May/June/July Russia thread

[zn]

‘This is off the map’: Former intelligence officials say the reported Kushner-Russia plan is unlike anything they’ve ever seen

Natasha Bertrand

http://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-backchannel-plan-russia-flynn-2017-5

Former intelligence officials described Jared Kushner’s reported attempt to set up a backchannel line of communication with Russia last December that would bypass the US’ national security and intelligence apparatus as “off the map,” “explosive,” and “extremely dangerous.”

Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said during a press conference on Saturday that, if Kushner did try to set up such a back channel, “I would not be concerned about it.”

“We have back-channel communications with a number of countries,” McMaster said. “So, generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a discreet manner.”

Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who ran counterintelligence operations and spent more than 20 years at the bureau, agreed that it is not unusual for low-level staffers to work between governments and bypass bureaucracy to exchange views and build consensus in advance of higher-level negotiations.

But what Kushner appears to have done is “substantially different, in two ways,” he said.

“First, he is not seeking a back-channel for a low-level staff exchange,” Olson said. “He wants high-level direct-contact communication. This is extremely dangerous because it results in verbal (and therefore undocumented and unwitnessed) agreements, which are binding on governments. Free governments do not work this way. They can’t. If they do, they are no longer free.”

He continued:

“Second, he asked to use a foreign government’s communication facilities. This is way beyond a private server. This is doing US government diplomatic business over a foreign government’s communication system. It’s not an off-the-record conversation. It’s a conversation recorded by the opposing party. This shows a staggering lack of understanding of the US and its place in the world. Actually, it shows a staggering lack of common sense. When he negotiates a business deal does he use the other guy’s notes?”

Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, was willing to go extraordinary lengths to establish a secret line of communication between the Trump administration and Russian government officials, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Kushner met with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December at Trump Tower, where he floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia — and having those talks take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the US. That would essentially conceal their interactions from US government scrutiny, The Post wrote, citing US intelligence officials briefed on the matter.

Jared Kushner
White House Senior Advisor and son-in-law to the president Jared Kushner (L) joins other cabinet members and senior members of the Trump administration during a news conference. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The New York Times confirmed the Post’s story late Friday night, adding that the planned purpose for the secure channel was to discuss military strategies in Syria.

If true, “this actually is even more disturbing,” said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency. “Why in God’s name would they want to conceal plans on Syria strategy from the US military?”

“Even accepting their Syria spin, what Kushner tried to do was blind the US government on incredibly important national security matters,” Hennessey added. “That’s not how it works. That’s not the behavior of someone who recognizes America is still, at its core, a common endeavor.”

Kislyak reportedly passed along Kushner’s request to Moscow. The Post’s Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous, and Greg Miller reported that the Russian ambassador was “taken aback” by Kushner’s request, because it posed significant risks for both the Trump team and the Kremlin.

“This was probably as off-putting to Kislyak as it is for you and me,” Michael Hayden, who served as the director of the NSA and the CIA, told CNN on Saturday. “This is off the map. I know of no other experience like this in our history, and certainly not within my life experience.”

“What manner of ignorance, hubris, suspicion, and contempt [for the previous administration] would you have to have to think doing this with the Russian ambassador would be a good or appropriate idea?” Hayden added.

Kushner, who did not disclose the meeting on his security clearance form, is now under scrutiny in the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s election interference, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials to undermine Hillary Clinton.

“GOOD GRIEF. This is serious,” Robert Deitz, a veteran of the NSA and the CIA who worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations, said in an email of the latest developments.

“This raises a bunch of problematic issues. First, of course, is the Logan Act, which prohibits private individuals conducting negotiations on behalf of the US government with foreign governments. Second, it tends to reinforce the notion that Trump’s various actions about Comey do constitute obstruction.”

“In other words, there is now motive added to conduct,” Deitz said. “This is a big problem for the President.”

‘You are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor’
Trump fired FBI Director James Comey earlier this month as Comey was overseeing the FBI’s investigation. Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt shortly thereafter that “the Russia thing” was on his mind when he fired Comey, leading lawmakers and legal experts to question whether Trump obstructed justice — a criminal and impeachable offense.

Kushner was among those who pressured Trump to fire Comey, according to The New York Times.

“If you are in a position of public trust, and you talk to, meet, or collude with a foreign power” while trying to subvert normal state channels, “you are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor,” said Glenn Carle, a former top counterterrorism official at the CIA for more than two decades. “That is what I spent my life getting foreigners to do with me, for the US government.”

James Comey
James Comey. Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Carle said that if the Kushner-Kislyak meeting and reported discussion were an isolated incident, it could be spun as “normal back-channel communication arrangements among states.”

But Kislyak and the Trump campaign interacted extensively, and Trump associates either kept those interactions secret from US officials or misrepresented them. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign on February 13 amid questions about his communication with Kislyak, also spoke with the Russian ambassador about setting up a secret backchannel during the transition, according to Reuters.

Trump reportedly pressured Comey, in a meeting one day after Flynn resigned, to drop the bureau’s investigation into his foreign contacts and payments.

“We know about the multiple meetings of Trump entourage members with Russian intel-related individuals,” Carle said. “There will be many others that we do not know about.”

‘A huge red flag’
Mark Kramer, the program director of the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said Saturday that Kushner’s reported backchannel plan is “a huge red flag.”

“If the report accurately recounts what Kislyak transmitted, and if Kislyak’s transmission accurately reflects what Kushner was seeking, then it’s a very damaging piece of evidence,” Kramer said.

He added: “A back channel in itself would not be suspicious, but a back channel relying solely on Russia’s facilities would be egregiously unwise and dangerous. It’s a huge red flag, and it’s not surprising that the FBI investigators would have been taken aback by it.”

Carle said that while this reported back channel is “explosive,” it is worth questioning who tipped off The Post to the story. The Post said it received an anonymous letter in December tipping it off to the Kushner-Kislyak meeting.

Donald Trump Sergey Lavrov Sergey Kislyak
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, next to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP

Additionally, as a longtime diplomat, Kislyak would have known that his communications were being monitored. So the possibility remains, Carle said, that the Russians used the meeting with Kushner to distract the intelligence community and the public from potentially more incriminating relationships between the campaign and Moscow.

Kushner also met with the CEO of Russia’s state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergey Gorkov, in December 2016, The New York Times reported in late March. The meeting — which had not previously been disclosed and came on the heels of Kushner’s meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower — caught the eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation Russia’s election interference.

Kislyak reportedly orchestrated the meeting between Kushner and Gorkov, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank’s management team, Bloomberg reported last year.

The Kremlin and the White House have provided conflicting explanations for why Kushner met with Gorkov.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, in testimony last week before the House Intelligence Committee, said that “the information and intelligence” he saw before leaving office in January “revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals.”

“It raised questions in my mind about whether the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of such individuals,” he said.

[zn]

[wv]

The latest Harper’s has an article on the rift in the deep-state between Trump and the cold-warriors in the CIA. Not a good article in general, but i did find schumer’s statement, appal.ingly insightful.

link:https://harpers.org/archive/2017/06/security-breach/2/

Security Breach
Trump’s tussle with the bureaucratic state

By Michael J. Glennon

Over the course of President Trump’s short tenure, an unprecedented, seismic split between the Oval Office and the security directorate has taken place….

….
….

(page 3 of 3 )

…Many never-Trumpers in both parties now regard the security bureaucracy as their last, best hope. Following the Washington Post’s disclosure on December 9 that the CIA believed Russia had intervened in the election to help Trump, the agency overnight became the great darling of many Trump critics. They urged it to share its secrets with the Electoral College with the goal of preventing the president-elect from taking office. Trump was “being really dumb” by feuding with the CIA, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Francis Fukuyama hoped that “America’s enormous bureaucracy” would restrain Trump. Bill Kristol proclaimed he would “prefer the deep state to the Trump state.” And The New Yorker assured readers that the intelligence community’s managers were likely to challenge Trump before Congress, which was as it should be: “This is just the sort of thing we want to see happening” as part of “the fabled ‘checks and balances’ in the U.S. system.”

Clearly the public has a right to know whether a president is telling the truth if he claims that his predecessor ordered that he be illegally wiretapped. The public also has a right to know whether the president’s staff illegally coordinated with a foreign government during the election campaign or lied to the FBI about foreign contacts. But consider the price of victory if the security directorate were somehow to establish itself as a check on those presidential policies — or officials — that it happened to dislike. To formally charge the bureaucracy with providing a check on the president, Congress, or the courts would represent an entirely new form of government, a system in which institutionalized bureaucratic autocracy displaces democratic accountability. What standing would Trump’s critics have to object to bureaucratic supremacy should an enlightened president come along, in some brighter time, and seek to free them from the “polar night of icy darkness” that Max Weber warned is bureaucracy’s inevitable end point? Where then would they turn, having consecrated the security directorate as their final guardian?

As a creature of the people’s elected institutions, the bureaucracy was never intended to be a coequal of Congress, the courts, and the president. Bureaucracy doesn’t even appear in the constitutional design that emerged from Philadelphia in 1787. Under the Constitution, power is delegated to the intelligence bureaucracy, not by it. Like other departments and agencies, an intelligence organization can exercise only those powers given to it by its constitutionally established creators. Those who would counter the illiberalism of Trump with the illiberalism of unfettered bureaucrats would do well to contemplate the precedent their victory would set.

This perilous precedent would be the least of it, however, should the bureaucracy emerge triumphant. American history is not silent about the proclivities of unchecked security forces, a short list of which includes the Palmer Raids, the FBI’s blackmailing of civil rights leaders, Army surveillance of the antiwar movement, the NSA’s watch lists, and the CIA’s waterboarding. No one passingly familiar with this record of abuse and misconduct could seriously contemplate entrusting these agencies with responsibility for preserving the nation’s civil and political liberty. Without constitutional accountability, what reason is there to believe that they would not quickly revert to their old ways, particularly should a national emergency provide plausible justification? Who would trust the authors of past episodes of repression as a reliable safeguard against future repression?….see link

[Zooey]

Okay, so we have what appears to me to be clear Obstruction of Justice. Twice. By Trump’s own admission. That’s the legal fishhook that led to articles on Nixon and on Clinton.

And we have Flynn and Kushner, at least, who omitted information on a federal form, a felony.

So…what are we waiting for?

My guess is that they aren’t finishing investigating. I mean…impeachment of Trump isn’t the goal of the investigation. The goal of the investigation is to find out what the hell has been going on. All the way.

Seems to me that we ought to have an Independent Investigation to also report on how to protect ourselves from cyber activity in the future.

And how does Pence fit? I have seen suggestions that he is involved in the Russia stuff, but I have never seen anything to support that. AFAIK, he is just the VP who got tacked on because there had to be a VP. I have seen nothing that connects him in the Russia web. You know…apart from his telling the media things that are untrue about it. But there is no evidence yet that he knew it was a lie when he said it.

[zn]

wv wrote:

on the rift in the deep-state

To be provocative, and for the sheer fun of it, I just want to say…I don’t buy the concept of the “deep state.” I think it’s no accident that it was immediately appropriated by the right. I see it as conspiracy thinking without analysis, and based on very fuzzy assumptions.

Don’t get me wrong, there IS something there TO analyze, but I don’t think that whatever it is, it has much value in explaining things.

We want a world where various federal agencies do not buy into Trump’s agenda. Why? Because Trump’s agenda is far, far worse than THEIR agendas (and it’s not just one thing and not just one agenda).

The courts stand up to Trump. Different cities and states stand up to Trump. Various agency professionals (quite rightly) stand up to Trump.

So I don’t see a “deep state” (which is a journalistic concept without much actual real explanatory value). I see a “wide division.” Different thing.

[zn]

Mike Pence Is Toast: Anonymous Letter To WaPo Shows The Role Of Eric Prince In Trump-Russia

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/26/1666425/-Mike-Pence-Is-Toast-Anonymous-Letter-To-WaPo-Shows-The-Role-Of-Eric-Prince-In-Trump-Russia

Mike Pence lost all plausible deniability about his alleged ignorance of all things Russian today, if the Washington Post is correct that Pence benefactor and mentor Erik Prince is the “representative of Trump” named in an anonymous letter received by the Post in December; and moreover that Prince was a member of the Trump transition team all along.

The letter said among other things that Jared Kushner had talked to Sergei Kislyak about setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The letter also made reference to a “Trump representative” meeting with a Russian contact to set up the communications channel and the Trump representative is Erik Prince. If The Washington Post is correct, and it certainly appears that way, there is absolutely no way that Pence can maintain he didn’t know everything about Flynn and Trump-Russia, and that he learned it first hand from Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Erik Prince. This could be more than a leak, this could be a deluge, where Mike Pence and his credibility are concerned. The Washington Post said this:

In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.

The Post reported in April that Erik Prince, the former founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Could Erik Prince be the representative of Trump that is referred to? It certainly seems that way. And take a look at what else the Post reported on April 3:

The Post reports that the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and an un-named Russian close to Vladimir Putin, with the alleged goal of establishing a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and and the Trump transition team, headed by Mike Pence, according to U.S, European and Arab officials.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.

Prince and his family were major GOP donors in 2016. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that the family gave more than $10 million to GOP candidates and super PACs, including about $2.7 million from his sister, DeVos, and her husband.

Erik Prince has had lucrative contracts with the UAE government, which at one point paid his firm a reported $529 million to help bring in foreign fighters to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations from terrorist attacks.

The Washington Post goes on to point out that Erik Prince would have been perceived as way too controversial to serve in an official capacity on the transition team. But unquestionably Prince was a terrific go between because of his experience as an ex CIA agent and former Navy Seal, experience which arguably qualifies him for yet more clandestine endeavors, coupled with his relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates, where he moved to in 2010 amid mounting legal problems with his American business.

Before the Seychelles meeting and for weeks afterward, the UAE believed that Prince had the blessing of the new administration to act as its unofficial representative. The “Russian participant” was a person whom the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Zayed knew was close to Putin from his interactions with both men, officials said. And less than a week before the Seychelles meeting, U.S. intelligence agencies released a report accusing Russia of intervening clandestinely during the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House.

Erik Prince is an interesting character. Erik Prince portrays himself as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and Pope Benedict, according to The Intercept article, “Mike Pence Will Be The Most Powerful Christian Supremacist In U.S. History.” Mike Pence and Erik Prince go back a long ways. Erik Prince is Mike Pence’s benefactor. Mike Pence is Neo to Erik Prince’s Morpheus. Bankrolling Mike Pence so that he can become POTUS and implement dominionist rule in Washington is Erik Prince and Mike Pence’s dream. The Intercept said this:

…his close relationship to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater. In December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square; Pence and his Republican Study Committee, which served “the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives,” organized a gathering to welcome Prince to Washington. But their relationship is not just forged in wars. Prince and his mother, Elsa, have been among the top funders of scores of anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives across the country and have played a key role in financing efforts to criminalize abortion.

Prince has long given money to Pence’s political campaigns, and toward the end of the presidential election, he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump/Pence Super PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother kicked in another $50,000. […] Erik Prince…portrays himself as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and Pope Benedict…

Bear in mind that the $150,000 from mother and son to Mike Pence was a routine gesture; not a one-time contribution. Also bear in mind the number of anti-gay bills and anti-gay legislators and do the arithmetic on what kind of money it takes to be “among the top funders for scores” of those fund raising drives and campaigns across the country. A bit more background on Prince and his family, also from The Intercept article:

The Prince family’s support for Pence, and the Christian supremacist movement he represents, has deep roots. Erik Prince’s father, Edgar, built up a very successful manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, and became one of the premier bankrollers of what came to be known as the radical religious right. They gave Gary Bauer the seed money to start the Family Research Council and poured money into James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. “Ed Prince was not an empire builder. He was a Kingdom builder,” Bauer recalled soon after the elder Prince’s death. “For him, personal success took a back seat to spreading the Gospel and fighting for the moral restoration of our society.” Erik Prince’s sister Betsy married Dick DeVos, whose father, Richard, founded the multilevel marketing firm Amway and went on to own the Orlando Magic basketball team. The two families merged together like the monarchies of old Europe and swiftly emerged as platinum-level contributors to far-right Christian causes and political figures.

The Prince and DeVos families gave the seed money for what came to be known as the Republican Revolution when Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1994 on a far-right platform known as the Contract with America. The Prince and DeVos clans also invested heavily in a scheme developed by Dobson to engage in back-door lobbying activities by forming “prayer warrior” networks of people who would call politicians to advocate for Dobson’s religious and political agenda. The Princes consistently poured money into criminalizing abortion, privatizing education, blocking gay rights, and other right-wing causes centered around their interpretation of Christianity.

So much for Mike Pence and Erik Prince’s history together. To get current with the present day, the FBI was already investigating communications between Flynn and Kislyak, and the Post wrote about that on January 12th. The Seychelles meeting took place on or about January 12th as well. Then came the firing of Flynn ostensibly for misleading Mike Pence. Less than one week later, per the Post, U.S. Intelligence agencies accused Russia of intervening clandestinely in the 2016 election in order to help Trump get elected.

The Post makes it clear that although Erik Prince may not have had any official title or played any direct role on the Trump transition team his name “surfaced so frequently in internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser whose opinions were valued on a range of issues.” Additionally, the Post reports, and isn’t this interesting, “He appears to have particularly close ties to Steve Bannon, appearing multiple times on the Breitbart satellite radio program and website that Bannon ran before joining the Trump campaign.”

So here we have all the ducks in a row, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, Erik Prince, and Steve Bannon. Erik Prince lives in a world where a jeep arrives on a tarmac, shadowy figures pile out and go up the ramp of a private jet, and the jet disappears into the setting sun. Erik Prince is clandestine personified. So naturally Erik Prince denied everything about the Seychelle’s meeting or about his role as an unofficial but nonetheless very real member of the transition team, right alongside Mike Pence.

“We are not aware of any meetings, and Erik Prince had no role in the transition,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.

A Prince spokesman said in a statement: “Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”

Mike Pence has been playing games pretending that he is a Washington outsider, which defies the imagination let alone common sense. He has lost all plausible deniability after today. It will be interesting to see him squirm out of this one. Pence and Prince were side by side on the transition team and the Washington Post has it down in black and white and considerable detail. After today’s bombshell about Jared Kushner requesting a communications back channel a lot more dots are getting connected in the Trump Russia investigation. Yeah, Mike, as the Hoosier good ole boys say, “Last time there was a leak like this, Noah done got hisself a boat.”

[Zooey]

zn wrote:

Mike Pence Is Toast: Anonymous Letter To WaPo Shows The Role Of Eric Prince In Trump-Russia

There are a lot of names in that article I would like to see completely ruined politically.

[wv]

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

on the rift in the deep-state

To be provocative, and for the sheer fun of it, I just want to say…I don’t buy the concept of the “deep state.” I think it’s no accident that it was immediately appropriated by the right. I see it as conspiracy thinking without analysis, and based on very fuzzy assumptions.

Don’t get me wrong, there IS something there TO analyze, but I don’t think that whatever it is, it has much value in explaining things.

We want a world where various federal agencies do not buy into Trump’s agenda. Why? Because Trump’s agenda is far, far worse than THEIR agendas (and it’s not just one thing and not just one agenda).

The courts stand up to Trump. Different cities and states stand up to Trump. Various agency professionals (quite rightly) stand up to Trump.

So I don’t see a “deep state” (which is a journalistic concept without much actual real explanatory value). I see a “wide division.” Different thing.

================

Deep State is used in different ways by different people. “I” use it as a synonym for Corporotacracy or system.. I use the three terms interchangeably and i purposely keep away from trying to define both concepts in a rigid way.

Essentially i mean the cluster of power held by the corporations and oligarchs who are connected in often unknown ways.

I think deep-state, corporotacracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, system are all talking about the same thing, and i think they are flawed but useful words. To me they are words that lead to important questions, important research, important critical-thinking. I dont think the words are ever going to be totally clear. I dont think there has ever been anything like the deep-state before in human history.

w
v

[zn]

But I don’t think those things ARE synonymous. It’s not like it’s The Empire in Star Wars. I see a complicated tangle of things. Always remember I am personally going to approach stuff like this as an historian, and historians see contradictory movements and patches of differences, not simple blocs of power.

[Zooey]

zn wrote:

But I don’t think those things ARE synonymous. It’s not like it’s The Empire in Star Wars. I see a complicated tangle of things. Always remember I am personally going to approach stuff like this as an historian, and historians see contradictory movements and patches of differences, not simple blocs of power.

Power structures replicate themselves at the top. There is a certain Type of personality and character that will prosper in any given hierarchy. I mean, let’s face it. None of us would even get hired by one of those branches of the government. We wouldn’t get through the screening. There are certain beliefs and attitudes that are prerequisites.

Sure, there are variations, and individuals morph in some ways, and so on, but I think I’m closer to WV on this, at least the way I’m reading it.

[wv]

zn wrote:

But I don’t think those things ARE synonymous. It’s not like it’s The Empire in Star Wars. I see a complicated tangle of things. Always remember I am personally going to approach stuff like this as an historian, and historians see contradictory movements and patches of differences, not simple blocs of power.

=====================
I know you approach it differently than me. I never try to persuade you or anyone else to approach it like me.

And, yes, to me they are synonymous — and the words (to me) do not mean its NOT a ‘complicated tangle of things” — of course its a complicated tangle of things. But its still a related ‘cluster-of-things’. It definitely involves contradictory currents, patches of differences, unknowns, conspiracies, non-conspiracies, and a gazillion other fluid currents — but to me, there’s a dark blurry shape to it. Something is ‘there’. I think history and critical research show that. I think your approach tends to hide the dark-blurry-elephant in the room.

w
v

[zn]

wv wrote:

I think your approach tends to hide the dark-blurry-elephant in the room.

w
v

I just resist Slogans.

To me, Slogans are the drugs of the enemy.

Which of course is a slogan but what the heck.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by zn.

[zn]

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

But I don’t think those things ARE synonymous. It’s not like it’s The Empire in Star Wars. I see a complicated tangle of things. Always remember I am personally going to approach stuff like this as an historian, and historians see contradictory movements and patches of differences, not simple blocs of power.

Power structures replicate themselves at the top. There is a certain Type of personality and character that will prosper in any given hierarchy. I mean, let’s face it. None of us would even get hired by one of those branches of the government. We wouldn’t get through the screening. There are certain beliefs and attitudes that are prerequisites.

Sure, there are variations, and individuals morph in some ways, and so on, but I think I’m closer to WV on this, at least the way I’m reading it.

But it’s not a hierarchy. If it WERE a hierarchy this would be feudalism. It doesn’t work that way…it works in ways different from that.

And it’s not just individual variations.

Broad brushes can only paint broad strokes.

For example, when we looked into the intel on the run-up to the Iraq War, there were whole domains of the state dept/intel world that were actively resisting the Bush narrative. They circulated things. It was not hard to find.

If it weren’t for that, there would have been a TON we did not know. Their resistance to the POTUS narrative was crucial to our knowledge.

And not all the people attracted to state service are even remotely into the kinds of things we attribute to them. Often they take pride in just simply advancing the causes of reason, knowledge, and info. Many of them are in a better position to undestand and see through the effects of Citizens UNited than even we are. The thing is much more divided than the Cartoon Evil representation would have us think.

Besides. Remember, Stalinists are the ones who like to label the “impure” and then in the end eliminate them. THEY thought in terms of broad stroke messages. I just will never do that. Slogans aren’t worth the price you pay for them.

[wv]

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I think your approach tends to hide the dark-blurry-elephant in the room.

w
v

I just resist Slogans.

To me, Slogans are the drugs of the enemy.

Which of course is a slogan but what the heck.

=============

To me they have nothing to do with ‘slogans’. I see all political words as less than precise. Is the term ‘alt-right’ a ‘slogan’ ? Was Ike’s term “military industrial complex” a ‘slogan’ ?

Describing or labeling ‘clusters of power’ is always difficult. Especially difficult now because so much is hidden from us by secret agencies like the CIA, NSA, etc.

w
v

[wv]

zn wrote:

The thing is much more divided than the Cartoon Evil representation would have us think.

============

Well, you’ve posted with zooey and me for over a decade. Do you really think we would be satisfied with an ‘evil cartoon’ representation of reality?

You know we wouldnt.

And nothing you wrote about the run up to the Iraq war, clashes with the concept of ‘corporotacracy’ or ‘deep state’ or ‘system’ or ‘military industrial complex’.

w
v

[Zooey]

There are lots of hierarchies outside of feudalistic societies. I don’t even understand that statement. Of course the CIA and NSA and FBI are hierarchical.

And I think we can acknowledge that they aren’t all of the same mindset. Not every American is a Trump supporter. Not every American thinks capitalism is God’s own economic system. Not every American thinks that our government’s foreign policy is mostly benevolent. But there are cultures within these agencies that value service to the capitalist, imperialistic nature of our society. People within are largely supportive of these general values, and like General Butler, are prepared to serve those interests in violation of human rights.

[zn]

Zooey wrote:

There are lots of hierarchies outside of feudalistic societies. I don’t even understand that statement. Of course the CIA and NSA and FBI are hierarchical.

I don’t know how you’re using that word in a way that makes sense. It is true that all organizations are, well, organized…but that fact in itself means nothing. All the organizations we like are organized too. So the fact that an organization is organized tells me nothing about the political situation or what to expect in terms of the policies of those who work for them. It’s way too over-generalizing to me. And in fact, we do know that those organizations are actually diverse and factionalized.

A hierarchical society means that when you leave work, you are still subject to social levels of power requiring direct obedience. We don’t live in that world. I don’t owe deference and obedience to someone who works for a government organization—if he asks me to let him go ahead in the grocery line because he works for the state dept., I can just say “heck no” and that’s that.

So no we’re not a hierarchical society. We’re something different. Our problems are located in some other kind of issue, not that.

.

[wv]

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

There are lots of hierarchies outside of feudalistic societies. I don’t even understand that statement. Of course the CIA and NSA and FBI are hierarchical.

I don’t know how you’re using that word in a way that makes sense. It is true that all organizations are, well, organized…but that fact in itself means nothing. All the organizations we like are organized too. So the fact that an organization is organized tells me nothing about the political situation or what to expect in terms of the policies of those who work for them. It’s way too over-generalizing to me. And in fact, we do know that those organizations are actually diverse and factionalized.

A hierarchical society means that when you leave work, you are still subject to social levels of power requiring direct obedience. We don’t live in that world. I don’t owe deference and obedience to someone who works for a government organization—if he asks me to let him go ahead in the grocery line because he works for the state dept., I can just say “heck no” and that’s that.

So no we’re not a hierarchical society. We’re something different. Our problems are located in some other kind of issue, not that.

.

==================

What does ‘hierarchical’ have to do with ‘deep state’ ‘corporotacracy’ ‘system’ ‘military industrial complex’ ?

There’s no rule that says those concepts have to describe a ‘rigid’ hierarchy. In fact i think the corporotacracy is more of an…oh….”oligarchy melded with corporate-legal-structure melded with secret-power/military-organizations” (CIA, NSA etc)

I dont pretend to even know what the ‘system’ is precisely in a clear mathematical way. But i can certainly see the shadowy-outlines of it. Think of it as the Rochschilds/Morgans/Rockefellers melded with the political-elites melded with the Corporate-CEOs melded with the CIA/Pentagon.

I mean, how would ‘you’ describe corporate-capitalism and how it operates?

w
v

[zn]

wv wrote:

I mean, how would ‘you’ describe corporate-capitalism and how it operates?

As not one thing.

BUT the way the law is currently set up in the USA, certain policies and certain factions within the whole mess are allowed to dominate in ways that are detrimental to what I anyway take to be real democracy.

Get rid of Citizens United, for example, and part of it changes.

And so on.

IMO this is very minor in-group parsing of concepts. Which is fine. Outside of this parsing, we’re united against the same things.

[zn]

RUSSIANS CLAIMED FINANCIAL DIRT LEVERAGE ON TRUMP TEAM: REPORT

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-officials-spoke-openly-about-financial-dirt-trump-team-report-617535

Russian officials spoke openly about “derogatory” financial information they claimed to have on then-candidate Donald Trump and his close circle of advisers during calls intercepted by U.S. intelligence, CNN reported.

Two former intelligence officials and a source in Congress confirmed the information. One source told the broadcaster the intercepts during the 2016 campaign were about finances and whether Russia had leverage on Trump’s inner circle.

The Russians believed “they had the ability to influence the administration through the derogatory information,” one of the sources told CNN.

Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week

Other sources, however, warned that the Russian officials’ claims “could have been exaggerated or even made up.”

In early January, America’s intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election using a combination of disinformation through false stories and emails hacked from the Democrat and Republican parties.

In the intercepted communications the officials could have been “overstating their belief to influence,” one of the sources said. The sources would not tell CNN which Trump aides were mentioned by the Russians.

The finances of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, have come under intense scrutiny from law enforcement. Flynn’s former business associates received subpoenas in May.

U.S. agents working in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network began combing through Manafort’s offshore accounts in Cyprus earlier this year. No member of Trump’s campaign, transition or White House team has been charged with a crime.

Both Manafort and Flynn were revealed to have been picked up by American intelligence in calls with Russian officials during the campaign and transition.

On Friday May 26 the Washington Post reported that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner spoke with Russia’s ambassador to Washington during the transition period after the election to set up a communications back channel with Moscow from Russian diplomatic facilities. The plan was rejected, but picked up in communications between Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and his superiors.

New leaks about the content of the classified reports of Russian officials claiming to have incriminating financial material are “yet another round of false and unverified claims made by anonymous sources to smear the President,” the White House told CNN.

The White House pointed to an earlier report prepared in May by a law firm hired by Trump stating that he has no debts to Russians and only ever received $95 million from a Russian billionaire for an estate in Florida, and $12.2 million in connection with his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“There appears to be no limit to which the President’s political opponents will go to perpetuate this false narrative,” the White House said, “including illegally leaking classified material. All this does is play into the hands of our adversaries and put our country at risk.”

[wv]

zn wrote:

IMO this is very minor in-group parsing of concepts. Which is fine. Outside of this parsing, we’re united against the same things.

================

Absolutely. No question.

w
v

[wv]

zn wrote:

New leaks about the content of the classified reports of Russian officials claiming to have incriminating financial material are “yet another round of false and unverified claims made by anonymous sources to smear the President,” the White House told CNN.

================

My own wild-speculation is this: OF COURSE the Russians delved deeply into Trump’s past and dug up every single ugly thing they could find. I would think every country with a powerful secret-police-force did the same thing. I have no doubt Israel did the same thing. China, Europe, etc.

And of course there was a LOT of ugliness to find, given that Trump has a long history of unethical and ugly behavior.

I also think none of that matters to his base — cause (A) they dont care, and (B) they will never believe anything that comes from sources like the MSM.

….on a different tangent, I am still wondering about the missile strike in Syria. If Trump is under the influence of Russia — why the missile strike in Syria? Was it all just a set up to make it LOOK like Trump was not under the influence of russia? Was the strike ‘politics’ or policy?

w
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[zn]

wv wrote:

I am still wondering about the missile strike in Syria. If Trump is under the influence of Russia —

Is someone claiming he is directly under the influence of Russia?

[wv]

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I am still wondering about the missile strike in Syria. If Trump is under the influence of Russia —

Is someone claiming he is directly under the influence of Russia?

================
Noone on this board is doing that but sure,
there are inferences and implications by the Dems, through the MSM, that he is under the influence of Putin and the rooskies.

Though ‘under the influence’ is not a rigid black-and-white kindof concept. He might be ‘somewhat’ under their influence or ‘greatly’ under their influence, or ‘at times’ under their influence, etc etc.

At any rate, the missile strike was odd to me.

w
v

[zn]

wv wrote:

there are inferences and implications by the Dems

I wouldn’;t know, I don’t pay attention to that.

In fact this is my view.

Leftists who only pay attention to what Dems say about Trump/Russia are doing the left a disservice. They get all skeptical about the Dem version and then fail to realize that’s not the only way to look at it.

Dismissing Russia/Trump just because the Dems have a Russia/Trump narrative means failing to pay attention to the actual Russia/Trump narrative.

[zn]

The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document on Russia Hacking Aimed at US Voting System
The report details an operation targeting voter registration in 2016.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/intercept-nsa-document-russia-hack

On Monday, the Intercept published a classified internal NSA document noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year’s presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document provides details of how one such operation occurred.

According to the Intercept:

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into US voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

Go read the whole thing. https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/

[zn]

Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 presidential election
This goes way deeper than we first thought.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election-39-states-hack-putin-trump-sessions

Russia’s efforts to hack the 2016 presidential election were much more widespread than originally thought. The Russian campaign hit 39 states — twice as many as originally reported — and in one case hackers tried to delete and alter voter data.

That’s the startling revelation from a Bloomberg report this morning. The extent of the cyber intrusion was so widespread that Obama administration officials used the infamous “red phone” — which is really a digital communications channel that allows the countries to send information back and forth — to show Kremlin leaders what they had discovered. It remains unclear, though, if these intrusions had any direct effect on the election’s outcome.

Still, this is another example of Russia taking advantage of the many online vulnerabilities in America’s voting network, which is comprised of software companies, online registration sites, and vital information that election officials willingly send to each other over email.

All of them play an important part in obtaining and safeguarding sensitive voter information, but it appears the Russians have figured out how to get that data.

“If you got 10 people working to try and figure out what the US election system is for 18 months, of course they’re going to figure it out,” said Beau Woods, a cybersecurity expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

Russia, of course, denies having anything to do with the hackers that pulled this off. Either way, the news comes at an inauspicious time for President Donald Trump, who has had to deal with congressional hearings featuring former FBI Director James Comey last week and Attorney General Jeff Sessions today, each digging deep into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.

So, despite assurances from the Obama administration that the election’s integrity was not compromised, there was still a very large-scale Russian effort to mess with it. That means future elections, including ones next year, run the risk of being tainted.

Russia hacked into the voting systems of 39 states
The hack into Illinois’s election system is the one we know the most about. Ken Menzel, who serves as general counsel for the Illinois state board of elections, told Bloomberg that a part-time contractor for the state board of elections noticed unauthorized data leaving the network.

That data contained the personal information of around 15 million people, including names, birthdays, genders, and partial Social Security numbers. It was a huge coup for the Russians, as around half of those 15 million were active voters. Apparently, the cyber intruders aimed to delete or alter voter data they got a hold of.

But even if they did that, that still wouldn’t necessarily have affected the election. It’s the counties that upload voter information to the state, not vice versa. So even if all the rolls were deleted at the state level, there was a backup plan in place to restore all the names.

Voter data wasn’t all the information the hackers were after, though. In a different, unidentified US state, the Russians were able to get information from a campaign finance database, which would give them insight into the financial connections between certain voters and candidates.

America’s elections system is vulnerable to attacks
The intrusions scared these states so much that they ended up asking the Department of Homeland Security for special teams to help keep hackers out. Others hired private companies for the same mission.

The Obama administration was worried about these developments, too. Using the secure “red phone” backchannel, it showed the extent of the hacking campaign to its Russian counterparts.

If Kremlin officials were upset about it, they didn’t seem to show it. Russian leaders kept requesting more information. And throughout that whole process, the hackers proceeded with their work.

Some inside the Obama administration wanted to go public with the information. But the White House decided against it, claiming it wasn’t worth risking people’s faith in the election’s integrity.

So, it seems despite efforts to stop Russia’s actions and sanctions related to Moscow’s meddling, it effectively got away with it. But because vital elections information is online for the taking, the Russians didn’t need to try too hard.

“Most states these days have online voter registration tools or online absentee-ballot request tools. That means that the voter registration data base is online,” Douglas W. Jones, an elections expert at the University of Iowa, said in an interview.

In effect, Russia didn’t need an “inside man” for this — Americans make this information obtainable for elite hackers by putting all of this critical information on the internet. That leaves the US very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

So while it’s unclear still if Russia’s hacking efforts actually influenced the outcome of the election, the fact that it is able to access such important information is already troublesome in itself.

And that bodes poorly for the 2018 elections and others beyond that, as their integrity becomes more and more suspect with each new revelation of the extent of Russia’s election-hacking campaign.

Surely Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the congressional investigations into Russia’s possible ties to the Trump campaign will look into all of this. There may even be questions about it asked of Sessions this afternoon.

But in the meantime, collusion with Trump or not, we now know that Russia has struck deeper into the heart of America’s democracy: its elections.

[wv]

Well assuming any or some of that is true (for the sake of argument) I still dont understand what the ‘russian hackers’ could accomplish. The mainstream-corporate articles are vague on this ‘hacking’ — were they Deleting votes? Were they making it impossible for voters to vote for Hillary? What exactly did the hackers do?

I also think this stood out:
“…Some inside the Obama administration wanted to go public with the information. But the White House decided against it, claiming it wasn’t worth risking people’s faith in the election’s integrity.”

So when all was said and done, Obama didnt think enough damage was
done to even tell the voters about it.

w
v

[Zooey]

Computerized voting has always seemed like a bad, bad idea to me, going back to 2000 and Diebold. I’ve always feared domestic hacking more than international hacking, but now we have both to deal with, apparently. That’s why we need an Independent Counsel, and I don’t know what the holdup on that is. It seems inevitable to me, and the next set of elections is less than two years away, so get on with it.

[zn]

wv wrote:

The mainstream-corporate articles are vague

The last 2 articles on this in this thread are from Vox and Mother Jones, so this way too conveniently over general idea that mainstream news is always one single identifiable homogeneous thing doesn’t apply in this case.

[Author]

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