USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[James Lateer]

I haven't read everyone's take, but Trump's nominee for CIA must indicate he has a wish for self-destruction. As if there were not way enough plotting against him by his subordinates. And now we have this clandestine ops director in his office every day.

What a dummy.

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

Shakespeare said it best

Much ado about nothing.
That's the "Russian interference" in the 2016 American election.
A group of Russians operating from a building in St. Petersburg, we are told in a February 16 US government indictment, sent out tweets, Facebook and YouTube postings, etc. to gain support for Trump and hurt Clinton even though most of these messages did not even mention Trump or Clinton; and many were sent out before Trump was even a candidate.
The Russian-interference indictment is predicated, apparently, on the idea that the United States is a backward, Third-World, Banana Republic, easily manipulated.
If the Democrats think it's so easy and so effective to sway voters in the United States why didn't the party do better?
At times the indictment tells us that the online advertising campaign, led by the shadowy Internet Research Agency of Russia, was meant to divide the American people, not influence the 2016 election. The Russians supposedly wished to cause "divisiveness" in the American people, particularly around controversial issues such as immigration, politics, energy policy, climate change, and race. "The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy," said Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing the inquiry. "We must not allow them to succeed."
Imagine that the American people, whom we all know are living in blissful harmony and fraternity without any noticeable anger or hatred, would become divided! Damn those Russkis!
After the election of Trump as president in November 2016, the defendants "used false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election."
The indictment also states that defendants in New York organized a demonstration designed to "show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump" held on or about November 12, 2016. At the same time, defendants and their co-conspirators, organized another rally in New York called "Trump is NOT my President".
Much of the indictment and the news reports of the past year are replete with such contradictions, lending credence to the suggestion that what actually lay behind the events was a "click-bait" scheme wherein certain individuals earned money based on the number of times a particular website is accessed. The mastermind behind this scheme is reported to be a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin of the above-named Internet Research Agency, which is named in the indictment.
The Russian operation began four years ago, well before Trump entered the presidential race, a fact that he quickly seized on in his defense. "Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President," he wrote on Twitter. "The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong no collusion!"
Point 95 of the Indictment summarizes the "click-bait" scheme as follows:

Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.

Although there's no doubt that the Kremlin favored Trump over Clinton, the whole "Russian influence" storm may be based on a misunderstanding of commercial activities of a Russian marketing company in US social networks.

Here's some Real interference in election campaigns

[Slightly abridged version of chapter 18 in William Blum's Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower; see it for notes]

Philippines, 1950s:

Flagrant manipulation by the CIA of the nation's political life, featuring stage-managed elections with extensive disinformation campaigns, heavy financing of candidates, writing their speeches, drugging the drinks of one of the opponents of the CIA-supported candidate so he would appear incoherent; plotting the assassination of another candidate. The oblivious New York Times declared that "It is not without reason that the Philippines has been called "democracy's showcase in Asia".

Italy, 1948-1970s:

Multifarious campaigns to repeatedly sabotage the electoral chances of the Communist Party and ensure the election of the Christian Democrats, long-favored by Washington.

Lebanon, 1950s:

The CIA provided funds to support the campaigns of President Camille Chamoun and selected parliamentary candidates; other funds were targeted against candidates who had shown less than total enchantment with US interference in Lebanese politics.

Indonesia, 1955:

A million dollars were dispensed by the CIA to a centrist coalition's electoral campaign in a bid to cut into the support for President Sukarno's party and the Indonesian Communist Party.

Vietnam, 1955:

The US was instrumental in South Vietnam canceling the elections scheduled to unify North and South because of the certainty that the North Vietnamese communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, would easily win.

British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:

For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent Cheddi Jagan three times the democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Using a wide variety of tactics from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms the US and Britain forced Jagan out of office twice during this period.

Japan, 1958-1970s:

The CIA emptied the US treasury of millions to finance the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections, "on a seat-by-seat basis", while doing what it could to weaken and undermine its opposition, the Japanese Socialist Party. The 1961-63 edition of the State Department's annual Foreign Relations of the United States, published in 1996, includes an unprecedented disclaimer that, because of material left out, a committee of distinguished historians thinks "this published compilation does not constitute a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions'" as required by law. The deleted material involved US actions from 1958-1960 in Japan, according to the State Department's historian.

Nepal, 1959:

By the CIA's own admission, it carried out an unspecified "covert action" on behalf of B.P. Koirala to help his Nepali Congress Party win the national parliamentary election. It was Nepal's first national election ever, and the CIA was there to initiate them into the wonderful workings of democracy.

Laos, 1960:

CIA agents stuffed ballot boxes to help a hand-picked strongman, Phoumi Nosavan, set up a pro-American government.

Brazil, 1962:

The CIA and the Agency for International Development expended millions of dollars in federal and state elections in support of candidates opposed to leftist President João Goulart, who won anyway.

Dominican Republic, 1962:

In October 1962, two months before election day, US Ambassador John Bartlow Martin got together with the candidates of the two major parties and handed them a written notice, in Spanish and English, which he had prepared. It read in part: "The loser in the forthcoming election will, as soon as the election result is known, publicly congratulate the winner, publicly recognize him as the President of all the Dominican people, and publicly call upon his own supporters to so recognize him. … Before taking office, the winner will offer Cabinet seats to members of the loser's party. (They may decline)."
As matters turned out, the winner, Juan Bosch, was ousted in a military coup seven months later, a slap in the face of democracy which neither Martin nor any other American official did anything about.

Guatemala, 1963:

The US overthrew the regime of General Miguel Ydigoras because he was planning to step down in 1964, leaving the door open to an election; an election that Washington feared would be won by the former president, liberal reformer and critic of US foreign policy, Juan José Arévalo. Ydigoras's replacement made no mention of elections.

Bolivia, 1966:

The CIA bestowed $600,000 upon President René Barrientos and lesser sums to several right-wing parties in a successful effort to influence the outcome of national elections. Gulf Oil contributed two hundred thousand more to Barrientos.

Chile, 1964-70:

Major US interventions into national elections in 1964 and 1970, and congressional elections in the intervening years. Socialist Salvador Allende fell victim in 1964, but won in 1970 despite a multimillion-dollar CIA operation against him. The Agency then orchestrated his downfall in a 1973 military coup.

Portugal, 1974-5:

In the years following the coup in 1974 by military officers who talked like socialists, the CIA revved up its propaganda machine while funneling many millions of dollars to support "moderate" candidates, in particular Mario Soares and his (so-called) Socialist Party. At the same time, the Agency enlisted social-democratic parties of Western Europe to provide further funds and support to Soares. It worked. The Socialist Party became the dominant power.

Australia, 1974-75:

Despite providing considerable support for the opposition, the United States failed to defeat the Labor Party, which was strongly against the US war in Vietnam and CIA meddling in Australia. The CIA then used "legal" methods to unseat the man who won the election, Edward Gough Whitlam.

Jamaica, 1976:

A CIA campaign to defeat social democrat Michael Manley's bid for reelection, featuring disinformation, arms shipments, labor unrest, economic destabilization, financial support for the opposition, and attempts upon Manley's life. Despite it all, he was victorious.

Panama, 1984, 1989:

In 1984, the CIA helped finance a highly questionable presidential electoral victory for one of Manuel Noriega's men. The opposition cried "fraud", but the new president was welcomed at the White House. By 1989, Noriega was no longer a Washington favorite, so the CIA provided more than $10 million dollars to his electoral opponents.

Nicaragua, 1984, 1990:

In 1984, the United States, trying to discredit the legitimacy of the Sandinista government's scheduled election, covertly persuaded the leading opposition coalition to not take part. A few days before election day, some other rightist parties on the ballot revealed that US diplomats had been pressing them to drop out of the race as well. The CIA also tried to split the Sandinista leadership by placing phoney full-page ads in neighboring countries. But the Sandinistas won handily in a very fair election monitored by hundreds of international observers.
Six years later, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington's specially created stand-in for the CIA, poured in millions of dollars to defeat Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in the February elections. NED helped organize the Nicaraguan opposition, UNO, building up the parties and organizations that formed and supported this coalition.
Perhaps most telling of all, the Nicaraguan people were made painfully aware that a victory by the Sandinistas would mean a continuation of the relentlessly devastating war being waged against them by Washington through their proxy army, the Contras.

Haiti, 1987-1988:

After the Duvalier dictatorship came to an end in 1986, the country prepared for its first free elections ever. However, Haiti's main trade union leader declared that Washington was working to undermine the left. US aid organizations, he said, were encouraging people in the countryside to identify and reject the entire left as "communist". Meanwhile, the CIA was involved in a range of support for selected candidates until the US Senate Intelligence Committee ordered the Agency to cease its covert electoral action.

Bulgaria, 1990-1991 and Albania, 1991-1992:

With no regard for the fragility of these nascent democracies, the US interfered broadly in their elections and orchestrated the ousting of their elected socialist governments.

Russia, 1996:

For four months (March-June), a group of veteran American political consultants worked secretly in Moscow in support of Boris Yeltsin's presidential campaign. Boris Yeltsin was being counted on to run with the globalized-free market ball and it was imperative that he cross the goal line. The Americans emphasized sophisticated methods of message development, polling, focus groups, crowd staging, direct-mailing, etc., and advised against public debates with the Communists. Most of all they encouraged the Yeltsin campaign to "go negative" against the Communists, painting frightening pictures of what the Communists would do if they took power, including much civic upheaval and violence, and, of course, a return to the worst of Stalinism. Before the Americans came on board, Yeltsin was favored by only six percent of the electorate. In the first round of voting, he edged the Communists 35 percent to 32, and was victorious in the second round 54 to 40 percent.

Mongolia, 1996:

The National Endowment for Democracy worked for several years with the opposition to the governing Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRR, the former Communists) who had won the 1992 election to achieve a very surprising electoral victory. In the six-year period leading up to the 1996 elections, NED spent close to a million dollars in a country with a population of some 2.5 million, the most significant result of which was to unite the opposition into a new coalition, the National Democratic Union. Borrowing from Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, the NED drafted a "Contract With the Mongolian Voter", which called for private property rights, a free press and the encouragement of foreign investment. The MPRR had already instituted Western-style economic reforms, which had led to widespread poverty and wiped out much of the communist social safety net. But the new government promised to accelerate the reforms, including the privatization of housing. By 1998 it was reported that the US National Security Agency had set up electronic listening posts in Outer Mongolia to intercept Chinese army communications, and the Mongolian intelligence service was using nomads to gather intelligence in China itself.

Bosnia, 1998:

Effectively an American protectorate, with Carlos Westendorp the Spanish diplomat appointed to enforce Washington's offspring: the 1995 Dayton peace accords as the colonial Governor-General. Before the September elections for a host of offices, Westendorp removed 14 Croatian candidates from the ballot because of alleged biased coverage aired in Bosnia by neighboring Croatia's state television and politicking by ethnic Croat army soldiers. After the election, Westendorp fired the elected president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, accusing him of creating instability. In this scenario those who appeared to support what the US and other Western powers wished were called "moderates", and allowed to run for and remain in office. Those who had other thoughts were labeled "hard-liners", and ran the risk of a different fate. When Westendorp was chosen to assume this position of "high representative" in Bosnia in May 1997, The Guardian of London wrote that "The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, praised the choice. But some critics already fear that Mr. Westendorp will prove too lightweight and end up as a cipher in American hands."

Nicaragua, 2001

Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was once again a marked man. US State Department officials tried their best to publicly associate him with terrorism, including just after September 11 had taken place, and to shamelessly accuse Sandinista leaders of all manner of violations of human rights, civil rights, and democracy. The US ambassador literally campaigned for Ortega's opponent, Enrique Bolaños. A senior analyst in Nicaragua for Gallup, the international pollsters, was moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country's electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it."
At the close of the campaign, Bolaños announced: "If Ortega comes to power, that would provoke a closing of aid and investment, difficulties with exports, visas and family remittances. I'm not just saying this. The United States says this, too. We cannot close our eyes and risk our well-being and work. Say yes to Nicaragua, say no to terrorism."
In the end, the Sandinistas lost the election by about ten percentage points after steadily leading in the polls during much of the campaign.

Bolivia, 2002

The American bête noire here was Evo Morales, Amerindian, former member of Congress, socialist, running on an anti-neoliberal, anti-big business, and anti-coca eradication campaign. The US Ambassador declared: "The Bolivian electorate must consider the consequences of choosing leaders somehow connected with drug trafficking and terrorism." Following September 11, painting Officially Designated Enemies with the terrorist brush was de rigueur US foreign policy rhetoric.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs warned that American aid to the country would be in danger if Mr. Morales was chosen. Then the ambassador and other US officials met with key figures from Bolivia's main political parties in an effort to shore up support for Morales's opponent, Sanchez de Lozada. Morales lost the vote.

Slovakia, 2002

To defeat Vladimir Meciar, former prime minister, a man who did not share Washington's weltanschauung about globalization, the US ambassador explicitly warned the Slovakian people that electing him would hurt their chances of entry into the European Union and NATO. The US ambassador to NATO then arrived and issued his own warning. The National Endowment for Democracy was also on hand to influence the election. Meciar lost.

El Salvador, 2004

Washington's target in this election was Schafik Handal, candidate of the FMLN, the leftist former guerrilla group. He said he would withdraw El Salvador's 380 troops from Iraq as well as reviewing other pro-US policies; he would also take another look at the privatizations of Salvadoran industries, and would reinstate diplomatic relations with Cuba. His opponent was Tony Saca of the incumbent Arena Party, a pro-US, pro-free market organization of the extreme right, which in the bloody civil war days had featured death squads and the infamous assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
During a February visit to the country, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, met with all the presidential candidates except Handal. He warned of possible repercussions in US-Salvadoran relations if Handal were elected. Three Republican congressmen threatened to block the renewal of annual work visas for some 300,000 Salvadorans in the United States if El Salvador opted for the FMLN. And Congressman Thomas Tancredo of Colorado stated that if the FMLN won, "it could mean a radical change" in US policy on remittances to El Salvador.
Washington's attitude was exploited by Arena and the generally conservative Salvadoran press, who mounted a scare campaign, and it became widely believed that a Handal victory could result in mass deportations of Salvadorans from the United States and a drop in remittances. Arena won the election with about 57 percent of the vote to some 36 percent for the FMLN.
After the election, the US ambassador declared that Washington's policies concerning immigration and remittances had nothing to do with any election in El Salvador. There appears to be no record of such a statement being made in public before the election when it might have had a profound positive effect for the FMLN.

Afghanistan, 2004

The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, went around putting great pressure on one candidate after another to withdraw from the presidential race so as to insure the victory for Washington's man, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai in the October election. There was nothing particularly subtle about it. Khalilzad told each one what he wanted and then asked them what they needed. Karzai, a long-time resident in the United States, was described by the Washington Post as "a known and respected figure at the State Department and National Security Council and on Capitol Hill."
"Our hearts have been broken because we thought we could have beaten Mr. Karzai if this had been a true election," said Sayed Mustafa Sadat Ophyani, campaign manager for Younis Qanooni, Karzai's leading rival. "But it is not. Mr. Khalilzad is putting a lot of pressure on us and does not allow us to fight a good election campaign.".
None of the major candidates actually withdrew from the election, which Karzai won with about 56 percent of the votes.

[Tracy Riddle]

Shakespeare said it best

Much ado about nothing.
That's the "Russian interference" in the 2016 American election.
A group of Russians operating from a building in St. Petersburg, we are told in a February 16 US government indictment, sent out tweets, Facebook and YouTube postings, etc. to gain support for Trump and hurt Clinton even though most of these messages did not even mention Trump or Clinton; and many were sent out before Trump was even a candidate.
The Russian-interference indictment is predicated, apparently, on the idea that the United States is a backward, Third-World, Banana Republic, easily manipulated.
If the Democrats think it's so easy and so effective to sway voters in the United States why didn't the party do better?
At times the indictment tells us that the online advertising campaign, led by the shadowy Internet Research Agency of Russia, was meant to divide the American people, not influence the 2016 election. The Russians supposedly wished to cause "divisiveness" in the American people, particularly around controversial issues such as immigration, politics, energy policy, climate change, and race. "The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy," said Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing the inquiry. "We must not allow them to succeed."
Imagine that the American people, whom we all know are living in blissful harmony and fraternity without any noticeable anger or hatred, would become divided! Damn those Russkis!
After the election of Trump as president in November 2016, the defendants "used false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies in support of then president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using other false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies protesting the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election."
The indictment also states that defendants in New York organized a demonstration designed to "show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump" held on or about November 12, 2016. At the same time, defendants and their co-conspirators, organized another rally in New York called "Trump is NOT my President".
Much of the indictment and the news reports of the past year are replete with such contradictions, lending credence to the suggestion that what actually lay behind the events was a "click-bait" scheme wherein certain individuals earned money based on the number of times a particular website is accessed. The mastermind behind this scheme is reported to be a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin of the above-named Internet Research Agency, which is named in the indictment.
The Russian operation began four years ago, well before Trump entered the presidential race, a fact that he quickly seized on in his defense. "Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President," he wrote on Twitter. "The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong no collusion!"

I normally respect William Blum's opinion, but he is quite misinformed here. There are many more indictments coming. The first one didn't even mention hacking/Wikileaks/Cambridge Analytica. And Trump began planning his run for the Presidency many years ago:

Trump applied for a trademark for "Make America Great Again" in November 2012 -- mere days after the last presidential election.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investin...index.html

May 27 2013: Serial presidential campaign explorer Donald Trump is at it again, spending $1 million researching a 2016 run, according to his executive vice president. "The electoral research was commissioned," Trump's executive VP and special counsel Michael Cohen first told the New York Post and confirmed to CBS News. "We did not spend $1 million on this research for it just to sit on my bookshelf," he said.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-think...president/

January 22 2014 Tweet:
[FONT=&amp]

[B]Alferova Yulya‏ [/B]@AlferovaYulyaEFollowFollow

@AlferovaYulyaE

I'm sure @realDonaldTrump will be great president! We'll support you from Russia! America needs ambitious leader!

[/FONT]
https://twitter.com/alferovayulyae/statu...56?lang=en

[Peter Lemkin]

Ah, Tracy, But you missed the POINT! I'm personally rather agnostic on whether the Russians actually changed the election results. Oh, perhaps they tried, a little....but what you and most who hate Trump but love the Democrats miss is that the USA has BY FAR been the most egregious violator of democracy and voting in other countries by FAR, by any measure, by light years over all other countries combined! To not take that into account - as well as our messing with the USSR and Russia in various ways is to say, in effect "its wrong when 'they' do it; and its fine when we do it". That is an amoral position, and I will not concede that it is not. EVERY report on what may well have been Russian meddling in our election [and even perhaps for Trump] should also mention US meddling in hundreds of elections and polities. Half truths are falsehoods and used to mislead the people. Fine, condemn the Russians if they did so, but what they did, if they did, is child's play compared to what we have done and continue to do [but the Government, MSM, and many citizens play ostrich about]. We will not root out evil if we practice it ourselves and only condemn it when others do it.

Trump has done money laundering for Russians and has done other kinds of deals with Russians that are not savory. He should be condemned for that....but again, all persons who do that should be no matter their status or nationality nor the status or nationality of the dirty money or where it goes to or through. Condemn all equally. And if Trump campaign people were colluding with Russians to rig the election - fine drag 'em to court and put 'em behind bars - but the Clintons do not have clean hands, nor do many others on the other 'side of the aisle'. A plague on all their houses and deeds. I'd love nothing more than for Trump to resign, be impeached or commit suicide - but please for his real crimes, not invented ones, and not without a public awareness that others have done and continue to do the same. I'm all for cleaning up Dodge, but Dodge is not just the White House or Mar Lago now.

[Tracy Riddle]

Ah, Tracy, But you missed the POINT! I'm personally rather agnostic on whether the Russians actually changed the election results. Oh, perhaps they tried, a little....but what you and most who hate Trump but love the Democrats miss is that the USA has BY FAR been the most egregious violator of democracy and voting in other countries by FAR, by any measure, by light years over all other countries combined! To not take that into account - as well as our messing with the USSR and Russia in various ways is to say, in effect "its wrong when 'they' do it; and its fine when we do it". That is an amoral position, and I will not concede that it is not. EVERY report on what may well have been Russian meddling in our election [and even perhaps for Trump] should also mention US meddling in hundreds of elections and polities. Half truths are falsehoods and used to mislead the people. Fine, condemn the Russians if they did so, but what they did, if they did, is child's play compared to what we have done and continue to do [but the Government, MSM, and many citizens play ostrich about]. We will not root out evil if we practice it ourselves and only condemn it when others do it.

Trump has done money laundering for Russians and has done other kinds of deals with Russians that are not savory. He should be condemned for that....but again, all persons who do that should be no matter their status or nationality nor the status or nationality of the dirty money or where it goes to or through. Condemn all equally. And if Trump campaign people were colluding with Russians to rig the election - fine drag 'em to court and put 'em behind bars - but the Clintons do not have clean hands, nor do many others on the other 'side of the aisle'. A plague on all their houses and deeds. I'd love nothing more than for Trump to resign, be impeached or commit suicide - but please for his real crimes, not invented ones, and not without a public awareness that others have done and continue to do the same. I'm all for cleaning up Dodge, but Dodge is not just the White House or Mar Lago now.

Peter, I don't know how many times I've said this, and it doesn't seem like anyone here listens. I don't "love the Democrats." I used to be a Republican and now I'm an independent. Okay?

"the Clintons do not have clean hands"

Bill Clinton hasn't been in the White House for 17 years, and Hillary will never be President. Why some people are continuing to obsess about them daily, I really don't know.

And I've said at LEAST a dozen times that I have never agreed with US meddling in other countries' elections, but that doesn't give any country the right to meddle in ours - it's wrong no matter who does it. And Americans can't just develop a passive attitude of, "Well, we did it to other countries, so we have to flop over and play dead while Putin screws us."

Now they are apparently targeting our infrastructure and power grid:

"Russian hackers are conducting a broad assault on the U.S. electric grid, water processing plants, air transportation facilities and other targets in rolling attacks on some of the country's most sensitive infrastructure, U.S. government officials said Thursday.

The announcement was the first official confirmation that Russian hackers have taken aim at facilities on which hundreds of millions of Americans depend for basic services. Bloomberg News reported in July that Russian hackers had breached more than a dozen power plants in seven states, an aggressive campaign that has since expanded to dozens of states, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

"Since at least March 2016, Russian government cyber actors" have targeted "government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors," including those of energy, nuclear, water and aviation, according to an alert issued Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-fbi-warns

[Tracy Riddle]

New reporting indicates that the story about Trump's new CIA pick may be wrong:

Correction: Trump's Pick to Head CIA Did Not Oversee Waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah

ProPublica erred when it reported in 2017 that Gina Haspel was in charge of a secret prison in Thailand during the infamous interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect.

by Raymond Bonner, special to ProPublica
March 15, 6:38 p.m. EDT
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On Feb. 22, 2017, ProPublica published a story that inaccurately described Gina Haspel's role in the treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida leader who was imprisoned by the CIA at a secret "black site" in Thailand in 2002.
The story said that Haspel, a career CIA officer who President Trump has nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, oversaw the clandestine base where Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture. The story also said she mocked the prisoner's suffering in a private conversation. Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them. It is now clear that Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.
Our account of Haspel's actions was drawn in part from declassified agency cables and CIA-reviewed books which referred to the official overseeing Zubaydah's interrogation at a secret prison in Thailand as "chief of base." The books and cables redacted the name of the official, as is routinely done in declassified documents referring to covert operations.
The Trump administration named Haspel to the CIA's No. 2 job in early February 2017. Soon after, three former government officials told ProPublica that Haspel was chief of base in Thailand at the time of Zubaydah's waterboarding.
We also found an online posting by John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, who wrote that "It was Haspel who oversaw the staff" at the Thai prison, including two psychologists who "designed the torture techniques and who actually carried out torture on the prisoners."
The nomination of Haspel this week to head the CIA stirred new controversy about her role in the detention and interrogation of terror suspects, as well as the destruction of videotapes of the interrogation of Zubaydah and another suspect. Some critics cited the 2017 ProPublica story as evidence that she was not fit to run the agency.
Those statements prompted former colleagues of Haspel to defend her publicly. At least two said that while she did serve as chief of base in Thailand, she did not arrive until later in 2002, after the waterboarding of Zubaydah had ended.
The New York Times, which also reported last year that Haspel oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and another detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, published a second story this week making the same point. It quoted an unnamed former senior CIA official who said Haspel did not become base chief until late October of 2002. According to the Times, she was in charge when al-Nashiri was waterboarded three times.
James Mitchell, the psychologist and CIA contractor who helped to direct the waterboarding of both suspects, said in a broadcast interview on March 14 that Haspel was not the "chief of base" whom he described in his book as making fun of Zubaydah's suffering.
"That chief of base was not Gina," Mitchell told Fox Business Network. "She's not the COB I was talking about."
Mitchell's book, "Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America," referred to the chief of base in Thailand as both "he" and "she."
We erroneously assumed that this was an effort by Mitchell or the agency to conceal the gender of the single official involved; it is now clear that Mitchell was referring to two different people.
ProPublica contacted Mitchell in 2017 to ask him about this passage in his book. Facing a civil lawsuit brought by former CIA detainees, he declined to comment.
At about the same time, we approached the CIA's press office with an extensive list of questions about the cables and Haspel's role in running the Thai prison, particularly her dealings with Zubaydah.
An agency spokesman declined to answer any of those questions but released a statement that was quoted in the article, asserting that "nearly every piece of reporting that you are seeking comment on is incorrect in whole or in part."
The CIA did not comment further on the story after its publication and we were not aware of any further questions about its accuracy until this week.
The February 2017 ProPublica story did accurately report that Haspel later rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters, where she pushed her bosses to destroy the tapes of Zubaydah's waterboarding. Her direct boss, the head of the agency's Counterterrorism Center, ultimately signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a shredder. Her actions in that instance, and in the waterboarding of al-Nashiri, are likely to be the focus of questions at her confirmation hearings.
Dean Boyd, director of the CIA's office of public affairs, praised Haspel's 30 years of public service and said Thursday in a statement that her qualifications and capabilities would be evident in the hearing process.
"It is important to note that she has spent nearly her entire CIA career undercover," Boyd said. "Much of what is in the public domain about her is inaccurate. We are pleased that ProPublica is willing to acknowledge its mistakes and correct the record regarding its claims about Ms. Haspel."
A few reflections on what went wrong in our reporting and editing process.
The awkward communications between officials barred from disclosing classified information and reporters trying to reveal secrets in which there is legitimate public interest can sometimes end in miscommunication. In this instance, we failed to understand the message the CIA's press office was trying to convey in its statement.
None of this in any way excuses our mistakes. We at ProPublica hold government officials responsible for their missteps, and we must be equally accountable. This error was particularly unfortunate because it muddied an important national debate about Haspel and the CIA's recent history. To her, and to our readers, we can only apologize, correct the record and make certain that we do better in the future.
Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief

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Update, March 13, 2018: President Donald Trump has nominated CIA deputy director Gina Haspel as the agency's new chief. We published the story below on Feb. 22, 2017.
In August of 2002, interrogators at a secret CIA-run prison in Thailand set out to break a Palestinian man they believed was one of al-Qaida's top leaders.
As the CIA's video cameras rolled, security guards shackled Abu Zubaydah to a gurney and interrogators poured water over his mouth and nose until he began to suffocate. They slammed him against a wall, confined him for hours in a coffin-like box, and deprived him of sleep.
The 31-year-old Zubaydah begged for mercy, saying that he knew nothing about the terror group's future plans. The CIA official in charge, known in agency lingo as the "chief of base," mocked his complaints, accusing Zubaydah of faking symptoms of psychological breakdown. The torture continued.
When questions began to swirl about the Bush administration's use of the "black sites," and program of "enhanced interrogation," the chief of base began pushing to have the tapes destroyed. She accomplished her mission years later when she rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters and drafted an order to destroy the evidence, which was still locked in a CIA safe at the American embassy in Thailand. Her boss, the head of the agency's counterterrorism center, signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a giant shredder.
By then, it was clear that CIA analysts were wrong when they had identified Zubaydah as the number three or four in al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden. The waterboarding failed to elicit valuable intelligence not because he was holding back, but because he was not a member of al-Qaida, and had no knowledge of any plots against the United States.
The chief of base's role in this tale of pointless brutality and evidence destruction was a footnote to history until earlier this month, when President Trump named her deputy director of the CIA.
The choice of Gina Haspel for the second-highest position in the agency has been praised by colleagues but sharply criticized by two senators who have seen the still-classified records of her time in Thailand.
"Her background makes her unsuitable for the position," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., wrote in a letter to Trump. "We are sending a classified letter explaining our position and urge that the information be immediately declassified."
Read the Story

In Their Own Words: CIA Cables Document Agency's Torture of Abu Zubaydah

A trove of recently released cables and Zubaydah's own declassified account describe what happened when the al Qaeda suspect was held at secret prison.



That's not likely to happen. ProPublica has combed through recently declassified documents, including CIA cables and Zubaydah's own account of what he endured, and books by officials involved in the CIA's interrogation program to assemble the fullest public account of Haspel's role in the questioning of Zubaydah. The material we reviewed shows she played a far more direct role than has been understood.
Asked to respond to the specific allegations about Haspel, a CIA spokesperson said only that, "Nearly every piece of the reporting that you are seeking comment on is incorrect in whole or in part." We reminded the spokesperson that many of the specifics came from books written by former CIA officials and cleared before publication by the agency. He declined to say which aspects of the reporting, or those books, were incorrect but did provide a long list of testimonials to Haspel's skills from present and former intelligence officials.
Critics of Haspel's appointment argue that her past is particularly relevant in light of Trump's shifting statements on the value of torturing terror suspects. During the campaign, former director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden said in response to Trump's endorsement of torture that "if any future president wants (the) CIA to waterboard anybody, he'd better bring his own bucket." After he won the election, Trump said he was persuaded by his secretary of defense, James Mattis, that torture is not effective. The Trump administration recently drafted and then withdrew a draft executive order asking American intelligence agencies to consider resuming "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects.
Much of the material we reviewed for this story referred to Haspel only by her title, chief of base, or "COB." Three former government officials, however, said the person described by that title in books and declassified documents was Haspel. As chief of base, these officials said, Haspel signed many of the cables sent from Thailand to CIA headquarters recounting Zubaydah's questioning. The declassified versions of those documents redact the name of the official who sent them.



One declassified cable, among scores obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the architects of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques, says that chief of base and another senior counterterrorism official on scene had the sole authority power to halt the questioning.
She never did so, records show, watching as Zubaydah vomited, passed out and urinated on himself while shackled. During one waterboarding session, Zubaydah lost consciousness and bubbles began gurgling from his mouth. Medical personnel on the scene had to revive him. Haspel allowed the most brutal interrogations by the CIA to continue for nearly three weeks even though, as the cables sent from Thailand to the agency's headquarters repeatedly stated, "subject has not provided any new threat information or elaborated on any old threat information."
At one point, Haspel spoke directly with Zubaydah, accusing him of faking symptoms of physical distress and psychological breakdown. In a scene described in a book written by one of the interrogators, the chief of base came to his cell and "congratulated him on the fine quality of his acting." According to the book, the chief of base, who was identified only by title, said: "Good job! I like the way you're drooling; it adds realism. I'm almost buying it. You wouldn't think a grown man would do that."
Haspel was sent by the chief of the CIA's counterterrorism section, Jose Rodriquez, the "handpicked warden of the first secret prison the CIA created to handle al-Qaida detainees," according to a little-noticed recent article in Reader Supported News by John Kiriakou, a former CIA counterterrorism officer. In his memoir, "Hard Measures," Rodriquez refers to a "female chief of base" in Thailand but does not name her.
Kirakou provided more details about her central role. "It was Haspel who oversaw the staff," at the Thai prison, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists who "designed the torture techniques and who actually carried out torture on the prisoners," he wrote.
Kiriakou pleaded guilty in 2012 to releasing classified information about waterboarding and the torture of detainees, and served 23 months in prison.
The CIA officials in Thailand understood that the methods they were using could kill Zubaydah and said that should that happen, they would cremate his body. If he survived questioning, Haspel sought assurances that "the subject will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life."
So far, that promise has been kept. Zubaydah is currently incarcerated at Guantanamo. His lawyers filed a court action in 2008 seeking his release, but the federal judges overseeing the case have failed to issue any substantive rulings.
Zubaydah was seized in a raid in Pakistan in late March 2002, during which he suffered life-threatening bullet wounds in his leg and groin. The CIA had long been hunting for Zubaydah, who had worked as what one former government official described as "administrator" at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. The camp was started by the CIA during the Soviet occupation, was not under the control of al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, the official said, but Zubaydah had on occasion supplied false passports and money to al-Qaida operatives.
American doctors saved Zubaydah's life, and after he was stable enough he was drugged, gagged, trussed and blindfolded, and put on a CIA charter flight. In order to avoid being traced, the plane flew around the world, stopping in several places, including Morocco and Brazil, before landing in Thailand.
While still hospitalized, Zubaydah was interrogated by the FBI, led by Ali Soufan, an Arabic speaker. According to Soufan, Zubaydah, who was generally cooperative, provided the FBI interrogators with valuable intelligence on the overall structure of al-Qaida.
His information also confirmed what the CIA already believed, that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. A talkative sort who expressed a willingness to cooperate, Zubaydah gave the FBI information that led to the arrest of Jose Padilla for plotting to detonate bombs in the United States. Zubaydah, who was born in Palestine, said that while he believed in jihad, the 9/11 attacks were not justified because they killed innocent civilians.
CIA officials were convinced that he knew about plots in America, and with the horror of 9/11 still fresh, the agency was determined to prevent another attack. A month after Zubaydah was captured, Haspel drafted a cable titled "Turning Up the Heat in AZ Interrogations."
Soon after, he was put into isolation for 45 days, kept awake with loud music and doused with cold water. During this time, the ALEC team at CIA headquarters, which was assigned to find Osama bin Laden, sent questions to Thailand for the team to ask Zubaydah; they went unasked, and unanswered, because he was in isolation.
The FBI and CIA clashed over whether or not Zubaydah was fully cooperating on the subject of possible future attacks. The agency's view prevailed, and counterterrorism officials sought permission for harsher measures.
In late July, the CIA team conducted a "dress rehearsal … which choreographed moving Abu Zubaydah (Subject) in and out of the large and small confinement boxes, as well as use of the water board," Haspel notified Washington.
A few days later, she wrote, "Team is ready to move to the next phase of interrogations immediately upon receipt of approvals/authorization from ALEC/Headquarters. It is our understanding that DOJ/Attorney General approvals for all portions of the next phase, including the water board, have been secured, but that final approval is in the hands of the policy makers."
By this time, the source on whom the CIA had based its assessment that Zubaydah was number three or four in the al-Qaida organization had recanted his testimony, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture released in 2014. The agency would ultimately conclude that Zubaydah was not even a member of al-Qaida.
Read the Story


Incommunicado' Forever: Gitmo Detainee's Case Stalled For 2,477 Days And Counting

The Senate torture report chronicled the CIA's interrogation of high-profile detainee Abu Zubaydah, but the justice system's treatment of his habeas corpus petition has largely escaped notice.



"So it begins," a medical officer on Haspel's team wrote on the morning of Aug. 4, 2002.
Later that year, when journalists began asking the CIA and the White House about a "black site," in Thailand, the CIA rushed to close it. Zubaydah was again drugged, trussed, blindfolded, and put on another secret CIA flight to another black site, this time in Poland.
Haspel moved to cover up the agency's operations at the Thai base. The chief of base told the security officer "to burn everything that he could in preparation for sanitizing the black site," Mitchell wrote in his book, "Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America," which was published late last year.
According to Mitchell's account, the security officer asked the chief of base whether he should include the tapes; he was told to hold off until "she" could check with Washington.
She was told to retain them. A few years later when she was back in Washington and chief of staff to the director of operations for counterterrorism, Jose Rodriquez, the man who had sent her to Thailand, she continued to lobby for destruction of the tapes.
"My chief of staff drafted a cable approving the action we had been trying to accomplish for so long," Rodriquez writes in his memoir. "The cable left nothing to chance. It even told them how to get rid of the tapes. They were to use an industrial-strength shredder to do the deed."
Without approval from the White House or Justice Department, Rodriquez gave the order.
In a twist of fate, destroying the tapes drew more outside scrutiny of the program. Disclosure of the shredding prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to begin its long-running examination of the torture program. The result was a 7,000-page report that drew on thousands of highly classified cables relating to the Bush administration's rendition and detention program and concluded torture was not effective.

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[Peter Lemkin]

However, she DID oversee [in person] the waterboarding of another prisoner...name I don't remember. She's a psychopathic shit who loves seeing people in pain and being tortured - what does it matter who it was. I'm sure there were more than one she watched and hundreds she gave the OK to torture. And she was directly involved in destroying the torture tapes.

[Peter Lemkin]

MARCH 16, 2018 | JIMMY FALLS

REVENGE OF THE NEOCONS

John Bolton. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
President Donald Trump's cabinet is starting to look more and more like a Bush-Cheney war room.
The irony is thick, considering candidate Trump's promises to "drain the swamp," his claimed opposition to foreign intervention, and his apparent antagonism to the Bush dynasty in the lead up to election day.
Just days ago, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him. To fill Pompeo's place as head of the CIA, Trump nominated Deputy Director Gina Haspel. And reportedly waiting in the wings to replace former general H.R. McMaster as national security advisor is none other than John Bolton.
Let's start with nominee for CIA Director Gina Haspel. During the Bush administration, she ran a secret CIA blacksite in Thailand and oversaw torture. Enough said?
She later was responsible for helping to destroy evidence of torture. Her punishment? She was promoted to Deputy Director, while a whistleblower like CIA case officer John Kiriakou, who exposed the torture program, was jailed for exposing the identity of a CIA officer by giving that classified information to the press.
On the campaign trail, Trump expressed his openness to reviving torture, sayingthat he would "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding." It's unclear exactly what he had in mind (maybe cold water and battery cables? Or perhaps having your eyes taped open and being forced to watch The Apprentice?).
Then there's Pompeo. Besides the prospect of the State Department effectively becoming a wing of the CIA (or maybe it already was), what should Americans expect from their future top diplomat?
As a former congressman from Kansas, Pompeo sat on the House Intelligence Committee and was one of the NSA's biggest cheerleaders, calling for whistleblower Edward Snowden's execution. He also advocated for regime changein Iran and North Korea.
Pompeo has also previously defended waterboarding.
Finally, we come to John Bolton. As former ambassador to the UN under Bush-Cheney, Bolton was one of the loudest voices for regime change leading up to the Iraq War. He also wanted regime change in Libya. And Cuba. And Iran. And North Korea.
He also does not believe the Bush-Cheney administration engaged in torture.
Trump has made antagonistic threats to both Iran and North Korea. Not to mention that North Korea was part of the "Axis of Evil", and Iran has always been on the hit list.
So what could possibly go wrong?

[Dawn Meredith]

Great few hours catching up with pal Richard Bartholomew. Learned something major about Mueller. He is the nephew of Richard Bissell and his wife is the granddaughter of Charles Cabell. (For those who do not know both Bissell and Cabell were fired by JFK- very very deep state criminals)

Doesn't that put the whole Mueller investigation in a new light???

[Cliff Varnell]

Great few hours catching up with pal Richard Bartholomew. Learned something major about Mueller. He is the nephew of Richard Bissell and his wife is the granddaughter of Charles Cabell. (For those who do not know both Bissell and Cabell were fired by JFK- very very deep state criminals)

Doesn't that put the whole Mueller investigation in a new light???

Looks like a clean-up of the family karma, a Republican prosecuting an illegitimate, corrupt scumbag Fascist.