Trump’s Showdown With the CIA
By Finian Cunningham | Sputnik | December 13, 2016
It doesn’t come more scathing than this. On nationwide television, US President-elect Donald Trump rubbished the Central Intelligence Agency as “ridiculous” for making claims that Russian hackers helped get him elected.
The CIA – America’s foremost intelligence apparatus set up after the Second World War by then President Harry Truman – is supposed to be the guiding light for occupants of the White House on all matters geopolitical.
And here we have aspiring White House occupant Donald Trump telling the CIA to shut up.
Over the last week, the spy agency was quoted by both the Washington Post and New York Times as having informed anonymous government officials that there was “high confidence” that Russian-sponsored hackers had interfered in the US presidential election in favor of Trump over his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.
The alleged modus operandi to sway the election was the leaking of private emails to whistleblower site Wikileaks which implicated Clinton in big business corruption and fomenting foreign wars, among other scandals.
It’s a sensational claim, especially given that the CIA or its unnamed official conduits quoted by the US’ two most prominent newspapers have provided zero evidence to support their contention of Russian malfeasance. Russia has flatly denied the accusations. As has Wikileaks.
In effect, the explosive insinuation is that Trump’s election last month is invalid because voting was marred by foreign manipulation.
In his subsequent slap-down of the CIA, Trump was clearly implying that the supposedly prestigious spy agency was far from competent. He said that the hacking of the Democrat party’s emails could have been carried out by anybody, including “someone sitting in their bed somewhere”.
He also expressed skepticism on the specific claim that Russia was to blame. His campaign team went even further in its dismissal of the CIA, saying: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” Adding insult to injury, Trump also disclosed that he is reducing the daily briefings customarily received by presidents to weekly meetings. “I don’t need to hear the same words every day,” he said, adding that “when something changes” then the CIA can call him.
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In a previous edition of this column it was speculated that the CIA and its secretive Deep State networks might pull off a “digital 9/11” on the day of the November 8 election to scupper a Trump victory. During the long run-up to the ballot, it was abundantly evident that the US political establishment, including the CIA and mass media, favored Clinton to win. Her belligerent foreign policy towards Russia was certainly something that former CIA officials were endorsing.
As it turned out, Trump’s election blindsided the US establishment. The latter were sure Clinton was a shoo-in. The bolt from nowhere may be why the powers-that-be appeared slow to react on Trump’s election.
The latest dredging up of allegations about Russian hackers getting Trump into the White House seems to be part of a retrospective action by the Deep State to call the presidential election in the way that it sees fit.
It is worth noting that from a constitutional viewpoint Trump’s inauguration as 45th president is not finalized. Legal challenges are underway aimed at forcing the decisive Electoral College to overturn earlier votes for Trump.
If enough brouhaha is whipped up over alleged Russian interference in the US election – and large sections of the US corporate media seem all too willing to do that – then a critical number of Electoral College votes might be revoked in Clinton’s favor.
Trump appears to be aware of this stealth agenda. As well as lambasting the CIA’s “Russian hacker” claims as rubbish, he also said that it was a brazen partisan effort by his Democrat rival and her powerful backers to overturn an election result that they did not accept. In short, Trump is inferring an electoral coup attempt.
But even if the CIA and its spooks fail to thwart Trump in taking the White House, an alternative, less controversial option is to smear the next president as a Russian stooge. That charge has already been made during the election campaign when Trump was denigrated by Clinton and media pundits for being a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following Trump’s election victory, those charges notably disappeared from public discourse.
However, the recent resurfacing of CIA claims that Russia interfered in the election serves to recall earlier smears. That in turn seems designed to curtail Trump’s stated foreign policy objective of normalizing US-Russia relations. In particular, Trump has said he wants to work with Russia on resolving the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts.
In recent days, Trump has flagged the possibility of appointing ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson as the next Secretary of State. The oil tycoon has extensive industry links with Russia as well as reportedly cordial personal relations with president Putin. He has publicly opposed the erstwhile US sanctions policy on Russia as counterproductive. Trump’s consideration of Rex Tillerson for the top diplomat position has provoked disapproving media headlines that such a choice is “proof” of Russia’s hand in steering the US election.
In the wake of sensational CIA claims that Russia interfered to get Trump elected, one can see how his presidency will be dogged by ongoing aspersions that his policies are somehow hostage to the Kremlin’s orchestration.
One way or another, however, whether the Deep State can succeed in thwarting Trump taking the White House or rather confines itself to warping his foreign policy towards Russia, the reality is that Trump seems to be on a collision course with his top spooks.
Trump’s brusque attitude toward the CIA over its claims of Russian subversion suggest that he is prepared for a bruising encounter. So much so that the Washington Post is reporting that personnel within the agency are anxious that Trump in office will exact retribution with mass sackings at the agency’s Langley headquarters.
There was a time when no US president would dare take on the CIA, such was the agency’s fearsome reputation for dirty tricks and political assassinations. Only one president pushed that envelope. John F Kennedy threatened to smash the CIA into a “thousand pieces and throw it to the wind” following the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Two years later, the CIA and its mafia contractors had JFK murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas.
If Trump follows through on his showdown with the CIA, he will have to tread carefully. But, as with other tentacles of the US empire, the CIA is no longer the same all-powerful agency it once was.
The American public have become more attuned to how the Deep State operates through its fake news media conduits in order to propagandize and manage perception. That is partly why the US media is currently floundering from a credibility crisis.
Significantly too, the US domestic crime agency, the FBI, has pointedly declined to support the CIA’s reported contentions about Russian interference in the US election. Moreover, quite a few senior US lawmakers in Congress have expressed skepticism over the CIA claims.
The time for muzzling the CIA may be at hand.
Top US spy agency abstains on CIA assessment of Russian hack of 2016 election
RT | December 13, 2016
The office overseeing all 17 agencies of the US intelligence community apparently doubts the CIA’s assessment that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win the presidential election, as Reuters reports anonymous officials saying the allegation won’t be endorsed.
Three unnamed officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told Reuters on Monday that their agency does not dispute the CIA’s findings, yet it would not accept them either.
“ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent,” one of the officials told the news agency. “Of course they can’t, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.”
The CIA has not made its findings public, but the Washington Post reported on a secret assessment by the agency. It concluded that Russian intelligence hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta to help Trump win the presidency.
The ODNI was formed to ease the bureaucratic obstacles between US intelligence agencies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“[It was] a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” another official said in response to the speculation. He stressed that the “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (D-California) wrote a letter Monday to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. In it, Nunes said he was “dismayed” with Clapper’s inaction on informing the house committee about the division between the assessments of the CIA and the FBI, Reuters reported. Nunes also requested that Clapper speak to his panel by the end of this week and noted that Clapper testified in November that there was not enough evidence to show a connection between Russia and the “Podesta emails” releases from WikiLeaks.
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has urged a Congressional probe, saying there is “no information” to prove any Russian intention.
“It’s obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns,” McCain told Reuters. “But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of the election, and that’s why we need a congressional investigation.”
‘Poroshenko fuels war & corruption with IMF money’ – fugitive Ukrainian MP to RT
RT | December 6, 2016
Petro Poroshenko holds sway in Ukraine by channeling western financial aid into war and bribery, while making big money with a close circle of loyal oligarchs, fugitive Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Onishchenko told RT in an exclusive interview.
Aleksandr Onishchenko, a former MP in Ukraine’s parliament, a billionaire oligarch and professional Olympic showjumper, fled the country this summer a week before being stripped of parliamentary immunity due to an investigation into an alleged gas fraud scheme.
He said that the case against him is a setup and the Ukrainian government tried to frame him to cover up a large-scale bribery scheme linked directly to President Poroshenko.
Onishchenko, who said he was a key figure in the complex scheme for two years, vowed to show western sponsors of the Ukrainian government where their money is actually going. He told RT that most IMF aid money is being used by President Poroshenko and his accomplices to fuel the ongoing civil conflict in the east of Ukraine.
“Most of the money they use for the war. I think that Poroshenko is very interested to keep the war,” Onishchenko said. An overgrown military not only allows Poroshenko to reap profits from “war-time” contracts but also suppress political opponents, the fugitive Ukrainian MP alleged.
“All the contracts for this war, even the smaller [ones], like weapons, or some stuff for the army, they [are going through] the companies which are close to [Poroshenko]. They are just [laundering] money … for them the war is like business.”
Ukraine’s president and his accomplices have a stake in all the major businesses in the country now and it’s impossible for someone outside the inner circle to make money in Ukraine, according to Onishchenko, who claims Poroshenko and his team are scared that someone could potentially fund the opposition in the wake of upcoming elections
“Poroshenko is in control now [of] all the state’s companies. It’s the biggest business they’re doing. It’s a chemical factory in Odessa, a lot of state energy companies,” said Onishchenko. Only people close to the president have been put in charge of these companies, he said.
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“They use this money for political [advantage] for voting, for supporting … they use this money to make Poroshenko stronger,” Onishchenko added.
A scandal surrounding impressive income declarations, recently filed by Ukrainian politicians, brought to attention the scale of Ukrainian corruption, Onishchenko told RT.
He hopes the recent revelations about the scale of corruption in the Ukrainian government will result in the end of financial aid to the country.
“All Europe was shocked after the declaration of the people from the parliament of Ukraine. If you saw, all the people’s deputies, they declared so much cash. It was crazy, like millions and millions. How did they make that cash?” Onishchenko said.
“Poroshenko corrupts them … pays them money for… voting. That’s why they have so much money now. They’re buying … big houses, they are buying yachts and a lot of stuff. They must explain where the money is from. That’s why they put the money in these declarations. After these declarations from the government of Ukraine and this corruption scandal, even what I said to the press, I don’t see that western Europe will support [them] anymore, I mean, financially, Ukraine. Because they see they just use money for corruption and they’ll never accept this.”
Trump vs. MSM: Donald’s twitter to become No1 source for White House news?
RT | November 23, 2016
Donald Trump seems to be going to war with the US mainstream media. The president-elect has accused outlets of being dishonest and biased against him. RT’s Ilya Petrenko has been looking at the uneasy relationship America’s incoming leader has with the media.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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