Vincent J. Curtis
4 Apr 2017
The Trump wiretapping story is moving quickly to a climax
after it was revealed that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice
requested the unmasking of the names of likely Trump associates in electronic
intelligence gathering intercepts. It is
also becoming obvious that the Trump-Russia collusion angle is nothing but a
disinformation campaign orchestrated by outgoing Obama Administration officials
in an effort to discredit the presidency of Donald Trump. The most likely of Rice’s associates involved
in this campaign is former Assistant National Security Advisor for Strategic
Communications Ben Rhodes.
From the information thus far public, Susan Rice began
requesting the unmasking of names from SIGINT (signals intelligence) intercepts
involving Trump campaign officials at least as early as July, 2016, i.e. soon
after his nomination, and perhaps even as early as the beginning of the year. It seems that the purpose of Susan Rice’s
requests was her interest in discovering what, if any, connection there might
be between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime, or any other information
that could prove embarrassing to the Trump campaign. To be sure, Obama would have been aware of
the unmasking since he too is on the distribution list of these intercepts that
his NSA Director regards as important.
The purpose of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin
Nunes’s much criticized visit to the Whitehouse last month was to that he could
see with his own eyes the log of requests that was kept on the Whitehouse
computer system, kept so secure that even specially designated members of
Congress can’t ordinarily see this information.
What he saw told him that Susan Rice was requesting unmasking and
disseminating a lot of Trump-related SIGINT intercepts and none of it related to “Russia.”
This fact told Congressman Nunes that Susan Rice was, in effect,
surveilling the Trump campaign by taking advantage of loopholes in the FISA
act.
Rice found no collusion between the Trump team and
Putin. If there were, we would know
about it right now. The report of the
chiefs of the intelligence services, ordered by President Obama to be delivered
before he left office, was that they found no evidence of collusion between the
Trump team and “Russia.” With all this
interest at the highest levels of the American government in finding a
connection between Trump and Putin, if there was one, it would have been found
by now. It has not been found because
one never existed. Nevertheless, the
Democrat party has, since WikiLeaks published the emails of the DNC that showed it working to ensure that Hillary Clinton was the party’s nominee for President, and
Bernie Sanders was defeated, been interested in connecting nefarious acts by
the Putin regime to the embarrassment of their party in the campaign. They have been trying to change the story
from the content of the emails to nefarious acts of Russian president Vladimir
Putin, in effect trying to make themselves look victimized by an enemy of
America.
When WikiLeaks released the authentic emails of John Podesta,
the Democrats again tried to change the subject from the contents of the emails
to the story of how they were being victimized by an enemy of America, Vladimir
Putin, whom Trump seemed to be friendly towards.
What surfaced in late December and early January were
imputations at Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Lt-Gen. Michael Flynn
may have feloniously breached the Logan Act by conducting foreign policy with
Russia. National media were fed this
piece of disinformation. In the first
place, the national media do not of themselves think of such things; that an
incoming National Security Advisor might have a telephone conversation with an
important foreign ambassador prior to taking office is something they would think he would do in
the normal course of his business in getting prepared. And it is something he would do in the normal
course of his business so that he would hit the ground running, as it
were. No one except in the Obama
administration could have an objection to Flynn doing his job. Few in the national media even know of the
Logan Act, and even fewer would be prepared to offer a legal opinion on their
own concerning the unobserved preparations Flynn was going through to get
ready, and say that Flynn might be violating the act.
Who, then, in the Obama Administration would be in a
position to know of the unobserved things Flynn was doing, to have an authority
high enough to impress the media with the legal implications of the Logan Act,
and to know who to leak a story to? Why
NSA Strategic Communications wizard, Ben Rhodes!
The story in the media that Michael Flynn may have breached
the Logan Act was a shot at discrediting the incoming Trump administration.
Flynn stumbled under the pressure. As an old intelligence hand, he knew his name
ought to have been masked in the intercept of his communication with the
Russian ambassador. Thus, when he was
asked whether the subject of sanctions came up in a December 29, 2016, telephone
conversation he had while relaxing on a beach in the Bahamas with the Russian
ambassador, he said no, even though he may have contributed nothing to that
conversation. One can imagine the
Russian ambassador wailing on about the sanctions that President Obama had just
imposed, and Flynn saying that the matter will be reviewed in due course once
Trump takes office. However, Flynn said
no, sanctions had not come up in the conversation, fearing Logan Act
implications. Then the text of the
intercept of that communication became known in the media.
For that text to implicate Flynn, Susan Rice would have to
have requested that his name be unmasked, and then she would have circulated
that unmasked intercept transcript to Rhodes, who could then leak it to
friendly reporters in the media. Because
Flynn had misled Vice-President Elect Mike Pence, Flynn had to resign.
Trump has been dogged with suggestions that he benefited
from “Russian hacking of the election.”
As we have seen, there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump
campaign and “Russia” because there is none.
If evidence of such existed, Rice would have found it and Rhodes would
have leaked it. Moreover, one doesn’t
hack and election; one hacks computers, thus the charge against Trump becomes a
little obscure.
The campaign by President Obama to reveal the full extent of
Russian influence in the election amounts to a lot of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. And this is exactly
what a disinformation campaign is intended to do: to sow doubt in the target
audience of the legitimacy of someone by means of false information. The release of John Podesta’s emails was not
a disinformation campaign because the emails were authentic; if the
incriminating emails had been falsified then the release would have been
disinformation.
The influence, if any, made by Russia the in the election
amounted to nothing but the release of the Podesta emails, which were
authentic. If Putin were behind it, he
did nothing but provide authentic information to the American electorate that
happened to be unfavorable to Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton. He would have done what the American media
would not do, provide disastrously unfavorable information to the American
electorate about Hillary Clinton.
The Rice-Rhodes disinformation campaign is designed to tie
Trump’s success at the polls to nefarious Russian, i.e. Vladimir Putin,
influence. To besmirch Trump, you have to
show collusion because no election computers were hacked. You have to hold that Russia is bad for
America, a strange premise coming from Democrats. Since you have to assume that
the electorate is able to make up its own mind, you have to say that they were
unduly influenced in some way, a way that is best not made clear. Podesta’s hacked emails were authentic, no
matter how they were obtained. What has
to be danced around is that the electorate pronounced a verdict on Hillary
Clinton herself, and found Trump to be the lesser of two evils in the all in
all.
By perfectly legal means Susan Rice sought to gain political
advantage against Donald Trump on behalf of the Democrat campaign by unmasking
the names of his associates caught in SIGINT intercepts. These conversations were evaluated for potentially
embarrassing information, and none of them, or very few, involved “Russia.” If there were collusion between the Trump
campaign and “Russia,” Rice would have found it. What embarrassing material she did find, she
circulated to Ben Rhodes, who knew what to do with it. Barack Obama was not innocent in this,
because he would have been on the distribution list.
Thus, the campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump is through a
disinformation campaign, begun by Ben Rhodes with information provided by Susan
Rice, and carried on by complaint people in the Democrat party. There is no Russian collusion because it
would have been found by now if it existed.
The “Russia hacked the election” business is without merit, or even
sensibility. The Trump campaign and
transition team was surveilled by the Obama administration by the abuse of a
legal process, and President Obama was aware it was going on.
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