."

In response to the Inspector General's pushback, seven senior Democrats sent a letter to McCullough and his counterpart at the State Department, raising concerns over the impartiality of the Clinton email investigation. McCullough, however, was not arriving at any conclusions himself – he was simply passing along the findings of individual government agencies on appropriate classifications assigned to the emails.

Fox News reports:

McCullough described one confrontation with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office just six weeks before the election, amid pressure to respond to the letter – which Feinstein had co-signed.

"I thought that any response to that letter would just hyper-politicize the situation," McCullough said. "I recall even offering to resign, to the staff director. I said, 'Tell [Feinstein] I'll resign tonight. I'd be happy to go. I'm not going to respond to that letter. It's just that simple."

As Election Day approached, McCullough said the threats went further, singling out him and another senior government investigator on the email case.

Inquiries sent by Fox to both Feinstein and Clapper were not returned at the time of publication.

Watch:

Herridge: "Was there an effort to deliberately mislead the public about [ @HillaryClinton ] classified emails?" McCullough: "Absolutely." pic.twitter.com/UOwC5BoJ41

-- Fox News (@FoxNews) November 28, 2017

enough of this , Nov 28, 2017 8:20 AM

Lock Her Up!

Rainman -> enough of this , Nov 28, 2017 8:27 AM

..." Not even a smidgen of corruption " ... Obozo

Shitonya Serfs -> Rainman , Nov 28, 2017 8:31 AM

This is getting juicy. Wonder what big event(s) is happening to bring this about today??

overbet -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 8:39 AM

and yet she still walks free and is protected by secret service on our dime

Shitonya Serfs -> overbet , Nov 28, 2017 8:46 AM

Walking is a bit of a stretch

tmosley -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 8:59 AM

>FBI Anon posts on ZH

Best timeline.

xavi1951 -> tmosley , Nov 28, 2017 9:17 AM

The trial should be in Texas, where they still have executions.

pods -> xavi1951 , Nov 28, 2017 9:21 AM

Trial? She will never be brought to trial. At WORST she gets a slap on the cankle that Trump pardons her for right afterwords.

The whole government is sleazy. They all use secondary and tertiary communications to handle the shit they don't ever want brought before a committee (ie the people).

pods

NoDebt -> pods , Nov 28, 2017 9:23 AM

Threatening retaliation against a Federal Inspector General isn't even a crime any more, I don't think.

Troll Magnet -> NoDebt , Nov 28, 2017 9:56 AM

Everyday citizens should have the right to threaten all federal employees, not the other way around.

My crotch itches -> NoDebt , Nov 28, 2017 9:58 AM

Apparently neither is perjury or mishandling classified information.

BetterRalph -> My crotch itches , Nov 28, 2017 10:28 AM

This pisses me off the most out of the entire thread. How this is possible is both amazing and unsustainable. People should be rolled up and in supermax with red eyes from being questioned 24/7

green sheen -> NoDebt , Nov 28, 2017 11:00 AM

incredible

Consuelo -> NoDebt , Nov 28, 2017 11:27 AM

Cool. Should serfs like us then give it a whirl - just for giggles...?

Rex Andrus -> NoDebt , Nov 28, 2017 12:34 PM

Racketeering https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-96

Extortion https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/927

By government goons https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/872

and Threats https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-41

tmosley -> pods , Nov 28, 2017 9:29 AM

Everyone seems to have missed the process that is going on here. There are numerous steps required to "lock her up", and they must be taken in the correct order. These include things like "overthrowing the Saudi government and replacing it with a more friendly leader", "destroying the credibility of the MSM", "exposing the crimes of the intelligence community", "exposing sexual (and other) abuse among the neoliberal donor class", etc.

This is a massive and complicated system that is being unwound. It was never going to happen overnight. Prosecutions will come, but only after they have lost their ability to evade the consequences of their actions. I suspect we are getting very close now. I think it will happen before the midterms.

two hoots -> tmosley , Nov 28, 2017 9:49 AM

There is some reason this won't die? Strange these people keep coming out of the woodwork?

Trump could save a lot of face if he could get, at a minimum, public acceptance of Hillary and the Clinton group exposed and verified as corrupt and dishonest. Could we see a trial, not sure but think a special counsel that drags out the truth would be most helpful.

Hillary has been distressed, biting her nails lately but then she just did a glory days speech in China where she hit at Trump and Tillerson for poor performance? She may be attempting to collect herself knowing she faces some critical headwinds shortly, one can hope?

???ö? -> two hoots , Nov 28, 2017 9:53 AM

Well fuck me. Looks like "obstruction of justice". Where's the MSM?

Troll Magnet -> ???ö? , Nov 28, 2017 9:59 AM

Getting ready to cover another false flag event perhaps? They're gonna need to bring down more high-risers to sweep this under the rug. What's Mossad up to these days?

My crotch itches -> two hoots , Nov 28, 2017 10:06 AM

"Hillary has been distressed,biting her nails lately" I don't think so. The woman is a pure psychopath. Noone (even his most ardent supporters) can truthfully deny that Trump is a narcissictic asshole. That's ok, and even admirable by some. But this bitch is pure evil with no conscience and a lust for power and money unequalled in our lifetime.

Chupacabra-322 -> My crotch itches , Nov 28, 2017 10:26 AM

@ My,

It's why I refer to her in conversation as: Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopath Hillary Clinton.Describes her perfectly.

BetterRalph -> two hoots , Nov 28, 2017 11:03 AM

why do they use the SARS law against me when I want to bank with money over $10,000 or at 10 (hell I don't even know what the details of this BS law is exactly but I know it BITES "normal people" if you screw up) so why not use that against the Clinton Foundation, or Soros. Then they can be in supermax awaiting trial. And we can start getting a new narrative that holds truth and therefore light at the end of this dark hell. If SOROS, and CLINTON and Lynch and Holder and on and can't be arrested then there's no LAW ANYMORE

they are the ones actually funding domestic terrorists vs me or grandma ripping off our savings and saying we're scum

you think the chains that keep the dogs from biting will hold much longer? You better be right.

nunyabidnez -> two hoots , Nov 28, 2017 11:31 AM

I doubt anything will happen to her, that's why mueller was appointed, so he can destroy any damaging evidence, and he has a boatload of clintonista backup.

shitshitshit -> tmosley , Nov 28, 2017 10:50 AM

getting a gun for hire do the dirty job would be quite a shortcut, wouldn't it?

343 Guilty Spark -> pods , Nov 28, 2017 11:55 AM

Actually Trump pardoning her would not necessarily be a bad thing. According to the Supreme Court a pardon is an admission of guilt and therefore claiming the 5th amendment is no longer a viable alternative. So if Trump were to pardon Hillary, she would be forced to provide testimony on EVERYTHING. Sure she wouldn't go to jail (unless she lies under oath) but her and Bill's corruption scheme would be completely destroyed and she would be done forever.

I am not saying this is preferable but it is an alternative.

krispkritter -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 10:56 AM

Is there such as thing as a 'perp drag'?

AsinineBovineFeces -> krispkritter , Nov 28, 2017 11:56 AM

I'm sure a citizens arrest would involve that. Could also be useful during questioning, trial and sentencing.

AsinineBovineFeces -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 11:53 AM

>Can't handle stairs

>Spotted hiking in the woods

GUS100CORRINA -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 11:54 AM

Obama-Appointed Federal Inspector Threatened By Clinton Campaign Over Email Investigation

My response: I will bet there were a lot of people who wanted to come forward, but were afraid for their lives and well being if they did come forward.

Under Obama, this is called tyranny.

343 Guilty Spark -> GUS100CORRINA , Nov 28, 2017 12:00 PM

I completely agree. It is astounding on how much illegal and unconstitutional Obama's actions were and yet he is boasted as being such an amazing president. It is also incredibly odd that the MSM forgets how Obama literally used the intelligence apparatus to spy on journalists and had raids done on them for publishing leaks.

Kidbuck -> GUS100CORRINA , Nov 28, 2017 12:24 PM

kidbuck has worked at a half dozen government agencies both federal and state. Saw felonious behavior at every site. The whistle blower ALWAYS fared worse than the felons. It has to do with the fact that so many people observed the illegal behavior and said and did nothing that they were effectively condoning it and thus guilty themselves.

Ajax-1 -> overbet , Nov 28, 2017 9:11 AM

I have no doubt that the Secret Service would love to drop her worthless ass off at prison and be done with the old hag. However, this brings up an interesting point. If she were sentenced to prison, would she be required to forfeit her Secret Service protective detail?

Han Cholo -> Ajax-1 , Nov 28, 2017 9:30 AM

She would be a felon, not entitled to it I would believe.

BarkingCat -> Ajax-1 , Nov 28, 2017 10:06 AM

I was just thinking the same thing.

If she goes to jail does the Secret Service go with her?

BetterRalph -> BarkingCat , Nov 28, 2017 11:11 AM

Nullify the detail, strip em away, they are needed elsewhere. She'll have supermax guards instead.

Shitonya Serfs -> BetterRalph , Nov 28, 2017 11:29 AM

Wouldn't need guards if she's in gitmo or solitary or drop her off in Libia

BetterRalph -> Ajax-1 , Nov 28, 2017 11:06 AM

JUST DO IT!

oldmanofthesee -> overbet , Nov 28, 2017 9:49 AM

Sorry to be so repetitive, but my wife reminds me "they never put each other in jail".

Chupacabra-322 -> oldmanofthesee , Nov 28, 2017 10:43 AM

It's the mechanism of how Crime Syndicate's function specifically the Criminal Globalist Administions that have been able to Tyrannically Govern with Impunity decade after decade.

Present Administration's never Investigate previous ones out of fear that future Administrations may investigate the current one.

Thus, making them Criminal Accessories to previous Administrations War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Crimes Against The American People.

War Criminal Obama's "moving forward" on War Criminal Bush Administration Torture, Lying The American People into War, the beginning of mass Surveillance of The American room 641A at Criminal AT&T are but just some examples of the Tyrannical Lawlessness we see before us.

There are absolutely No stature of limitations on War Crimes.

JRobby -> Shitonya Serfs , Nov 28, 2017 10:08 AM

This is standard cartel operating procedures. Same as the Mob, DDB. The Mob takes their orders from the elites.

takeaction -> Rainman , Nov 28, 2017 10:18 AM

SETH

chubbar -> enough of this , Nov 28, 2017 8:27 AM

She had SAP documents that she was not authorized to have in her possession, she sold them to overseas donors and yet Sessions is doing NOTHING about this? Trump needs to fire that asshole along with every FBI motherfucker that has obstructed or otherwise delayed/obfuscated this fact. Also, a full investigation on who leaked this information to Hillary. There are only a handful of people read in on any specific program. It shouldn't be hard to polygraph each one of those read in to the specific program they found on her server. This is a fucking outrage and the fact that idiot Sessions is doing nothing is just as great an outrage as Hillary. They are both fucking traitors!

Jack McGriff -> chubbar , Nov 28, 2017 8:38 AM

Sessions is too busy going after States that legalized cannabis and ramping up civil asset forfeiture. Sessions will never go after Clinton because he is deathly afraid of prosecuting politicians and believes "only banana republics go after political opponents." So there you have it, straight from the AG's mouth. Criminals can be successful and immune from prosecution if they are in the club of "politics." As a politician, anything goes. Rules for thee and not for me as the saying goes. Thanks, Jeff! Fucking coward!

JRobby -> Jack McGriff , Nov 28, 2017 10:14 AM

Sessions (and big pharma) needs to face the reality that legal weed is here to stay. If they let the industry access the banking system ( instead of risking money laundering and wire fraud charges) it would grow even faster.

Let's face it, GOVT hates small entrepreneurship business so that means they hate us, hate job growth, hate widespread prosperity.

AsinineBovineFeces -> Jack McGriff , Nov 28, 2017 11:49 AM

Sessions' most current statements do not reflect that. CAF is becoming a problem in terms of crooked cops and ordinary people exploited by them however, these laws may help crush groups such as MS13 as well as some swamp creatures so it may be a necessary evil for a time. We just need to stay vigilant and apply great pressure when abuse occurs.

/semper vigilans

847328_3527 -> chubbar , Nov 28, 2017 8:38 AM

She sold out America to foreign enemies. In former days when we had a Rule of Law, Hillary would be indicted and found guilty of espionage (at the least) and executed.

JRobby -> 847328_3527 , Nov 28, 2017 10:17 AM

But no corpse abuse after execution. We aren't barbarians!

[Jul 28, 2017] One of the key figures of anti-Trump coup Clapper has outright lied to congress -- former FBI agent

Jul 28, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Northern Star ,

July 24, 2017 at 9:50 am
How many of the lapdog media present dared to even 'whimper' a question that challenged in any way these two fascists???

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/24/trum-j24.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/no-way-no-how-no-brennan/208302/

https://www.sott.net/article/340016-Outgoing-CIA-director-Brennan-sets-conditions-for-Trump-and-expresses-pride-in-war-crimes-during-interview

[Jul 01, 2017] Clapper as the major figure in anti-Trump putch

Notable quotes:
"... Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a "special intelligence community assessment" (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, "a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community," the former DNI said. ..."
"... Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and NSA. ..."
"... Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you "hand-pick" the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did. ..."
"... The point of enlisting the broader intelligence community – and incorporating dissents into a final report – is to guard against such "stove-piping" of intelligence that delivers the politically desired result but ultimately distorts reality. ..."
"... Another painful example of politicized intelligence was President George W. Bush's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD that removed State Department and other dissents from the declassified version that was given to the public. ..."
"... Since Clapper's and Brennan's testimony in May, the Times and other mainstream news outlets have avoided a direct contradiction of their earlier acceptance of the 17-intelligence-agencies canard by simply referring to a judgment by "the intelligence community." ..."
"... For instance, on May 31 at a technology conference in California, Clinton referred to the Jan. 6 report , asserting that "Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election." ..."
"... The failure of the major news organizations to clarify this point about the 17 agencies may have contributed to Haberman's mistake on June 25 as she simply repeated the groupthink that nearly all the Important People in Washington just knew to be true. ..."
"... But the Times' belated correction also underscores the growing sense that the U.S. mainstream media has joined in a political vendetta against Trump and has cast aside professional standards to the point of repeating false claims designed to denigrate him. ..."
Jun 29, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Original title: NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard by Robert Parry June 29, 2017

Exclusive: A founding Russia-gate myth is that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that Russia hacked into and distributed Democratic emails, a falsehood that The New York Times has belatedly retracted, reports Robert Parry.

The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true.

In the Times' White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for "still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected."

However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of Haberman's ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies - the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."

The Times' grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents.

The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate assessment was admitted in May by President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Obama's CIA Director John Brennan in sworn congressional testimony.

Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a "special intelligence community assessment" (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, "a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community," the former DNI said.

Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you "hand-pick" the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.

Politicized Intelligence

In the history of U.S. intelligence, we have seen how this selective approach has worked, such as the phony determination of the Reagan administration pinning the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and other acts of terror on the Soviet Union.

Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference on May 31, 2017.

CIA Director William Casey and Deputy Director Robert Gates shepherded the desired findings through the process by putting the assessment under the control of pliable analysts and sidelining those who objected to this politicization of intelligence.

The point of enlisting the broader intelligence community – and incorporating dissents into a final report – is to guard against such "stove-piping" of intelligence that delivers the politically desired result but ultimately distorts reality.

Another painful example of politicized intelligence was President George W. Bush's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD that removed State Department and other dissents from the declassified version that was given to the public.

Since Clapper's and Brennan's testimony in May, the Times and other mainstream news outlets have avoided a direct contradiction of their earlier acceptance of the 17-intelligence-agencies canard by simply referring to a judgment by "the intelligence community."

That finessing of their earlier errors has allowed Hillary Clinton and other senior Democrats to continue referencing this fictional consensus without challenge, at least in the mainstream media.

For instance, on May 31 at a technology conference in California, Clinton referred to the Jan. 6 report , asserting that "Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election."

The failure of the major news organizations to clarify this point about the 17 agencies may have contributed to Haberman's mistake on June 25 as she simply repeated the groupthink that nearly all the Important People in Washington just knew to be true.

But the Times' belated correction also underscores the growing sense that the U.S. mainstream media has joined in a political vendetta against Trump and has cast aside professional standards to the point of repeating false claims designed to denigrate him.

That, in turn, plays into Trump's Twitter complaints that he and his administration are the targets of a "witch hunt" led by the "fake news" media, a grievance that appears to be energizing his supporters and could discredit whatever ongoing investigations eventually conclude.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Jun 27, 2017] Loretta Lynch, the ex-Justice Minister, appearing to be becoming a target based on her defence of the Harpy from criminal liability for the email server during the 2016 campaign.

Notable quotes:
"... The fact that the Hersh piece was published in one of Germany's ueber-establishment organs, Die Welt, is significant. It means that Germany is no longer on board, and I don't see Macron, though he is an empty suit, doing a 180 like some fear, since he takes many of his orders from Merkel. ..."
www.unz.com

exiled off mainstreet | Jun 27, 2017 10:33:18 AM | 25

I go along with comments 14 and 15 and see it actually as a response intended to defend against the inference from the Hersh piece that Trump revealed himself to be a moron for succumbing despite the evidence to media propaganda.

I think that the problem is that Trump is less than fully in control of elements of his government, possibly even Spicer, as evidenced by the failure to inform the state dept, military and others of the statement, which may not have been fully vetted. I wouldn't be surprised if Spicer's time as press secretary is limited.

The fact that the Hersh piece was published in one of Germany's ueber-establishment organs, Die Welt, is significant. It means that Germany is no longer on board, and I don't see Macron, though he is an empty suit, doing a 180 like some fear, since he takes many of his orders from Merkel.

It is seriously disconcerting that the neocons still seem to be able to rule the roost. If any "chemical" attack occurs within a few days or longer away, it will be extremely suspect. Meanwhile, the Russia conspiracy stories in the US seem to be in the early stages of blowing up, with a CNN official being exposed as admitting it was all propaganda, and Loretta Lynch, the ex-Justice Minister, appearing to be becoming a target based on her defence of the Harpy from criminal liability for the email server during the 2016 campaign.

In light of these facts, I think the whole thing more likely shows weakness and disarray, not a serious conspiratorial threat of armageddon, though it could end up blowing up in that direction.

[Jun 17, 2017] Clappers Unhinged Russia-Bashing by David Marks

Notable quotes:
"... That Clapper would offer such a one-sided account of the reasons behind the worsening antagonisms and the emerging arms race – leaving out the fact that the United States, despite its own budgetary and economic problems, spends about ten times more on its military than Russia does – suggests that he is not an objective witness on anything regarding Russia. ..."
"... Clapper's shrill voice confirms his cold-warrior perspective, caught in the past but applying his thinking to the present, still believing that he has a special understanding of America's interests and is protecting them. Clearly, the Russians have been at the center of Clapper's frustrations for many years and Russia-gate just gives him the opportunity to rekindle anti-Moscow hysteria. ..."
"... Clapper has since been a star congressional witness pushing Russia-gate and his confidence in Putin's guilt. But Clapper did acknowledge that the Jan. 6 report – besides containing no actual evidence – was prepared by "handpicked" analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, not from a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies as had been widely reported. ..."
"... So, as we listen to the debate on Russia-gate, Clapper and his fellow national-security-state representatives are revealing not just their political perspectives but deeply disturbed minds. Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process. They perceive themselves as the cure when they are a primary cause of the illness they denounce. ..."
"... Undiscovered Self ..."
"... then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction ..."
"... In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions – ..."
"... no way to bold that statement ..."
Jun 15, 2017 | consortiumnews.com
Exclusive: Russia-gate's credibility rests heavily on ex-Director of National Intelligence Clapper who oversaw a "trust us" report, but a recent speech shows Clapper to be unhinged about Russia, as David Marks describes.

Whatever the ultimate truth about the murky Russia-gate affair, it appears that it is Donald Trump's willingness to consider friendship and cooperation with the Russians that is driving this emotional debate.

For some of the older U.S. intelligence and military officers, there appears to be a residual distrust and fear of Moscow, a hangover from the Cold War now transferred, perhaps almost subliminally, into the New Cold War and a sense that Russia is America's eternal enemy.

James Clapper, President Obama's last Director of National Intelligence, is a fascinating example of how this antagonism toward Russia never seems to change, as he revealed in a June 7 speech to the Australian National Press Club.

"The Russians are not our friends; they (Putin specifically), are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared.

In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions – expanding NATO to Russia's borders, renouncing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and locating new missile bases in Eastern Europe. Instead, Clapper blamed the renewed arms race and resulting tensions on the Russians:

"The Russians are embarked on a very aggressive and disturbing program to modernize their strategic forces - notably their submarine and land-based nuclear forces. They have also made big investments in their counter-space capabilities. They do all this - despite their economic challenges - with only one adversary in mind: the United States. And, just for good measure, they are also in active violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty."

That Clapper would offer such a one-sided account of the reasons behind the worsening antagonisms and the emerging arms race – leaving out the fact that the United States, despite its own budgetary and economic problems, spends about ten times more on its military than Russia does – suggests that he is not an objective witness on anything regarding Russia.

A Shrill Voice

Clapper's shrill voice confirms his cold-warrior perspective, caught in the past but applying his thinking to the present, still believing that he has a special understanding of America's interests and is protecting them. Clearly, the Russians have been at the center of Clapper's frustrations for many years and Russia-gate just gives him the opportunity to rekindle anti-Moscow hysteria.

Clapper is repeating with new gusto what he has sold to recent presidents, Republicans and Democrats, for decades. His entire attack on Trump beats the drum of Russian deviousness. Yet, Clapper ignores the context of the Russians actions.

Time magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsin's reelection as Russian president in 1996.

Way ahead of the Russians, the U.S. intelligence community mastered computer hacking and mounted the first known software attack on a country's strategic infrastructure by – along with Israel – unleashing the Stuxnet cyber-attack against Iranian centrifuges. U.S. intelligence also has a long record of subverting elections and toppling elected leaders, both before and since the computer age.

But Clapper only sees evil in Russia, even during the 1990s when the U.S. government advisers and American political operatives were propping up President Boris Yeltsin amid the rapacious privatizing of Russia's industries and resources, which made Russian oligarchs and their U.S. advisers very rich.

Clapper said, "Interestingly, every one of the non-acting Prime Ministers of Russia since 1992 has come from one of two domains: the oil and gas sector, or the security services. To put this in perspective, and as I have pointed out to U.S. audiences, suppose the last ten presidents of the U.S. were either CIA officers, or the Chairman of Exxon-Mobil. I think this gives you some insight into the dominant mind-set of the Russian government."

With such remarks, Clapper acts as if he doesn't know much about recent U.S. government staffing, which has been dominated by people with backgrounds in the oil industry, leading Wall Street banks, and the intelligence community. Indeed, the man who brought Clapper from Air Force intelligence into the White House was President George H.W. Bush, former director of the CIA and an oil company executive.

Bush's son, George W., also came from the oil industry, as did his Vice President Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, both Republican and Democratic administrations have filled senior economic policy positions from the ranks of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks. And the U.S. intelligence community has wielded broad power over the few recent U.S. presidents, such as Barack Obama, who came into the White House with more limited government and private-sector experience.

Clapper, having been a senior executive for Booz Allen Hamilton, knows full well that giant intelligence contractors have a powerful influence in how they serve U.S. interests with an eye to profiteering from conflict. And along with Clapper, other White House advisers drift between intelligence contractors and government.

It's also true that a U.S. president doesn't need to have previous employment within the oil sector to do its bidding. Considering the influence of the millions spent on campaign donations and lobbying by the industry, the U.S. government is easily wed to oil and gas – as well as to the military and intelligence complex – at least as much as the Russian government. Indeed, the current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was the Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil.

Classic Projection

Clapper's perception of the Russians as evil for allegedly practicing the same sins as the U.S. government exemplifies classic projection of the highest order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

In case after case, Clapper justifies painting darkness onto the Russians with half the data, while ignoring the information that cancels out his perspective. Perhaps he is representative of many in Washington who have lost their rationality and morality in defense of the greatness of the United States. His ethics become situational.

As Director of National Intelligence, Clapper lied to Congress in 2013 about the National Security Agency's massive gathering of private data from Americans. Clapper's deception gave the final push to Edward Snowden who revealed the truth about NSA surveillance.

Subsequently, Clapper led the charge against Snowden, while excusing his own false congressional testimony by saying, "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner."

Despite this history, the U.S. mainstream media has treated Clapper as a great truth-teller as he adds ever more fuel to the Russia-gate fires. From his Australian speech, most news outlets highlighted his best news-bite, when he declared: "Watergate pales, really, in my view compared to what we're confronting now."

Like other powerful government officials, Clapper may think it is his duty to a higher cause that allows him to defy the truth and transcend the law, a classic symptom of the super-patriot who thinks he knows best what's good for America, a dangerous creature that the U.S. government seems to produce in quantity.

In that sense, Clapper has played a central role in Russia-gate. He was the official who oversaw the key Jan. 6 report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. After promising much public evidence, he released a report that amounted to "trust us."

Clapper has since been a star congressional witness pushing Russia-gate and his confidence in Putin's guilt. But Clapper did acknowledge that the Jan. 6 report – besides containing no actual evidence – was prepared by "handpicked" analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, not from a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies as had been widely reported.

So, as we listen to the debate on Russia-gate, Clapper and his fellow national-security-state representatives are revealing not just their political perspectives but deeply disturbed minds. Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process. They perceive themselves as the cure when they are a primary cause of the illness they denounce.

In 1956, in the Undiscovered Self , the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote about the state of the human mind and how it affected the political world: "And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within.

"We are again living in an age filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of that split, symbolized by the Iron Curtain, which divides humanity into two halves? What will become of our civilization and man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread?"

Jung's words still ring with foreboding truth.

David Marks is a veteran documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter. His work includes films for the BBC and PBS, including Nazi Gold, on the role of Switzerland in WWII and biographies of Jimi Hendrix and Frank Sinatra.

mike k , June 15, 2017 at 9:38 pm

Once you clear away the cobwebs of cultural conditioning, the truth of many things becomes obvious. One does not need the authority of a Carl Jung or anyone to see what is right in front of your eyes. The amazing thing is that people can be so easily deluded to ignore the reality all around them. One of the purposes of meditation in the spiritual traditions of mankind is to clear a space in one's mind that is fresh and unconditioned. Without this cleansing of the consciousness, only those things one's conditioning permits can be seen.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 1:16 am

If ((("TPTB"))), even if they are only very temporary in the scheme of the time of the Universe, come here and read this, they are either too common-cored to understand the truth of it and change for the better or they are still smart enough to understand it and are laughing all the way to the temporary bank.
If you understand reincarnation you understand that your future personalities will be in-line with the immutable Universal laws of Consciousness-Evolution and Cause & Effect and the next one, at the least, won't be so easy and pretty for you, in view of the lesson that one just isn't learning at a normal Universal standard; the laws of the Universe simply don't allow for degradation to continue unabated so that evolution can take place in the allotted time, it will provide the necessary wake-up call in all it's required force.
Even though all of us who have made it here to read the great articles on this website know, deep down inside, that we are all equal in the grand scheme of all good thoughts, feelings and actions, we know that we are just that little bit ahead of the curve and it would behoove us to accept our and their respective positions in the curve and help them out, come what may.
Hoota Thunk I'd see you around these parts. ;->

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:38 am

These deviants in "intelligence" should have been brought under control long before they killed Kennedy, but they weren't. They've been allowed to self select themselves, with each generation of sociopaths cultivating an even more deranged next generation. I guess that Hoover had so much dirt on every pol ever elected to high office that few had the guts to challenge these most dangerous menaces to our freedoms and democracy. Even if a courageous president could chop off the "heads" of these traitorous agencies their conditioned subordinates would be hard to root out. You read of rumors, though I've seen no evidence but ambiguous grainy photos, that these maniacs actually practice satanic blood rituals and the like. I prefer not to believe such things, but what kind of perverted thinking motivates the very damaging policies driven by these agencies, which bring us to the brink of nuclear war for no discernible reason. How is it allowed for them to blackmail public figures like MLK, threatening to ruin his marriage and destroy his reputation unless he commits suicide? These are not "good" virtuous men. They are not protecting or upholding "American" values. They are sick control freaks.

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 9:48 pm

If people like James Clapper and their statements become sources for American history in the early 21st Century, then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction.

The decadence of Washington is obvious when a senate intelligence (?) committee invites Clapper to give evidence after his blatant lie about torture to a former convocation of the committee. The United States senate is the world's greatest deliberative body? What a crock of shit!! Who was the idiot who gave the first utterance to that meretricious nonsense?

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 9:50 pm

then the works of historians should be filed under non-fiction

Ooops: That should be "under fiction."

Gregory Herr , June 15, 2017 at 11:13 pm

And only a blatant liar could characterize his lying as speaking in "the most truthful, or least untruthful" manner.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:40 am

I was absolutely amazed when I heard that. What kind of BS does he expect the world to fall for? It really shows his utter arrogance and distain for us "proles". His not being arrested for lying to Congress and the American people shows the ridiculousness of believing there is "equal justice for all" in the USA.

Pete , June 16, 2017 at 6:52 am

Bill, reading your comment, I am reminded of a similar assessment given Washington and it's august Senate by British MP George Galloway, during a Senate sub-committee hearing in May 2005, on his 'alleged' receipt of bribe monies from Iraq's Saddam Hussein. His absolutely devastating verbal attack upon the committee, chaired by Sen. N. Coleman, is a must view for those who haven't seen it online.

Bill Bodden , June 15, 2017 at 10:04 pm

In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government's own role in the mounting tensions –

Gregory Barrett has an interesting recap of U.S. and Russian histories: "The Russians Didn't Do It" – https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/15/the-russians-didnt-do-it/

Helen Marshall , June 17, 2017 at 12:19 pm

When I posted this on Facebook, a "liberal" friend made several angy comments about EVIL Russia and then accused me of being a traitor for "defending a sworn enemy of our country."

In today's climate that kind of charge is not trivial. Watch out when you share it!

Jessica K , June 15, 2017 at 11:02 pm

Great article by Gregory Barrett from Counterpunch, thanks, Bill. Worth sending around. Send a pile of copies to Clapper. That guy is either sick or evil, maybe both. Couldn't he disappear or something? "Clap-on, clap-off, it's the Clapper!" (Preferably "clap-off".) Maybe too much Booz he's been imbibing.

Gary Hare , June 15, 2017 at 11:19 pm

I wouldn't single Clapper out. The entire Washington establishment, and Mainstream Media, appear unhinged, deranged, absolutely stupid. That is unless you consider why they are this way. Are they not promoting the need for more military spending, about the only thing in which the US leads the World these days. Does this not make them feel alpha, tough, patriotic and falsely proud. Classic self-delusion. Or is it cunning propaganda?
What bothers me just as much, is that Clapper's speech was widely reported here in Australia, without a single word of criticism from Australian politicians or the media. However low the US stoops, we seem to get right down there with them.
I watched on YouTube a segment on Colbert interviewing (there must be a better word to describe this fiasco) Oliver Stone. Colbert was infantile. The audience reminiscent of a cheer squad for a college football game. No-one was interested in what Stone had to say. Too few people realise how dangerous this empty-headed jingoism is.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 1:45 am

G'Day Gary,
I think it is SBS that is airing The Putin Interviews starting either Sunday or Monday night, depending on your region.
Happy viewing and ammo for counter-attacks on stupidity!
airdates.tv at last resort in the future
Hoota Thunk.

Craig Watson , June 16, 2017 at 7:58 am

All of Stone's Putin interviews were published for everyone to watch on Information Clearinghouse yesterday:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47246.htm .

You don't need cable TV to see them now.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:43 am

Wow. Thanks for that. I really need to send ICH some money.

john wilson , June 16, 2017 at 5:13 am

Obviously, Garry, they are not unhinged they are simply looking after their own interests. The removal of Trump is essential to their plans for some kind of fight with Russia, so the rubbish about Russia gate and anything else is of course, pure lies and make believe. They all wanted Hillary who was a proven war monger and who they could manipulate to do their bidding. Had she won there would probably be some kind of open conflict in Syria with the USA, Russia and Iran bu now. War makes money so any one who has the temerity to suggest peace, is a threat and has to be got rid of.

Jessica K , June 15, 2017 at 11:38 pm

Good observations, Gary. Unfortunately, Clapper has played a large role in the development of this Russiagate fiasco, as former head of the CIA and overseeing of the phony documents that allegedly pointed to "Russian hacking" in the election. You are right that the whole bunch of the MIC bureaucrats depend on ginning up for war. And we had a conversation on CN a couple of days ago about Colbert, who is hugely overpaid for being nothing more than snide and smarmy. That's what passes for entertainment nowadays. Google today shows all the vicious and nasty published articles about the Putin interviews, such as the tabloids Daily Mail, Daily Star, also The Guardian, and no doubt there are other polemics. Hard to contemplate that this is the 21st century when human development was supposed to be advancing due to all the amazing technology, when actually it is regressing.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:22 am

Clapper has been one of the guys charged with creating Karl Rove's "new realities." He thinks he's a god.

Skip Scott , June 16, 2017 at 9:45 am

So far he seems to be getting away with it.

Gregory Herr , June 15, 2017 at 11:48 pm

"Thursday's appearance by fired FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee has raised the anti-Russian hysteria in the US media to a new level. The former head of the US political police denounced supposed Russian interference in the US elections as a dire threat to American democracy. "They're going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of," he warned. "And they will be back they are coming for America."
None of the capitalist politicians who questioned him challenged the premise that Russia was the principal enemy of the United States, or that Russian hacking was a significant threat to the US electoral system. None of them suggested that the billions funneled into the US elections by Wall Street interests were a far greater threat to the democratic rights of the American people .

the political issues in the anti-Russian campaign, which represents an effort by the most powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the Democratic Party and the bulk of the corporate media, to force the Trump White House to adhere to the foreign policy offensive against Moscow embarked on during the second term of the Obama administration, particularly since the 2014 US-backed ultra-right coup in Ukraine.
Those factions of the ruling class and intelligence agencies leading the anti-Russia campaign are particularly incensed that Russian intervention in Syria stymied plans to escalate the proxy civil war in that country into a full-fledged regime-change operation. They want to see Assad in Syria meet the same fate as Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Their fanatical hatred of Putin indicates that they have similar ambitions in mind for the Russian president.
The entire framework of the anti-Russian campaign is fraudulent. The military-intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and the media are following a well-established pattern of manufacturing phony scandals, previously a specialty of the Republican right:

Of what does the "undermining" of US democracy by alleged Russian hacking consist? No vote totals were altered. No ballots were discarded, as in Florida in 2000 when the antidemocratic campaign was spearheaded by the US Supreme Court. Instead, truthful information was supplied anonymously to WikiLeaks, which published the material, showing that the Democratic National Committee had worked to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton had cozied up to Wall Street audiences and reassured them that a new Clinton administration would be in the pocket of the big financial interests

Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she ran as the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus and made no appeal to working-class discontent. This was after eight years during which Obama had intensified the economic stagnation, wage cutting and austerity that had been going on for decades, while overseeing a further growth in social inequality

[The Democrats] have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia."

https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming/

george Archers , June 17, 2017 at 7:51 am

Excuses. "Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she ran as the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus and made no appeal to working-class discontent." pure garbage
Listen folks,Both parties take turns every 8 years like clock work–except one term Jimmy Carter who p!ssed off Israel firsters. Hillary was in it for the election donations collected.

, June 15, 2017 at 11:50 pm

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis, speaking truth to power Mr Marks, alarming how democracies are so chaotic?

The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Super patriots defying truth and transcending laws, his ethics becoming situational, which checks and balances are implemented to reign in the retired general?

Cal , June 16, 2017 at 12:41 am

Remember the neos and zios "Project for the New American Century that preceded the Iraq war?

Well Clapper is with the same group-except they have a new name now still lying and lobbying for the US to control the universe

Center for a New American Security

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/extending-american-power-strategies-to-expand-u-s-engagement-in-a-competitive-world-order

irina , June 16, 2017 at 12:58 am

Clapper said something so astounding on 'Meet the Press' on May 28th that I found the transcript and printed it out.

In the context of Jared Kushner meeting with Sergei Kislyak, Clapper said "I will tell you that my dashboard warning
light was clearly on and I think that was the case with all of us in the intelligence community, very concerned about
the nature of these approaches to the Russians. If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians
were doing to interfere with the election. And just the historical practices of the Russians, who (are) typically, ALMOST
GENETICALLY DRIVEN TO CO-OPT, PENETRATE, GAIN FAVOR, WHATEVER, which is a typical Russian technique.
So we were concerned."

(Apologies for caps, no way to bold that statement and it is an extremely scary and revealing phrase.)

Chuck Todd ignored Clapper's "genetically driven" diatribe and soldiered on, reinforcing 'the Russians did it' meme.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 10:36 am

That was quite a racist statement, was it not? If he had applied the remarks to any other distinct group of people Chuck Todd would have gone ballistic, playing the race card for all it's worth in the grand American tradition.

Bill Bodden , June 16, 2017 at 11:38 am

no way to bold that statement

There is. At the beginning of the text to be set in bold, type the word "strong" inside . At the end type "/strong" inside but not the quotation marks shown in this example.

Bill Bodden , June 16, 2017 at 11:46 am

Oops: After "inside" above there should have been a less-than sign ""

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 12:59 am

The profits of War drive people like Clapper to do some hideous and unquestionable things. The beast they feed is the same beast Rumsfeld gave a speech about on 9/10/01 where he sighted the Pentagon not being able to account for 2.5 trillion dollars. If you recall last summer the DOD year ending June 2016 sighted another missing 6.5 trillion dollars this time tripling the 2001 unaccountability. This is a known unaccountability of 9 trillion dollars by the Defense Department so far this 21st Century that no one is even talking about. When a nation can spill this much coffee and not worry about it, then you know that the people spending this nations well earned capital aren't spending their own money, but they no doubt are profiting from all this saber rattling and war. Imagine the defense budgets with Russia in it's crosshairs.

http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2016-113.pdf

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 5:36 am

Joe, have you seen this? https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Intelligence

"Also killed in the Pentagon on 9/11 were a large number of budget analysts and accountants who may have been looking into the $2.3 trillion of unaccounted military spending that Donald Rumsfeld announced on Sept 10th, 2001."[

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 7:20 am

This is something to new to me, but when it comes to 911 I have seen other similar things like it, like building #7. Nice of you Gregory to share this with me, thanks.

When it comes to 911, there are so many questions that I just wish there were somebody who could answer them. Yet, questioning any of the oddities regarding the 911 Attack will get you a 'tinfoil hat' since this is what we Americans do to each other these days over things such as assassinations or other unexplained tragedies. Like having doubts over Russia-Gate will deem you being a Trump Supporter or Putin Apologize.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 10:50 am

Since you bring up 9-11 and the inconsistencies in its narrative, I just want to ask the question: Why didn't that high rise tower in London collapse under its own weight like the twin towers in NYC, especially since the fire appeared to be so much more intense? It wasn't just a localised burn, the entire structure was engulfed in flames. And, no, rebar-strengthened concrete is not more resistant than steel girders to damage from high temperatures. Concrete will more likely crack than steel girders will melt in a fire. I look for the structural engineers to chime in on this one.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:43 pm

My dad always told me: "Never be above the third floor in an apartment building or a hotel. The smoke will get you before the fire does." Good advice. A fire fighter's worst nightmare, a hi-rise fire. As the London fire points out, they can be death traps.

Yeah, buildings don't just fall down. 9/11 was most definitely a controlled demolition, and if a proper investigation were conducted, "controlled demolition" would scream out at everyone with half a brain.

If you haven't seen this half-hour video, give it a watch. It's one of my favorites because the guy is a physicist/mathematician who used to work for N.I.S.T. He had never before questioned the findings, at least until August of 2016 when he started looking at it. He couldn't believe what he found.

Especially watch at 18:03 when he starts talking about the collapse. "Asymmetric damage does not lead to symmetric collapse. It's very difficult to get something to collapse symmetrically because it is the law of physics that things tend towards chaos. Collapsing symmetrically represents order, very strict order. It is not the nature of physics to gravitate towards order for no reason."

And:

"Huge chunks of steel perimeter beams flying hundreds of feet off to the side. Steel does not fly off to the side, hundreds of feet, due to gravity. Gravity works vertically, not laterally. There has to be a FORCE there pushing it to the side, otherwise it would just fall down to the ground. It would be like dropping a ball out of a window. It would just fall straight down."

The video is called "Former NIST Employee Speaks Out On World Trade Centre Towers Collapse Investigation".

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:44 pm

Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_jQgIEnI8

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 1:50 pm

Other examples: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 9:50 pm

Honestly Realist I thought the same thing when I saw that high rise ablaze. I even made mention of it to my wife, commenting to how that is the way a high rise burns, not like 911. Now, Realist how many others had the same thought, as you and I.

Realist , June 17, 2017 at 2:27 am

Quite a powerful video by that analyst from Wisconsin, backwardsevolution.
I have read analyses by physicists and engineers of the collapses, mostly through PCR's website, but I had not seen that video with all the slo-mo shots parallel to computer models. Why is that production never shown on American television? Why was NIST so remiss in its analysis, as the narrator points out? Of course, we know the answers to both questions. The truth will never be admitted by any authorities in our life times, or even in our children's life times. Maybe in 50 years when all the blame can be placed on corpses that can't protest it will be. Even that will be done to usher in some new world order as the game never changes.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:14 am

Not a structural engineer but with knowledge and experience there. I have no prejudice as to motives and means of the WTC collapse. The WTC towers were uniformly supported by steel columns and one floor was subject to broadly distributed intense aviation fuel fire exceeding their melting point, so that floor was uniformly weakened.

Large steel columns are severely weakened by several minutes of intense petroleum fire, as I have observed myself. When a single failure occurs, adjacent components are subjected to the additional loads which is normally within their capacities by design. When those are also much weakened they too will fail, subjecting adjacent components to even greater overloads, etc. This is called "progressive failure." So filling an entire steel-supported floor with burning aircraft fuel would soon cause the entire floor to collapse in a rapid side-to-side progressive failure.

Because the floors are thin flat sections, not tall compared with their width, a quick lateral failure across the whole floor would cause the entire structure above to fall quite vertically until it hit the floor below. This in turn would severely overload all columns below that, causing the entire structure below to collapse. Because the entire support structure was uniform and was uniformly greatly overloaded, a near-vertical collapse is not surprising.

Smaller structures are usually not built that way; they have strong outer walls and a few inner "bearing walls." When part of the structure collapses, often some of the bearing walls collapse but others remain standing, so that forces on the collapsing structure are asymmetrical and it falls partly to the sides.

As to reinforced concrete columns (assuming as you suggest that these were used in the London fire), it is the concrete that provides most of the vertical support, and it does insulate the steel reinforcement rods, which mainly provide tension strength against bending loads (wind and earthquakes). The horizontal bars hold the concrete together against cracking loads during its curing and later, when it often has many small cracks. So it is not surprising that such a structure survives a fire sufficient to burn the combustibles normally inside, without a broad progressive failure.

Also it was probably not subjected to such a large. intense, and broadly-distributed fuel fire.

But of course it was defective in safety systems for a high-rise structure, and this is not permitted in the US or under the International Building Code so far as I know. It should have had smoke detectors, fireproof unit doors and hallways, sprinklers to suppress non-petroleum fires, non-combustible materials on all interior surfaces, and at least two "separate and independent" fireproof exit stairways. Presumably investigation will reveal the deficiencies in its construction, maintenance, and enforcement practices, if not in the building code itself.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:40 am

It is not necessary to remind me that there are other explanations and perhaps additional causes of the WTC fire, and that Bldg 7 apparently had intelligence offices with provision for a deliberate large fire that occurred while WTC was burning. I do not know what happened there.

I remain skeptical that persons so long and carefully prepared to attack WTC by aircraft would have prepared a distinct method of attack requiring ability to plant explosives, etc. It is not impossible but why do both? They would probably have attacked other structures with the aircraft. Also, if another attack on the same structures was planned, there is no obvious reason to wait until after the aircraft attacks to use the other method. Also, the plane that did not hit any buildings did not correspond to any structure simultaneously destroyed by other means.

So if there was another demolition means used simultaneously, we need evidence of that, and I have seen no convincing photos or reports of explosive residues. I have already looked at videos that do not in fact show this, but merely events not inconsistent with the aircraft-only model.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 7:52 am

I accept that there were motives for an attack like 911, and those parties may have been involved in the aircraft attack. But without direct evidence, our efforts are better spent investigating the sources of the aircraft attack.

We know that AlQaeda did the attack, that KSA was fairly directly involved, that AlQaeda was grown by US warmongers attacking the USSR in Afghanistan, and that US interests wanted another Pearl Harbor. That says a lot, and suggests that there is much more to be learned about US/KSA/Israel involvement that we may hope will be exposed.

backwardsevolution , June 17, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Sam F – had Building No. 7 not come down in exactly the same manner as the other two, I might have bought (maybe) what you just said. A really big "maybe". I think the reason the scientists at N.I.S.T. did not extend their models out past the collapse initiation stage is because they KNEW they wouldn't be able to replicate the building coming down in its own footprint. As the fellow in the video said, there would have been chaos and the building would have deviated to one side. No way it would have come straight down.

Could be the reason they hit the buildings with the planes was precisely to provide the excuse of the "jet fuel". "Oh, yes, it was the heat from the jet fuel. Wrap it up, boys, no more questions." I wonder whether that other plane was supposed to have hit Building No. 7, but didn't make it there. "Whoops, how do we explain this? Oh, who cares, just say the fire did it. Who is going to know the difference?"

I'm not buying any of it. Three huge buildings ALL come down on their own footprint? Yeah, right.

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 4:04 pm

I agree, b-e, the Bldg 7 collapse is very strange and suspect; and I apologize to others for the long posts above, and do not object to anyone else's views on this.

1. The lowest floors of Bldg 7 are not shown in any of the videos, only floors above maybe floor 3 or 6, none of which show any damage at the time that it collapsed. So the damage must have been to lower floors.
2. It also fell quite vertically, which is odd because that implies near-simultaneous damage across an entire floor, while the only causes related to WTC N&S would be asymmetrical debris impacts from their prior collapses.
3. There were reports of a US intelligence agency office there, equipped with devices to burn that structure if security required. I do not know about this.

But I today reviewed many videos of the WTC collapses, and found nothing in the WTC N & S tower collapses that suggests controlled explosions; they appear to have only aircraft damage:

4. Both collapsed first at the lowest level of the burning sections, where the aircraft and fuel hit.
5. The structure above fell almost vertically (up to 20 degree tilt in the first collapse) with chunks and dust thrown outward from the collapsing sections only.
6. No damage is seen to lower sections until the upper structure hits them on the way down. That is conclusive.
7. It would be very difficult to install and detonate explosives progressively just below the falling structure as it comes down just to create that appearance, and would use many times the explosives necessary to do that to a single lower floor.
8. So the only way planted explosives could have been significant would be if the lowest burning floor had collapsed due to explosions instead of weakened columns. But the aircraft impact floor could not have been predicted so as to put explosives there, nor could such a system have been controlled with a high temperature fire burning so long on the same floor.
9. The temperature of a petroleum fire will collapse large steel columns in a few minutes. I saw the results when a fuel truck overturned and burned next to a very tall billboard (maybe ten floors high) supported by large steel columns near MIT in Cambridge in the 1970s (no casualties).
10. The planes probably had at least 10,000 gal of aircraft fuel in them: the wings are mostly fuel tanks; no doubt that has been estimated.
11. While interior materials also burn at temps higher than the melting point of steel, they wouldn't supply heat as fast as an intensive petroleum fire, likely not enough to prevent the rest of the steel cooling the heated portion.

Anyway, backwardsevolution is an interesting tag; I've wondered whether it warns of the peril of the fittest or survival of the least fit, both very apt in our era.

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 1:45 pm

Obviously a key to grasping 9/11 involves motive. The obvious things like expanding "security" budgets and "justifications" for war are easy. E.P. Heidner's "Collateral Damage" shows how more than two birds were killed with one stone .

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm

Gregory – yep. So many lies, so many cover-ups. Divided States of Lies would be a better name. Thanks, Gregory.

Joe Tedesky , June 16, 2017 at 9:51 pm

I think we have seen the motive play out over these last 16 years .what do you think Gregory?

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 10:22 pm

To the hilt, Joe and tragically so for so many.

Gregory Herr , June 17, 2017 at 10:50 am

A good deal of aviation fuel was likely used up in the initial explosion. Once the remaining fuel burned up there would be no source other than office furnishings for fires. There was never any large, intense, or broadly distributed fuel fire associated with the WTC. If any temperature melting points for steel were achieved (dubious), it would have been of very short duration and isolated with respect to the entire structure. My God, even the core columns disappeared .which is certainly not consistent with the already fanciful progressive destruction at rates that suggest no resistance. "Cut" beams (promptly removed and shipped out) and nanothermite residue were in evidence.

Why do both?
The hijacker narrative is part of the setup to assign blame and is also connected to the Pentagon, not just the WTC. The "plane crashes", in and of themselves were not sufficient to bring down the towers. Motives to bring down the towers can be discerned.
The "parties involved", the "sources" of the attacks, certainly constitutes the crux of the matter. Let's not make assumptions about this. Evidence supporting the "official" narrative is thin to contrived to nonexistent.

Unless and until Mr. Parry publishes an article concerned with 9/11, this is my last comment on the subject here. Discussion about 9/11 gets to be endless and prompts all sorts of abuse. I trust the many capable people who read CN can research the matter to their own satisfaction (or dissatisfaction).

george Archers , June 17, 2017 at 7:57 am

Joe–that hush money 2.5 trillion dollars disappeared into Israel. Payment for Sept 11 2001 bombings

UIA , June 16, 2017 at 2:13 am

It might as well be $200 trillion, it's a fiction and a gov fiction at that. People are missing body parts for the big oil adventure in Iraq. All the busted out US towns need new filling stations and used car lots to boom. With bad sandwiches, gas and lottery computers we can have an economy again. Supermarket is a bust. People are dying for nothing who knows where. War on terror and new scams to expand rackets. Smedley Butler called it. System is unhinged. Don't sleep much. You can't afford it.

Make the coins with lead, so we can melt them down and make bullets to kill with to fight over what's left. Nothing is left now. News isn't fake, the money is.

mej , June 16, 2017 at 2:51 am

I think we will hear Clapper say, 10 years after today's kerfuffle is buried by the next scandal, "yes, I lied, but it was for a good reason!"

Reminds me of Pres.Saakashvili after his failed war in 2008 and all the hysterical noise about Russia starting the war in Georgia. That statement helped seal his fate as the soon-to-be ex-president of Georgia.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 3:56 am

mej – you're right.

Wendi , June 16, 2017 at 3:20 am

Bring back Iron Curtain discussion. Ultimately, we see it is a Mirror. Whatever dirt we say of Russians shows in fact we're looking at ourselves.

Sillyme 2.0 , June 16, 2017 at 3:42 am

Let me put it another way;

We're not going to return kind for kind,
we're going to let you think about what it means to be a human being
in your own good time on your own good island, with good isolation from us.
Good luck .

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 5:19 am

Clapper is either thoroughly devious, or paranoid. In either case, any sensible president would discharge him from his office immediately.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 12:01 pm

Clapper resigned in November of 2016, his resignation took effect in January of 2017. Instead of being thoroughly discredited for lying to Congress, he's instead put on a pedestal and continually brought forward by the media as some sort of wise man.

He sits there, all calm, all knowing, a Wilford Brimley clone, and the public eat his words up. "This man is at the end of his career, so there's no way he would be lying to us." They don't realize grandpa-types can deceive too.

Yeah, I haven't figured him out yet, but I like your choices: either devious or paranoid. It's one or the other. Now he's off to pollute Australia.

"In June 2017 Clapper commenced an initial four-week term at the Australian National University (ANU) National Security College in Canberra that includes public lectures on key global and national security issues. Clapper was also expected to take part in the ANU Crawford Australian Leadership Forum, the nation's pre-eminent dialogue of academics, parliamentarians and business leaders.

In a speech at Australia's National Press Club in June, Clapper accused Trump of 'ignorance or disrespect', called the firing of FBI director James Comey 'inexcusable', and warned of an 'internal assault on our intuitions'."

The asylum has taken over.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 7:01 am

The secret police always gain a lot of power over time; now they are exercising their power in a big way. These are glory days for the spooks. From their secret lairs they are showing what they can do. Trump challenged them directly, as he did the media, both major political parties, and the MIC. These power centers cannot tolerate this, and are acting decisively to crush Trump. The Donald's electoral supporters are the only friends he has left, and these are a disorganized rabble, no match for the forces arrayed against them.

It looks like Donald's days in the spotlight are turning into a deer in the headlights moment. He just doesn't have the resources to withstand the shit storm he has provoked against his presidency.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 8:16 am

Clapper's evil mendacity being permitted to be aired as fact is testimony to the nearly complete unhingement of a segment of the American population who have no rational understanding of what happened in this election. If the insanity unleashed by the loss of Madame Warmonger Clinton is not stopped, something very evil seems on the horizon. Russia has become the scapegoat for the madness unleashed in the US.

In an article this morning on Zero Hedge by Daniel Henninger titled "Political Disorder Syndrome: Refusal to Reason is the New Normal", the author reports that James Hodgkinson, the shooter of Steve Scalise and four others had tweeted before the incident: "Trump is a traitor. Trump has destroyed our democracy. It's time to destroy Trump." And a production to be staged in Central Park by New York Public Theater is planned for a production of "Julius Caesar" where Caesar is presented looking like Trump and will be pulled down from a podium by men in suits and assassinated by plunging knives.

This is beginning to look like a long, hot summer. The author of the article on Zero Hedge mentions that social media has become a marinade for psychological unhingement of much of the population, leading to "jacked-up emotional intensity". Is it possible this could happen simply because the Democrat presidential candidate lost? Or is there something else driving this insanity behind the scene? I was startled to see the number of vicious published articles about Oliver Stone's interviews with Vladimir Putin. Where's the curiosity, only knee-jerk reaction that Putin is a source of evil? The insanity, the sickness in America is becoming unnerving and I have a strange sense of foreboding.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:11 am

Neoliberal_rationality/ will be in short supply in the days ahead. To resist being sucked in by the waves of emotional madness will be important.

Pixy , June 16, 2017 at 9:00 am

As a Russian I should say I agree with this Clapper person actually. Consider what he says:

"Russia is America's enemy." – True. Russia has always stood on the way of any nation bent of world domination. Since the USA have embarked on that very mission, Russia IS their enemy.

"The Russians are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values." – Absolutely true! Russia does oppose to what passes for democracy in USA nowadays. And it opposes to your values, but not the officially declared ones, but those that you follow unofficially: blatant racism, dividing the world on übermensch and untermensch and treating nations and countries accordingly, hypocrisy and open lies, when children in Aleppo are very-very important and every tear they cry is the reason for the Hague tribunal, while children in Mosul are apparently non-existent, and no one gives two f..ks about carpet bombings, absence of safety corridors, suffering and deaths of civilians and general state of humanitarian crisis there. This is just one, most recent example.

USA is insulting the intelligence of the people all over the world (and I mean THE WORLD really, all 7 billion people, not just US satellites), if they think anybody but the american Joe buys into their transparent lies and double standards.

For as long as USA will continue on this trek, Russia will oppose you and remain your enemy. And we'll see how it turns out. So far the human history teaches us that every time the übermensch eventually break their necks and diminish.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:06 am

Yes. Good comment.

Linda Wood , June 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

Pixy,
Thank you for saying all of this.

MaDarby , June 16, 2017 at 9:09 am

""The Russians are not our friends; they, (Putin specifically) are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared."

I have a high regard for this site and this author but I want not so much to disagree with but to deepen the discussion.

Underlying Clapper's views are far far deeper forces than just being "stuck in Cold War mentality." Powerful forces in the US are gripped by extremist Calvinist ideology and have been sense the beginning of the US. These powerful forces supported the Nazi movement against the "godless" Soviet Union (to show just how extreme they are). Their view is that the US (them and their power) is the chosen instrument of god to rid the world of the evil devil (exceptionalism). This means taking over the world and dominating all non-Calvinest countries. It means the justification of the biblical slaughter of the innocents to appease a vengeful god and rid the world of evil. We see the results of this extremist religious ideology in the continuous slaughter the US has perpetrated against the rest of the world sense WWII.

Further, neutrality in the fight against the devil himself is unacceptable as immoral and those countries trying to be neutral are just as evil as the others.

All Clapper is doing is carrying on the fundamental views the US has held of itself as morally superior to the rest of the world the same view Roosevelt and Carter and Kennedy had much less Reagan or Lyndon Johnson.

Nothing will change until the iron grip of extremist Calvinism, which justifies the slaughter of millions, is no longer the fundamental guiding ideology.

You ask the fish abut the water and he responds – What water?

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:07 am

Interesting. There is much truth in what you say.

Linda Wood , June 16, 2017 at 10:10 am

You describe the mindset that is used so well. But the military industrialists who use it are doing it for the trillions of dollars in defense spending. People have killed for a lot less. Clapper represents an industry. He uses the mindset you describe to explain to us why we have to accept the pouring of more trillions into the black hole of war.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:17 am

Absolutely true Linda.

hyperbola , June 16, 2017 at 10:27 am

Calvinism is only half the story.

The Revolutionary Jew and His Impact on World History
http://www.culturewars.com/2003/RevolutionaryJew.html

. By 1649, when Charles I went on trial, the tradition of Judaizing which had been extirpated from Spain had struck deep roots in England. The English judaizers were known as Puritans, and Cromwell as their leader was as versed in using Biblical figures as a rationalization for his crimes as he was in using Jewish spies from Spain and Portugal as agents in his ongoing war with the Catholic powers of Europe. The Puritans in England could implement the idea of revolution so readily precisely because they were Judaizers, and that is so because revolution was at its root a Jewish idea. Based on Moses' deliverance of Israel as described in the book of Exodus, the revolutionary saw a small group of chosen "saints" leading a fallen world to liberation from political oppression. Revolution was nothing if not a secularization of ideas taken from the Bible, and as history progressed the secularization of the concept would progress as well. But the total secularization of the idea in the 17th century would have made the idea totally useless to the Puritan revolutionaries. Secularization in the 17th century was synonymous with Judaizing. It meant substituting the Old Testament for the New. The concept of revolution gained legitimacy in the eyes of the Puritans precisely because of its Jewish roots. Graetz sees the attraction which Jewish ideas held for English Puritans quite clearly. The Roundheads were not inspired by the example of the suffering Christ, nor were they inspired by the medieval saints who imitated him. They needed the example of the warriors of Israel to inspire them in their equally bellicose campaigns against the Irish and the Scotch, who became liable to extermination because the Puritans saw them as Canaanites. Similarly, the King, who was an unworthy leader, like Phineas, deserved to die at the hands of the righteous, who now acted without any external authority, but, as the Jews had, on direct orders from God. "The Christian Bible," Graetz tells us,

"with its monkish figures, its exorcists, its praying brethren, and pietistic saints, supplied no models for warriors contending with a faithless king, a false aristocracy and unholy priests. Only the great heroes of the Old Testament, with fear of God in their hearts and the sword in their hands, at once religious and national champions, could serve as models for the Puritans: the Judges, freeing the oppressed people from the yoke of foreign domination; Saul, David, and Joab routing the foes of their country; and Jehu, making an end of an idolatrous and blasphemous house-these were favorite characters with Puritan warriors. In every verse of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, they saw their own condition reflected; every psalm seemed composed for them, to teach them that, though surrounded on every side by ungodly foes, they need not fear while they trusted in God. Oliver Cromwell compared himself to the judge Gideon, who first obeyed the voice of God hesitatingly, but afterwards courageously scattered the attacking heathens; or to Judas Maccabaeus, who out of a handful of martyrs formed a host of victorious warriors."

Chet Roman , June 16, 2017 at 9:58 am

"Clapper may think it is his duty to a higher cause that allows him to defy the truth and transcend the law"

"Those who angrily criticize the Russians are completely blind to their own participation in a similar destructive process"

Interesting article but the author is giving Clapper and the rest of the "intelligence" community too much credit. There is no "higher cause" and the "Washington consensus" is not blind to their own actions. Clapper and the deep state are well aware of their self serving actions and it is motivated by money and power. What is happening is the deliberate and aggressive promotion of propaganda to the U.S. public by the intelligence agencies, patriotism has nothing to do with it.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:09 am

Yes. The secret police are the slimiest of the slimy. To call them intelligent is absurd.

Gregory Herr , June 16, 2017 at 6:55 pm

I think this is accurate to a great extent. But even "wicked" people who deep down know their own black hearts allow themselves the relief of their rationalizations that is to say that in a psychotic sort of way, they sometimes allow themselves to "believe" their own shit even while knowing it's not true. It's how they are able to function.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

Thank you for your viewpoints from outside the United States, and I hope you know that people who follow and post on CN are opposed to the United States' militarism and destruction in the world, which, as you say, MaDarby, is based upon the arrogance of the US, and you say comes from Calvinism, a belief that success means you are blessed by God. That may have been a starting point when the US was formed, but now there are such forces in power play that it goes farther. We, the dissenters in the US, have a powerful armed structure that makes opposition to it very difficult. And your good points from Russia are written in a clearer way than many Americans could even write, since the educational system has been deliberately controlled to "dumb down" the citizens.

But what to do even when we challenge this militaristic power in control? Our elections as you must know are certainly not fair and democratic. There are weapons now used against protesters so that has become increasingly difficult, as we just saw with the native peoples who opposed the Dakota oil pipeline. It looks as if the problems in the US will come to a head economically because of the enormous debt the US has allowed to get out of control, which may be the only way to stop the failing empire. We have read that Russia has paid off its debt wisely, and that's even after the bankers of the world mainly through the US in the 1990s tried to destroy Russia. But the US just keeps printing fictitious money to pay for its warmongering. And President Putin accurately stated that it is a multipolar world, no longer can one power such as the US call the shots.

I do not think that Russia is an enemy, but that Russia has the intelligence to lead a challenge to the USA, knowing that US cannot continue its behavior. I see it more as a challenge, and in fact, China is important to that challenge. Yes, it is ignorant and arrogant that Americans are not disturbed by the merciless destruction and killing their government has done. Good points you have made, thank you.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 10:32 am

Anyone who presents the vaguest challenge or limit to US hegemony is seen as an enemy to be dominated or destroyed. Capitalism is the cover for worship of unlimited power. This is the essence of fascism which is simply a religion of power worship. As Thrasymachus said in Plato's Republic, "Justice is the interest of the stronger." Meaning that force trumps all other considerations, and is the ultimate goal and meaning of human life. Human history has been the story of men's struggle to dominate others. The ultimate goal of this sick philosophy is for one man to dominate everyone and everything: the apotheosis of Power! One Man becomes God over everything! When Ayn Rand said that altruism is the enemy of mankind, she was voicing this deranged philosophy.

Realist , June 16, 2017 at 7:01 pm

Yes, there are so many riches on this planet in which all of its creatures were meant (more accurately "required") by nature to share, yet 5 men claim ownership of as much "wealth" (land, resources, means of production, etc) as another 4 billion and they do everything in their power to keep it all for themselves causing untold misery for those billions. They accomplish this by conflating the onerous realities of naked unregulated "capitalism" with the platitudes of "freedom and democracy," evidenced in the "invisible hand" of the free market clearly implied to represent "god's will" in action. So this inequitable status quo is buttressed in conventional wisdom not only by phony altruism but by the power of organised religion.

Really, these self-anointed de-facto gods know they're just hucksters who have hoodwinked the public into subordinating their own interests to tyrants. It is arguably a dysfunctional principle hardwired into the human genome, as strong-man rule traces back to our earliest recorded history. But knowledge is power and recognising this flaw in the system that makes life a misery for so many should give us a reason and the leverage to change things.

Aside from widespread ignorance and fear, what is it that has kept so many down for so long? Ah, yes, the principle of "divide and rule," wherein a deliberate socioeconomic gradient is maintained amongst the 99% to make us compete and fight with one another rather than challenge them. So much easier to hate your neighbor for the little more that he many have, so much more feasible to assault and steal from him than from the lords at the top.

I could go on, but the trolls still wouldn't see it since they are too invested in their delusions and meager rewards. They are sure to have some talking points on why degrading the planet so a few pashas can shit in solid gold commodes is a simply capital idea! And how we are fools for not seeing the obvious nature of things.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 11:04 am

Hyperbola's point about the Old Testament domination of New Testament is interesting, carrying it through history by the Roundheads and Puritans. We certainly see plenty of that vicious Old Testament "YHWH" in the actions of Israel and its armed-to-the-teeth lackey, USA. The OT god is a god of power and hate, and we're seeing plenty of it now. Some of these Bible bangers really do believe in end times.

Abe , June 16, 2017 at 11:41 am

"complex conspiracy theories buttressed by the most tenuous documentation have been spun and promoted in the midst of public hearings, political rearrangements in the White House and other theatrics designed to keep the public engaged and convinced of the notion that Russia's government actually attempted to manipulate the results of America's presidential election.

"However, the entire spectacle and the narrative driving it, is based entirely on the assumption that Russia's government believes the office of US President is of significant importance enough so as to risk meddling in it in the first place. It also means that Russia believed the office of US President was so important to influence, that the substantial political fallout and consequences if caught were worth the risk.

"In reality, as US President Donald Trump has thoroughly demonstrated, the White House holds little to no sway regarding US foreign policy.

"While President Trump promised during his campaign leading up to the 2016 election cooperation with Russia, a withdrawal from undermining and overthrowing the government in Damascus, Syria and a reversal of decades of US support for the government of Saudi Arabia, he now finds himself presiding over an administration continuing to build up military forces on Russia's borders in Eastern Europe, is currently and repeatedly killing Syrian soldiers in Syria and has sealed a record arms deal with Saudi Arabia amounting to over 110 billion US dollars.

"It is clear that the foreign policy executed by US President George Bush, continued by President Barack Obama and set to continue under US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is instead being faithfully executed by President Trump."

US Election Meddling: Smoke and Mirrors
By Ulson Gunnar
landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/06/us-election-meddling-smoke-and-mirrors.html

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 12:46 pm

I just listened to YouTube of the phenomenal Russian pianist, Denis Matsuev, playing Rachmaninoff's incredibly difficult Piano Concerto no. 3 with the Moscow Symphony, such talented people in the orchestra. And this mediocre bureaucrat, James Clapper, should call Russia "our enemy". I'll bet he has no appreciation for art. There has got to be a stop to this madness. The pianist was one of many Russian artists who signed a letter in support of President Putin when Crimea returned to Russia. The government of the USA is very, very sick and evil.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 2:30 pm

David Marks – just a great article! Very well done. Thank you.

DMarks , June 16, 2017 at 4:20 pm

Thanks, I'm always interested in the comments provoked by my writing. A family member wrote to me: "There's no reason to give the Russian government some kind of trust, Russian policies towards gay people, the oligarchical power structure than ensures only the favored voices are heard, murdered journalists who raise criticisms against Putin, state controlled media, and the fact that Putin has turned himself into his own brand of reality TV star by staging ridiculous feats that are widely publicized in order to give him a superhero reputation these things are not the signs of a misunderstood government." I don't disagree. If I were in Russia, I could/would write an article that mirrors the one I just wrote. That's the central concept. From each side, the other side appears as the aggressors/destroyers.

Among Europeans, there are many who feel the Russian government is at the core of the problem, rather than the people in general. The farther you get from Europe, the easier it is to smear the whole country, along with their "failed" communism. We are the sum of history and it's hard to separate cause and effect of the events that lead us here. If there wasn't the immense fear of communism at the beginning of the 20th century coming from Royals, European industrialists and US oligarchs, we might have seen what the Russian experiment would have yielded. Instead the militarists and profiteers prevailed, with mirror images on both sides from the Stalin era through the Reagan era. No matter how much they were demonized before, the defeated Nazis became partners in fighting back the Soviet world. Just that single fact shows how desperately communism needed to fail in the eyes of the capitalists.

If we could have a re-run of the "cold-war" where no one is allowed to spend money on arms, defense, etc. (and of course no social repression) - purely an economic competition - what would happen? Well that's what the West feared and prevented - and we will never know what the outcome might have been.

My "neurosis" is formed as an American and still I struggle not to take "our" side. To keep some balance, I avoid the pressure to become a "fan" of anyone. Unfortunately, the majority of the general public (from all political persuasions) are pressured to see conflict as a sports event. Those in power support the notion that it's the whole other "team" that is evil and by extension the demonization of their leader is acceptable. The fanatical war mongering oligarchs of both sides bring conflict to a head by lying to us about everything, helping us believe we can win the "super-war" because we are the "good guys." Clapper is simply a great example of these beasts and the extremis we have reached. Unfortunately, there is someone just like him on the other "team."

Sam F , June 17, 2017 at 9:04 am

Indeed the warmongers and oligarchs of the US seek to provoke and grow similar forces in other powers, because they need a foreign monster to pose as protectors and accuse their moral superiors of disloyalty. While such elements can be found in every large group, the US failure to protect democratic institutions from economic concentrations has allowed them to predominate. Russia has a much smaller military, and even China has no modern record of foreign domination, provocation, and scheming.

This makes one consider whether the ideological vetting of the communist parties, which originally selected some rulers of present day Russia, and those of China, served their people better by excluding the worst of the warmongers. If the US cannot find better ways to protect democracy from warmongers, it will be discarded by history as less democratic than communism.

mike k , June 16, 2017 at 5:28 pm

Mr. Marks, I agree with most of what you said in your article, but I must respectfully disagree with what I felt was your leaning over backwards to be "objective" and "even handed." Although it is true that nobody is all good or bad in this world situation, there are sides to be taken, and values to be affirmed. The United States is far and away the major cause of the very serious and potentially life ending problems on this planet at this time. The American Empire is the number one disaster for everyone alive today. I am not even going to try to prove what I have said here. To me it is by this time too obvious to ignore. I am tired of trying to point out the obvious to those who refuse to see what is right in front of them. By the way, I am not including you in that category. You have a good grasp of what is going down, but maybe you are a little too concerned with being "even handed" for my taste.

backwardsevolution , June 16, 2017 at 6:37 pm

David Marks – well, it's just a very fair article. You point out Clapper's projections. I'm always floored when I hear these guys speaking about how aggressive other countries are when, if the truth were told, they're actually the aggressor and the other country is just trying to defend themselves. Yeah, the other country is on their back, being pummeled, and they're the aggressor?

I know there are bad people in Russia too (they're everywhere), and I also know that if the U.S. wasn't the biggest bully on the block, someone else would step in and fill the vacancy. But for right now, in our current situation, the U.S. are acting like warlords, and it's just nice to have someone spell that out, point out the idiocy of people like James Clapper.

Jessica K , June 16, 2017 at 7:56 pm

Mr. Marks, one could say very parallel things about the US government that your family member said about Russia. The US bureaucratic leaders apparently have no desire to get their own house in order but would rather create scapegoats for their mistakes. There's no way to make exact comparisons between cultural values from one country to another, people's origins have similarities but also many differences. The US has no business deciding the gay issue for Russians, and that is especially hypocritical since the US still cannot treat its descendants of slaves equally, throwing a disproportionate number of them in prison after not even giving them opportunities as the whites. The US has a lot of housecleaning to do, but they don't really want to do it, they prefer to attack others and they never stop. And we the people can't get through to them, they don't care what we think.

Linda Wood , June 17, 2017 at 12:42 am

Jessica K, just to support what you are saying about our outrage over Russian backwardness with respect to gay rights, there is a writer at caucus99percent who contributes an essay nearly every day about another murder of a transgender person in the United States.

https://caucus99percent.com/diaries

turk151 , June 16, 2017 at 8:04 pm

Mr. Marks,

I sincerely appreciate the article, but my thoughts upon reading it, is that, while I agree with all of your points about Clapper, he is merely the top bureaucrat, not the agenda setter. As you can see by the comments above, while there is unanimous condemnation of the nefarious covert operations run by our government, there is a broad divergence of who sets that agenda, ranging from satanists, Calvinists, Jews, the MIC or Wall Street . However, in your follow up comment, you address a very under reported issue, which I feel is at the heart of this matter. That this stems from a fear from the Royals, who allied themselves with the Nazis to fight the communists. I believe this is the central story of the past century, yet perhaps it is still a topic that is too sensitive to discuss and does not receive nearly the coverage it deserves. I would love to more of your ideas on this subject.

Linda Wood , June 17, 2017 at 12:55 am

Not just the royal families of Europe, but Standard Oil, Chase Bank, and other U.S. corporations. This is the truth that is, just as you say, too sensitive to discuss, and is as you say so very clearly, the central story of the past century.

Thank you for saying it so well.

Bob , June 16, 2017 at 8:16 pm

Clapper and people like him in those positions are expected to lie when asked such things. Telling the truth might see you ending up like William Colby. Once you take that oath and realize the type of people you are dealing with, lying comes much easier.

Jamie , June 17, 2017 at 12:40 am

"If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to, as we now know, the thousand Russian agents."

– Hillary

Andrew Nichols , June 17, 2017 at 3:20 am

"The Russians are not our friends; they, (Putin specifically) are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations," Clapper declared.

And the Aussie pollies and media just lapped up the crap from the Clap and also from Mad Jihadi lover McCain. We in Aus really are pathetic grovellers.

Cal , June 17, 2017 at 6:25 am

This nails the anti Russia movement

Zero Hedge

Why the Elites Hate Russia

1, Russia is an independent country. It's not possible to manipulate Russia via external remote control, like it is most countries. The Elite don't like that! Russia kicked out Soros "Open Society":

Russia has banned a pro-democracy charity founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, saying the organization posed a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution. In a statement released Monday morning, Russia's General Prosecutor's Office said two branches of Soros' charity network - the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) - would be placed on a "stop list" of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed "undesirable" by the Russian state.

2. Russia is not easy to cripple via clandestine means, whether it be CIA, MI6, or outright military conflict. Some other BRICs however, that's not the case. Say what you will about Russia's military – it's on par and in many cases, advanced, compared to the US military. And that's not AN opinion, that's in the opinion of top US military commanders:

3. Russian culture, and language, is too complex for the average "Elite" who pretends to be internationally well versed because they had a few semesters of French.

. Plain and simple, the Elite do not control Russia.

While there are backchannels of Russian oligarchs that work directly with Western Rothschild interests, for example, they simply don't have the same level of control as they do European countries, like Germany for instance.

Jessica K , June 17, 2017 at 7:52 am

Thanks, Linda, for your point about murders of gays and transgenders in the US. This country for all its vaunted proclamations about being so advanced and exceptional, has a huge amount of prejudice and ignorance among the people, who have been kept down economically so many harbor resentments.

Your points about Russia are interesting, Cal, especially about the military. US has exploited its citizens for military service when jobs have been taken away in other fields, so that a huge number of the enlisted are just waiting to get out. I have a friend whose son-in-law has to finish his third or maybe fourth deployment to Afghanistan and he can't wait to get out. And as noted in various posts, sloppy work has been done on military equipment in US, much of which becomes wasted money. I suspect Russians have to pay more attention to the job they do because money can't be thrown around as in US, Russian defense budget is far leaner.

Michael Kenny , June 17, 2017 at 9:37 am

Every time I see an American article about Russiagate, I run a search for the word "Macron". I never get a hit. MacronLeaks proves Russiagate but no American author even mentions it. None even bother to refute the proposition that it does prove Russiagate. The parallels are astonishing: a populist "ranter" (Trump, Le Pen), a moderate candidate who is being discredited (Clinton, Fillon) and a dark horse (Sanders, Macron). The scam was to get Le Pen and Fillon into the second round and then discredit Fillon, in the hope that Macron's "new generation" voters would be so disgusted with the "old style" politician that they would abstain in the second round, thereby allowing Le Pen to win. The scam failed principally because the media blew the lid off the Fillon story before the first round of voting, meaning that Fillon's voters had already been driven into Macron's arms before the vote. In a ham-fisted, last-minute, panic move, the scammers tried to discredit Macron but, in their haste, made lots of mistakes and fell into a trap he had set for them. The matter is now before the French criminal courts, but three names have already become public, one Russian and two figures of the US alt-right, one of whom worked for the Trump campaign. It is therefore established that Russians, whether working for the Russian government, the Russian Mafia or someone else in Russia, and American rightwing extremists sought to rig the French presidential election. The same pattern in the US election, so logically, the same perpetrators. Thus, James Clapper's reasoning is perfectly sustainable and calling him rude names doesn't change that.

Bill , June 17, 2017 at 11:34 am

Is Clapper in a conspiracy with Brennan and Comey? Who else are they working with?

Jessica K , June 17, 2017 at 12:28 pm

Macron leaks were not any more provable than Russiagate, they were allegations. Macron is a Rothschild banker, he appeared as a politician very suddenly and is undoubtedly part of the New World Order plan for the neoliberal free market agenda manipulated by the wealthy. Obama endorsed Macron in the days preceding the French election showing that it is clear that Obama supports the neoliberal agenda of "free market" control which has stripped people of their assets and enriched the wealthy wherever it is employed. Just watch France in the next few years, there will be problems as great or greater than under Hollande. Immigrants will be brought in, hired as wage slaves, the economy will be manipulated by bankers, and the people will pay the price as usual. You are making inferences from hearsay, there is no proof of what you say. James Clapper is known to have lied in the past about domestic surveillance; he has claimed in the Russiagate investigations first one thing, then another: we have no proof but it is possible, later we know they did it (although we have no proof), once even saying that Russians are genetically prone to be dishonest, the most bizarre thing he has said. If you want to defend someone who says things like that, you put yourself in the same category of absurdity.

TellTheTruth-2 , June 17, 2017 at 1:50 pm

Let's face it .. they tried to shift from Russia to the WAR ON TERROR; but, after 15 years with no end in sight the American public got sick and tired of it and now they need to shift back to Russia so they have a bogyman they can use to scare us into supporting more guns. Econ 101 .. Guns or Butter? How about us getting some butter for a change?

J. D. , June 17, 2017 at 3:32 pm

Clapper's rant revealed the actual reason for the coup attempt against President Trump, which he, along with Brennan, Comey, and the Obama Dems have coordinated,. Contrast his lying depiction of Putin to the actual words of Russia's president in his interviews with Megyn Kelley and better yet, with Oliver Stone. Hopefully. Americans will get an actual chance to see and hear President Putin and not the demonized caricature they have been barraged with by the MSM.

[Jun 09, 2017] Social Media Reacts to Loretta Lynch Being IMPLICATED

Notable quotes:
"... Ousted FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he suspected former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was in cahoots with the Hillary Clinton campaign last summer. ..."
Jun 09, 2017 | truthfeed.com
A key takeaway of today's Comey hearing is the bombshell revelation that former DOJ head Loretta Lynch tried to encourage James Comey to minimize the investigation into Hillary Clinton.

From NYPost

Ousted FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he suspected former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was in cahoots with the Hillary Clinton campaign last summer.

Lynch, he said, told him not to refer to the probe into Clinton's private email server as an "investigation."

"She said just call it a matter. That concerned me because that language tracked how the campaign was talking about the FBI's work," he said.

Former President Bill Clinton's surprise meeting with Lynch at an Arizona airport also prompted him to go public with results of the FBI probe into the email server .

"That was the thing that capped it for me, that I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation, which meant both the FBI and the Justice Department," Comey said.

Comey announced last July that criminal charges were not warranted, angering Republicans.

[Apr 02, 2017] DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump

Notable quotes:
"... We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security. ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | www.dni.gov
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511

January 11, 2017

DNI Clapper Statement on Conversation with President-elect Trump


This evening, I had the opportunity to speak with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss recent media reports about our briefing last Friday. I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.

We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.

President-elect Trump again affirmed his appreciation for all the men and women serving in the Intelligence Community, and I assured him that the IC stands ready to serve his Administration and the American people.

James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

[Mar 07, 2017] Robert Barnes Ludicrous to Claim Obama Never Spied on Americans When He Drone-Bombed American Citizens Around the World

Notable quotes:
"... "The original pretext was that FISA warrants were obtained in October for some limited capacity of Trump surrogates," Barnes recalled. "The problem is FISA's a very limited law, especially if you are talking about U.S. citizens. If you're talking about foreigners, then the breadth of the law is very broad, and the president can, in fact, intercept and surveil foreign activities at a much wider degree because of a limited application of the Fourth Amendment – although the Ninth Circuit doesn't seem to understand the limits of the Constitution as to foreigners, but that's another story ." ..."
"... "So President Trump is correct that it appears that's what took place here, based on published reports, headlines in the New York Times that use the words 'intercepted calls' involving Trump advisers who are American citizens. It raises very serious issues, and he's absolutely right to raise them," Barnes said ..."
"... "I think that is problematic about Clapper in particular. He'd be the least likely guy you would want to put up as a credible source for the administration," Barnes replied. "But what he really also did at the same time was that he gutted the sort of defense that Obama could have had. Because here you have these stories that come out about intercepted calls, and Clapper goes on TV and says there's actually no legal grounds for any intercepted calls to be taking place, at least not through the FISA authority, which is exactly what was being cited as the reason it was done." ..."
"... "Actually, Clapper's answer raises even more questions. Either (a) Clapper's lying, which is always possible, or (b) Clapper is being truthful, which means all these intercepted calls were done entirely illegally and off the books, or (c) it was done through the Department of Justice in some entirely different manner that would put Obama right in the middle of it," he said. "In other words, if it wasn't done as some sort of national security matter, but was simply done in some sort of disguised investigation that was a politically motivated means of monitoring your adversaries," Barnes elaborated. "So he ended up opening more Pandora's Box than he closed it." ..."
"... "There were three different interpretations of Comey and Clapper combined coming out and saying that," he suggested. "One interpretation was that they were not being fully forthcoming and that it was a message to their underlings that they were not going to be the ones to take the fall if any such activity took place, and that those underlings could take Hillary-style actions in terms of whatever evidence may remain of that." ..."
"... "The second interpretation of what Clapper and Comey did is that they were both kept in the dark – that you had a sort of a rogue operation of people, including Sally Yates at the Department of Justice, who circumvented both Comey and Clapper in order to engage in this sort of illicit personal surveillance," he continued. ..."
Mar 07, 2017 | www.breitbart.com
Attorney Robert Barnes appeared on Monday's Breitbart News Daily to talk about President Trump's allegation that the Obama administration wiretapped him during the 2016 presidential campaign. Barnes's latest article on the subject for LawNewz is entitled "Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance."

"The allegations that Trump raises are allegations that derive directly from what the newspapers have reported – the Guardian, BBC, Heat Street, the New York Times, the Washington Post , where they all talk about there being an interagency panel of people who were involved in an investigation, who purportedly requested and obtained various means of intercepting phone calls," Barnes explained.

"So there have been competing stories, and on Sunday, they got even more complicated, as both Clapper and Comey denied any knowledge of any wiretapping presence," he continued. "Their denials went a little further than Obama's himself, where all he said was that he himself didn't personally order something – which was a rather absurd cop-out because the president doesn't directly order things of that nature. His surrogates or delegates do."

"The issue goes right to: why, at any time, was anybody's phone calls being intercepted that were on the Trump team, that are American citizens?" he said. "The various news stories that are out, including one by Andrew McCarthy, who recounts them for the National Review , there's just no legal grounds for any of that surveillance to be taking place. There's no legal grounds for any of those calls to be intercepted."

"The original pretext was that FISA warrants were obtained in October for some limited capacity of Trump surrogates," Barnes recalled. "The problem is FISA's a very limited law, especially if you are talking about U.S. citizens. If you're talking about foreigners, then the breadth of the law is very broad, and the president can, in fact, intercept and surveil foreign activities at a much wider degree because of a limited application of the Fourth Amendment – although the Ninth Circuit doesn't seem to understand the limits of the Constitution as to foreigners, but that's another story ."

"The issue he raises is critical and essential, and it's been ever since these stories started leaking out," he said of McCarthy's writing. "Aside from the criminality of the leaks, it was that this is information that never should have been gathered in the first place. What FISA requires is that if you're going to intercept a call where an American is on the line at any level, then what you have to do is you have to go through certain protocols, and you have to establish basically probable cause that the person is involved in criminal conduct of some sort. Just the fact that I, as a U.S. citizen, am talking to a foreigner does not allow magically the Fourth Amendment to disappear as to my right to privacy."

"And yet, purportedly, that's what effectively took place here because here you had Sally Yates discussing a transcript of a call that involved former NSA assistant Michael Flynn, and that's information that never should have been in her possession or custody," he observed.

"Just because one of the people on the phone call may have been not a U.S. citizen, that's no legal grounds to intercept an American's communications. Another way to think of it is, sometimes you'll see in the movies where the guy is sitting in a van, and he's listening in on a phone conversation on a wiretap, and the person he's listening to shifts to some personal conversation, maybe of an intimate nature, that has nothing to do with the criminal investigation going on. You'll see him turn off the recording device and put down his headphones," he explained.

"If it happens that the manner and method of interception was something that you couldn't physically do that, then what you're supposed to do is to scrub the information and delete it from the record. In fact, an ex-CIA officer wrote an article for American Conservative documenting that that was always the protocol and procedure, whenever they were involved in an intelligence-gathering investigation. Yet apparently here , according to published reports, what they actually did is they went and they not only kept the information, didn't scrub it or delete it, they deliberately went back and saved it, and then shared it with a bunch of other people who had no authority to ever look at it," said Barnes.

"FISA is very particular about this," he noted. "It requires protection of any innocent American's information that ever may be gathered through this process. You have to not only scrub it and delete it; you cannot disseminate it to people. You can't identify the individual that's being sourced in the investigation. And the failure to follow FISA's strict procedures is actually a crime. FISA section 1809 of Title 50 makes it a criminal penalty to either gather the information outside of FISA's procedures or to disseminate it outside of FISA's procedures."

"So President Trump is correct that it appears that's what took place here, based on published reports, headlines in the New York Times that use the words 'intercepted calls' involving Trump advisers who are American citizens. It raises very serious issues, and he's absolutely right to raise them," Barnes said.

SiriusXM host Alex Marlow noted that President Obama's denial of Trump's wiretapping accusation was "thin." "It clearly leads to many more questions than it answers," Marlow said. "Oh, absolutely," Barnes agreed. "There's different parts of it that are problematic. The first thing is that if he was being serious about a denial, you simply issue a two-sentence statement. You say, 'I am not aware of any wiretapping that took place on Mr. Trump or his campaign, and I would not have supported such a wiretap had it occurred.' He could have been very broad. It's interesting that Comey and Clapper were much more specific and particular than Obama was."

"The second aspect where there were some ludicrous claims included therein, such as the White House never engaging in electronic surveillance of a United States citizen," he continued. "Well, as Andrew McCarthy and other attorneys have pointed out, and other people familiar with the national security operation have pointed out, Obama drone-bombed American citizens in various foreign locations around the world while he was president, including one in Yemen quite prominently. There's no way you can actually do that without some form of surveillance on the individuals. It's not like you had a global map tattooed on the wall, and you took a dart and threw it at the map, and said, 'Oh, okay, we'll drone-bomb there.'"

"The fact that he didn't deny the existence of the wiretap, did not deny his awareness of it, did not deny his approval of it, and then made clearly materially false or misleading statements about his engagement and involvement with surveillance of American citizens – and this coming on top of Clapper committing perjury previously before Congress that led to Ed Snowden becoming Ed Snowden I mean, Ed Snowden probably never becomes Ed Snowden if Clapper doesn't commit perjury, and then, Obama's reaction to Clapper's perjury was to promote him, rather than to demote him, about spying on American citizens," said Barnes.

After playing a recording of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper flatly denying the existence of any FISA court order relating to Trump Tower, Marlow asked, "Do we care what this guy says? He's a known liar."

"I think that is problematic about Clapper in particular. He'd be the least likely guy you would want to put up as a credible source for the administration," Barnes replied. "But what he really also did at the same time was that he gutted the sort of defense that Obama could have had. Because here you have these stories that come out about intercepted calls, and Clapper goes on TV and says there's actually no legal grounds for any intercepted calls to be taking place, at least not through the FISA authority, which is exactly what was being cited as the reason it was done."

"Actually, Clapper's answer raises even more questions. Either (a) Clapper's lying, which is always possible, or (b) Clapper is being truthful, which means all these intercepted calls were done entirely illegally and off the books, or (c) it was done through the Department of Justice in some entirely different manner that would put Obama right in the middle of it," he said. "In other words, if it wasn't done as some sort of national security matter, but was simply done in some sort of disguised investigation that was a politically motivated means of monitoring your adversaries," Barnes elaborated. "So he ended up opening more Pandora's Box than he closed it."

Marlow played an excerpt from an interview given by former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he essentially said President Trump's accusation that President Obama directly ordered surveillance on Trump Tower might be "incorrect" in the details, but Trump was "right" to believe a surveillance operation could have been in progress.

Barnes said Mukasey did "accurately relay what has been reported to the press, which is this request for a FISA warrant in the summer that was rejected because it put Trump's name in the warrant request."

"To give you an idea of how rare that is, if that did occur, is that the last 35,000-plus requests for the FISA court to issue a warrant, it's only been denied 12 prior times, to public knowledge," he noted.

"According to the published reports, they went back in October and simply left Trump's name off of it, slightly limited it, and got it," he said of the FISA request in question. "Now, Clapper's statement completely denies that ever occurred in terms of October, in terms of ever getting any FISA warrant on anybody connected to, in his own words, the Trump campaign. So there's a major discrepancy present."

"Secondly, the one area where he doesn't quite correctly describe the situation: there is some misleading information out there that the government can just tap the phones of anyone involved who's working on any level on behalf of a foreign government, by any means. Well, if that had been the case, everybody at the Clinton Foundation should have been tapped permanently," Barnes said. "Putting that aside, the actual law requires that they not only be, quote, 'an agent of a foreign power,' but if they're a United States person, there has to be evidence that they're engaged in criminal activities of a particular kind."

"So they couldn't just wiretap Michael Flynn, for example, or listen in on his conversations, even if the person on the other line is not a United States person. They have to have evidence that he was engaged in criminal conduct. That is what was problematic, as soon as the Flynn story broke, was there was no grounds for them to have ever recorded him, kept the recording, or shared the recording. FISA law specifically prohibited it under those set of circumstances," he explained.

"That's the illegal aspect of what's going on. It's not just the political motivation that would be impermissible or inappropriate because it would be First Amendment punitive use, misuse of the search warrant authority. But it actually violates what warrant authority they could ever obtain in the first place, under both the First and Fourth Amendments, and under the FISA law itself," he said.

Barnes said the reported request from FBI Director James Comey for the Justice Department to refute Trump's wiretapping accusation was "an interesting set of statements."

"There were three different interpretations of Comey and Clapper combined coming out and saying that," he suggested. "One interpretation was that they were not being fully forthcoming and that it was a message to their underlings that they were not going to be the ones to take the fall if any such activity took place, and that those underlings could take Hillary-style actions in terms of whatever evidence may remain of that."

"One little-noted story last week was that Trump put out a requirement that everybody connected to the story keep all information," he noted. "He did this before he did his tweets, but his motivation may have been to actually prove and document this illicit activity took place."

"The second interpretation of what Clapper and Comey did is that they were both kept in the dark – that you had a sort of a rogue operation of people, including Sally Yates at the Department of Justice, who circumvented both Comey and Clapper in order to engage in this sort of illicit personal surveillance," he continued.

"I've been on the opposite side of Sally Yates in cases where she was at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta," Barnes revealed. "If you were going to pick an unethical, corrupt prosecutor, she'd be at the top of the list. She tried to help railroad a family there, in a case I dealt with over ten years."

"The third possibility is that this was just unlawful surveillance," he concluded. "I've had a lot of cases like that, especially under the Obama administration. It became too frequent and too regular that you had agents that were just doing illegal surveillance, without ever notifying their supervisors, without ever obtaining judicial authority, without ever doing it legally at all. And so you may have had an operation that was a true Deep State kind of operation, that was just doing unlawful surveillance."

"There's too much information, like some of the criticism of President Trump. Well, people should be critical then of the New York Times because it was their story that said there was intercepted calls of multiple members of Donald Trump's campaign. That was, I think, the story that ran on Valentine's Day, actually. It was in the very first sentence of the story. So either the New York Times was purely fake news or somebody in the government is lying about what they were up to," Barnes summarized.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

[Feb 19, 2017] The deep state is running scared!

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government... ..."
"... The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media! ..."
"... Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection! ..."
Feb 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
im1dc : February 18, 2017 at 05:32 PM
This is running now on FoxNews.com, total fabrication especially the last sentence but Trumpers believe this Fake News. I think this is where ilsm gets his intell insights from, phoney former intell officers, they sound exactly like him - check it out for yourself

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/18/im-democrat-and-ex-cia-but-spies-plotting-against-trump-are-out-control.html

"I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control"

By Bryan Dean Wright...February 18, 2017...Foxnews.com

..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government...

Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president "will die in jail."..."

ilsm -> im1dc... , February 18, 2017 at 06:08 PM
The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media!

Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection!

+40 years around the puzzlers.

[Jan 29, 2017] How Obama Framed Trump with Faux Mortgage Insurance Rate Decrease

Notable quotes:
"... By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV ..."
"... "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled"" ..."
"... Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. ..."
Jan 29, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV

(This is my first issue-opinion video. With thanks especially to Adryenn Ashley and Jimmy Dore for the inspiration. All sources and supporting evidence is below.) Within hours of becoming the 45th President of the United States , one of Donald Trump's first orders of business was to sign an executive order to " raise mortgage insurance rates " on millions of homeowners , by around $500 a year.

But while it is technically true that Trump did sign the order reversing the decrease, it is a misleading picture. This story is more a negative reflection on President Obama than it is on Trump.

A Brief Tutorial From Someone Who Is Learning the Subject Right Along With You

Generally speaking, if you are a first time homebuyer and purchase a house with a down payment of less than 20% of the home's worth, you are required to purchase mortgage insurance. This insurance is to protect the the lender in case you default on your payments.

Let's use the example of a $200,000 home with a $10,000 (5%) down payment. So you need to borrow $190,000.

$200,000 * .05 = $10,000
$200,000 - $10,000 = $190,000

Since January 2015 , the upfront MIP ( mortgage insurance premium ) has been 1.75%, with the annual premium at .8%. So when you sign the mortgage, you pay the upfront premium of $3,325.

$190,000 * .0175 = $3,325

And then every year, you pay the annual premium of $1,520.

$190,000 * .008 = $1,520

As you pay off your principal, this number goes down.

The Obama administration's reduction of the annual premium rate is .25 points (the upfront premium remains unchanged). So with the same loan above, your annual premium would instead be $1,045.

.008 - .0025 = .0055
$190,000 * .0055 = $1,045

That's a savings of $475 a year, or about $40 a month.

$1,520 - $1,045 = $475
$475 / 12 months = $39.59

Backlash Against Trump

The criticism of Trump for this move has been unrelenting and, at least in my internet bubble, unanimous. I have not seen any criticism of the Obama administration at all; including by, disappointingly, one of my primary sources of news, The Young Turks. (Can't find the video at the moment, but they briefly criticized Trump for the move, without looking further into the issue.)

As reported by USA Today :

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that Trump's words in his inaugural speech "ring hollow" following the mortgage premium action.

"In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford a mortgage," he said. "What a terrible thing to do to homeowners. Actions speak louder than words."

As reported by Bloomberg :

"This action is completely out of alignment with President Trump's words about having the government work for the people," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, through a spokesman. "Exactly how does raising the cost of buying a home help average people?"

Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, in an e-mail wrote, "On Day 1, the president has turned his back on middle-class families - this decision effectively takes $500 out of the pocketbooks of families that were planning to buy a home in 2017. This is not the way to build a strong economy."

And one of the many strong criticisms as documented by Common Dreams :

"Donald Trump's inaugural speech proclaimed he will govern for the people, instead of the political elite," [Liz Ryan Murray, policy director for national grassroots advocacy group People's Action] said. "But minutes after giving this speech, he gave Wall Street a big gift at the expense of everyday people. Trump may talk a populist game, but policies like this make life better for hedge fund managers and big bankers like his nominee for Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, not for everyday people."

The Full Picture

To say that Trump took savings away from the neediest of homebuyers is not true, because homebuyers never had the savings to begin with. The rate reduction was not announced until January 9 of this year–11 days before the end of Obama's eight year term–and was not set to take effect until January 27, a full week after Trump was sworn in.

(Here's the PDF from the FHA, of Trump's suspension announcement .)

In addition, Obama's reduction decision seems to have been made without any advance notice or even a projection document justifying the decrease. As I understand it , both of these things are unusual with a change of this magnitude.

Finally, with the announcement made little more than a week before the new administration was to be sworn in, and despite Trump being entirely responsible for implementing this change, the incoming administration was not consulted.

Now that the timing is clear, Time Magazine's coverage is particularly misleading:

Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.

"Obama-era policy" implies the reduction was made long ago, and has been in force for much of that time.


(Rates can't be raised if they were never lowered.)

Conclusion: It Was a Set Up

Finally. After eight years of hard work and multiple requests, your boss approaches you on a Monday morning and says, "Good news! Starting in two weeks, I'm giving you a raise. Congratulations."

Two days later, you find out that he decided to leave the company months ago, and his final day is Friday. Your raise doesn't start until a week after that.

You ask him about your new boss. "Well, he's a pretty strict guy." He leans in, puts the back of his hand to the side of his mouth, lowers his voice, and continues, "Honesty, I hear he is a bit difficult to work with. Real penny pincher." He sits up, his voice back to its normal cadence, "But don't worry. I'm leaving a note on his desk telling him just how important this raise is to you and your family." He stands up and slaps you on the back as he walks away. "I'm sure he'll keep my word."

If that were me, I would be upset at my new boss, but I would be furious at my old one. He had eight years to do something.

This was nothing more than an opportunistic political maneuver by the outgoing president, to set the incoming president up for failure. All while pretending to care about American homeowners. If the President Obama really wanted to help Americans, he would've considered this move–or something similar–long ago. Instead, he told them he was giving them a gift and promised that it would be delivered by Trump, knowing full well that he would never follow through. Lower-income Americans were used as pawns in a cheap political game.

Further confirming my theory, here is what was said when the reduction was originally announced :

"The Trump administration would be accused on day one of raising mortgage costs for average Americans if it reverses the FHA move," analyst Jaret Seiberg, managing director at Cowen Group Inc., wrote in a note to clients. "Trump's career has been real estate. It would seem out of character for him to be aggressively negative on real estate in his first week in office." [ ]

"I have no reason to believe this will be scaled back," [HUD Secretary Julian] Castro told reporters. The premium cut "offers a good benefit to hardworking American families out there at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up."

It is not Trump's responsibility to keep the promises that Obama makes on his way out the door. It is Obama's responsibility to not promise what is not promiseable.

There are so many things for progressives to criticize Trump about. This is not one of them.

So Who Are We Fighting Anyway?

To paraphrase Jimmy Dore , "The way to oppose Trump is to agree with him when he's right, and to fight him when he's wrong. Anything else delegitimizes you, especially in the eyes of his supporters."

And again in another of his videos : "We don't need to unite against Trump. We need to unite against corruption and corporatism."

If Democrats do something wrong, we need to fight them. If Trump does something wrong, we need to fight him. If Trump does something right, we need to stand with him.

If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win.

39 0 10 0 1 This entry was posted in Banana republic , Banking industry , Credit markets , Dubious statistics , Guest Post , Media watch , Real estate , Regulations and regulators on January 28, 2017 by Yves Smith . Subscribe to Post Comments 93 comments Lambert Strether , January 28, 2017 at 6:06 am

"If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win."

Let's get that tatooed on our foreheads.

UserFriendly , January 28, 2017 at 7:21 am

I agree with the sentiment but after watching the D party protest war under Bush, never talk about it under Obama, and then cheerlead for it with Hillary I don't think they actually stand for anything except identity politics.

jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:47 am

Right, they traded support for real issues for identity politics. Identity politics which is lovingly celebrated on TYT every day by the way. I'm not sure how or why anyone would go to that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation for news, but ok.

Here is a litmus test: anyone who gave a pro forma endorsement of Hillary OK, understandable, and I can kind of tolerate that. But for the others who were in the tank for Hillary like TYT–all except for Jimmy Dore–those people are persona non grata from here out.

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:35 am

Totally disagree that TYT was in the tank for Hillary. Have watched these guys every day since around May. They're all pro-Bernie. They clearly wanted Hillary over Trump during the general (and I did too, but that's waaaaaay not to say I'm pro-Hillary), but I don't think "in the tank for Hillary" is a fair characterization for any of them.

To me, the best evidence is that I have not witnessed Jimmy Dore being forced to tone his admittedly louder and more vehement anti-Hillary ranting down on any show, including the main show. They even gave him his own show around the end of the primaries where he gleefully goes off (Aggressive Progressives).

As an aside, The Jimmy Dore Show seems fresher than Aggressive Progressives, I believe because he rehearses the bits on own show first. On TJDS, he is frequently good, and consistently on fire.

Naked Cap, the entire TYT network, Glenn Greenwald, Le Show, and of course, Bernie Sanders, are among my most important truth tellers.

Jerry Denim , January 28, 2017 at 2:00 pm

Sorry for being so clueless, but "TYT", "TJDS" ?

Anyone care to fill me in on this nomenclature?

Thanks!

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:26 pm

TYT – The Young Turks
TJDS – The Jimmy Dore Show

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

The Young Turks and The Jimmy Dore Show. YouTube shows.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:27 pm

If you voted for Hillary then you were in the tank for her. There's no such thing as the lesser of the two evils. Sorry! Same goes for TYT.

dcrane , January 28, 2017 at 3:04 pm

A relevant definition of "in the tank" from this NY Times Magazine article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-safire-t.html

"to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled""

Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 4:59 pm

It's not that clear cut. For instance, if you are a person of color, there was good reason to be plenty worried about Trump. Violence against immigrants picked up big time in the UK after Brexit, so there's a close parallel. And his appointment of Jeff Sessions as AG is hardly encouraging.

Brian Daly , January 28, 2017 at 7:43 pm

But if you're White, you have no good reason to be worried about Trump? That's a rather shabby way to think about folks of all colors.

Sorry to be snarky. It's just exasperating reading these attempts to define and claim moral purity. In a complex and compromised world.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 pm

Did you see their election day coverage? Here are the highlights: TYT meltdown .
My favorite part starts at 14m50s, when Kasparian rants about how she has no respect for women who didn't vote for Clinton and calls them "f@#king dumb". Solidarity!

skippy , January 28, 2017 at 3:30 pm

What the – ????? – like the right wing is not all about Identity Politics from an ethnic and religious foundations .. errrrrrr .

Now that the Democrats embraced free market neoliberalism and went off the reservation with non traditional views wrt whom could join the club, being the only thing separating the two, its a bit wobbly to make out like there is some massive schism between the two.

Disheveled . you can't have a "dominate" economic purview running the ship for 50ish years and then devolve into polemic political warfare ..

Teejay , January 28, 2017 at 4:42 pm

jgordon– Identity politics lovingly celebrated on that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation every day. Wow, takes my breath away. I've watched the TYT evening news for ~10 months virtually ever day and I'd guesstimate that I viewed 60 of their You Tube clips. Seems to me you're projecting. Given your strident certitude you should have no trouble provide any links that convinced you of your opinion, buttress your argument. The daily recurrences of "identity politics" put it out there. What convinced you they were "in the tank for Hillary"? It'd be hard to come up with a more inaccurate phrase. They full throatedly endorsed Sanders in the primaries. Cenk announced on the Monday (IIRC) before that he would be voting for HRC so how do you arrive at using "in the tank"? I found your remarks a "rancid cesspool of biased disinformation" long on emotion and very short on facts and evidence. That's why it seems like projection.

Donald , January 28, 2017 at 10:00 am

The US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is the most clearcut example of the moral worthlessness of many liberals. Actually, to their credit many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have opposed it, but it isn't a big cause because Obama was the one doing it. I imagine Trump will continue the policy, but don't expect anything to change– Trump can be opposed on other issues, so there will be no incentive to criticize him on an issue when the Trump people can say they are just continuing what Obama started.

It is infuriating to hear liberals mindlessly repeating how disgraceful it is to see Trump cozying up with a dictator who has blood on his hands. It is the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with these people.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 10:33 pm

This tweet (which I found @ActualFlatticus ) sums up the dynamic you are referring to perfectly imo.

Jen , January 28, 2017 at 7:31 am

Hear, hear! Thanks to NC that Common Dreams piece set off my bs detector immediately. There's a larger framing question we can add as well: who benefits from PMI?

Using the example above, the home buyer pays an upfront premium of $3,300 which gives them no additional equity in their home, and somewhere between $1400 and $1500 a year for their premium, which also doesn't increase their equity. And, they continue to pay PMI until they achieve a loan to value ratio of 80%.

So you buy your 200K house and dutifully pay your mortgage and PMI, which, btw, is also not tax deductible. You finally get to the point where through a combination of paying down your mortgage and increasing home prices, you have 80% equity in your home. Then the housing market tanks, and your 200K home is worth 170K. Your house is worth less than you paid for it and you're stuck paying $1500 a year in fees that don't reduce the amount of your mortgage, that you can't deduct from your taxes, and that you can't get rid of until you have 80% equity in your house.

Sign me up!

So who benefits? Certainly not the middle class would be homeowner, who not only gets screwed on the finances, but thanks to inflation of home prices, is getting screwed on the finances so that they can spend 200K on a crappy little ranch that's a 40 minute commute to their job one way on a good day.

jgordon , January 28, 2017 at 7:56 am

I also read about this on the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas Huffington Post, and I have to say that they were spinning really hard to make this look like something horrible Trump had done. But even in the extremely biased article I read they surreptitiously had to admit that this was a rule the Obama regime had put in place the midnight before Obama departed and that Trump was just reversing it. I read this before I knew anything else about t he subject and already had a pretty good idea of what was going on. But the above post helped a lot.

Baby Gerald , January 28, 2017 at 8:45 am

'the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site for women and manginas '

Thank you, jgordon, for my first hearty laugh of the morning. I'm going to bookmark HuffPo just so I can re-title it this.

Thanks again to NC for giving me a good link to use against the uninformed masses with whom I frequently have to deal.

lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:12 pm

Finance benefits – they get to keep promoting unaffordable mortgages.

We refused to pay this BS insurance when purchasing our house, since it wan't insuring us against anything but rather we'd be paying for the bank's insurance against ourselves. Seems a lot more like a scam when you frame it that way, considering that the bank is lending you money they just created in the first place.

Instead we saved up for another year or two until we had the whole 20% down required to avoid the insurance. I do understand that not everyone can afford 20% down depending on their job and where they live however if enough people refused both PMI and to purchase because they couldn't afford 20% down on an overpriced house (and we are in another bubble already, at least in my area), prices would drop until people could really afford them.

Finance pretends they are just trying to make the American Dream available to everybody and too many have taken the bait to the point where finance as a percentage of GDP is near or at an all time high. The reality is that it's mostly just a scam to benefit finance and turn the population into debt slaves.

Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

The home owner was able to purchase a home with less than 20% down. The PMI protects the lender during default, which is considerably higher when borrower has no skin in the game. Also, there are other options such as lender paid mi.

Marcer69 , January 28, 2017 at 2:11 pm

Additionally, most of you are confusing PMI – Private Mortgage Insurance- with FHA Upfront and MIP. With the latter being required regardless of the down payment. Secondly, the author was wrong on his facts. MIP is .85 @ 96.5% and .80 @ 30 years. 15 YR.terns offer reduced

koki , January 28, 2017 at 10:50 pm

PMI is another insurance company rip-off. Requiring people to escrow taxes with no interest paid to them by the banks using those funds is another rip-off.

Roger Smith , January 28, 2017 at 10:40 am

Agreed! Great article Jeff!

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 1:24 pm

Thank you, Roger.

nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:12 pm

Trying to condense this whole article into a tweet is a challenge. . .

"Obama cuts mortg. ins. rate for <20% down by 25 pts ($500 on $200k home) 11days prior to exit in con artist act sure to be dropped by Trump resulting in bogus media claims about Dem support for working class homeowners."

Sondra , January 28, 2017 at 4:35 pm

I agree. If we Progressives are to make any fwd movement, we can't beat up on DJT on any and everything. I am also cautioning friends & family to do so too. If cry "foul" everyou time he acts, that delegitimizes us.

One recent example is the Trumps' arrivall @ wh b4 the inauguration. A snapshot shows DJT entering WH before the Obamas and Mrs. DJT. Once posted, goes viral and the talk is how ill-mannered, selfish is and how gracious the Obamas are for escorting the Mrs. after her "oafish" husband

What is not shown is that DJT stops, comes back, and ushers the trio ahead of him. (which you can see on CSPAN ).
When I saw the truth of what happened, after reading the negative comments, that worried me.

We REALLY need to be more dis corning and employ critical thinking.

Have to be careful not to be swayed by bullshit, no matter where it comes from.

Quiet , January 28, 2017 at 7:01 am

This explanation, while nice, only serves to make Trump look dumb. He jumped into an obvious trap. Rather than focus on how Obama tricked him, I'm a bit more concerned with what this portends for the future. See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this, the odds of his success aren't very high.

By the way, this reads like one more zing at Obama after he's already left the building. He earned most of the criticism he got, definitely from this site, but I feel like this is overdoing it. Criticizing him for not doing it sooner? Totally valid. Criticizing him for tripping up his successor? Petty.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of Schumer and Kaine isn't part of that pettiness, though. That will be useful to remember as they cozy up to the Don and claim they're doing it to "help working families."

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:13 am

I am admittedly a political newbie (Bernie woke me up never did anything before him but vote), and perhaps I am missing something, but I would be much less upset about it if he didn't screw middle class Americans in the process.

That this is considered petty, by which I believe you mean normal politics, is exactly the problem.

JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 11:37 am

"Screw middle class Americans" exactly how?

The article makes it pretty clear, if I am reading it and the links and background right, that the screwing is principally in the form of requiring mortgage insurance to insure THE LENDER (or note holder or whoever MERS says gets paid on default). And that the "benefit" you may feel was (according to the spin) "taken away," was not even an "entitlement" because it would not have even been in effect until three weeks AFTER Obama (who has screwed the middle class and everyone else not in the Elite, nine ways from nowhere, for 8 years), and would not change the abuse that is PMI. And would not have "put dollars in the pockets of consumers" anyway for long after that. And how many homeowners are in the category?

And banksters and mortgage brokers and the rest, gee whiz, we mopes are supposed to be concerned about THEM? About people whose paydays come from commissions on the dollar amount of the loans they write? Where all the "incentives," backed by the Real Economy that undergirds the ability of the US Government to do its fiat money forkovers to lenders that connived to change the policies against prudential lending to inflate the bubble that crashed and burned so many, are all once again being pointed in the direction of making Realtors ™(c)(BS) and lenders even richer on flips and flops and dumb transactions and churning?

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 12:08 pm

He screwed the middle class by teasing them with a rate reduction, knowing that Trump was going to never let it happen.

JTMcPhee , January 28, 2017 at 3:39 pm

Just to clarify, and please anyone correct me, this was not any kind of "rate reduction." Rate reductions are what is supposed to happen under the various homeowner "they let you live in their house as long as you pay the rent mortgage" relief programs that never happened except to transfer more money to the Banksters. As in "reduce the unaffordable interest rate on oppressive mortgages." And "mark to market." And PRINCIPAL reductions as a result. And I do know the nominal difference between "title" states and "equitable interest" states - in either, the note holder effectively owns the house and property until the last nickel is paid, and as seen in the foreclosure racket, often not even the. And the "homeowner" gets to pay the taxes and maintain and maybe improve the place, to protect the note holder's equity "Fee simple absolute" is a comforting myth.

As the article points out, the only potential reduction in money from borrower to lender/loan servicer (since the PMI underwriters seem to have such close financial ties to the insured note holder, there's but slim difference between the parts of the racket) might have been that tiny reduction in the insurance PREMIUM.

Niggling over terms, maybe, but that's what "the law" is made up of.

And apologies if I mistook the referent of "he" to be "Trump" rather than Obama and his clan - but nonetheless

hemeantwell , January 28, 2017 at 8:54 am

This excellent analytic walkthrough is a model for what must be done to ward off any form of "Obama 2!" as a political battle cry. It must be done relentlessly and without any consideration of being fair to that neoliberal schemer. The Clintonites will claw their way back from the edge of their political grave if they can draw on such sentiments.

nonsense factory , January 28, 2017 at 3:20 pm

Exactly, what we need is an FDR approach, which Bernie Sanders Democrats are far more likely to deliver. Instead of bailing out AIG and Goldman Sachs, FDR would have set up a Homeonwers Loan Corporation to buy up all the adjustable rate mortgages and convert them to fixed-rate mortgages, and instead of the zero-interest loans going to Wall Street from the Fed, they'd have gone to homeowners facing foreclosure, who could then stay in their homes and pay them off over time.

But when Obama came in, he brought in Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who preached about "not returning to the failed policied of FDR." What a pack of con artists. I prefer your honest hustlers to those guys (i.e. Team Trump, American Hustle 2.0 at least you know what to expect.)

a different chris , January 28, 2017 at 2:20 pm

>See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls like this

How is this a pitfall? Trump puts a hold on a "last minute Obama change", lets it sit for awhile, and then reinstates it or maybe even makes it better. Then Trump owns the reduction, not Obama.

This isn't even one-dimensional chess.

Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 7:59 am

This essay focuses on timing and tactics. Not analyzed is the essential question of What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?

It's an actuarial question based on prior loss experience. Real estate moves in long cycles. Each trough is different in depth.

Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans.

Obama's action mirrors what's seen in other gov-sponsored insurance programs, such as pension benefit guarantee schemes which are chronically under-reserved. Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout.

What's so stupendously silly about Obama's diktat is that it was too late to provide any electoral benefit. Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis.

Perhaps HUD secretary Ben Carson will ask a more fundamental question: what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway? Obama's ham-handed tampering with premiums for political purposes shows why government is not well placed to be in the insurance business - it has skewed incentives. Ditch it, Ben!

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 8:49 am

In researching this story (I have no financial background, and have never owned anything beyond a car), I had a theory that the reduction made no fiscal sense because the Feds raised rates for the first time in 2016, after hovering above near zero for eight years, to .5%. My thinking was that the move was to discourage new borrowers by making loans more expensive, therefore increasing the cost of mortgages and ultimately threatening the solvency of the FHA. I was wrong, which is disappointing because it would have made for a more dramatic ending, in that Trump's revoking the decrease would have been the "correct" thing to do.

Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 9:23 am

Jim,

Aye. You make an excellent point that essentially everybody in media has ignored. What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way , Obama is incompetent.

If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

Jim Haygood , January 28, 2017 at 9:53 am

An analogy could be made to municipal bond insurance, which like mortgage insurance is intended to protect the lender against loss of principal:

Municipal bond insurance adds a layer of protection in the rare case of default. However, that protection is dependent on the insurance companies' credit quality.

Municipal bond insurance used to be commonplace; now it's quite rare. Why is that? As of 2008, nearly half of all newly issued municipal bonds carried some form of insurance. Today, the share is less than 7%.

The number of municipal bond insurers has also declined and their credit ratings have fallen.

A number of bond insurers went bust during the Great Recession. Plus, a large default by Puerto Rico has caused many municipal market participants to question the ability of insurance companies to pay on the bonds they insure.

http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-the-Municipal-Bond-Insurance-Market-Has-Changed-Since-the-Great-Recession

Muni bond insurers were publicly traded, profit seeking companies. But they underpriced their insurance, probably because no one expected a 1930s-style crisis like 2008.

Obama had no more concept about how to price mortgage insurance than I do about how to perform brain surgery. He was just mindlessly handing out bennies at public expense in the dark of night, before skulking away into well-deserved obscurity.

shinola , January 28, 2017 at 1:35 pm

I dunno Jim – perhaps Obama DID know (or was advised) that the rate cut was actuarially unsound thus setting up his successor for problems down the road or bad optics upfront if the cut was reversed.

Cleverly devious?

Brian Lindholm , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

Yep. To quote the White House press release, " Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. "

That's not a valid reason to lower PMI rates. PMI rates must cover losses, and higher interest rates on mortgages may very well mean higher default rates. If so, PMI rates would need to go up as well.

Now if the press release had talked about PMI overcharges by the FHA, then I might have have bought it. But they didn't. There was no mention of actuarial soundness at all .

Jack , January 28, 2017 at 10:12 am

For a good explanation of how mortgage insurance works and the impact of the discussed premium increase/decrease, check out David Dayen's (a frequent contributor to NC) article on the Intercept here . David goes more in depth on the actual numbers and what they mean.

Optic7 , January 28, 2017 at 12:26 pm

I did briefly hear some discussion in the news about the FHA mortgage insurance program having been underfunded in the recent past. This could have given an additional reason for Trump to block the lower rate until the numbers could be analyzed. I did a search and found a couple of articles from before either of these decisions that illustrate different perspectives on this issue:

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/232492-castro-grilled-over-lowering-mortgage-insurance-premiums

http://www.fhaloanpros.com/2009/01/is-the-fha-under-funded/

The latter article is from 2009 but includes some interesting details about significant amounts of money being transferred from the fund to the treasury department.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm

From the first link, as of 2015: " his recent decision to lower mortgage insurance premiums despite the FHA falling short of its capital reserve requirement." So the fund was out of compliance with the law, and this was a long-running point of contention between the administration and the Republicans in Congress.

What we don't know yet is whether the fund reached its goal, which would justify lowing the premium. The Congress members were complaining about being lied to.

DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:38 pm

"What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?"

"Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans."

The argument here seems to be that what is typical is appropriate. By that argument, 0.55% which falls in that range would be ok. The argument that it's too low assumes that the range as it stands is somehow rationally defined, which is another assumption that itself bears scrutiny. To say that 0.5-1.0% is ok is an assumption, and should be examined in detail right along with the 0.55 and 0.8 HUD figures before firmer conclusions could be drawn. The results would give an informed answer to the rhetorical question " what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business, anyway?" Absent that, we're reduced to arguments, tainted on both sides by political inclinations. Jeff Epstein's clarification is exemplary.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:51 pm

" Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis."

Oh Boy! That would really hurt Obama, when he'd be long gone and dancing with the stars!

Remember, whatever he did during his term he weighed and measured a thousand times.

flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

"Cheap premiums look like a free benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout."

+1.

Domofdoom , January 28, 2017 at 8:18 am

Well said. What do you think would be more effective: trying to change the dems or giving up on them and setting up another party?

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:33 pm

option 2

Vatch , January 28, 2017 at 4:37 pm

One may be more effective, but if it's not feasible, it doesn't matter how effective it would be in theory. See this comment by Martin from Canada a few days ago:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/bernie-sanders-nails-trumps-pick-health-human-services-directly-wall.html#comment-2747290

Here's the link that Martin pointed to:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democratic-labor-party-ackerman/

Maybe a viable new progressive party can be created. But it sure won't be easy. If it weren't extremely difficult, don't you think that the Greens would have done it by now? For now, I think that people need to be actively looking for candidates to run in the 2018 Democratic primaries. In a few places, at the state level, this will be happening in 2017. See:

https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_elections,_2017

"Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia hold elections in odd-numbered years."

rjs , January 28, 2017 at 8:36 am

Obama came in off the golf course after Trump was elected and issued dozens of similar diktats i recall wondering at the time that if all those moves were so important, why didn't he make them in the 8 years he had

oho , January 28, 2017 at 9:39 am

EZ real issue for Democrats to embrace. Stop the sales tax of food at the state/muni level. Shift that burden (or as much as reasonably possible) to the top income brackets.

Oh wait, the places where Democrats can do this, always solidly vote D and there's no incentive.

J.P. Steele , January 28, 2017 at 9:51 am

There is an art to politics. As anyone who studies the subject knows, one has to be both "Lion & Fox." Lion .for the strength to drive policies, but also a Fox in order to avoid "Snares and Traps." Bannon, who actually has been writing these executive orders, stepped right into this Trap. Rookie mistake. This is what happens when you have ideologues attempting to actually govern. They "step in it." I believe that Jeff is a bit naive and thin skinned here as to "The Game." Obama did indeed set a snare ..but I am a bit more concerned by Steve's arrogance for boldly stepping in it and allowing the opposition a fine platform to grandstand on the issue. Rookie mistake. Arrogance & Stupidity.

integer , January 28, 2017 at 11:13 pm

Afaics there are two ways in which this game can be played:

A)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates while simultaneously denouncing 0bama for setting the trap.
3: MSMedia circus.

B)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates.
3: D-party denounces Trump.
4: MSMedia circus.
5: Trump/Bannon denounces 0bama for setting the trap.
6: MSMedia once again loses credibility, at least in the eyes of Trump supporters.

Why is option A better than B? Am I missing something here?

Yves Smith Post author , January 29, 2017 at 12:02 am

Trump and Bannon will never do 5 and 6. They never fight on the level of detail and timetables.

Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 10:14 am

Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?

Craig , January 28, 2017 at 10:53 am

Excellent question, it has not been answered yet:). Lotsa words tho.

cm , January 28, 2017 at 2:39 pm

1. It raised financial risk to the govt.
2. As the article pointed out many times, it was a sleazy move on Obama's part

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 3:41 pm

Same reason Bush 43 reversed the last-minute reductions to water regulations that Bill Clinton passed, and Obama had to deal with

Clinton to Bush : President Clinton Signs Midnight Regulations

Bush to Obama : Bush's Final FU: Last-Minute Regulations That Will Screw America for Years to Come

Obama to Trump: Mortgage rate (non-)"reduction", likely more to come

Wiki on "Midnight Regulations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_regulations

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:07 pm

Not a lot of archived stuff from 2001 and before on the nets, oddly. I regret posting the CNN link up there.

I washed my hands twice afterward.

ScottW , January 28, 2017 at 10:17 am

If everyone with less than 20% equity has PMI, why didn't it pay off after the crash and lessen the need for a bailout? Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down. Did PMI pay any money during the crash and to whom and for what?

If it didn't do any good during the last crash to lessen the public bailout, what's the point of requiring it?

lyman alpha blob , January 28, 2017 at 1:00 pm

That is a very good question and I don't remember hearing anything about PMI paying out during the crash (but that could just be my memory). In fact it never even crossed my mind but yeah you'd think that should have mitigated some of the losses. Maybe any payout would only benefit the mortgage holder directly and wouldn't carry through to the mortgage-based securities? That seems odd though and if true would be a strong case for severely curtailing if not eliminating at least the more exotic bets.

Anybody know anything about this?

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:55 pm

I often wondered about the same thing/

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:01 pm

Because it's another BS fee they tack on for no good reason other than greed.

I was in the mortgage game in 2006-2008. Now matter how many showers I take I still don't feel clean.

bob , January 28, 2017 at 4:03 pm

"Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought most recently with less than 20% down."

Not banker logic. They were foreclosing on houses with equity to steal. Those houses that were valued above what was mortgaged.

Jim F , January 28, 2017 at 10:29 am

What gets me is people who think "shame on Trump" for not recognizing and avoiding the trap. Every single one of those people I avoid like the plague.

Joel , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

Re: The Young Turks

I watched a few times until what's his name, the main turk, interrupted and talked over the female co-host too many times for my stomach. There are too many good choices to give clicks to that type of behavior. Hey this is the 21st century.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:03 pm

Cenk Uygur – the only actual Turk on the show. It IS his show and network, but I see your point.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 10:42 am

I don't know . Obama made many policy changes after the election results came.

It's not as if government is a fast moving engine. This could have been in the works for years and got expedited for obvious reasons. It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him.

Unless the policy was itself a fraud, it's impossible to know whether it was implemented cynically.

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:01 pm

I made this point below, once it escapes moderation, but basically: 1) the article fails to tell us whether the new rate made sense; and 2) Clinton did the same thing – a bunch of last-minute progressive moves, designed to stroke his legacy and punk his Republican successor. Let's hope the clemency actions are less reversible than the policy moves.

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:04 pm

"It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him."

It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences, also Chelsea Manning,*** BECAUSE*** there was no political gain in it for him.

There, I fixed it for you.

John , January 28, 2017 at 11:00 am

So Trump/Bannon got punked by Obama the first week in office. Looks like to me th e Repubs are realizing Obamacare may be a similar punkjob.

JamesG , January 28, 2017 at 11:02 am

"Simple question: why did Trump reverse the cut?"

To gain time.

To evaluate the numbers and come up with an accurate rate?

My simple question: Why did the Ds presume it was simply "to hurt the middle class?"

Horatio Parker , January 28, 2017 at 12:06 pm

Because it makes buying a house more expensive.

It seems that Obama's motives may safely assumed to be deceitful and petty, but we can conclude nothing at all about Trump or his motives.

I don't see how this "truth" advances any agenda.

DarkMatters , January 28, 2017 at 12:41 pm

Maybe Mnuchin protecting his faction? Just another hypothesis.

NotClairVoyant , January 28, 2017 at 12:12 pm

The MIP rate reduction was either an ill-advised reaction to the recent spike in mortgage rates or a simple set-up for the incoming administration. I suspect is was a combination of both, and likely designed more for political gain than anything.

It's hard to take a guy seriously when he professes to be concerned about home affordability when he spent the last 8 years "foaming the runway" for banks as millions of people were foreclosed on their homes, only to watch many of those same homes get gobbled up by Wall Street and rented back out to them.

Fewer underwater borrowers will at least curtail the path to feudalism in this new echo housing bubble.

winstonsmith , January 28, 2017 at 12:21 pm

Another issue is who would have actually benefited from the Obama rate cut. We are supposed to believe it would have been home buyers, but a uniform increase in the spending power of home buyers as a group is to a large extent offset by a corresponding increase in home prices. To that extent it would be sellers (including private equity) and not low income buyers who would benefit.

yan , January 28, 2017 at 1:14 pm

Also, as far as I'm concerned, if Obamamometer was serious about helping homeowners there are many more better ways to do it than "foaming the runway" for banks, or preempting any meaningful action through his statewide get out of jail free card settlement, or actually trying to stop his buddies from blowing asset bubble after asset bubble.
Moreover, if you can´t put up more than 20% up front to buy a house maybe the problem is that wages are shit compared to property prices and people can´t afford anything more than cheap meth or oxycontin to cope with their sorry lives.

WheresOurTeddy , January 28, 2017 at 4:06 pm

+1

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Pardon if this is a duplication, but: Isn't there a very large omission here? Was the premium decrease justified, or not? It's supposed to be government insurance, so the premium should cover the costs. Did it? Would the proposed lower premium cover them? (Yeah, I know, MMT. But apparently the idea here was to have a self-supporting program, so it should be self-supporting unless you announce otherwise.)

That said: this is part of a pattern. Obama made a number of progressive policy moves at the very last minute, most of them reversible. This is nothing but legacy-stroking, as well as setting a trap for the next Pres. Clinton did the same thing, along with some questionable pardons.

"So why'd you wait so long?"

Oregoncharles , January 28, 2017 at 2:30 pm

Well, Haygood was the only one to beat me to it.

oh , January 28, 2017 at 2:21 pm

I noticed the false headlines on yahoo news (the bastion of fake and worthless news) and I immediately checked it to find that O'Liar had planted this landmine so that it could blow up in Trump's face. Sure enough, when Trump canceled it, he was the bad guy (even though it had never had gone into effect as this article points out). What a cynical move by O'Liar and how cynical can his sycophants be?

flora , January 28, 2017 at 3:11 pm

Great post! I saw the headlines when the story came out and instantly thought there was something "off", something a little too pat about the stories. But I wasn't sure what was wrong with the stories, and was left confused. This post of investigative reporting and facts informs me what was actually happening. Thank you.

aliteralmind , January 28, 2017 at 4:48 pm

Nice to hear this. Thanks.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 4:29 pm

The reaction here puzzles me to the point of confusion. Absent any argument that the policy didn't offer it's claimed benefits (cost savings for the middle-class), is the left so virtuous that it will reject and refuse to fight for any advance which isn't selflessly arrived at?

Compare this to "conservatives" who successfully campaigned in 2010 against supposed Medicare cuts related to Obamacare implementation, when they'd love nothing more than to kill the program outright.

We, by contrast, we won't even fight for what we claim to believe in, if it isn't wrapped in virtue.

Yves Smith Post author , January 28, 2017 at 5:06 pm

You are missing that this is insurance, and the cost of losses must be paid for somehow. From Bruce's comment above:

What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.

I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately require a taxpayer bailout. Either way, Obama is incompetent.

If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.

Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.

jake , January 28, 2017 at 6:56 pm

Granted, but nobody knows the facts. Bruce wants to damn Obama for not doing it before, or damn him now for doing it. But nothing he either did or didn't do will be deemed acceptable at this point, even if the reduction is fully warranted.

Have we never heard politics? Process? Delay? Your net conclusion may still prove to be the correct one, though I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?

flora , January 28, 2017 at 7:55 pm

I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted, could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?"

A Presidential Directive, aka an executive order or executive action, can be laid at the feet of the President. So, yes, we do know. He could have taken the action anytime in the past 8 years. Note the date on this action – Jan 7th, 2017.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32533-its-official-obama-to-direct-fha-to-cut-mortgage-insurance-premiums

centaur , January 28, 2017 at 5:03 pm

+1000, jake

witters , January 28, 2017 at 6:10 pm

So Obama almost nearly did something that might, maybe, have been a tiny bit useful, but then the US Constitution

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[May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page

[May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe

[May 05, 2019] Did Mueller substituted Russia for Israel in his report

[May 03, 2019] Former high-ranking FBI officials on Andrew McCabe's alarming admissions

[May 03, 2019] Andrew McCabe played the key role in the appointment of the special prosecutor

[Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté

[Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

[Apr 28, 2019] Tit For Tat: Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook by Mike Whitney

[Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda

[Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

[Apr 21, 2019] Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender

[Apr 21, 2019] Special Counsel Mueller -- Disingenuous and Dishonest by Larry C Johnson

[Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ...

[Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

[Apr 15, 2019] War is the force that gives America its meaning.

[Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

[Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End

[Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader

[Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson

[Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate

[Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ...

[Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

[Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

[Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary

[Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed

[Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings

[Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

[Mar 11, 2019] Bruce Ohr, Liar or Moron by Larry C Johnson

[Mar 05, 2019] The Shadow Governments Destruction Of Democracy

[Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network

[Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library

[Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

[Dec 14, 2018] MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given

[Oct 01, 2020] 'Clueless' former FBI Director James Comey admits the agency's Trump-Russia probe was a ball of bungled confusion by David Haggith

[Sep 30, 2020] DNI Letter Supports Allegation That Hillary Clinton Created 'Russiagate' by b

[Sep 23, 2020] Another sign of the crisis of legitimacy of neoliberal elite: FBI Agent Who Discovered Hillary's Emails On Weiner Laptop Claims He Was Told To Erase Computer

[Sep 20, 2020] Darren Beattie Tucker Carlson Discuss Color Revolutions The Plot To Oust President Trump

[Sep 20, 2020] Norm Eisen And The Colour Revolution Playbook!

[Sep 20, 2020] THE TAKE-DOWN OF TRUMP ALA THE "COLOR REVOLUTION"- NORM EISEN'S REVOLUTIONARY PLAYBOOK A Deeply Embedded (Demster) Lawfare Operative; Regime Change Professionals More. What's Going On- Conservative Firing Line

[Sep 09, 2020] Proof of collusion at last! - IRRUSSIANALITY

[Aug 23, 2020] Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda by Ray McGovern

[Aug 16, 2020] CIA Behind Guccifer Russiagate A Plausible Scenario

[Aug 08, 2020] Russia Hoax- Are We All Being Played- Put Up Or Shut Up! - Zero Hedge

[Aug 02, 2020] Russiagate, Nazis, and the CIA by ROB URIE

[Jul 21, 2020] This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier.

[Jun 15, 2020] Do Deep State Elements Operate within the Protest Movement? by Mike Whitney

[Jun 15, 2020] Full Special Investigation - Donald Trump vs The Deep State

[Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput

[Jun 03, 2020] Requiem to Russiagate: this was the largest and the most successful attempt to gaslight the whole US population ever attempted by CIA and Clinton wing of Dems by CJ Hopkins

[Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

[Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0

[May 24, 2020] Obamagate as the reaction of managerial class neoliberals on the crisis of neoliberalism

[May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0's Hidden Agenda : looks like Gussifer 2.0 was a false flag operation designed to smear WikiLeaks and distract from the content of the stolen by Seth Rich or some other insider DNC emails

[May 22, 2020] Time to Break up the FBI by William S. Smith

[May 19, 2020] Russophobia in the Age of Donald Trump

[May 18, 2020] FBI under Comey as an uncontrolled political police operating without any oversight from Justice Department

[May 17, 2020] General Flynn investigation 'has tarnished Obama's legacy' - YouTube

[May 17, 2020] Apparently, the FBI, and not the CIA, are the real government.

[May 16, 2020] Tucker Adam Schiff should resign

[May 15, 2020] The Complete Collusion Against Trump Timeline

[May 13, 2020] From RussiaGate To ObamaGate The End Of Boomerville by Tom Luongo

[May 11, 2020] Lee Zeldin Adam Schiff 'should resign today' for role in Russia investigation by Dominick Mastrangelo

[May 11, 2020] McCarthy: It would be 'profoundly crazy if Obama wasn't in on Flynn case'

[May 11, 2020] Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble by Ray McGovern

[May 10, 2020] Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security by Kevin R. Brock

[May 10, 2020] Does Obama now feels his potential liability for staging coup d' tat and gaslighting the whole nation?

[Apr 17, 2020] Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to sabotage Trump.

[Feb 22, 2020] The Red Thread A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy by Diana West

Sites



Etc

Society

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Quotes

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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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