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Iran Hawks Take the White House

Inspired by fringe theories about Islamic civilization, Michael Flynn is leading Trump down a dangerous path.
By PHILIP GIRALDI • February 9, 2017 on The American Conservative

The United States is adding new sanctions on Iran over that country’s alleged misdeeds, and nearly all of those allegations are either out-and-out lies or half-truths. It has a familiar ring to it, as demonizing Tehran has been rather more the norm than not since 1979, a phenomenon that has included fabricated claims that the Iranians killed American soldiers after the U.S.’s armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This time around, the administration focused on the perfectly legal Iranian test of a non-nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile and the reported attack on what was initially claimed to be a U.S. warship by allegedly Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi fighters. The ship was later revealed to be a Saudi frigate.

Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, “officially” put Iran “on notice” while declaring that “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Iran’s provocations that threaten our interests. The days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.”

Ignoring the fact that Iran cannot actually threaten the United States or any genuine vital national interests, the warning and follow-up action from the White House also contradict Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to avoid yet another war in the Middle East, which appears to have escaped Flynn’s notice. The increase in tension and the lack of any diplomatic dialogue mean that an actual shooting war might now be a “false flag,” false intelligence report, or accidental naval encounter away.

If it all sounds like a reprise of the baseless allegations and intentionally unproductive negotiations that led to the catastrophic Iraq War, it should. What “belligerent actions against the United States” Flynn was referring to, generally speaking, were not completely clear, but that lack of precision may have been intentional, to permit instant vilification of anything Tehran attempts to do to counter the hostility coming out of Washington.

Hating Iran has a considerable pedigree. I must confess to being of a generation in the federal government, like Flynn and others, where saying something derogatory about Iran was in the DNA, welcomed by all and sundry. I nursed a personal and specific grudge relating to the mullahs, as an Iranian government agent tried to kill me in Turkey in the 1980s. But more often the animosity was generic, sometimes expressed humorously at CIA Station staff meetings. I recall how one fellow officer who was undercover at a consular office would positively gloat as he described how many Iranian visa applicants he had turned down in the past week and everyone would bang their fists on the conference table, signifying their approval. Of course, we all felt fully justified in our Iranophobia due to the 1979-80 embassy hostage crisis, which was still very fresh in our minds.

But my rancor toward Iran has long since faded. I have Iranian friends and have come around to the view that Iran has much more been sinned against than sinned in its relationship with the United States. With the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015, I even began to believe that the two nations might well be able to resume something like normal diplomatic relations, which would benefit everyone involved. Alas, such hopes appear to be scuppered by a recent wave of Iran hysteria that bids fair to eclipse the Russian panic that has consumed the media and chattering class during the past six months.

I should have seen it coming. In December 2015, I was present at a conference in Moscow where General Flynn explained his concept of 21st-century geo-economic-political strategy. At least I think that was what he was talking about, though one can understand the frustration of the interviewer, Sophie Shevdernadze, as she tried to get him to explain what he meant during a largely incoherent presentation.

At the time I knew little about Flynn and his views, but I was particularly taken aback by a random shot he took at the Iranians, stating very clearly that they were responsible for “fueling four proxy wars in the Middle East.” He was presumably referring to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. The audience, which included a number of international journalists and genuine foreign-policy experts, became somewhat restless and began to mutter. I was standing in the back of the room and witnessed Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, responding to the expressions of disbelief, waving his arms around and shouting “Right! Right! Check the intel!”

Two minutes later, the elder Flynn returned to the theme, mentioning the “terrible nuclear deal with Iran.” Now, I am accustomed to hearing nasty things about Iran, but they usually come from Israeli partisans who persist in falsely describing the Iranians as a global threat. It is in their interest to do so, and many pliable American politicians and media talking heads have picked up the refrain, so much so that a U.S. attack on Iran would likely be endorsed overwhelmingly by Congress and applauded in the media.

But I believed that Flynn was not particularly in with that group, consisting largely of neoconservatives, and his disdain for Iran seemed to be at least somewhat sincere in that it appeared to be rooted in his own experience as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). But I was wrong and should have paid more attention to the people Flynn was talking to.

Sources of Flynn’s Worldview

A long-time foe of Iran, Michael Ledeen believed that invading the country should have been the first priority in 2003 rather than Iraq. He believes that “everything traces back to Tehran” and that Iran manipulates both sides of the Shi’ite-Sunni conflict, leading reviewer Peter Beinart to note that his “effort to lay virtually every attack by Muslims against Americans at Tehran’s feet takes him into rather bizarre territory.”

Even as Flynn was speaking in Moscow he was collaborating with Ledeen on a book called The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, which appeared in July 2016. The book has two basic premises. First, the entire “civilized world” is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a perverted form of Islam that has produced the phenomenon referred to as “radical Islamic terrorism,” a phrase that may have been embraced by the Trump administration largely thanks to Flynn. Flynn insists on the tag including the Islamic part because of his belief that the Muslim religion is itself intrinsic to the very nature of the conflict. In fact, he prefers to call Islam a political ideology rather than a religion and even describes it as a political ideology that has “metastasized” into “malignant cancer.” He once tweeted that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” linking to a false claim that Islam wants 80 percent of humanity enslaved or exterminated.

Second, Ledeen’s book views Iran as both the source and lynchpin of the massive disorder prevailing in the Middle East, with tentacles reaching throughout the region and beyond. It is itself a radical Islamic regime that uses terror as a weapon, a state sponsor of terrorism according to the State Department, and it also is an ally of movements like ISIS and the various al-Qaeda affiliates that it only pretends to be fighting. Flynn and Ledeen also assert that Iran is intent on developing a nuclear weapon and has a secret program to do so in spite of the 2015 agreement. It would use such a weapon to threaten Israel and other U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond, and is simultaneously developing ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver the weapons on target.

In addition to Ledeen, Flynn’s conspiratorial mindset goes back further, to his days with DIA, where he was well known for what his staff referred to as “Flynn facts,” things he would say that were demonstrably untrue. He once insisted that three-quarters of all new cell phones were bought by Africans and maintained that Iran has killed more Americans than al-Qaeda. Few dared to disagree. When he took over DIA, Flynn said to his senior staff that everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His subordinates would only be right when their views became the same as his.

DIA Director Flynn considered the Benghazi attack in September 2012 to be an incident in the global war against Islam. His initial reaction was to “prove” Iranian involvement, and he pressured his analysts to come up with the evidence, including shouting at them when they couldn’t support his conclusions. He told the analysts that Benghazi was a “black swan” event that needed more creative analysis to unravel.

Later, in testimony before the House of Representatives in June 2015, Flynn stated that

Iran represents a clear and present danger to the region, and eventually to the world. Iran’s stated desire to destroy Israel is very real. Iran has not once contributed to the greater good of the security of the region. Nor has Iran contributed to the protection of security for the people of the region. Instead, and for decades, they have contributed to the severe insecurity and instability of the region, especially the sub-region of the Levant surrounding Israel. … It is clear that the nuclear deal is not a permanent fix but merely a placeholder.

Flynn was eventually fired from DIA over his hardline views, in part because of his demonization of Iran and Islam. It would be easy to suggest that Flynn has only a tenuous grasp on what is really going on in the Middle East. Consider his assertion that Shi’ite Iran is in league with groups like al-Qaeda—which consider Shi’a to be a heresy and are willing to kill its followers on that basis alone. But the situation is actually much more dangerous than the usual Washington groupthink: Flynn and Ledeen have constructed a narrative in which the world is at war with a great evil and Iran is the central player on the enemy side. It is a viewpoint that is, unfortunately, shared at least in part by the new secretaries of defense and state and endorsed by many in Congress. This has consequently developed into a new sensibility about U.S. national security that is apparently driving the Trump administration’s responses to Iranian behavior.

The Danger of Escalation

Iran certainly exhibits assertive behavior regionally. But much of its maneuvering is defensive in nature; it is surrounded by a sea of enemies, most of whom are better armed and funded than it is. The nuclear agreement with Iran has considerably delayed any possible development of a nuclear weapon and is in everyone’s interest. It is not plausibly a delaying tactic to acquire a weapon somewhere down the road, as Flynn and Ledeen would have us believe.

Iran will be a very tough nut to crack if Flynn has his way and the Trump White House employs military force. Iran is roughly the same size as Alaska and has three times the population of Iraq, and the Iranian people have a strong national identity. They would fight hard, and using their sophisticated Russian-provided air defenses and Chinese missiles they could inflict major damage on U.S. air and naval units in the Persian Gulf region. They would also be able to unleash limited but nevertheless lethal terrorist resources. It would not be a “cakewalk,” and even if there were a military victory of some sorts, the world would be left with yet another power vacuum in the heart of Asia.

I believe that Flynn is a dangerous man, possibly even mentally unhinged on some issues. He thinks that the United States has the preemptive right to tell countries in the Middle East what is acceptable and what is not and is willing to exercise various repressive measures to compel good behavior. Iran, as a designated “problem state,” is consequently not allowed to act in support of its own national-security interests. Flynn justifies his hostility by claiming that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and instability, which is a self-serving lie. Absent diplomacy to resolve differences, the only interaction with Tehran from Washington has become the threat of economic sanctions backed up by military force. As Iran responds in kind this will become an escalatory cycle with no easy way out.

A better policy would allow Iran to diversify naturally without a constant stream of provocations that only serve to embolden hardliners. Iran’s young people, the majority of the population, are very pro-Western and even pro-American in their cultural affinities and sentiments. The Iranian population is closely tied to a large Iranian diaspora, with an estimated 1.5 million Iranians living in the U.S. alone. Threats of military action will strengthen the grip of the government in Tehran, producing hard responses and piling threat upon threat that will ultimately lead nowhere. Hopefully some adults in the White House cabinet room will at some to point tell Michael Flynn that it is time to sit down and listen to the facts.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

The Nihilist Intelligence Officer

CIA employees are not staging a coup against Donald Trump.
By PHILIP GIRALDI • January 25, 2017, originally published at The American Conservative.

It would never occur to ordinary CIA officers that derailing a presidency might be a desirable thing to do. The rumor of some kind of coup in the making is the creation of a media that is looking for a story and trying to bash Donald Trump at the same time.

To be sure, there has been an open dispute between Trump and several intelligence officials over the nature of the alleged Russian threat, with the new president tending to dismiss the alarms being raised by former CIA director John Brennan and others. Trump has struck back against the criticism in general terms, noting dismissively how several of the various agencies that make up the community have had a tendency to get things wrong, most notably the CIA’s Weapons of Mass Destruction assessment on Iraq.

Sometimes this rift has morphed into an alternative media narrative suggesting that the intelligence agencies are actually trying to stage a soft coup through their criticism of Trump and his advisers, attempting to delegitimize the presidency and wage war on Trump’s policies as he struggles to establish himself in Washington. There have also been allegations that leaks reportedly coming from the top levels of several agencies have been intended to discredit the new president.

Some others have noted, less alarmingly, that a president at odds with the intelligence agencies he directs is a formula for trouble internally and will also create problems in sharing information with friendly foreign security services. Those who are more conspiracy-minded see instead a focused effort to pile up criticism and distractions that will narrow Trump’s options for dealing with Russia and the Middle East. In its most extreme rendition, some suspect that the national security “deep state” is even eager to enter into a new Cold War with Moscow, possibly to justify its own existence and emoluments.

Trump has responded sharply to a so-called dossier containing allegations about his relationship with Moscow, calling the possibility that an intelligence agency leaked the scandalous but unverifiable material something that might have happened in Nazi Germany. John Brennan saw an unacceptable analogy in that comment and also warned that the impression that the White House does not trust its own spies could have major international repercussions. He recommended that the new president should be more careful in what he says and does, particularly regarding Russia, further fueling the perception that the national-security state is building a united front against any possible shift in policy.

I do not, however, share the view that a major conflict between America’s intelligence community and the Trump administration is in place or somehow developing. Nor is there a potential problem with foreign intelligence services, which continue to receive much more information from Washington than they provide. Yes, there is a rift between the new White House and its national-security apparatus, but what we have been seeing is a largely internal conflict between the outgoing Obama administration and the incoming Trump administration over the foreign-policy and national-security agenda.

Sources of Russian Hysteria

Obama, for reasons that elude me, used his last several weeks in office to punish Russia. Relying on the as of yet evidence-free claims of Moscow’s interference in the U.S. election as a pretext, 35 Russian diplomats and their families were expelled just before the New Year while an American infantry brigade supported by armor was shifted to Poland over a largely speculative threat to allies in Eastern Europe.

The Obama attempt to lock Russia into a certain foreign-policy box has been aided and abetted by a largely Democratic Party and media-induced hysteria over the results of the election, one that increasingly blames Russia and Vladimir Putin personally for the outcome. The narrative has expanded as it has gone along, adding an apparent Russian-Putin plan to destabilize all of Europe. Republican notables, including Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have eagerly jumped on board the bandwagon and are chairing committee hearings where no one who has anything exculpatory to say about Russia need apply.

But as the CIA does not often do things spontaneously, someone should be asking who in the White House directed the agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to focus on Russia and the election, resulting in the yet-to-be-seen-by-the-public classified 35-page report on the alleged hack that is now being used to explain the stunning election results. As John Brennan has been promoting the anti-Russian agenda as Obama’s yes-man in Langley, he is almost certainly the source of much of the prevailing narrative, but one nevertheless has to assume that he was acting under orders.

Another prominent former CIA officer who has also been aggressively pushing the anti-Russian button is retired Acting Director Michael Morell. He is best known for his recent recommendation that the United States begin to assassinate Iranians and Russians to send a “serious” message that they are interfering in Syria—and that we are really angry about what they are doing. (Morell somehow missed the fact that we are the ones who are interfering, as Syria has an internationally recognized government that has sought assistance from Tehran and Moscow while excluding us.)

Morell is currently calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to return whistleblower Edward Snowden to the U.S. so he can be tried and punished as an inaugural “gift” to President Trump. If the proposal is being made in all seriousness, it suggests that Morell has completely lost touch with what most would regard as reality.

Morell is inevitably a passionate Clinton supporter who might have been aspiring to be named as her CIA director. During the campaign, he described Trump as an “unwitting agent” of Russia even though his own career through the CIA bureaucracy rather suggests that “unwitting” might well apply to several of his stops along the way. Morell, as White House briefer, delivered the false report that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. He also presented to George W. Bush the August 2001 CIA report suggesting that a major terrorist strike on the U.S. was about to take place but added his own view that “there was no need to worry about an Al Qaida attack on the homeland.” Morell also led the team of analysts that prepared the infamous Colin Powell UN speech that falsely claimed Iraq possessed “biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.”

But Morell is gone for good unless one has the misfortune to see him on CBS News. Brennan is now also out the door, soon to be replaced by Mike Pompeo, and if Brennan’s personal staff is not gone already, it soon will be. So the drive for a certain flavor of foreign policy being supported by cherry-picked intelligence to suit will lose its raison d’être and will change to conform with what the new administration desires.

The Permanent CIA

The CIA is not the departed John Brennan and his inner circle of heavily politicized senior managers. Nor is it Michael Morell. It is nearly 20,000 employees who are generally type-A personalities: headstrong and largely unwilling to have anyone tell them what is right and what is wrong. Many who work through a couple of overseas tours return home pretty much as political nihilists, regarding one band of corrupt politicians pretty much like any other, including those who sit in Washington. To cite only one example, while serving in Geneva, fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden recounted how he met many American spies who were deeply opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East. “The CIA case officers were all going, what the hell are we doing?” That kind of reaction by CIA’s foot soldiers to what was coming out of Washington was not exactly unusual.

An interesting recent op-ed by David Ignatius, who is well plugged in to Washington intelligence circles, explains inter alia how the CIA is not equivalent to the agency leadership, which comes and goes with each administration. As Ignatius describes, most CIA staffers are currently more engaged in a controversial internal reorganization Brennan has been implementing over the past year—in part to punish the agency’s actual spies, who reportedly rejected his services 37 years ago, instead forcing him to become an analyst. He has never forgiven them, apparently. Ignatius cites two senior operations officers who describe the changes as the “revenge of the nerds.”

The bottom line is that few agency staffers care very deeply about how Donald Trump might perceive the organization that pays them, as long as it continues to pay them and gives them at least a modicum of respect. No cuts in the intelligence-community budget are anticipated and some believe that it might actually increase. I know there were no exit polls at CIA headquarters, but I would bet that an overwhelming majority of agency staffers, who normally identify as Republicans anyway, actually voted for Donald Trump. Many were more than a little disgusted by what they regarded as a pusillanimous Obama and hold Hillary Clinton in utter contempt for no-fault email caper.

Trump, for his part, has clearly understood the need to reassure the intelligence community that new management is preparing to take over. His first visit to a government agency on the day after the inauguration was to CIA, where he was applauded as he said at least some of the right things to heal the breach.

Sure, it is nice to be loved—but it is far more important to have a good job with benefits, work that is fulfilling, and regular promotions that help pay the mortgage and kids’ college tuition. CIA employees who put their job and family first will go with the program as long as the leadership doesn’t go completely bonkers. Most also take seriously their oath to uphold the Constitution, not necessarily what they perceive as the propaganda that comes out of every White House.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Honoring a Whistleblower in the Sam Adams Tradition

Originally posted on Huffington on 1/30/2009

Note: On Jan. 26, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Danish military intelligence officer Frank Grevil was given the Sam Adams award for integrity in intelligence. The following is an extended version of the introductory remarks by former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern. While I and others could only join in the spirit and not in person on this particular occasion, I thought Mr. McGovern’s witty remarks (first posted on Consortium News) worth sharing:

Thank you, one and all, for coming this evening at such short notice and in such encouraging numbers. Our first order of business this evening is the presenting of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award to former Danish intelligence officer, Maj. Frank Grevil. You each have a handout explaining who former CIA analyst Sam Adams was, and why we, his former colleagues, created this movement in his memory.

Representing the Sam Adams Associates, I have the privilege, together with former British Intelligence officer Katharine Gun, who received the award in 2004, to honor Frank Grevil with the sixth annual Sam Adams Award. …

Hans Christian Andersen and Shakespeare

Whenever I come to Denmark, ringing in my ears are the wonderful stories with which your Hans Christian Andersen gifted the world. Not to mention the words that The Bard put in the mouths of his vivid characters in Hamlet, set in Denmark.

First, Hans Christian Andersen (we shall get to Shakespeare later): Most of you will remember the one about the king’s “Magic Suit of Clothes.” The American actor Danny Kaye immortalized that story on film. As a boy, I memorized his musical rendition of those tales and I now sing them to our grandchildren.

What follows is a kind of allegory with, I think, some teaching points.

Once upon a time, in a land far away…no, not far away, but here, in this land, Denmark…there was a king, who was simply insane about new clothes, because he thought they would enhance the distinguished image he craved. Well, one day swindlers came to see the king — there is an unconfirmed report that they came from the American embassy. In any case, they came to persuade the king to buy a suit made out of whole cloth — a suit they said was a “magic suit.”

Now, in truth, as they held up the supposed raiment, there was nothing there at all. But the swindlers were very clever. They told the king — or was it the prime minister? — that this was a magic suit and only a wise man would recognize this. But, to a fool the suit would be invisible.

Most important, they said the suit was distinctive for its so-called “weapons of mass destruction,” and that if the king were a wise man he could readily see them in the fine fabric woven by clothier Bush Blair Rumsfeld Ltd.

And not only that: They said the king could have the suit for free. All he had to do was vouch strongly and publicly for the existence of these weapons. And, if he did this on a specific date chosen by the clothier, he could then become a best buddy of Bush and Blair.

Moreover, then Bush would come and spend the night in the Danish kingdom. And, best of all, then could the Danish king — or was it the prime minister? — be invited to travel across the sea to Crawford Castle in the kingdom of Texas to have his photo taken there with Bush, and with Danish and American flags waving briskly in the background.

There were just a few other things the king should know, said the swindlers. A small war would be involved, and the king would be required to bring his country into it. Thus, the king was required to endorse the pretext for war precisely on the day before it started. This was the script the king — or was it the prime minister? — needed to memorize and assert publicly on that fateful eve:

“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know.”

The swindlers persuaded the vain king that “justifying” the war would be a “Schlammdunk,” and that this wee war of aggression would be a “Kuchenwalk” — suggesting ease in conjuring up a casus belli, and in achieving a quick and easy victory.

Best of all, his country was sure to be on the winning side and he would be invited to march in the very first row of the victory parade.

Now the king, not wanting to appear a fool, saw at once that the magic suit was fairly bristling with weapons of mass deception — sorry, I mean destruction. He enthusiastically joined the chorus of Sir Tony of Blair and other dodgy nobles who had been so ready to see the invisible. The king donned the suit and ordered a practice parade as a kind of rehearsal for the eventual victory parade.

The day for the rehearsal came, and the streets were lined with thousands and thousands of people. They had heard the story of the magic suit and wished to see it — and appear wise — like the king. And so they all were cheering like mad. That is, all but one fellow named Frank Grevil.

Now, it is understood that no one wants to appear completely out of step — and particularly not at a celebratory parade. And so Major Grevil strained his eyes and directed his considerable analytical skills toward the king in his “magic suit”… and was shocked.

Grevil shouted:

“Look at the king! The king is in the altogether, he’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born.

“The king is in the altogether; it’s altogether the very least the king has ever worn!

“Call the court physician; call an intermission. The king is wide open to ridicule and scorn!

“The king is in the altogether, and it’s altogether too chilly a morn.”

The disruption caused by this burst of honesty was most unwelcome. You see, everyone but Grevil — whether nobles like Sir Tony of Blair or commoners — had their own reasons for going along with the king and pretending to see the WMD. And so they did.

And thus began this nasty little war against people of darker hue who happen to swim on a sea of oil. But, alas, no victory parade is now envisaged. Bush Blair Rumsfeld, Ltd, has declared bankruptcy and is no longer weaving garments out of whole cloth.

Worse by far: hundreds of thousands died. And there were very, very few who lived “happily ever after.”

The Supreme Irony

One who did live through all this — and happily, it would seem — was the prime minister — Oops, I mean the king. I mean the one who thought it politically wise to claim, despite the lack of real evidence, that he knew that weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq. I mean the one who thus shares moral responsibility for the carnage that ensued.

You will find this hard to believe, but the king sits on the throne still to this day. The great majority of his subjects are either unaware of his complicity or prefer to ignore or deny it. What comes off the printing presses makes little mention of it. [At the time of the Iraq invasion – and now – Denmark’s prime minister is Fogh Anders Rasmussen.]

What about Frank Grevil, the one who called attention to the king’s nakedness? His reward? Four months in prison.

We are grateful for the Grevils of this world. We call them whistleblowers — people of integrity and courage who buck the tide and refuse to be intimidated or silenced. The good they do usually goes unheralded. It is, nevertheless good — and worth doing — because it is good. The results, as history shows, are not always in the hands of the truth tellers.

The whole-cloth clothier, Bush Blair Rumsfeld, was right about one thing; i. e., there IS evil in the world. And the Briton, Lord Acton, also had it right, when he famously pointed to what lies so often at the core of major evil like wars of aggression — little or large. Acton’s observation: “Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Recognizing what they are up against, some whistleblowers have quipped that their rewards are “out of this world.” Black humor aside, there is ample support for that observation in the Biblical tradition from which many of us come.

Indeed, people of integrity like Frank Grevil give flesh to the Biblical assurance: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

And for that we are all very grateful.

Shakespeare and ‘Something Rotten’

As I landed in Denmark reflecting on Frank Grevil’s imprisonment for speaking truth, it struck me there must be “something rotten in Denmark.” I had not thought of that quote from Shakespeare in many years, but when it came back into mind, its context came with it.

And I realized I had misquoted Marcellus’ remark to Hamlet’s friend Horatio. Marcellus says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” — the allusion being to the political hierarchy at the top. He is saying the state of Denmark is like a fish rotting from the head down.

Shakespeare is highlighting the main theme of Hamlet — the connection between the crime of a ruler and the health of the country as a whole. Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, King of Denmark, is a calculating, ambitious politician who will stop at nothing in his lust for power. I shall leave it to you to ponder whether there may be any parallels in today’s Denmark, or not.

Rot is hardly confined to Denmark. It is as universal and noxious wherever senior officials seek to exercise unbridled power. Legislative oversight committees have become overlook committees.

Often, the only brake on the Executive’s exercise of power is the whistleblower willing to take the risk of shedding light in dark places. And Frank Grevil is not alone in suffering from the abuse of power. In Washington, too, whistleblowers have a price on their heads.

One of our Senators with fascist tendencies, Kit Bond of Missouri, currently vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has spoken out with special venom against whistleblowers.

At last week’s confirmation hearings for Dennis Blair, nominated by President Barack Obama to the most senior intelligence post (Director of National Intelligence), Bond pressed the nominee on whether he would try to prosecute leakers of classified information.

Falling in nicely with Bond’s proclivities, Blair did not disguise his repugnance toward whistleblowers: “If I could ever catch one of those [leakers], it would be very good to prosecute them. We need to make sure that people who leak are held accountable.”

It is, rather, Senators and Directors who need to be held accountable. And they tend to show their true colors at such hearings.

On Aug. 2, 2006, for example, Sen. Bond actually suggested that leakers be Guantanamo-ized: “There is nothing like an orange jumpsuit on a deliberate leaker to discourage others from going down that path,” said Bond.

Dennis Blair has now been confirmed by the Senate, but there is also some good news.

On Jan. 29, the House of Representatives voted to strengthen whistleblower protections for federal employees, including those working in national security agencies. The bill’s sponsors believe that, if the Senate also approves, President Obama will sign it into law.

Fair warning: the likes of Dennis Blair can be counted on to lobby the Senate strongly against approving this legislation.

Whistleblower Protection

Those, like Frank Grevil, whose conscience prompts them to disclose suppressed truth on important matters, will continue to be ostracized — and sometimes imprisoned. There will always be a need for a community of support to give them hope.

Sam Adams Associates and those who have been honored with our annual award comprise that kind of community. Previous awardees are Coleen Rowley of the FBI; Katharine Gun of British Intelligence; Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; Craig Murray, former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan; and former U.S. Army Sgt. Sam Provance, truth teller about Abu Ghraib.

Thinking again of Hamlet, one might say we have taken to heart the wise advice Polonius gives his son Laertes:

“Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.”

It can be very lonely out there. Community, as well as conscience, are what enrich and sustain whistleblower friendship and support. We encourage one another to follow, as Frank Grevil has, the rest of Polonius’s advice:

“This above all—
To thine own self be true;
And it must follow
As the night the day,
Thou canst not then
Be false to any man.”

Former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley, the first recipient of the Sam Adams award, has sent us for this occasion a corollary quote in the vernacular. It is from Texan politician/populist Jim Hightower:

“The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

And so we are back to rotten fish.

The Witness of Other Truth Tellers

We are painfully aware of the experience of Frank Grevil. In more fortunate circumstances, whistleblowers have scored major successes. Let me mention a couple, before we give Frank the Sam Adams award.

It has been 50 years since my first extended visit to Europe as a university student. Most of you are too young to remember, but a “wonder-drug,” Thalidomide, had just come on the market. This drug gave temporary rest and relief to millions, especially prospective mothers with morning sickness and problems sleeping.

Stationed in Germany more than a decade later, I witnessed the human results of the horrible side effects of Thalidomide, which had become available all over Germany, the rest of Europe, and beyond.

Over 10,000 babies in 46 countries were born without limbs or otherwise disfigured and disabled. Those still alive would be in their late forties now. Perhaps you have encountered some of them.

Frances Kelsey

How did the United States escape this plague? One whistleblower, a woman named Frances Kelsey of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saw through the charade — the magic suit, you might say, of the swindlers from the drug company.

Although Doctor Kelsey came under extreme pressure to fall in step and approve the drug, she would not be moved. She saw right through this particular magic-suit-type scheme, scorned the testing that had been done by the Thalidomide manufacturer, and blocked introduction of the drug into America.

As the sixties and seventies wore on, the horrible damage caused by the drug made itself known. And what also became clear was the reality that a decade of American babies born in whole, with all their limbs, owed a debt of gratitude to Frances Kelsey, whistleblower par excellence!

Tom Clark, who did so much to help arrange this evening’s event, tells me that he is of that generation, that his mother suffered from morning sickness in bearing him, and that he might well be missing a limb or two today, had his mother been able to acquire Thalidomide in the United States.

W. Mark Felt

Just last month, W. Mark Felt, now perhaps the most famous whistleblower in our country’s history, died at the age of 95. Felt was the senior FBI official referred to as “Deep Throat,” who resisted and exposed the cover-up of the Watergate crimes under President Richard Nixon.

Felt leaked to the press so much damaging information that President Richard Nixon was driven out of office when it became clear that he was trying to be king, rather than president. With help from journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post — an independent newspaper in those days — a would-be dictator was forced to resign the presidency.

One must make some practical application here in order to explain why Bush and Cheney were permitted to serve out their term.

It was the power of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) and the cowardice of an invertebrate legislature that were responsible for the fact that those war criminals were not impeached, convicted, and removed from power — a process for which the provident Founders of our country were careful to provide in the Constitution.

Freedom is endangered when there is no truly free and independent Fourth Estate, which the British statesman Edmund Burke called the “most important estate of all.”

The biggest sea change I have witnessed in the American body politic in the 45 years I have been in Washington is the reality that our country no longer has, in any meaningful sense, a free media. That is, as we say in America, BIG! Perhaps the situation is better here in Denmark?

The morphing of Bob Woodward is perhaps most instructive of all. He kept his explicit promise to Felt to avoid revealing the identity of “Deep Throat” until Felt released the reporter from that pledge shortly before Felt’s death.

Woodward did not, however, keep the implicit promise of an investigative journalist to pursue truth without fear or favor. Rather, like the craven Washington Post, Woodward made an unconscionable transition from fearless “junkyard dog” to Historian to the Court of George W. Bush and his regent Dick Cheney.

It was the price Woodward would pay for uniquely privileged access to them.

All, including investigative journalists, are vulnerable to the temptations of power. Lord Acton’s dictum at work once again.

Sadly, Britain’s Lord Goldsmith seems blissfully unaware of Lord Acton’s dictum. Or perhaps he means to prove it! Goldsmith is the U.K Attorney General who conveniently obliged when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair told him to change his legal opinion on attacking Iraq from illegal to legal.

I am not making this up. An official British document that was leaked to the Sunday Times contains the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at 10 Downing Street and has become known as the “Downing Street Memo.” The minutes record Goldsmith as saying that “the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action.”

Elizabeth Wilmshurst

But no matter. Under great pressure, Goldsmith was persuaded to change his mind. And so did all the lawyers in the Foreign Office — all, that is, but one Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy legal counsel.

Wilmshurst had been deeply involved in negotiations with the International Criminal Court regarding crimes of aggression. She knew a war of aggression when she saw one.

Wilmshurst would not go with the flow like the proverbial dead fish. When her boss Michael Wood and her colleagues did a 180-degree collective change of mind on the legality of attacking Iraq, she resigned on March 18, 2003, one day before the war began.

In her letter of resignation, Elizabeth Wilmshurst wrote that she was leaving “with very great sadness” after almost 30 years in the legal department of the foreign office:

“I cannot in conscience go along with advice — within the Office or to the public or Parliament — which asserts the legitimacy of military action without a [new Security Council] resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.”

Her boss, Michael Wood, who went with the flow, was rewarded with knighthood the following year. So was Christopher Greenwood, the outside jurist from whom Lord Goldsmith sought cover, when he dutifully changed his opinion on the legality of the war. O Tempora, O Mores!

Katharine Gun

The bravery of Katharine Gun is well depicted in the book published last year, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War.

Working on Chinese affairs in the British equivalent of the U.S. eavesdropping agency (NSA), Katharine had little access to sensitive information regarding the Middle East. Yet at the turn of 2002-2003 it became clear to her that the U.S. and U.K. had decided to attack Iraq, whether or not it had threatening weapons, and whether or not the UN Security Council approved.

Still, Katharine was startled to see set down in black and white, in an e-mail of late January 2003, a blanket instruction to her colleagues to help the U.S. National Security Agency “surge” the monitoring of conversations of Security Council members in New York, in order to give American and British diplomats the wherewithal to pre-empt any initiative that could block the path to war.

Her conscience led her to make that blanket instruction available to the media.

Katharine’s objective, pure and simple, was to prevent a war of aggression. And, absent approval by the Security Council, that was precisely what an attack on Iraq would be.

She expected that if she provided unimpeachable documentary evidence, including the full name of the senior NSA official ordering the “surge” in monitoring, this would demonstrate to the world how hell-bent Bush and Blair were on war — even if illegal.

Katharine Gun reasoned that exposing the wealth of detail regarding what the NSA was urging in order to rig the results of any discussions among Security Council members would bring a flurry of attention in the Western press. She expected that this, in turn, would give a boost to those trying to stop the launching of an unprovoked war.

As things turned out, Katharine was shocked that the information she leaked was virtually ignored by the U.S. Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), which had long been cheerleading for war.

She was arrested and brought to trial. Her pro bono lawyers argued that she was trying to prevent a war. They contended that the war was illegal, which of course the British government denied. However, when asked to make public the opinion(s) of the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the war, the government refused.

Blair was not inclined to let his own and Lord Goldsmith’s dirty linen hang out for all to see. As a result, Katharine escaped the fate that befell Frank Grevil.

I would now like to introduce to you that same Katharine Gun, and ask her to read the citation awarding Frank Grevil the Sam Adams award:

The Sam Adams Associates
Corner-Brightener Candlestick
Awarded to Frank Grevil

Know all ye by these presents that FRANK GREVIL is hereby awarded The Corner-Brightener Candlestick, presented by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

Heeding the dictates of conscience and true patriotism, Danish Army Maj. Frank Grevil put his career and his very liberty at risk for democracy. He did this by exposing the deceptive nature of the intelligence conjured up in an attempt to “justify” Denmark’s role in the attack on Iraq in March 2003.

Maj. Grevil and other intelligence analysts had warned the Danish government that there was very little evidence that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” Despite this, on the day before the invasion of Iraq, Denmark’s Prime Minister told Parliament: “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know.”

Grevil believes it to be extremely destructive of democracy when national leaders deceive the citizens’ representatives, whether in Parliament or Congress, into voting for what the Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” — a war of aggression. He thought it essential that Danish citizens learn that their political leaders had not told the truth. And so he gave to the press documents that exposed this, fully aware that, in doing so, he ran the risk of going to prison.

Like previous SAAII annual award winner, Katharine Gun of British intelligence, the documents that Frank Grevil released shone a laser beam of light through a thick cloud of deception. Grevil set a courageous example for those intelligence analysts of the “Coalition of the Willing” who have first-hand knowledge of how intelligence was corrupted to “justify” war, but who have not yet been able to find their voice.

Presented this 26th day of January 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark by admirers of the example set by our former colleague, Sam Adams.

A Demand for Russian ‘Hacking’ Proof

More than 20 U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic veterans are calling on President Obama to release the evidence backing up allegations that Russia aided the Trump campaign – or admit that the proof is lacking. (originally published January 17, 2017 on Consortiumnews.com)

MEMORANDUM FOR: President Barack Obama

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: A Key Issue That Still Needs to be Resolved

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take the oath of office Friday, a pall hangs over his upcoming presidency amid an unprecedentedly concerted campaign to delegitimize it. Unconfirmed accusations continue to swirl alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized “Russian hacking” that helped put Mr. Trump in the White House.

As President for a few more days, you have the power to demand concrete evidence of a link between the Russians and WikiLeaks, which published the bulk of the information in question. Lacking that evidence, the American people should be told that there is no fire under the smoke and mirrors of recent weeks.

We urge you to authorize public release of any tangible evidence that takes us beyond the unsubstantiated, “we-assess” judgments by the intelligence agencies. Otherwise, we – as well as other skeptical Americans – will be left with the corrosive suspicion that the intense campaign of accusations is part of a wider attempt to discredit the Russians and those – like Mr. Trump – who wish to deal constructively with them.

Remember the Maine?

Alleged Russian interference has been labeled “an act of war” and Mr. Trump a “traitor.” But the “intelligence” served up to support those charges does not pass the smell test. Your press conference on Wednesday will give you a chance to respond more persuasively to NBC’s Peter Alexander’s challenge at the last one (on Dec. 16) “to show the proof [and], as they say, put your money where your mouth is and declassify some of the intelligence. …”

You told Alexander you were reluctant to “compromise sources and methods.” We can understand that concern better than most Americans. We would remind you, though, that at critical junctures in the past, your predecessors made judicious decisions to give higher priority to buttressing the credibility of U.S. intelligence-based policy than to protecting sources and methods. With the Kremlin widely accused by politicians and pundits of “an act of war,” this is the kind of textbook case in which you might seriously consider taking special pains to substantiate serious allegations with hard intelligence – if there is any.

During the Cuban missile crisis, for instance, President Kennedy ordered us to show highly classified photos of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and on ships en route, even though this blew sensitive detail regarding the imagery intelligence capabilities of the cameras on our U-2 aircraft.

President Ronald Reagan’s reaction to the Libyan terrorist bombing of La Belle Disco in Berlin on April 5, 1986, that killed two and injured 79 other U.S. servicemen is another case in point. We had intercepted a Libyan message that morning: “At 1:30 in the morning one of the acts was carried out with success, without leaving a trace behind.” (We should add here that NSA’s dragnet SIGINT capability 30 years later renders it virtually impossible to avoid “leaving a trace behind” once a message is put on the network.)

President Reagan ordered the U.S. Air Force to bomb Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s palace compound to smithereens, killing several civilians. Amid widespread international consternation and demands for proof that Libya was responsible for the Berlin attack, President Reagan ordered us to make public the encrypted Libyan message, thereby sacrificing a collection/decryption capability unknown to the Libyans – until then.

As senior CIA veteran Milton Bearden has put it, there are occasions when more damage is done by “protecting” sources and methods than by revealing them.

Where’s the Beef?

We find the New York Times- and Washington Post-led media Blitz against Trump and Putin truly extraordinary, despite our long experience with intelligence/media related issues. On Jan. 6, the day after your top intelligence officials published what we found to be an embarrassingly shoddy report purporting to prove Russian hacking in support of Trump’s candidacy, the Times banner headline across all six columns on page 1 read: “PUTIN LED SCHEME TO AID TRUMP, REPORT SAYS.”

The lead article began: “President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.” Eschewing all subtlety, the Times added that the revelations in “this damning report … undermined the legitimacy” of the President-elect, and “made the case that Mr. Trump was the favored candidate of Mr. Putin.”

On page A10, however, Times investigative reporter Scott Shane pointed out: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission.”

Shane continued, “Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’ There is no discussion of the forensics used to recognize the handiwork of known hacking groups, no mention of intercepted communications between the Kremlin and the hackers, no hint of spies reporting from inside Moscow’s propaganda machinery.”

Shane added that the intelligence report “offers an obvious reason for leaving out the details, declaring that including ‘the precise bases for its assessments’ would ‘reveal sensitive sources and methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in the future.’”

Shane added a quote from former National Security Agency lawyer Susan Hennessey: “The unclassified report is underwhelming at best. There is essentially no new information for those who have been paying attention.” Ms. Hennessey served as an attorney in NSA’s Office of General Counsel and is now a Brookings Fellow in National Security Law.

Everyone Hacks

There is a lot of ambiguity – whether calculated or not – about “Russian hacking.” “Everyone knows that everyone hacks,” says everyone: Russia hacks; China hacks; every nation that can hacks. So do individuals of various nationalities. This is not the question.

You said at your press conference on Dec. 16 “the intelligence that I have seen gives me great confidence in their [U.S. intelligence agencies’] assessment that the Russians carried out this hack.” “Which hack?” you were asked. “The hack of the DNC and the hack of John Podesta,” you answered.

Earlier during the press conference you alluded to the fact that “the information was in the hands of WikiLeaks.” The key question is how the material from “Russian hacking” got to WikiLeaks, because it was WikiLeaks that published the DNC and Podesta emails.

Our VIPS colleague William Binney, who was Technical Director of NSA and created many of the collection systems still in use, assures us that NSA’s “cast-iron” coverage – particularly surrounding Julian Assange and other people associated with WikiLeaks – would almost certainly have yielded a record of any electronic transfer from Russia to WikiLeaks. Binney has used some of the highly classified slides released by Edward Snowden to demonstrate precisely how NSA accomplishes this using trace mechanisms embedded throughout the network. [See: “U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims,” Dec. 12, 2016.]

NSA Must Come Clean

We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks. If NSA can produce such evidence, you may wish to order whatever declassification may be needed and then release the evidence. This would go a long way toward allaying suspicions that no evidence exists. If NSA cannot give you that information – and quickly – this would probably mean it does not have any.

In all candor, the checkered record of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for trustworthiness makes us much less confident that anyone should take it on faith that he is more “trustworthy than the Russians,” as you suggested on Dec. 16. You will probably recall that Clapper lied under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12, 2013, about NSA dragnet activities; later apologizing for testimony he admitted had been “clearly erroneous.” In our Memorandum for you on Dec. 11, 2013, we cited chapter and verse as to why Clapper should have been fired for saying things he knew to be “clearly erroneous.”

In that Memorandum, we endorsed the demand by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner that Clapper be removed. “Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” said Sensenbrenner in an interview with The Hill. “The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced.”

Actually, we have had trouble understanding why, almost four years after he deliberately misled the Senate, Clapper remains Director of National Intelligence – overseeing the entire intelligence community.

Hacks or Leaks?

Not mentioned until now is our conclusion that leaks are the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures in question – not hacking. Leaks normally leave no electronic trace. William Binney has been emphasizing this for several months and suggesting strongly that the disclosures were from a leaker with physical access to the information – not a hacker with only remote access.

This, of course, makes it even harder to pin the blame on President Putin, or anyone else. And we suspect that this explains why NSA demurred when asked to join the CIA and FBI in expressing “high confidence” in this key judgment of the report put out under Clapper’s auspices on Jan. 6, yielding this curious formulation:

“We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.” (Emphasis, and lack of emphasis, in original)

In addition, former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray has said publicly he has first-hand information on the provenance of the leaks, and has expressed surprise that no one from the New York Times or the Washington Post has tried to get in touch with him. We would be interested in knowing whether anyone from your administration, including the intelligence community, has made any effort to contact Ambassador Murray.

What to Do

President-elect Trump said a few days ago that his team will have a “full report on hacking within 90 days.” Whatever the findings of the Trump team turn out to be, they will no doubt be greeted with due skepticism, since Mr. Trump is in no way a disinterested party.

You, on the other hand, enjoy far more credibility – AND power – for the next few days. And we assume you would not wish to hobble your successor with charges that cannot withstand close scrutiny. We suggest you order the chiefs of the NSA, FBI and CIA to the White House and ask them to lay all their cards on the table. They need to show you why you should continue to place credence in what, a month ago, you described as “uniform intelligence assessments” about Russian hacking.

At that point, if the intelligence heads have credible evidence, you have the option of ordering it released – even at the risk of damage to sources and methods. For what it may be worth, we will not be shocked if it turns out that they can do no better than the evidence-deprived assessments they have served up in recent weeks. In that case, we would urge you, in all fairness, to let the American people in on the dearth of convincing evidence before you leave office.

As you will have gathered by now, we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the “intelligence” evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact “certitude” – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Obama’s Legacy

Mr. President, there is much talk in your final days in office about your legacy. Will part of that legacy be that you stood by while flames of illegitimacy rose willy-nilly around your successor? Or will you use your power to reveal the information – or the fact that there are merely unsupported allegations – that would enable us to deal with them responsibly?

In the immediate wake of the holiday on which we mark the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it seems appropriate to make reference to his legacy, calling to mind the graphic words in his “Letter From the Birmingham City Jail,” with which he reminds us of our common duty to expose lies and injustice:

“Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret) and former Office Director in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA

Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official, ret.

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (Ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)

Brady Kiesling, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, ret. (Associate VIPS),

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

Donald Trump v. the Spooks

Exclusive: President-elect Trump is in a nasty slugfest with U.S. intelligence agencies as they portray him as a Russian tool and he blasts their attempt to delegitimize his election, says ex-British intelligence officer Annie Machon. (originally published January 16, 2017 at Consortiumnews.com)

By Annie Machon

The clash between plutocratic President-elect Trump and the CIA is shaping up to be the heavyweight prize fight of the century, and Trump at least is approaching it with all the entertaining bombast of Mohammed Ali at the top of his game. Rather than following the tradition of doing dirty political deals in dark corners, more commonly known as fixing the match, Trump has come out swinging in the full glare of the media.

In that corner, we have a deal-making, billionaire “man of the people” who, to European sensibilities at least, reputedly espouses some of the madder domestic obsessions and yet has seemed to offer hope to many aggrieved Americans. But it is his professed position on building a rapprochement with Russia and cooperating with Moscow to sort out the Syrian mess that caught my attention and that of many other independent commentators internationally.

In the opposite corner, Trump’s opponents have pushed the CIA into the ring to deliver the knock-out blow, but this has yet to land. Despite jab after jab, Trump keeps evading the blows and comes rattling back against all odds. One has to admire the guy’s footwork.

So who are the opponents ranged behind the CIA, yelling encouragement through the ropes? The obvious culprits include the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose corporate bottom line relies on an era of unending war. As justification for extracting billions – even trillions – of dollars from American taxpayers, there was a need for frightening villains, such as Al Qaeda and even more so, the head choppers of ISIS. However, since the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, those villains no longer packed as scary a punch, so a more enduring villain, like Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state in George Orwell’s 1984, was required. Russia was the obvious new choice, the old favorite from the Cold War playbook.

The Western intelligence agencies have a vested interest in eternal enemies to ensure both eternal funding and eternal power, hence the CIA’s entry into the fight. As former British MP and long-time peace activist George Galloway so eloquently said in a recent interview, an unholy alliance is now being formed between the “war party” in the U.S., the military-industrial-intelligence complex and those who would have previously publicly spurned such accomplices: American progressives and their traditional host, the Democratic Party.

Yet, if the Democratic National Committee had not done its best to rig the primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton, then perhaps we would not be in this position. Bernie Sanders would be the President-elect.

Two-Party Sham

These establishment forces have also revealed to the wider world a fact long known but largely dismissed as conspiracy theory by the corporate mainstream media, that the two-party system in both the U.S. and the U.K. is a sham. In fact, we are governed by a globalized elite, working in its own interest while ignoring ours. The Democrats, openly disgruntled by Hillary Clinton’s election loss and being seen to jump into bed so quickly with the spooks and the warmongers, have laid this reality bare.

In fact, respected U.S. investigative journalist Robert Parry recently wrote that an intelligence contact told him before the election that the intelligence agencies did not like either of the presidential candidates. This may go some way to explaining the FBI’s intervention in the run-up to the election against Hillary Clinton, as well as the CIA’s attempts to de-legitimize Trump’s victory afterwards.

Whether that was indeed the case, the CIA has certainly held back no punches since Trump’s election. First the evidence-lite assertion that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC emails and leaked them to WikiLeaks: then the fake news about Russia hacking the voting computers; that then morphed into the Russians “hacked the election” itself; then they “hacked” into the U.S. electric grid via a Vermont utility. All this without a shred of fact-based evidence provided, but Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats last month solidified this dubious reality in Americans’ minds.

All this culminated in the “dirty dossier” allegations last week about Trump, which he has rightly knocked down – it was desperately poor stuff.

This last item, from a British perspective, is particularly concerning. It appears that a Washington dirt-digging company was hired by a Republican rival to Trump to unearth any potential Russian scandals during the primaries; once Trump had won the nomination this dirt-digging operation was taken over by a Democrat supporter of Hillary Clinton. The anti-Trump investigation was then sub-contracted to an alleged ex-British spy, an ex-MI6 man named Christopher Steele.

The Role of MI6

Much has already been written about Steele and the company, much of it contradictory as no doubt befits the life of a former spy. But it is a standard career trajectory for insiders to move on to corporate, mercenary spy companies, and this is what Steele appears to have done successfully in 2009. Of course, much is predicated on maintaining good working relations with your former employers.

That is the aspect that interests me most – how close a linkage did he indeed retain with his former employers after he left MI6 in 2009 to set up his own private spy company? The answer is important because companies such has his can also be used as cut-outs for “plausible deniability” by official state spies.

I’m not suggesting that happened in this case, but Steele reportedly remained on good terms with MI6 and was well thought of. For a man who had not been stationed in Russia for over 20 years, it would perhaps have been natural for him to turn to old chums for useful connections.

But this question is of extreme importance at a critical juncture for the U.K.; if indeed MI6 was complicit or even aware of this dirt digging, as it seems to have been, then that is a huge diplomatic problem for the government’s attempts to develop a strong working relationship with the US, post-Brexit. If MI6’s sticky fingers were on this case, then the organization has done the precise opposite of its official task – “to protect national security and the economic well-being of the UK.”

MI6 and its U.S. intelligence chums need to remember their designated and legislated roles within a democracy – to serve the government and protect national security by gathering intelligence, assessing it impartially and making recommendations on which the government of the day will choose to act or not as the case may be.

The spies are not there to fake intelligence to suit the agenda of a particular regime, as happened in the run-up to the illegal Iraq War, nor are they there to endemically spy on their own populations (and the rest of the world, as we know post-Snowden) in a pointless hunt for subversive activity, which often translates into legitimate political activism and acts of individual expression).

And most especially the intelligence agencies should not be trying to subvert democratically elected governments. And yet this is what the CIA and a former senior MI6 officer, along with their powerful political allies, appear to be now attempting against Trump.

Chances for Peace

If I were an American, I would be wary of many of Trump’s domestic policies. As a European concerned with greater peace rather than increasing war, I can only applaud his constructive approach towards Russia and his offer to cooperate with Moscow to stanch the bloodshed in the Middle East.

That, of course, may be the nub of his fight with the CIA and other vested interests who want Russia as the new bogeyman. But I would bet that Trump takes the CIA’s slurs personally. After all, given the ugliness of the accusations and the lack of proof, who would not?

So, this is a world championship heavy-weight fight over who gets to hold office and wield power, an area where the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies have considerable experience in rigging matches and knocking out opponents. Think, for instance, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953; Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973; Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003; and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is wobbly but still standing, thanks to some good corner support from Russia.

However, it would appear that Trump is a stranger to the spies’ self-defined Queensbury Rules in which targets are deemed paranoid if they try to alert the public to the planned “regime change” or they become easy targets by staying silent. By contrast, Trump appears shameless and pugnacious. Street-smart and self-promoting, he seems comfortable with bare-knuckle fighting.

This match has already gone into the middle rounds with Trump still bouncing around on his toes and still relishing the fight. It would be ironic if out of this nasty prize fight came greater world peace and safely for us all.

Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI).