Judiciary and Intelligence Committees: CIA and Biden’s own Campaign Interfered with 2020 Election

From the WSJ article, "Biden’s CIA Assist in the 2020 Presidential Election: The agency, not only retirees, turns out to have worked on the Hunter excuse letter."

Even new habits are hard to break, and that’s the case with a federal intelligence apparatus that can’t keep its fingers out of elections. It seems President-elect Biden on Nov. 4, 2020, owed thanks not only to a cabal of former intelligence officials, but to the Central Intelligence Agency.

That’s the big takeaway of this week’s interim report from House committees detailing the origins of the October 2020 disinformation letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop. An earlier release revealed that Joe Biden’s campaign helped engineer a statement from 51 former U.S. spies that claimed the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” That letter provided Democrats, journalists and social-media companies the excuse to dismiss and censor evidence of Hunter’s influence peddling, removing an obstacle from his father’s path to victory.

Now we find out that, according to a written statement supplied to the committee, an active CIA official joined the effort to solicit more signers to the letter. The campaign to elect Joe Biden extended into Langley.

The report (issued jointly by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government) tells the sordid story of the letter, beginning with a call from Biden campaign official Antony Blinken to former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell three days after the New York Post published its laptop scoop. Mr. Morell told the committees that Mr. Blinken wanted his “reaction” to the laptop news, but another signer said Mr. Morell put it to him bluntly: the Biden campaign “asked” for the letter.

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Hollowed-Out

I propose this as a metaphor for a large country whose institutions are being hollowed out.

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Bad Leakers and Good Leaks.

A recent document leak on Discord shows that the U.S government is lying to Americans. The contents of this leak make it clear that U.S. troops are already on the ground in Ukraine, a situation that dramatically increases the risk of direct confrontation of the U.S. and Russia, which could be cataclysmic given the current situation, already hair-trigger dangerous. The U.S. corporate news is refusing to discuss the new revelations, both the White House dishonesty and the danger on the ground in Ukraine. Why? It's entire predictable.

When the corporate news media likes the content of a leak, they don't give a rat's ass about who leaked it. On other  occasions, the corporate news media finds the leak content inconvenient, in which case they zero in, laser-like, to destroy the reputation of the leaker, harping on the illegality of the leak and simultaneously suppressing the content of the leak. This protocol is in their standard playbook, as discussed by Glenn Greenwald in "The Same Establishment Playbook is Used to Malign the Character of Leakers and Distract Attention From the Substance of the Revelations."

On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post's long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump's incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State laundered in the American corporate press.

But when it comes to unauthorized leaks -- which result in the disclosure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws -- that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now -- in a new and genuinely shocking escalation -- it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI's work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.

This playback is always used in such cases and is easily recognized. The point is to shift attention from the substance of the embarrassing and incriminating disclosures onto the personal traits of the person who exposed them, so as to make the public forget about what they learned and come to see the leaker as so unlikeable that they want nothing to do with the disclosures themselves.

Glenn's System Update Episode #70 further explores the media's treatment of the Discord leaker.

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The Fine Financial Fortunes of Clarence Thomas

In past decades I looked forward to visiting Washington DC, mostly to see the museums and historic sites. Back in the day, DC brought me good vibes because it reminded me about the genius of the American project and all of the good things the Founders gifted for millions of American people. It was far from perfect, but it was better than what we could see in most other countries and that's why immigrants clamored to join us.

My attitude has soured over the years based on countless revelations of financial conflicts of interests, not the least of which was Nancy Pelosi's surreal ability to know when to buy winning stocks, notably semi-conductor chip stocks. I now think of DC as a cesspool of corruption, not as collateral damage but as its defining attribute. I can no longer look at the photos of the iconic DC architecture without thinking these thoughts. I hear corruption whenever I hear about an acquaintance who has accepted a new job in DC. I think about this whenever a new idealistic politician bursts onto the scene--I shrug and assume it's just a matter of time before their conscience is unburdened by new financial "opportunities." We have so many examples of politicians who choose personal gain over serving the people that it has ceased to be news. More than ever, the job description of politician is this: non-stop fundraising to hire the best PR machine so one can surf the election cycle to accrue more money and power.

That's how I see it, more than ever. Until recently, my concern and distress have been focused on the Legislative and Executive branches of government. But now Propublica has dropped this bomb about the financial fortunes of Clarence Thomas. Follow the full tweet-thread if you dare.

What do you think? Could this lifestyle possibly influence one's judicial mindset? In how many ways could it scramble one's mind and conscience to ride this private gravy-train for years while purporting to serve the public? I wish Propublica had the bandwidth to run deep investigations into the financial and social ties of ALL of our federal judges, as well as all of our federal representatives. I'd like to know this as a mere curiosity, as the U.S. continues its slide toward third world status.

Photos by Erich Vieth

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The Little Sailboat that Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline

1. Joe Biden promises he will make Nord Stream pipeline inoperable. Someone then destroys the pipeline. Biden then denies that he had anything to do with this act of war. 2. Next, Seymour Hersh publishes detailed investigative article showing how the U.S. destroyed the pipeline. 3. Germany, co-owner of the pipeline, displays what has got to be the most vivid case of Stockholm Syndrome in human history. 4. U.S. news media ignores the Hersh story. 5. The CIA cooks up an absurd alternative story that not-Joe-Biden destroyed the pipeline. The pipeline was destroyed using "Pro-Ukrainian" group that uses a 49 foot sailboat. 6. The NYT, which has now begrudgingly acknowledged Hersh's blockbuster story, laps up the CIA story. 7. Seymour Hersh destroys the NYT-CIA story with a handful of simple questions.

Excerpt from Hersh's newest story, "THE NORD STREAM GHOST SHIP: The false details in the CIA's cover story":

My initial report received coverage around the world but was ignored by the major newspapers and television networks in the United States. As the story gained traction in Europe and elsewhere abroad, the New York Times on March 7 published a report quoting US officials asserting that American intelligence had accumulated information suggesting that a pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged the pipelines. The story said officials who had “reviewed” the new intelligence depicted it to be “a step toward determining responsibility” for the pipeline sabotage. The Times story got worldwide attention, but nothing more has been heard since from the newspaper about who did what. In an interview for a Times podcast, one of the three authors of the article inadvertently explained why the story was dead on arrival. The writer was asked about the involvement of the alleged pro-Ukrainian group: “What makes you think that’s what happened?” He answered: “I should be very clear that we know really very little. Right?”

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