The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[Paul Rigby]

The Rise of the Alt-Center

Why did establishment liberals fall in love with a deranged Twitter thread? It's time for some game theory.

By Sam Kriss

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...erals.html

You might remember a time, back before the election, when we all still lived in the real world and Donald Trump was an unhinged conspiracy theorist. Nearing rock bottom in the polls, wheeling off helplessly down the one-way chute of defeat, Trump began making a series of increasingly implausible claims: The election was a fix; shadowy foreign actorsChina, Saudi Arabiawere colluding with elements within the deep state to put their puppet in the White House; media organizations were polluting the country with their lies and distortions; the whole country was about to suffer a soft coup, maybe bloodless, maybe not. If Clinton won, he said, he might not accept the legitimacy of the result, and people were horrified by this suggestion. Every principle of representative democracy seemed under threat and all because one jumped-up narcissist and his limp, frothing coterie couldn't deal with not getting everything they ever wanted. Defeat, past or imminent, does strange things to people. They get desperate, they try to grab hold of any explanation that won't incriminate themselves, they tear through their own skin looking for stab wounds in the back. It's understandable.

But Trump didn't lose. Despite spending a year of the world's time preening and pouting, blubbering when things didn't go his way or filling screens with his bulbous shit-eating smirk whenever they did, Trump won. And for liberals, who had assumed along with Hillary Clinton that the world was theirs to inherit, this needed an explanationone that had nothing to do with their own failures, one that could be safely localized somewhere distant, malevolent, and unknowable. Russia, perhaps. Enter Eric Garland.

On Dec. 11, fueled by prescription amphetamines and craft beer, Eric Garland disgorged a sprawling 127-tweet thread explaining to America and the world exactly what was going on, how Russia put Trump in power, and what they could do about it. And the thing was a sensation. Every so often, a text comes along that perfectly captures the mood of a certain section of society at a certain time, something that screams their pain for them in ways they can't quite manage to do themselves. Garland's tweet thread is that common roar of establishment liberalism in the age of Trump. It's been retweeted thousands of times, gaining fawning praise from much of the liberal intelligentsia. Finally, someone has had the courage to put it all together, in a grand masterpiece of political analysis. Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek and Vanity Fair called it "a MUST read." Clara Jeffery, editor in chief of Mother Jones, gushingly described it as the "single greatest thread I have ever read on Twitter. And in its way a Federalist Paper for 2016." "Great writing, using a form that doesn't usually lend itself to greatness," gurgled the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold. Tim Fullerton, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's director of communications, glooped that "if there were a Pulitzer for tweetingthis thread would be the undisputed winner of 2016." Patton Oswalt: "Succinct & propulsive writing." Sean Illing: "Bullshit-free."

Clearly something horrifying has happened to America's great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them. This is, after all, how cults get started. Cultists will venerate any messianic mediocrity and any set of half-baked spiritual dogmas; it's not the overt content that matters but the security of knowing. If Trump's devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the "alt-right," the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen. So it's strange, but not surprising, that so many people would sing the praises of Garland's masterpiece, because it is absolutely the worst piece of political writing ever inflicted on any public in human history.

Garland is not a political expert. He describes himself instead as a "futurist, strategist, author, bassist." His personal site carries the tag line "Track the trends. Explore the scenarios. Make the strategy. Rule the world" and urges you to sign up to his mailing list and "become a trend insider." He sells executive training courses and offers himself as a keynote speaker at prices from $10,000 to $25,000 and above per speech. These speeches have titles like "The Next Narrative: Branding in a Fast-Changing World" or "The WTF Economy." He's a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman, peddling sleek gibberish to people who've never read a book without "… and how YOU can profit" in the subtitle; in any true meritocracy he'd be putting his strategic skills to work hawking trinkets by the roadside. And it shows.

Garland starts his magnum opus with a promise: He's going to combat the idea that Obama and Clinton are "doing nothing, just gave up" in the face of Trump's victory. "Guys," he writes. "It's time for some game theory." Game theory, for the uninitiated, is a branch of mathematics that uses computational models to predict the behavior of human beings in potentially conflictual situations. It's complex, involves a lot of formal logic and algebra, and is mostly useless. Game theory models human actions on the presumption that everyone is constantly trying to maximize their potential gain against everyone around them; this is why its most famous example concerns prisonersisolated people, cut off from all the noncompetitive ties that constitute society. One of its most important theoreticians, John Nash, was also a paranoid schizophrenic, who believed himself to be the target of a vast Russian conspiracy.

But we digress. Eric Garland keeps up this attempt at game theory for precisely two tweets. "ACTOR ANALYSIS: The Russians enter the Game with a broad objective, flexible tactics, and several acceptable outcomes," he writes. There are no further ACTOR ANALYSES. That's it. For Eric Garland, game theory means describing something as a Game, with a capital G; you don't get $25,000 speaking fees for nothing.

American liberals won't accept that the dry civics lesson of a democracy they love so much is capable of creating a monster.
From here it deteriorates badly. Garland goes on to give his own personal account of the past few decades of U.S. and world history, in which absolutely everything is the product of a long, slow Russian master plan to bring America to its knees by encouraging the population not to trust the noble, hardworking CIA. Glenn Greenwald is a Russian agent; so are Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden; they're traitors. The fact that these people revealed actual illegal activity by government agencies is immaterial (as is the fact that Chelsea Manning has been made to suffer tremendously for it, tortured in solitary confinement)all this was calculated, it's a show, these people are just "characters." Meanwhile, from the moment Obama is elected, the Russians are also using the media to encourage the extreme right wingwho would, presumably, all be docile and obedient taxpayers if it weren't for the Slavic menaceto distrust their government. Trump is here, Garland tells us, because the Russians put him here. No evidence is offered for any of this; it's just a story, for you to believe if you want to. And this story is delivered in an almost psychotically annoying style, directly transplanted from the internet of the mid-2000s, an unholy reanimated prose corpse shambling through the discourse, groaning hideously if it can haz cheezburger. A sample tweet: "And now, it's December 11th. Trump says he don't need no stinkin' intel agencies. Russia (BWA HAHAHAHAAAA) blames Ukraine! LOLOLOLOLZZZ. A lot of Republicans stare into the middle distance, except for McCain and Graham who are NOT HAVING THIS SHIT. (I salute you, gentlemen.)" As the journalist Libby Watson showed, when you collapse this screed into a single paragraph, it's almost unreadable: demented, speed-addled bullshit, signifying nothing.

Garland never fulfills his promise. When it comes to providing a "game theory" answer to why Obama and Clinton don't seem to be doing anything, he just shrugs. "JESUS, WHAT CAN YOU DO?" It took him 127 tweets to get to his answer, and there's nothing there. He ends, by way of an excuse, with a corny dollop of patriotic waffle, an inspiring speech clearly half-cribbed from some star-splattered disaster movie. "This system is not rotten, not beyond repair, not exiled from the future. We have been infiltrated by agents who would drive us mad." And when some people started pointing out to him just how awful and empty his grand political intervention was, Eric Garland knew why. Everyone criticizing him on Twitter was, of course, also part of a vast Russian conspiracy.

It's possible that the Democratic National Committee leaks were caused by Russian hackersbut given that the hack took place thanks to John Podesta clicking on a link in a phishing email, displaying all the technological savvy of someone's aunt extremely excited by the new iPhone she thinks she's won, it could have been anyone. The "leaked" CIA concerns over Russian meddling were quite clearly leaked deliberately by the CIA itself, an organization not exactly famed for its commitment to the truth; they're the conclusions of an investigation that hasn't even happened yet and on which there's no consensus even among the gang of petty Caligulas that calls itself the intelligence community. Still, it's possible. Countries sometimes try to exert influence in each other's internal affairs; it's part of great-power politics, and it's been happening for a very long time. When Americans meddled in Russia's elections, it was by securing victory for Boris Yeltsin, Russia's very own Donald Trump, a man who had sent in tanks to shell his own parliament. Leaked cables suggest that Hillary Clinton's own State Department interfered with the political process in Haiti by suppressing a rise in the minimum wage. And American involvement in the politics of Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran was mostly through military coups, sponsored by none other than the CIA. There was no question of these countries repeating their elections; anyone the generals didn't like was tortured to death. Next to the mountain of corpses produced by America's history of fixing foreign elections, a few hacked emails are entirely insignificant.

Top Comment

It wasn't the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail"vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins. More...

Whatever Russia did or didn't do, the idea that its interference is what cost Hillary Clinton the election is utterly ludicrous and absolutely false. What cost Hillary Clinton the election can be summed up by a single line from Sen. Chuck Schumer, soon to be the country's highest-ranking Democrat: "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." As it turned out, he was fatally wrong. It wasn't the Russians who told the Democratic Party to abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base. It wasn't the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail"vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins." The Russians didn't come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like "I'm with her" or "America is already great." The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.

What the Russia obsession represents is a massive ethical failure on the part of American liberals. People really will suffer under President Trumpwomen, queer people, Muslims, poor people of every stripe. But so many in the centrist establishment don't seem to care. They're far too busy weaving themselves into intricate geopolitical power plays that don't really exist, searching for a narrative that exonerates them from having let this happen, to do anything like real political work. They won't accept that Trumpism is America, in all its blood-splattered horrorthat the dry civics lesson of a democracy they love so much is capable of creating a monster. Decades of neoliberal policy disenfranchised people to the extent that Donald Trump could look like a savior; far better to just hide your bad conscience somewhere far away in Eastern Europe. It wasn't us, it wasn't our country, we were all duped by Putin. And if this means falling into reactionary paranoia, screaming red-faced about traitors and spies, slobbering embarrassingly over the incoherent rants of any two-bit con artist whose name isn't Donald Trumpso be it. None of this will help anyone or achieve anything, but that's not the point. And then, at the end, with nothing solved, they shrug at us like Eric Garland's imagined game-theory version of Hillary Clinton. Jesus, what can you do?

Sam Kriss is a writer surviving in London.

[David Guyatt]

I wonder if the "now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues" brigade trod the same game theory to revolt over Jeremy Corbyn's massive vote of Labour Party members, or those who cried foul against the Brexit vote?

[David Guyatt]

The below article is regarded as a good summing up by former FBI Special Agent and whistleblower, Coleeen Rowley:

The Leak That Came in From the Cold
Craig Murray tells all media ignores him


by Justin Raimondo, December 16, 2016
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What difference, at this point, does it make?


As the frantic attempts by die-hard Democrats, the media, and the CIA to prevent Donald Trump from being sworn into office reach a fever pitch, Hillary Clinton's anguished cry seems like the only appropriate response. Trump won the election, he's now announcing his Cabinet, and that's the end of the matter.


Or is it only the beginning?


When the CIA targets a country for regime change, I wouldn't bet the farm on the targeted government surviving. And while this isn't quite Allende's Chile, America's increasing resemblance to a banana republic is augured in the CIA's refusal to appear at a congressional oversight committee to explain leaks in the press charging that Russian intelligence actively worked to elect Trump. So who's in charge here the CIA or the people's elected representatives?


The White House has joined the fray, implying that the PEOTUS is directly colluding with Moscow. White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated that Trump was "obviously" aware, "based on whatever sources were available to him," that the Russians were behind the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta. Because, you see, Trump has a direct line to the Kremlin: after all, how else could the Russians issue their marching orders?


It's unlikely, albeit possible, that this brouhaha is going to prevent Trump from taking office: the "Hamilton electors" campaign doesn't seem to be going anywhere, in spite of the best efforts of Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter gee, how did she become an elector, I wonder?


The game plan of "the Resistance" yes, that's what these drama queens call themselves seems to be to block what the CIA and the neoconservative NeverTrumpers fear the most: Trump's vow to turn US foreign policy around, align with Russia against Saudi-jihadist elements in the Middle East, and bring an end to the policy of "intervention and chaos," as the President-elect put it in one of his "victory tour" speeches. Their strategy is to Russia-bait him into exhaustion, block his nominees to national security positions Rex Tillorsen will face the McCain-Graham inquisition, to be sure and utilize the media to unleash a tsunami of fake news designed to smear him as Putin's poodle.


The first phase of this assault is slated to be endless congressional hearings on the subject of Russian "influence" in American politics: think of the old House Un-American Activities Committee. "Are you or have you ever been …?" And the outgoing administration is going to leave a turd in the icebox with the "report" on the whole matter ordered by President Obama to be placed on his desk before January 20.


Yet this whole ginned-up controversy is starting to come unglued, as congressional Republicans start to push back, both the FBI and the ODNI distance themselves from the CIA's assessment, and even John Bolton challenges the narrative, calling into question the entire basis of the conspiracy theory at the heart of the "Putin did it" campaign. Technical experts are also raising their voices, pointing out the manifold holes in the publicly available case of those who claim to know that the Kremlin is behind an elaborate plot to upend the American political system. An excellent article in the Intercept asks such pertinent questions as why, if the Russians are so diabolically clever, did they leave Cyrillic comments on their cyber-trail? "Would a group whose tradecraft is superb' with operational security second to none" really leave behind the name of a Soviet spy chief imprinted on a document it sent to American journalists?"


Speaking of American journalists: the media-industrial complex, which was clearly an arm of the Clinton machine during the election campaign, is steadfastly ignoring the biggest development in this ongoing story: Craig Murray, a close confidante of Julian Assange, has now revealed the real story of how both the DNC emails and the Podesta email archive were acquired by WikiLeaks.


Murray, the United Kingdom's former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, says "Neither of the leaks came from the Russians. The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks." The leakers were "disgusted whistleblowers" disillusioned with the Clinton campaign's sidelining of Bernie Sanders and what they viewed as the corruption of the Clinton Foundation.


According to Murray, while someone may have hacked the DNC and John Podesta, the fact is that hackers were not Assange's source. In the Daily Mail version of this story, the British tabloid reports that Murray said he flew to Washington, D.C., and met a go-between "in a wooded area near American University," which is in the northwestern part of the city. The hand-off of what is described as a "package" took place there, and the rest is history.


However, in an extensive interview with Antiwar Radio's Scott Horton, Murray doesn't say he personally received the materials, although he does say he took a trip to Washington in September that was somehow connected to this affair. He is firm in his contention that a) Both the DNC and Podesta leaks were the work of Americans, not Russians, and b) The leaks were separate, and the perpetrators were different people. Furthermore, Murray strongly implies that John Podesta whose brother, Tony, is a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, and whose public relations firm, the Podesta Group, received $140,000 monthly payments from the Kingdom was hacked by American intelligence officials, who were perhaps motivated by undue Saudi influence on the Clinton campaign. (Judge Andrew Napolitano has a similar take.) As for the DNC leaks, this too was, according to Murray, the work of Americans, although he is less explicit about their identity: the implication is that the individual or individuals who provided WikiLeaks with the emails supported Bernie Sanders, although this isn't clear. (In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Julian Assange is asked about Murray's story, and he basically refuses to answer: "I don't want to go anywhere near that," he says.)


Here is someone intimately involved with the WikiLeaks operation claiming to have significant knowledge of the leaks and their provenance. One would think the media would be eager to interview him, and get the biggest story to come down the pike in quite a while. Yet, so far, there has been almost no mention of Murray's revelation in any major US media outlet, save for a few short pieces on Fox News and the Washington Examiner.


Why is that?


As I pointed out last summer:


"What's striking is that for all this subjective analysis' and cyber-sleuthing, no one is pointing to what should be the first suspicion in such a case: that the hacking of the DNC server was an inside job. Is it all that improbable that someone working for the DNC is a supporter of Bernie Sanders or just someone who believes in elemental fairness who saw how the DNC was rigging the game and used their access to supply WikiLeaks with the emails? As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Democracy Now' in an interview, If we're talking about the DNC, there's lots of consultants, lots of programmers' with means, motive, and opportunity.


"Why isn't this very broad hint by someone who's in a position to know who was responsible admissible evidence? It's being studiously ignored because it doesn't fit the narrative that the media and the Democrats or do I repeat myself want to push on the public."


Now that the Facebook/Legacy Media alliance is setting up mechanisms to filter out "fake news," i.e. news and opinion they would rather you didn't read or even know about, the truth is going to be even harder to get out there. Yes, both the Washington Post which ran the PropOrNot smear as front page "news" and ABC News are slated to be official "fact-checkers" who will rule on what sort of "fake news" you won't be allowed to see.


This is why Antiwar.com is more vitally important than ever. Here is where you get the real news about what s happening in the world: the full lowdown on what schemes the War Party is planning, both here and abroad. And that's why I'm so jazzed by the success of our recent fundraiser, which went over the top the other day: thank you one and all!


Yes, after twenty-one years we're still here,: and not only that, but thanks to our readers and supporters we're going strong. We've made considerable progress, but we've still got a long way to go. The War Party may be wounded, but a wounded animal is even more dangerous than he might otherwise be and so we're ever-vigilant, watching them day and night bringing you the truth 24/7, unfiltered and often before anyone else has reported it.

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[Paul Rigby]

A Spy Coup in America?

By Robert Parry

December 18, 2016

Exclusive: As the Electoral College assembles, U.S. intelligence agencies are stepping up a campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump as a Russian stooge, raising concerns about a spy coup in America, reports Robert Parry.

As Official Washington's latest "group think" solidifies into certainty that Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump something entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S. intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president.

I was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior leaders of the Obama administration's intelligence agencies from the CIA to the FBI were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ascending to the presidency. And, it's true that intelligence officials often come to see themselves as the stewards of America's fundamental interests, sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public or from inept or corrupt political leaders.

It was, after all, a senior FBI official, Mark Felt, who as "Deep Throat" guided The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate investigation into the criminality of President Richard Nixon. And, I was told by former U.S. intelligence officers that they wanted to block President Jimmy Carter's reelection in 1980 because they viewed him as ineffectual and thus not protecting American global interests.

It's also true that intelligence community sources frequently plant stories in major mainstream publications that serve propaganda or political goals, including stories that can be misleading or entirely false.

What's Going On?

So, what to make of what we have seen over the past several months when there have been a series of leaks and investigations that have damaged both Clinton and Trump with some major disclosures coming, overtly and covertly, from the U.S. intelligence community led by CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey?

Some sources of damaging disclosures remain mysterious. Clinton's campaign was hobbled by leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee showing it undercutting Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders and from her campaign chairman John Podesta exposing the content of her speeches to Wall Street banks that she had tried to hide from the voters and revealing the Clinton Foundation's questionable contacts with foreign governments.

Clinton already burdened with a reputation for secrecy and dishonesty suffered from the drip, drip, drip of releases from WikiLeaks of the DNC and Podesta emails although it remains unclear who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Still, the combination of the two email batches added to public suspicions about Clinton and reminded people why they didn't trust her.

But the most crippling blow to Clinton came from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign when he reopened and then re-closed the investigation into whether she broke the law with her sloppy handling of classified material in her State Department emails funneled through a home server.

Following Comey's last-minute revival of the Clinton email controversy, her poll numbers fell far enough to enable Trump to grab three normally Democratic states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin enough to give him a victory in the Electoral College.

Taking Down Trump

However, over the past few weeks, the U.S. intelligence community, led by CIA Director Brennan and seconded by FBI Director Comey, has tried to delegitimize Trump by using leaks to the mainstream U.S. news media to pin the release of the DNC and Podesta emails on Russia and claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally trying to put Trump into the White House.

This remarkable series of assessments from the CIA now endorsed by the leadership of the FBI come on the eve of the Electoral College members assembling to cast their formal votes to determine who becomes the new U.S. president. Although the Electoral College process is usually simply a formality, the Russian-hacking claims made by the U.S. intelligence community have raised the possibility that enough electors might withhold their votes from Trump to deny him the presidency.

If on Monday enough Trump electors decide to cast their votes for someone else possibly another Republican the presidential selection could go to the House of Representatives where, conceivably, the Republican-controlled chamber could choose someone other than Trump.

In other words, there is an arguable scenario in which the U.S. intelligence community first undercut Clinton and, secondly, Trump, seeking however unlikely to get someone installed in the White House considered more suitable to the CIA's and the FBI's views of what's good for the country.

Who Did the Leaking?

At the center of this controversy is the question of who leaked or hacked the DNC and Podesta emails. The CIA has planted the story in The Washington Post, The New York Times and other mainstream outlets that it was Russia that hacked both the DNC and Podesta emails and slipped the material to WikiLeaks with the goal of assisting the Trump campaign. The suggestion is that Trump is Putin's "puppet," just as Hillary Clinton alleged during the third presidential debate.

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly denied that Russia was the source of the leaks and one of his associates, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a "disgruntled" Democrat upset with the DNC's sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community.

Although Assange recently has sought to muzzle Murray's public comments out of apparent concern for protecting the identity of sources Murray offered possibly his most expansive account of the sourcing during a podcast interview with Scott Horton on Dec. 13.

Murray, who became a whistleblower himself when he protested Britain's tolerance of human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, explained that he consults with Assange and cooperates with WikiLeaks "without being a formal member of the structure."

But he appears to have undertaken a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25 visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University. At the time, Murray was at American University participating in an awards ceremony for former CIA officer John Kiriakou who was being honored by a group of former Western intelligence officials, the Sam Adams Associates, named for the late Vietnam War-era CIA analyst and whistleblower Sam Adams.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, a founder of the Sam Adams group, told me that Murray was "m-c-ing" the event but then slipped away, skipping a reception that followed the award ceremony.

Reading Between LInes

Though Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some legal or physical danger.

Murray has disputed a report in London's Daily Mail that he was receiving a batch of the leaked Democratic emails. "The material, I think, was already safely with WikiLeaks before I got there in September," Murray said in the interview with Scott Horton. "I had a small role to play."

Murray also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

"The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn't conclude that they both have the same source," Murray said. "In both cases we're talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information."

Reading between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray's comments as suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have been monitoring John Podesta's emails because the Podesta Group, which he founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered "foreign agent" for Saudi Arabia.

"John Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government," Murray noted. "If the American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi government's paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services would not be doing their job. … His communications are going to be of interest to a great number of other security services as well."

Leak by Americans

Scott Horton then asked, "Is it fair to say that you're saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?"

"I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah," Murray responded. "In both cases they are leaks by Americans."

In reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that "Julian Assange took very close interest in the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic staff member" who had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10 near his Washington, D.C., home.

Murray continued, "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his killers. So, obviously there are suspicions there about what's happening and things are somewhat murky. I'm not saying don't get me wrong I'm not saying that he was the source of the [DNC] leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believes that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks … whether correctly or incorrectly."

Though acknowledging that such killings can become grist for conspiracy buffs, Murray added: "But people do die over this sort of stuff. There were billions of dollars literally billions of dollars behind Hillary Clinton's election campaign and those people have lost their money.

"You have also to remember that there's a big financial interest particularly in the armaments industry in a bad American relationship with Russia and the worse the relationship with Russia is the larger contracts the armaments industry can expect especially in the most high-tech high-profit side of fighter jets and missiles and that kind of thing.

"And Trump has actually already indicated he's looking to make savings on the defense budget particularly in things like fighter [jet] projects. So, there are people standing to lose billions of dollars and anybody who thinks in that situation bad things don't happen to people is very naïve."

An Intelligence Coup?

There's another possibility in play here: that the U.S. intelligence community is felling a number of birds with one stone. If indeed U.S. intelligence bigwigs deemed both Clinton and Trump unfit to serve as President albeit for different reasons they could have become involved in leaking at least the Podesta emails to weaken Clinton's campaign, setting the candidate up for the more severe blow from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign.

Then, by blaming the leaks on Russian President Putin, the U.S. intelligence leadership could set the stage for Trump's defeat in the Electoral College, opening the door to the elevation of a more traditional Republican. However, even if that unlikely event defeating Trump in the Electoral College proves impossible, Trump would at least be weakened as he enters the White House and thus might not be able to move very aggressively toward a détente with Russia.

Further, the Russia-bashing that is all the rage in the mainstream U.S. media will surely encourage the Congress to escalate the New Cold War, regardless of Trump's desires, and thus ensure plenty more money for both the intelligence agencies and the military contractors.

Official Washington's "group think" holding Russia responsible for the Clinton leaks does draw some logical support from the near certainty that Russian intelligence has sought to penetrate information sources around both Clinton and Trump. But the gap between the likely Russian hacking efforts and the question of who gave the email information to WikiLeaks is where mainstream assumptions may fall down.

As ex-Ambassador Murray has said, U.S. intelligence was almost surely keeping tabs on Podesta's communications because of his ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments. So, the U.S. intelligence community represents another suspect in the case of who leaked those emails to WikiLeaks. It would be a smart play, reminiscent of the convoluted spy tales of John LeCarré, if U.S. intelligence officials sought to cover their own tracks by shifting suspicions onto the Russians.

But just the suspicion of the CIA joining the FBI and possibly other U.S. intelligence agencies to intervene in the American people's choice of a president would cause President Harry Truman, who launched the CIA with prohibitions against it engaging in domestic activities, and Sen. Frank Church, who investigated the CIA's abuses, to spin in their graves.

[Paul Rigby]

GOP electors under siege: Electoral College members receive death threats, creepy Christmas cards and pressure from Hollywood to dump Trump at tomorrow's vote

• Members of the Electoral College, especially GOP members casting a vote for Donald Trump, are being pressured to pick someone else
  
• Those interviewed in recent days report receiving death threats, thousands of emails and Christmas cards - pleading for a vote change - in the mail
  
• Republican electors are pushing back, saying that they're protecting the country from big states dominated by liberal elites
  

By NIKKI SCHWAB, U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 13:14, 18 December 2016 | UPDATED: 00:43, 19 December 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...llege.html

Members of the Electoral College, especially those GOP electors poised to cast a vote tomorrow for Donald Trump, are being pressured and threatened to pick someone else.

Electors talking to various news outlets report receiving death threats, thousands of emails, individualized messages from a Hollywood actor and creepy Christmas cards.

'I never can imagine harassing people like this. It's just f***ed up,' Jim Rhoades, a Republican elector from Michigan told Politico. 'I've lost a bunch of business,' Rhoades, who owns a home inspection service, continued.

One Texas Republican elector said he's been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails, Politico reported as well.

Carole Joyce of Arizona, a 72-year-old GOP state committee member, told the Washington Post she's received emails signed ' Benjamin Franklin' and 'John Jay,' names of the Founding Fathers.

She also received a Christmas card that read: 'Please, in the name of God, don't vote for Trump.'


The New York Post talked to 22-year-old college student Michael Banerian, a GOP elector attending Oakland University in Michigan.

'Somebody threatened to put a bullet in the back of my mouth,' Banerian told the newspaper.

'You don't even have to vote for me,' McKinnon-as-Clinton says, using handwritten cue cards. 'I'm coo,' the actress says, sticking out her tongue.

'Just vote for literally anyone else,' she continues. 'Like, John Kasich, Tom Hanks, Zendaya, The Rock, A Rock.'

And, as a last ditch effort, the Saturday Night Live version of Clinton tells the elector, played by Cecily Strong, to enjoy her holidays.

'But keep in mind. If Donald Trump becomes president. He will kill us all,' McKinnon says.

Actor Martin Sheen, who famously played President Josiah Bartlet on the television show The West Wing, filmed a video where he begged Republican electors not to vote for Trump.

He even recorded versions using individual electors' names.

The group, Unite for America, also recruited Richard Schiff, Debra Messing, James Cromwell, BD Wong, Moby and Bob Odenkirk to the effort.


Some GOP electors are defending their Trump votes by positing them as a broader shielding of rural and small-town America against big-state liberals and its support for the national popular vote leader, Clinton.

But the picture is more complicated.

'Our Founding Fathers established the Electoral College cause those larger states, those larger areas, don't necessarily need to be the ones that rule,' said Mary Sue McClurkin, a Republican elector from Alabama.


In Trump's hometown of New York City, which Clinton won easily, Democratic elector Stuart Appelbaum countered that 'we're electing the president of the entire country,' so 'the will of the entire country should be reflected in the results.'

It's an expected argument given the unusual circumstances of the 2016 election.

Clinton won some 2.6 million more votes than Trump in the nationwide tally.

But Trump is line to get 306 of the 538 electoral votes under the state-by-state distribution of electors used to choose presidents since 1789.

Trump won rural areas, small towns and many small cities, including in states Clinton carried.

Clinton won in the largest urban areas, including in Trump states.

Former Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, a GOP elector, said Democrats' strength on the coasts is enough to justify the Electoral College.

'A presidential election decided each time by either California or New York,' he said, would leave voters in Alaska and many other places 'with no voice' in presidential politics.

It's worth noting that Trump didn't just win small states and Clinton didn't just take large ones.

Trump and Clinton split the six most populous states, each winning three, but Trump won seven of the top 10.

Of the 10 smallest states plus the District of Columbia, Trump edged Clinton 6-5. Trump actually ran up his national advantage in midsize states.

But the dynamics highlight the delicate balance in a political structure that defines itself simultaneously as a democracy and a republic.

When the U.S. was founded, some wanted direct election of the president. Others wanted state legislatures or Congress to choose the executive.

Instead the country got a compromise.

The Electoral College was the end result: Each state got a slate of electors numbering the same as its delegation in Congress.

Electors vote, with rare exception, for whichever candidate won the most votes in their state effectively meaning the presidential election is 51 separate popular votes.

'It's such an interesting compromise that gave us the Electoral College, unique to our American system,' said elections law expert Will Sellers from Alabama, who will serve as a Republican elector for the fourth time.

The system gives smaller states an advantage: The number of electors is based on each state's number of U.S. representatives plus two, for each member of the U.S. Senate itself a compromise favoring small states.

So California's 55 electoral votes reflect 53 House members and two senators. For seven states, including Wyoming, Delaware and the Dakotas, those extra two electoral votes bring their total to the minimum of three.

Put another way, Alaska's three electors will cast 0.56 percent of the 538 electoral votes despite casting just 0.23 percent of the national popular vote.

But the advantage doesn't just favor Republicans.

Democratic Nevada makes up 1.12 percent of the Electoral College but cast less than 1 of a 100 national ballots.

The Electoral College-popular vote split, along with Trump's larger-than-life personality and lack of elective experience, has fueled a vocal, but almost certainly futile, movement to deny him the presidency by pressuring electors to vote against him when they convene Monday in the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

In its own investigation, the Associated Press tried to reach all 538 electors and was able to interview more than 330 of them.

Like other news reports, many reported getting tens of thousands of emails, calls and letters asking them to vote against Trump.

[Paul Rigby]

Labour MP: Highly probable' Russian hackers interfered over Brexit vote

A LABOUR MP today claimed it is "highly probable" Russia interfered to influence the Brexit vote.

By GREG HEFFER, POLITICAL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 17:05, Tue, Dec 13, 2016

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/7...referendum

Speaking during an emergency House of Commons debate on Syria, where Russian forces have aided the country's dictator Bashar al-Assad in a brutal siege of rebel-held city Aleppo, Mr Bradshaw warned MPs of the growing threat of Russia.

The Exeter MP said: "I don't think we have even begun to wake up to what Russia is doing when it comes to cyber warfare.

"Not only their interference, now proven, in the American presidential campaign, probably in our own referendum last year.

"We don't have the evidence for that yet, but I think it's highly probable."

Mr Bradshaw claimed Moscow-backed agents will also be "involved" in next year's French and German elections, as he told MPs: "We've got to wake up to this."

US authorities recently assessed Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping President-elect Donald Trump successfully defeat Hillary Clinton in the battle for the White House.

And, earlier this week, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said there was "a disturbing pattern" of allegations against Russia around cyber warfare, pointing to examples in Bulgaria, a recent referendum in the Netherlands and its continuing pressure on the Baltic states.

So it was Putin who took control of my pencil and made me put my X in the wrong box...

Tucker Carlson interviews Nigel Farage over claims that Russia fixed Brexit vote

Published on Dec 15, 2016
THE TUCK interviews THE FARAGE!! (Dec. 15th, 2016)

[video=youtube_share;cmw59R5vKr8]http://youtu.be/cmw59R5vKr8[/video]

[Paul Rigby]

Only a Counter-Coup Can Save American Democracy

By Paul Craig Roberts

December 18, 2016 "Information Clearing House"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46067.htm

The CIA has long engineered coups in other countries. Now we are approaching at breakneck speed a CIA coup in the USA.

When the presstitute media first published unverifired, unsourced leaks attributed to unnamed CIA officials, both the FBI and the Director of Homeland Security said that they did not embrace the accusation that Trump's election was a result of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

Now suddenly we have a report from the Washington Post, a rag whose integrity is in doubt and a mainstay of anti-Trump propaganda suspected of being a CIA asset, that the FBI and Homeland Security are in agreement with the anonymous leaks to the presstitutes:

"FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed Friday, as President Obama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation.
New revelations about Comey's position could put to rest suggestions by some lawmakers that the CIA and the FBI weren't on the same page on Russian President Vladi*mir Putin's intentions."

"The positions of Comey and Clapper were revealed in a message that CIA Director John Brennan sent to the agency's workforce Friday. Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,' Brennan said, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...62c36e39ca

Note, that this claim comes from the CIA. It has not been verified at this time of writing by the FBI and Homeland Security. Indeed, please note that the Washington Post, which is hyping this story of intelligence agency consensus, reports:

"The CIA and the FBI declined to comment on Brennan's message or on the classified intelligence assessment that CIA officials shared with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, setting off a political firestorm." In other words, the CIA might be putting words in the mouths of the other intelligence officials.

Note also that Hillary says that Putin interfered against her because he has a grudge against her for her interference in his reelection by fomenting protests against him with the Western-financed Russian NGOs. If what Hillary claims is correct, then any Russian interference, for which proof remains absent, was directed against Hillary in order to settle a score and has nothing to do with any Russian influence over Trump or 200 Internet sites as falsely and maliciously reported by the Washington Post.

All the CIA officials making claims of Russian interference, according to the Washington Post, continue to speak "on the condition of anonymity."

So we have a coup against the president-elect based solely on unverified, unsourced, anonymous assertions made by the public knows not who.

Rep. Davin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which has oversight over the CIA, has said that neither he nor the committee have seen any evidence from the CIA in support of the claims he reads in the media. He has asked the agency to brief the Intelligence Committee on the alleged evidence but has had no response.

According to the Washington Post, "Nunes said: We have not received any information from Intelligence Community (IC) agencies indicating that they have developed new assessments on this issue. I am alarmed that supposedly new information continues to leak to the media but has not been provided to Congress.'"

Rep. Nunes statement makes it completely clear that the CIA is using the presstitute media to launch a coup against president-elect Trump.

CIA director John Brennan's audacity suggests that he expects the coup to succeed. Otherwise, he is dead meat along with Bezos, The Washington Post and the rest of the presstitute media.

Trump's critics on the left and right and among the liberals and progressives have stupidly played into the CIA's hands. I tried to warn them not to judge Trump by the past associations of his appointees as no change was possible without strong knowledgeable appointees. Those who romanticize Bernie Sanders are out to lunch. A person as weak as Sanders proved to be, completely collapsing in the face of his stolen presidential nomination by Hillary, could not possibly have prevailed over the powerful oligarchic groups that rule America. When we finally get a president-elect strong enough to bring change from the top down, the leftwing-liberal-progressive elements join the CIA in denouncing him!

If the generals Trump has announced as his appointees have been too marginalized within the military by the neoconservatives to be able to provide US military protection against the CIA's coup against the president-elect, do not expect Donald Trump to be inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20.

We are at the point that only a countercoup against the CIA and the Hillary forces can save American democracy.

High treason is alive and well in the United States, and it is operating against American democracy and president-elect Trump.

[Paul Rigby]

The Striking Audacity of the Coup-in-Process

By Paul Craig Roberts

December 18, 2016

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/12/...g-roberts/

Unsubstantiated stories have been planted throughout the presstitute media by anonymous CIA officials that Donald Trump's electoral victory was the result of Russian intervention. This absurd claim has now been elevated to the even more absurd claim that Putin himself oversaw and even conducted the manipulation of the US presidential election.

No evidence has been provided for these amazing claims. The presstitutes are reporting unsubstantiated wild accusations that portend both a constitutional crisis in the US and a crisis with Russia. We know that the presstitutes lie. The presstitutes lied when they reported contrary to the weapons inspectors in Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They lied about fake evidence of yellowcake and alumninum tubes. They lied about Saddam Hussein's al-Qaeda connections. They lied about Iranian nukes despite the unanimous report of all US intelligence agencies that Iran had abandoned interest in nuclear weapons years ago. The presstitutes lied about Assad using chemical weapons against the Syrian people. They lied about Gadaffi. They lied about Russian invasion of Ukraine. They lied about the cause of the Russian/Georgian conflict. They lied about the Sochi Olympics. Now the presstitutes are claiming that Russian interference determined the outcome of the US presidential election and the Brexit vote.

As a result of the prestitutes' lies, millions of peoples have been killed and dislocated. This blood is all on the heads of the American media. So we know for a proven fact that the US media has no integrity and no conscience.

Now the presstitutes have surpassed their previous level of criminality. They are part and parcel of formenting a coup against the president-elect and throwing the country into a crisis of unknown proportion.

Tomorrow the Electoral College meets to cast the ballots for president. There is a well organized effort to disrupt this normally routine procedure. Based on CIA lies spread over the country by the presstitutes, 62 electors have requested a CIA briefing prior to the vote on Russian interference in the election. As there is no formal CIA report and no evidence in support of the allegations, the briefing would consist of the allegations.

A Harvard Law School professor, Lawrence Lessig, involved in the Stop-Trump movement, has promised free legal defence of electors who break with precedent and cast their votes differently from the majority vote of their states.

This effort, which presents a grave and continual threat to the Constitution, to domestic tranquility, and to international stability, is said in a nationwide media ad campaign to be necessary in order to block Trump from presenting "a grave and continual threat to the Constitution, to the domestic tranquility, and to international stabilithy." https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/artic...ege-monday

If the effort tomorrow fails, President Obama has put in motion a second shot at blocking Trump's inauguration with his order to the CIA to produce a report on Russian election meddling prior to January 20. This report could be used to delay the inauguration or to convey to the Amerian public and peoples abroad so many doubts that Trump's effectiveness as a leader would be undermined.

And of course, the constant assaults on Trump can result in his assassination by a "lone nut" patriot incensed over having in office a president declared by the New York Times to be a Putin stooge and useful idiot for the Russians. This is the newspaper of record's characterization of the president chosen by the American people.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research adds another dimension to the struggle a fight between rival oligarchic interests. Trump and his announced Secretary of State want the business deals that result from normal relations with Russia. The military/security oligarchs want the immense budgets and power that comes from positioning Russia as a dire threat. Even if Trump survives the CIA's challenge to his election, his cabinet appointees will have to survive confirmation fights and, if they do, ongoing challenges to their efforts to change policies from policies that favor oligarchs enriched by war to policies that favor oligarchs enriched by peace.

In other words, whatever the outcome tomorrow and January 20th, the fight is ongoing.

[Paul Rigby]

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Electoral College Vote. Towards a December 19 Surprise?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, December 18, 2016
Global Research 12 December 2016

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-foreign...se/5561928

UPDATE

December 18, 2016 (First published on December 12, 2016)

Obama's statement at his December 16 White House press conference together with CIA Director John O. Brennan's recent "revelations", constitute an "official" acknowledgment that Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation directly and deliberately interfered in the US presidential elections on behalf Donald Trump. These are serious and unsubstantiated accusations directed against Moscow as well as against the president elect.

What this suggests is that a "soft" Coup with the backing of US intelligence is underway to prevent Donald Trump from acceding to the White House.

The objective is clear: denigrate Trump in the eyes of public opinion, put pressure on the College Electors NOT TO VOTE FOR TRUMP on December 19 because he is "sleeping with the enemy", he is an agent of Moscow.

This strategy is confirmed by the outgoing Obama administration, with the backing of both the CIA and the FBI.

We are dealing with a coordinated endeavor sustained by persistent media propaganda, anti-Trump protests organized by the Hillary faction across the US, a campaign on social media coupled with a disruption campaign.

This initiative on behalf of the Hillary faction should be distinguished from the campaign against Trump emanating from the grassroots of American society.

What is required is a mass movement divorced from competing Trump-Clinton elite factions coupled with an effective counter-propaganda campaign across America which reveals the lies and fabrications of the corporate media.

What happens on December 19 is of crucial significance.

Whatever the outcome, the US is gearing towards a far-reaching constitutional crisis.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 18, 2016

In a previous article entitled Constitutional Crisis, Movement to Undermine President-elect Donald Trump's Accession to the White House? I focussed on the process of confrontation between the Trump and Clinton factions leading up to the Grand Electoral College Vote on December 19th.

While the Hillary Clinton faction supported by mainstream media propaganda is accusing Moscow of intervening in the US elections on behalf of Trump, they are also intent upon shifting the Electoral College vote in favour of Clinton with a view to blocking president-elect Trump's accession to the White House.

If this were to succeed, the U.S. would be precipitated into a deap-seated political crisis. It should be noted that this process is also coupled with extensive anti-Trump protests across America, organized by the Clinton faction.

What is a stake: "are fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate factions, each of which is intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency." (Ibid)

Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State

Since the publication of my earlier article, ExxonMobil Chief Rex Tillerson has been chosen by Trump to occupy the key position of US Secretary of State. This appointment potentially points to a major shift in US foreign policy (including an openly anti-China stance by Trump). It is also points to rising divisions within the US establishment. Tillerson not only has a good relationship with president Vladimir Putin, ExxonMobil also has sizeable business interests in the Russian Federation including drilling projects in the Arctic, Black Sea and Siberia in partnership with Russia's Rosneft. Needless to say these projects have been affected by Obama's economic sanctions regime directed against Russia.

In response to this controversial appointment, the Neocon faction linked both to the bi-partisan "War Party" has promised to block the confirmation of Tillerson's candidacy in the US Senate.

It should be noted that Wall Street is also divided. Financial institutions are engaged in an internal war. Donald Trump announced on December 12 his choice to head the White House National Economic Council (NEC): the appointee is Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer. The NEC director occupies a central advisory position regarding the formulation of government economic policy. Ironically, Cohn is a Democrat and Goldman Sachs is known to have supported the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Global Military Agenda

We are not dealing with "class conflict". What is at stake are rivalries, confrontations and deep divisions within the elite structures with regard to America's global military agenda.

While Hillary is the candidate of the US Military Industrial Complex, her hawkish foreign policy agenda does not directly serve the interests of a large segment of corporate America including a sizeable sector of the oil industry.

According to Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, "Interventionism is a business and it has a constituency and she is tapping into it,…. She [Clinton] is for the military industrial complex, and she is for the neoconservatives."

Clinton reaped generous donations through the Clinton Foundation, rewarded for the multibillion dollar contracts she approved in favour of the weapons industry while she was Secretary of State under Obama. These included a $29 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, for which she received a $10 million contribution deposited in the coffers of the Clinton Foundation:

"The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton's State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire"

…Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, That figure derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton's term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush's second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration.

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012. (See (Business Times investigation, May 26, 2005)

The stakes behind these multibillion dollar contracts for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, et al are exceedingly high. Hillary Clinton's military agenda constitutes a multibillion dollar bonanza for the weapons industry which could potentially lead to a Third World War. According to the New York Times, Clinton (if she were to be elected, depending on the outcome of the College Electoral Vote) would "redouble efforts to punish and isolate Moscow for war crimes in Syria's civil war and aggression toward Ukraine and other neighbors." (emphasis added)

"Business is Not Good Without War": Would a Trump Administration result in Heavy Losses for the Defense Contractors?

Early this week (December 12) the "Shares of Lockheed Martin fell as president-elect Donald Trump tweeted that making F-35 fighter planes is too costly and that he will cut "billions" in costs for military purchases." (CBC.ca, December 12, 2016)

In fact, "All defence stocks hurt by tweet":

"with Lockheed Martin Corp. shares falling by five per cent in morning trading, … Shares of other defence stocks, including General Dynamics, which is making military submarines, Northrop Grumman, which is making navigation systems … also moved downwards." (Ibid)

Needless to say, Rex Tillerson's candidacy is not favored by the weapons producers. According to the MSM, Trump could face a a "Capitol hill showdown" regarding Tillerson's candidacy. According to John McCain quoted by CNN, " Tillerson's cordial ties with Putin, whom the Arizona Senator considers a US enemy, are a red flag." (CNN, December 12, 2016).

The Electoral College Vote

On December 12, Ten Grand College electors of whom only one is a Republican released an "open letter" to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper requesting information about ongoing investigations on ties between Trump and "Russian government interference in the election." The letter (released on social media was written by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

The open letter "seeking the release of U.S. intelligence on possible foreign interference in the election" was also signed by the four Democratic presidential electors in New Hampshire.

Podesta describes the initiative as "bipartisan", intimating that Trump is "sleeping with enemy":

"Our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,… Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American." (quoted by Politico, December 12, 2016)

The fake Moscow interference in the US elections is being used as a propaganda ploy to shift the Electoral College vote in favour of Clinton on December 19th.

Sofar these efforts seem to have failed. But there is more than meets the eye.

A December 19 surprise should not be excluded.

Both factions representing powerful corporate interests are working behind the scenes. The public is not being informed.

The Clinton faction will do its utmost to reverse the vote of the Electoral College.

The (multibillion dollar) stakes are high…

The political implications are potentially devastating.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2016

[David Guyatt]

The best and most concise article I've read so far on the email hack affair. The US armaments industry and the military and intelligence community get to choose who is president to fit their agenda of what is good for them all to keep the bucks rolling in.

A Spy Coup in America?

By Robert Parry

December 18, 2016

Exclusive: As the Electoral College assembles, U.S. intelligence agencies are stepping up a campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump as a Russian stooge, raising concerns about a spy coup in America, reports Robert Parry.

As Official Washington's latest "group think" solidifies into certainty that Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump something entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S. intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president.

I was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior leaders of the Obama administration's intelligence agencies from the CIA to the FBI were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ascending to the presidency. And, it's true that intelligence officials often come to see themselves as the stewards of America's fundamental interests, sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public or from inept or corrupt political leaders.

It was, after all, a senior FBI official, Mark Felt, who as "Deep Throat" guided The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate investigation into the criminality of President Richard Nixon. And, I was told by former U.S. intelligence officers that they wanted to block President Jimmy Carter's reelection in 1980 because they viewed him as ineffectual and thus not protecting American global interests.

It's also true that intelligence community sources frequently plant stories in major mainstream publications that serve propaganda or political goals, including stories that can be misleading or entirely false.

What's Going On?

So, what to make of what we have seen over the past several months when there have been a series of leaks and investigations that have damaged both Clinton and Trump with some major disclosures coming, overtly and covertly, from the U.S. intelligence community led by CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey?

Some sources of damaging disclosures remain mysterious. Clinton's campaign was hobbled by leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee showing it undercutting Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders and from her campaign chairman John Podesta exposing the content of her speeches to Wall Street banks that she had tried to hide from the voters and revealing the Clinton Foundation's questionable contacts with foreign governments.

Clinton already burdened with a reputation for secrecy and dishonesty suffered from the drip, drip, drip of releases from WikiLeaks of the DNC and Podesta emails although it remains unclear who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Still, the combination of the two email batches added to public suspicions about Clinton and reminded people why they didn't trust her.

But the most crippling blow to Clinton came from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign when he reopened and then re-closed the investigation into whether she broke the law with her sloppy handling of classified material in her State Department emails funneled through a home server.

Following Comey's last-minute revival of the Clinton email controversy, her poll numbers fell far enough to enable Trump to grab three normally Democratic states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin enough to give him a victory in the Electoral College.

Taking Down Trump

However, over the past few weeks, the U.S. intelligence community, led by CIA Director Brennan and seconded by FBI Director Comey, has tried to delegitimize Trump by using leaks to the mainstream U.S. news media to pin the release of the DNC and Podesta emails on Russia and claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally trying to put Trump into the White House.

This remarkable series of assessments from the CIA now endorsed by the leadership of the FBI come on the eve of the Electoral College members assembling to cast their formal votes to determine who becomes the new U.S. president. Although the Electoral College process is usually simply a formality, the Russian-hacking claims made by the U.S. intelligence community have raised the possibility that enough electors might withhold their votes from Trump to deny him the presidency.

If on Monday enough Trump electors decide to cast their votes for someone else possibly another Republican the presidential selection could go to the House of Representatives where, conceivably, the Republican-controlled chamber could choose someone other than Trump.

In other words, there is an arguable scenario in which the U.S. intelligence community first undercut Clinton and, secondly, Trump, seeking however unlikely to get someone installed in the White House considered more suitable to the CIA's and the FBI's views of what's good for the country.

Who Did the Leaking?

At the center of this controversy is the question of who leaked or hacked the DNC and Podesta emails. The CIA has planted the story in The Washington Post, The New York Times and other mainstream outlets that it was Russia that hacked both the DNC and Podesta emails and slipped the material to WikiLeaks with the goal of assisting the Trump campaign. The suggestion is that Trump is Putin's "puppet," just as Hillary Clinton alleged during the third presidential debate.

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly denied that Russia was the source of the leaks and one of his associates, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a "disgruntled" Democrat upset with the DNC's sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community.

Although Assange recently has sought to muzzle Murray's public comments out of apparent concern for protecting the identity of sources Murray offered possibly his most expansive account of the sourcing during a podcast interview with Scott Horton on Dec. 13.

Murray, who became a whistleblower himself when he protested Britain's tolerance of human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, explained that he consults with Assange and cooperates with WikiLeaks "without being a formal member of the structure."

But he appears to have undertaken a mission for WikiLeaks to contact one of the sources (or a representative) during a Sept. 25 visit to Washington where he says he met with a person in a wooded area of American University. At the time, Murray was at American University participating in an awards ceremony for former CIA officer John Kiriakou who was being honored by a group of former Western intelligence officials, the Sam Adams Associates, named for the late Vietnam War-era CIA analyst and whistleblower Sam Adams.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, a founder of the Sam Adams group, told me that Murray was "m-c-ing" the event but then slipped away, skipping a reception that followed the award ceremony.

Reading Between LInes

Though Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some legal or physical danger.

Murray has disputed a report in London's Daily Mail that he was receiving a batch of the leaked Democratic emails. "The material, I think, was already safely with WikiLeaks before I got there in September," Murray said in the interview with Scott Horton. "I had a small role to play."

Murray also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

"The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn't conclude that they both have the same source," Murray said. "In both cases we're talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information."

Reading between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray's comments as suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have been monitoring John Podesta's emails because the Podesta Group, which he founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered "foreign agent" for Saudi Arabia.

"John Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government," Murray noted. "If the American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi government's paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services would not be doing their job. … His communications are going to be of interest to a great number of other security services as well."

Leak by Americans

Scott Horton then asked, "Is it fair to say that you're saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?"

"I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah," Murray responded. "In both cases they are leaks by Americans."

In reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that "Julian Assange took very close interest in the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic staff member" who had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10 near his Washington, D.C., home.

Murray continued, "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his killers. So, obviously there are suspicions there about what's happening and things are somewhat murky. I'm not saying don't get me wrong I'm not saying that he was the source of the [DNC] leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believes that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks … whether correctly or incorrectly."

Though acknowledging that such killings can become grist for conspiracy buffs, Murray added: "But people do die over this sort of stuff. There were billions of dollars literally billions of dollars behind Hillary Clinton's election campaign and those people have lost their money.

"You have also to remember that there's a big financial interest particularly in the armaments industry in a bad American relationship with Russia and the worse the relationship with Russia is the larger contracts the armaments industry can expect especially in the most high-tech high-profit side of fighter jets and missiles and that kind of thing.

"And Trump has actually already indicated he's looking to make savings on the defense budget particularly in things like fighter [jet] projects. So, there are people standing to lose billions of dollars and anybody who thinks in that situation bad things don't happen to people is very naïve."

An Intelligence Coup?

There's another possibility in play here: that the U.S. intelligence community is felling a number of birds with one stone. If indeed U.S. intelligence bigwigs deemed both Clinton and Trump unfit to serve as President albeit for different reasons they could have become involved in leaking at least the Podesta emails to weaken Clinton's campaign, setting the candidate up for the more severe blow from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign.

Then, by blaming the leaks on Russian President Putin, the U.S. intelligence leadership could set the stage for Trump's defeat in the Electoral College, opening the door to the elevation of a more traditional Republican. However, even if that unlikely event defeating Trump in the Electoral College proves impossible, Trump would at least be weakened as he enters the White House and thus might not be able to move very aggressively toward a détente with Russia.

Further, the Russia-bashing that is all the rage in the mainstream U.S. media will surely encourage the Congress to escalate the New Cold War, regardless of Trump's desires, and thus ensure plenty more money for both the intelligence agencies and the military contractors.

Official Washington's "group think" holding Russia responsible for the Clinton leaks does draw some logical support from the near certainty that Russian intelligence has sought to penetrate information sources around both Clinton and Trump. But the gap between the likely Russian hacking efforts and the question of who gave the email information to WikiLeaks is where mainstream assumptions may fall down.

As ex-Ambassador Murray has said, U.S. intelligence was almost surely keeping tabs on Podesta's communications because of his ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments. So, the U.S. intelligence community represents another suspect in the case of who leaked those emails to WikiLeaks. It would be a smart play, reminiscent of the convoluted spy tales of John LeCarré, if U.S. intelligence officials sought to cover their own tracks by shifting suspicions onto the Russians.

But just the suspicion of the CIA joining the FBI and possibly other U.S. intelligence agencies to intervene in the American people's choice of a president would cause President Harry Truman, who launched the CIA with prohibitions against it engaging in domestic activities, and Sen. Frank Church, who investigated the CIA's abuses, to spin in their graves.