Another article in which I hear over and over the echo of Q.
‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ on Obama’s Bad Cops and Spies
COMMENTARY
By Charles Lipson
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These defenders of the old guard are sliming Attorney General Bill Barr, who heads the investigation into their actions. They have good reasons, if not clean hands, for their attack. First, they want to keep as much secret as they can. Exposure can only harm them. Their main argument is that any disclosures will damage U.S. national security. Second, they want to paint the disclosures and forthcoming indictments as President Trump’s revenge, the illegitimate use of powerful agencies that should be nonpartisan. That, of course, is precisely what they are accused of doing.
Barr won’t be deterred. He did not return for a second stint as AG to pad his résumé or protect Donald Trump. He returned to clean out the Augean Stables. He needs to muck out the mess left by his predecessors and find the horses that left it.
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None dare call it spying. At least no Democrats or Obama officials will. But that’s exactly what it was. As that master of the English language, Winston Churchill, put it, “Short words are best and old words when short are best of all.” That’s far too clear for bureaucratic obfuscators, presidential contenders, and their media allies. They prefer long, Latinate terms like “surveillance” and “surreptitious investigation.” Barr is effectively telling them to “pound sand.”
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These are very serious charges, and, if proven, serious crimes. What makes them worse — far worse — is that they may well be connected to each other. If they are, they would represent a high-level conspiracy by government officials, appointed by one party and directed at political opponents during and after an election.
This assault on democracy has not been proven, but the evidence emerging in dribs and drabs strongly suggests the possibility. If it is proven, and if the Obama White House was directly involved, as some FBI texts plainly say, the scandal would be one of the biggest in American history.
How big? Big enough that major news organizations, which always favor transparency (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”), are now deeply troubled by the release of any secret documents. They know the stakes are too high and transparency too dangerous for their side, politically.
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As the evidence comes out, a hard rain’s gonna fall. The damage will be compounded by partisan divisions, corroding trust in our basic institutions, and an impending election. For democracy’s sake, let’s hope the bitter winds are not a Cat-5 storm.
The plot against Trump had deep roots dating back to Michael Flynn’s career
by Michael Ledeen
FTA:
It may well be that ill-willed FBI and CIA agents working against Trump evolved from a much narrower scheme that targeted Michael Flynn long before Donald Trump brought Flynn on to his team, first as a campaign adviser, and then as head of the national security council.
Life does not run in a straight line, and top officials in the intelligence community long had it in for Flynn, ever since he changed the way we did intelligence against al Qaeda in Iraq, and then against the Taliban and Iranian-supported terrorists in Afghanistan. The changes put both intelligence-gathering and anti-terrorist operations primarily under battlefield control, significantly diminishing the power of Washington-based intel officers. These high-ranking officials remained hostile thereafter, as Flynn moved to the headquarters of national intelligence, and then to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
He was essentially fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who told him he should retire. This came on the heels of Flynn’s sworn congressional testimony criticizing the Obama administration’s failed Afghanistan policy. This showed, once again, that Flynn understood how badly we were doing, and would not collude with the intelligence community. Indeed, he intended to carry out an audit of covert funding since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (none has been done in all those years).