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Dr. Spook and the Manchurian President?
Well, that’s a heck of a story to wake up to:
During a special briefing last Friday, leaders of the intelligence community gave President-elect Donald Trump a synopsis of unsubstantiated and salacious allegations that Russian operatives had obtained potentially compromising personal and financial information about the president-elect, a U.S. official confirmed Tuesday.
I gather that everyone who’s anyone in Washington has read the memo containing these allegations, but no one thought it was worth publishing (until now).
Some thoughts, in random order:
1. It looks as if the first publication to write about this was Mother Jones, on October 31. Here’s how they put it:
And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.
Let’s call the “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” Dr. Spook, for short. Was Dr. Spook shopping this to every publication in the US? Or just to Mother Jones? Maybe Mother Jones was the only publication willing to publish it? Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek also seems to have used the memos in his reporting. Did Dr. Spook fax his memos to every journalist in Washington?
2. The story as it’s now being presented is that this became newsworthy because Trump himself had been briefed about it. Who leaked the story that he’d been briefed about it, and why? Why now? Apparently, “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” told CNN about this. How many people would have direct knowledge of these briefings in the first place? Why didn’t any of these leaking briefers think to come forward with this before the election, given that everyone in Washington apparently knew about this?
3. As Lawfare blog puts it,
… it is significant that the document contains highly specific allegations, many of which are the kind of facts it should be possible to prove or disprove. This is a document about meetings that either took place or did not take place, stays in hotels that either happened or didn’t, travel that either happened or did not happen. It should be possible to know whether at least some of these allegations are true or false.
If Dr. Spook was passing these memos to every journalist and politician in Washington as early as October 31, at least a few of the key points should have been substantiated by now, wouldn’t you think?
4. John Schindler of 20Committee says that the “GOP was informed back in the spring that Trump was a 1-man FSB kompromat machine come to life. They did nothing. This is on them now.” Was this circulating as early as last spring, then? And no one has made any progress since then in substantiating or discrediting it?
5. Presumably everyone in Hillary’s camp also knew about it, too: It was an oppo research briefing, right? I wonder what kept her from bringing it up?
… the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting. The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House.
McCain is not thought to have made a judgment on the reliability of the documents but was sufficiently impressed by the source’s credentials to feel obliged to pass them to the FBI.
Who is this source? And who’s the Guardian’s source for this story, I wonder? The point of sending an emissary overseas to meet the source is to ensure that only he and the emissary knew of it. So I assume McCain authorized this leak. Why would McCain leak to the Guardian, though? Why not at least leak to a US publication?
7. The Guardian claims that as early as last summer, the FBI applied FISA warrant to monitor four members of the Trump team “suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials.” If so — what’s up with the FBI?
8. If Trump’s the victim of a disinformation campaign, who’s behind it? Is this the intel community’s response to Trump’s claim that they have “no clue?” Hillary’s revenge?
9. It doesn’t help when yet again, Trump replies using exactly the same language the Kremlin does:
10. I don’t understand how our Deep State works. Don’t we have spies of our own in Russia? Why do we need Dr. Spook to tell us this? Why is this only being reported now?
My verdict: I’ve got no idea what’s going on, but this seems fishy.
That said: That people will believe it is Trump’s fault. His behavior toward Putin has been so sycophantic and bizarre that even an extraordinarily weird story like this sounds plausible. If Obama’s refusal to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism” convinced a significant number of Americans that he was a Muslim, the same phenomenon will be at work here — even if these memos prove to be a complete fabrication and fantasy.
It’s entirely plausible to imagine that Trump enjoyed the company of ladies of poor repute when he was in Russia. No one can say, with a straight face, “That’s ridiculous. Donald Trump is an upright and responsible married man and a faithful husband. He would never consort with Slavic hookers.” Exactly no one would be surprised if he had, and exactly no one would be surprised that the Russians taped the encounter.
Trump’s eagerness to adopt the Kremlin’s line in matters of foreign policy and his general mien of moral incontinence will be enough to convince a significant number of Americans that all of these allegations are true.
It won’t be enough for Trump to Tweet indignantly and wait for the media to bore with the story. It won’t. We’ll hear of nothing but this for years to come, I reckon.
What do you make of it?
UPDATE: The Trump Dossier: Dynamite or Disinformation? makes the skeptical case better than I did, and concludes:
In the absence of any evidence, this will do nothing but widen the dangerous divide within American society.
And here’s the irony: that’s exactly what the Kremlin wants. Whether damning proof of complicity with an antagonistic foreign power, or a piece of raw anti-Trump disinformation, at present this cache of documents is probably more effective than any number of hours of programming by Russia’s RT television station – which emerged as the star of the recent and deeply flawed open source on the hacking case – in turning America against itself.
Published in General
This doesn’t even rise to the level of “fake but accurate.” Even the Democrat-Media Complex doesn’t want to touch this one.
They were talking about making something up and the user who supposedly made something up says now this is that something. (I love rumors like this, they give me all the coherence of a street corner doomsday preacher wearing a sandwich board reading “The End is Nigh!”)
Is there any actual evidence they made this up in October?
Wonder why Trump has any doubts about he intelligence agencies, him being a Russian operative and all.
Much is made on, say, NPR that RT is “heavily funded by the Russian government.
Says Wikipedia:
Little is made of NPR/PBS acting as an echo chamber for RT’s anti-fracking propaganda.
Wikipedia says nothing about PBS’ funding. According to CPB, it received nearly $450 million in FY 2015 from the feds and spends most of that on PBS and NPR. These are sterling examples of independent journalism which carried no more water for the Obama White House than ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the NY Times and Washington Post did.
BTW, Dan “Fake but Accurate” Rather has a new gig online teaching “Finding the Truth in News”.
4chan is what you would get if you inverted the Ricochet Code of Conduct.
That’s actually kind of ironic.
Yeah. Remember the investigation into Bush 1 and the SR 71 to Iran? His mistress? Remember the Cocaine stories about Bush 2? Rubio and the gay suds parties? Walker and the Koch brothers etc etc etc.
There is the november post which was a “I can’t believe he is eating it” type prankster gloating.
Its always possible that there is a another complete set of gullible and hysterical cranks that would believe literally anything out there. But come on.
So far, the only thing like evidence I’ve observed is that 4chan didn’t make this up, but is willing to repurpose Wilson’s old tweets to try to make it seem as if 4chan can take credit for having trolled Wilson back in October – like how “Spirit Cooking” got turned from lame performance art into secret Satanic ritual and chitchat about pizza got turned into child prostitution. None of that lends credence to anything in this so-called “report”. It’s just that there’s no reason to believe 4chan’s troll is what it says it is, either, rather than 4chan’s troll being 4chan taking credit for a troll someone else started.
“Why would McCain leak to the Guardian, though.”
Because John McCain always works with liberal media outlets to damage the GOP, unless he is up for reelection.
No way 4chan wrote this. I’ve seen 4chan write stuff. 35 pages in prose that could pass as a credible intelligence report is not something that 4chan members could pull off.
4chan’s taking credit for something they didn’t do. Shocker.
It could be real, it could be that some British intelligence source caught an early case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Either way, it ain’t 4chan- they’re just cheering and taking credit, as always.
I think it’s incredibly important to distinguish between CNN’s reporting and Buzzfeed’s here.
It’s becoming quite clear that Buzzfeed should never have published those memos. Per Jim Geraghty in the Morning Jolt, it looks like one key verifiable detail has been verified false, as there seems to be evidence that Michael Cohen was in the U.S. when the memos allege he was in Prague meeting Russians. At that point, unless some further evidence should emerge, we’re entitled to treat the entire memos as “fake news.”
But that does not mean the CNN story is fake news, because its report doesn’t depend on the reliability of those memos. Jake Tapper doesn’t have the reputation of a cheap MSM hit reporter, and this piece is clearly written at a higher journalistic standard than Buzzfeed used.
It’s important to note that Tapper et al make no actual allegations against Trump. They report that he’s being briefed that the Russians believe they can undermine him. It’s also important to note that the memos Buzzfeed published are only part of the information: Trump, Obama, and congressional leaders have seen things we have not seen. It seems manifestly obvious that the Russians would have whatever information they could get on Trump (and plenty of other people too). Some of their “kompromat” file could be completely made up.
It also strikes me as entirely plausible that the Russians have Trump’s tax return.
The “World Cup soccer tournament” blunder and the whole Russia hotel escapades I can believe as 4chan’s work.
One of the things I wonder about is how many sources this collection of memos came from.
If this story about Russian hookers came out about Cruz or Walker or Pataki, nobody would even take the time to comment on it. It would be in the same league as Pizzagate.
The “They would do this to any Republican” thing doesn’t fly. Donald Trump is something very different.
Obama and the EPA, NPR/PBS and RT all hate fracking, too. Of course, that’s in Russia’s economic interest and against the USA’s, which proves how independent NPR and PBS are. Or something.
Turtles all the way down, man.
Excellent point. If the “35 pages” is assembled from many different sources, I can see a 4chan troll being the source for the Russian hotel escapades. I can’t see a 4chan troll being the source for the dates & times of Trump campaign officials contacting Russian agents, or 4chan trolls wrapping it all together in prose that makes it seem legit.
Actually 4chan is claiming credit for the golden shower scene. They said that it is been incorporated into the larger document and given a spy angle.
Well the Left side of my Facebook feed has lit up with this and they are taking it deadly serious. Impeachment talk, etc. This is real to them and I doubt they will be convinced otherwise.
Or, someone else pretending to be English. Or an Englishman making stuff up who knows Americans are stupid about football and call it soccer while they call their weird rugby “football” ;-P
The TANG memos are still real to them.
Oh well, more grist for the mill.
The second troll on the grassy knoll…
he he he he I rhymed.
Of course this story is being pushed hard by Jon Gabriel’s Twitter bro, Rick Wilson.
That borders on “blame the victim.” It sounds like you’re making the argument: Trump is a sleazeball, you elected him, therefore you (and he) are going to have to live with sleazy accusations whether they’re true or not.
That’s rationalization, not good judgment.
You can’t let your personal distaste of Trump get ahead of the facts, otherwise you’re just as bad as BuzzFeed.
Personal distaste in my mind of the Clintons has lead me to accept, at first some things I no longer think are true. When my emotions are high against someone, I try hard to not look to get my biases confirmed. I often fail, alas.
They accused Bush 1 of having a mistress. and it was taken seriously. Nice try.
Of course the fact that a recent US president was mentored for years by an active member of the CPUSA (which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Soviet intelligence,) used an unrepentant domestic terrorist as his
ghostwriterwriting coach and attended a racist and racialist church for many years doesn’t sound Manchurian Candidatish to any thinking person.Still, I wonder what Obama’s KGB/GRU file looked like a decade before the Soviet Union fell. Unless Frank Marshall Davis never reported on his protegé with the prosperous radical grandparents who sent him to the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii.
Or his grandparents’ FBI file, destroyed in 1997, the year Obama entered the Illinois State Senate.
Yeah. they are easily excited. How many “Impeach Bush” moments did we go through.
Don’t forget his college prof, an avowed Communist who talked about how Obama self identified as a Marxist in college, and who advised him he could do far more by working within the system.
People, please! Christmas is over so fruitcake season has passed. Let us speak rationally about the matter at hand or not at all.