Category Archives: Russia
Deep State Russian Dragnet
Daniel Henninger in the WSJ calls the Obama/Lynch decision to allow the NSA to spread raw intel to the other 16 agencies the Rosetta Stone for the Russia story:
As with Hillary’s server, there is a Rosetta Stone for the Russia story. It is the Barack Obama/Loretta Lynch decision in January to sign rules permitting the National Security Agency to disseminate “raw signals intelligence” to 16 other intelligence agencies without privacy protections for individuals.
Russian Dragnet
Two months later, it was reported by the New York Times that Obama administration officials had done this to dispense information across the intelligence bureaucracies “about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians.”
Of course, those “contacts” leaked into the water-collection barrels of the entire Washington press—either from officials inside 17 U.S. intelligence agencies or from Obama officials themselves, such as it-wasn’t-me Susan Rice.
The predictable tumult from the Obama-originated mass leaks then intimidated Congress into sending the House and Senate intelligence committees chasing after these “suggestions” of collusion.
Beyond Mike Flynn and Carter Page, why haven’t we seen more leaks pushing past the original stories? Why have the leakers gone silent, unless they leaked everything they had? Indeed why hasn’t there been a mega-dump into the press by now of all the original NSA “raw signals intelligence” à la the Pentagon Papers?
Instead, calls are now bubbling up from this swamp—what else can you call it?—to appoint a special prosecutor, presumably to get to the bottom of the Russian collusion swamp, though without subpoena powers in Moscow.
Putin’s Super Bowl Ring
A trip to the White House is the elite athlete equivalent of everyone getting a trophy.
The New England Patriots made their regular trek last week. They gave President Trump another jersey. Jason Gray, in the WSJ (a subscription is required but try clicking the Google link), says he’ll never wear it unless he gets a job at Buffalo Wild Wings.
Some players didn’t make the trip, including Tom Brady. Also, on the dark side, former star receiver Aaron Hernandez hung himself in prison that morning. He had just been cleared of two murder charges but was serving a life term for another.
Putin’s Super Bowl Ring
But team owner Robert Craft showed up. He claims Vladimir Putin stole his Super Bowl ring in 2013.
Reset of a Reset
President Trump doesn’t look like much of a Russian collaborator lately. Last week he bombed Putin’s Syrian Ally al Assad for using chemical weapons. Weapons the Russians promised to eliminate.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson got a chilly reception from his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and President Putin in Moscow yesterday. And he didn’t bring a reset button with him.
Reset of a Reset
When asked on the Journal Report what he makes of the U.S. Russian relationship, Dan Henninger answered, “I guess you could call it a reset of a reset. Because whatever Donald Trump’s relationship may or may not have been with Vladimir Putin, it’s not the same as of this strike against Syria.” CNN says, “Donald Trumps Russia’s reset already needs a reset.”
Follow the Unmasking
The Trump/Russian conspiracy theory is dragging. For one thing, no real evidence is being presented. And for another Trump bombed Syria, the ally of his alleged co-conspirator Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, there is evidence Team Obama spied on Team Trump. Bloomberg‘s Eli Lake and others broke the story last week. Obama national security adviser Susan Rice purused raw intelligence data on Russians’ conversations with Trump associates. Spying on foreigners is legal but spying on Americans isn’t. When American citizens get caught up in foreign surveillance their names are supposed to be masked in the intelligence report.
Follow the Unmasking
But Susan Rice had American names unmasked. Adam Housley at Fox News reported that she then circulated raw reports with the unmasked names.
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.
Somewhere along the line somebody leaked Michael Flynn’s name and he was forced to resign as Trump’s national security adviser. Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal suggests that FBI Director Comey has a conflict of interest in all this. And that it’s even possible “his staff was among the leakers.”
Andrew McCarthy wrote a column in National Review titled Susan Rice’s Unmasking: a Watergate style scandal.
Conspiracy Theories Run Wild in Washington
Conspiracy theories are running wild in Washington. But there is no evidence that President Obama climbed a pole and personally wiretapped President Trump’s phone. Angela Merkel’s phone? Well, maybe a little.
Fox News’s Judge Napolitano says Obama got the Brits to do it for him.
Update 3/21/17:
The L.A. Times reports that Fox News has pulled Judge Andrew Napolitano off the air. He had claimed to have unnamed sources who say Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. The Brits say that’s ridiculous.
“By bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints,” Napolitano wrote in a column on FoxNews.com.
The judge also claimed that Fox News backed up his claim.
“Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way,” Shepard Smith told viewers Friday.
