Vincent J. Curtis
15 Dec 2016
“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” asked King Henry II of England in respect of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in a moment of drunken pique. His young, loyal knights took the remark as a
hint and murdered Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
President Barack Obama is without doubt royally annoyed at
the selection of Donald Trump by the American electorate to succeed him as President
of the United States. Trump promises to
undo Obama’s “legacy,” such as it is.
Trump is already in control of the headlines, and is fulfilling campaign
promises before he is inaugurated. He
saved jobs at Carrier; Ford Motor Company has decided not to move a production
line to Mexico; a Japanese banker has pledged to invest $50 billion in the
U.S., and tech giant IBM has announced plans to hire 25,000 workers. Trump is putting together a cabinet of
surpassing competence. His approval
rating has jumped 17 points since Election Day.
How to discredit this rising star? How to put fight into Obama’s defeated and
exhausted party?
An important factor in the loss by Hillary Clinton was the
disclosure of the depth of corruption surrounding her. This corruption came to public attention
through WikiLeaks that posted about a thousand emails a day to a total of
50,000 from the account of Hillary’s campaign manager, John Podesta in the
latter part of the campaign. The defense
the campaign mounted against this tsunami of truth was to refuse to discuss the
content of the emails themselves and to focus instead on the speculation that
the Russians had released the emails to WikiLeaks for the purpose of helping
Donald Trump.
This total allegation contains three simple allegations:
that the release was done for the purpose
of helping Donald Trump; that the hackers were acting under the guidance or
control of the Russian government, specifically Vladimir Putin, and the emails
themselves may not be authentic.
The CIA is a highly political institution; it went to war
against the Bush Administration beginning in 2004 to discredit the war policy
in Iraq. Its technique was to leak salacious
information to the major media. Since
the leak came from “the CIA” the opinions contained in the leak were assumed to
be likely true. That the information
could be, in reality, ass-covering, finger-pointing, and unverifiable half-truths
were not cautions expressed in an ostensible “news” story. The leak was newsworthy and was treated as “news”;
the difference between the truth of a news story faithfully reported and the
truth of the content of the story itself – that the actual content of the story
may be somebody’s ass-covering, finger-pointing half-truth – was lost on the
general public, or at least upon the media talking heads who had political axes
of their own to grind.
Thus when “the CIA” leaks that Russian hackers were behind
the WikiLeaks revelations about Hillary Clinton for the purpose of helping
Donald Trump in the election, you have to wonder who is playing what game. This is the same “CIA” that yesterday refused
to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to explain what’s behind these
findings of ‘CIA determines Russian hacking for the purpose of helping Donald
Trump’ appearing in the big media but those responsible in the Congress for
such things not being briefed on it.
The FBI have refused to endorse the “CIA’s” determination.
Who is “the CIA” in respect of these leaks to the major
media? Could it be outgoing CIA Director
John Brennan? Are these leakers acting
upon the presumed will of President Barack Obama, in the manner of Henry II in
respect of Thomas Becket? Are they
acting upon the specific instructions of Barack Obama?
Good reason exists for casting deep suspicion on this
so-called “CIA determination.” The first
concerns that the WikiLeaks exposure was for the purpose of helping Donald
Trump. Unless the CIA has a human spy
close to Vladimir Putin, or hold an authentic communication of his, they cannot
say “for the purpose of…” because saying that means you know the mind of that
person. It is reasonable to say you think it is for the purpose of, but
to say it is for the purpose of
requires a high level of confidence that is unwarranted here. There is no doubt that WikiLeaks’ founder
Julian Assange wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton, and that such hurt would tend to
help Donald Trump, but in that case the help entails no debt on Trump’s account
and much would turn upon the authenticity of the emails. If the emails were not authentic, then there
is no help at all. But Hillary’s
campaign would say nothing about their authenticity, and after a while silence
meant affirmation.
The CIA has no newsworthy proof of Russian hackers being
responsible for accessing the DNC computers and John Podesta’s gmail
account. Such information would have to
come from the NSA, and the NSA isn’t leaking, the FBI isn’t agreeing, and a “false
flag” operation cannot be disproven at this point (A “false flag” occurs when evidence
is left behind that points at someone else being the wrong-doer). Thus somebody at the CIA is getting way over
his skis in saying that Russians did the original hacking of John Podesta’s
account.
Another ‘tell’ is that Barack Obama did absolutely nothing to
the Russians in the course of the campaign in response to their alleged hacking
and leaking. He apparently had no
diplomatic conversations with the Russians about it, he did not retaliate
against the Russians, and he said nothing himself about it at all. If incontrovertible evidence existed, you
would think the President of the United States would himself caution the
Russians about interfering in the U.S. election. (Hypocrisy would drip from such a warning
from Obama, but never mind.)
This source in the CIA has said nothing about the
authenticity of the leaked emails. If it
admitted that they were authentic, that would change the trajectory of the
story from the Russians helping Trump to Hillary’s circle really being that
cynical and corrupt. Helping Trump or
not, Hillary deserved to lose.
After “the CIA” refused to appear before the House
Intelligence Committee to share with them what they knew about Russian hacking,
the political partisanship of that narrative became clear. No good evidence exists that Russian hackers were
the ones who gained access to John Podesta’s gmail account. No evidence exists that Vladimir Putin
ordered Podesta’s email trove to be released to WikiLeaks and that he did so
for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
The WikiLeaks disclosure likely did help Donald Trump because the emails
it released were authentic, and the content of these authentic emails was
damning against Hillary and her circle.
Julian Assange was motivated to hurt Hillary’s campaign, but his final
motive is unclear. He may have hoped
merely to cripple her Administration by giving the Republicans ammunition for
impeachment. Donald Trump may have been
helped by WikiLeaks, but the extent of it is unknown and unmeasurable.
At this point, the obvious purpose of the CIA leaks that
give legitimacy to old Democrat allegations is to give Democrats and their many
friends in the major media ammunition to de-legitimize incoming President
Donald Trump, implying that he is in the debt of Russian president Vladimir
Putin. But nobody owns Trump, and if
Putin thinks he does he is in for a rude awakening. And nobody is disputing that Americans
actually elected Trump over Hillary with valid votes.
It is not clear whether the CIA leaking campaign to
de-legitimize Trump is done at the behest of Barack Obama, or whether it is his
loyal minions in the CIA performing work they think he would like to have done
but can’t say so.
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