RAY McGOVERN: Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda
August 21, 2020
The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it
regards as Special Counsel Robert Muellers weak-kneed effort to blame the
Russians for giving us Donald Trump.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has
the feel of fin de siècle. The last four reality-impaired years do seem as
though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long
as most people dont know whats going on.
The LSM should be confronted: At long last have you left no sense of
decency? But who would hear the question much less any answer? The
corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted
to hear. Checking the truth, once routine in journalism, is a thing of the
past.
Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the
current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel
Robert Muellers weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us
Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls.
The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date
report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided the occasion to
catapult the propaganda, as President George W. Bush once put it.
As the the Timess Mark Mazzetti put it in his article Wednesday:
Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day,
Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention on the
interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American
political process, which has continued unabated.
Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce: regarding that interference four
years ago, and the continued-unabated part, you just have to trust us and
our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if,
nevertheless, you persist in asking for actual evidence, you are clearly in
Putins pocket.
Incidentally, Muellers report apparently was insufficient, only two years
in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committees magnum opus took
three years, is almost 1,000 pages and fortified. So there.
Iron Pills
Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with
Muellers anemic findings in spring 2019. His report claimed that the
Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping
and systematic fashion via a social media campaign run by the Internet
Research Agency (IRA) and by hacking Democratic emails. But the evidence
behind those charges could not bear close scrutiny.
You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA
was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted it could not prove
that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Muellers ipse dixit
did not suffice, as we explained a year ago in Sic Transit Gloria Mueller.
The Best Defense
is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committees release of its
study call it Mueller (Enhanced) and the propaganda fanfare come at
a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as
the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled
Senate was sending Trump a message.
Durham
One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John
Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and other officials who
launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop
before the election. Barr has said he expects developments in Durhams
investigation hopefully before the end of the summer.
FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the
felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate
Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that Clinesmith was just a small cog in
the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump.
And those running the machine are well known. The president has named names,
and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying on the
president.
The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that
Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director
James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can
they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared
that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to
take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so
without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.
The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more
vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness particularly with regard to
Covid-19 he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the
big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no
one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of
uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious.
So, the stakes are high for the Democrats, as well and, not least, the
LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative not just to circle the
wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that
virtually all the ammunition (as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale
(enhanced or not).
Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement
and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM and in the key
pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch Mueller Report (Enhanced)
and catapult the truth now with propaganda, before it is too late.
No Evidence of Hacking
The hacking of the DNC charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when
it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the DNC-hired cyber-security
firm CrowdStrike, admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the
DNC emails were hacked by Russia or anyone else.
(YouTube)
Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017, but House Intelligence Committee
chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.
Heres a brief taste of how Henrys testimony went: Asked by Schiff for the
date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data, Henry replied, We just
dont have the evidence that says it actually left.
You did not know that? You may be forgiven up until now if your
information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The New York Times
still publishes all the news thats fit to print. I am taking bets on how
much longer the NYT will be able to keep Henrys testimony hidden; Schiffs
record of 29 months will be hard to beat.
Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian Tampering
Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Muellers findings
last year enabled Trump to shout No Collusion with Russia. What seems
clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of
the truth is to apply lipstick to Muellers findings.
After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump
campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most LSM-suffused Americans
remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner
Mazzetti have been commissioned to keep it that way.
In Wednesdays article, for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:
Like the special counsel
the Senate report did not conclude that the
Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian
government a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was
no collusion.
How could they!
Mazzetti is playing with words. Collusion, however one defines it, is not
a crime; conspiracy is.
Breathtaking Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)
Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)
Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report showed extensive evidence of
contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin,
and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committees vice chairman,
said the committee report details a breathtaking level of contacts between
Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real
counterintelligence threat to our elections.
None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things
generally well known even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people
like Paul Manafort sharing polling data with Russians who might be
intelligence officers. That data was mostly public the Times itself
reported, and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended
for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead.
That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is
rarely mentioned.
Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI
lawyer to justify eavesdropping on Trump associate Carter Page show the
Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBIs
decision to investigate Page. The committee may wish to revisit that
endorsement at least.
On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge
against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary
Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that
both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and
Clinton campaign to push Russiagate.
Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the
Senate Judiciary Committee last month that revealed that Steeles Primary
Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip
that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.
Smearing WikiLeaks
The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly debunked myths
about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview
Julian Assange before launching its smears. Italian journalist Stefania
Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta
emails, described the reports treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter
thread:
2. the description of #WikiLeaks publishing activities by this
#SenateIntelligenceCommittees Report appears a true #EdgarHoovers
disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely
radioactive
3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the
#SenateIntelligenceCommittees Report completely rely on #US intelligence
community+ #MikePompeos characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even
any pretense of an independent approach
4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
[WikiLeaks] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual
Americans and foreign allies (p.200)
WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries (p.201)
5. its completely false that #WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its
disclosures add any public interest value (p.200) and any longtime media
partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this
characterisation [is].
Titillating
Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the
two top right columns of Wednesdays Times with the blaring headline:
Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trumps Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee
Echoes Muellers Findings on Election Tampering.
Those who make it to the end of Mazzettis piece will learn that the Senate
committee report did not establish that the Russian government obtained
any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such
materials [that they didnt have] as leverage against him. However,
Mazzetti adds,
According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party
during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he
had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they might
have had a brief romantic relationship.
The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump
spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a
business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.
This is journalism?
Another Pulitzer in Store?
The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that
won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trumps advisers and
their connections to Russia.
And thats not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT
colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, The Plot to Subvert an
Election, trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research
Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election
with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.
That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane
failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015
through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed
in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in peoples news
feeds 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack
of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.
In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth
Porter commented:
The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of
propagandizing for the narrative of Russias threat to U.S. democracy is
dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media
Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the heart of the Times coverage of
that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change.
Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory
The late Robert Parry.
Its too much; its just too much, too much, a sedated, semi-conscious
Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in late January 2018 a
couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News.
It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On
Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what he titled An Apology
& Explanation for spotty production in recent days. A stroke on Christmas
Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able to summon enough
strength to write an Apologia his vision for honest journalism and his
dismay at what had happened to his profession before he died on Jan. 27,
2018. The dichotomy was just too much.
Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the unrelenting ugliness
that has become Official Washington.
Facts and logic no longer mattered.
It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your
opponent
this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most
prestigious halls of American media.
What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian
bear. The U.S. medias approach to Russia, he wrote, is now virtually 100
percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times
or The Washington Posts coverage of Russia and think that he or she is
getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts?
Western journalists
now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise
would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia.
Parry, who was no conservative, continued:
Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because
elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last
Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for hacking Democratic emails and releasing them
to WikiLeaks.
Bob noted that the hand-picked authors evinced no evidence and even
admitted that they werent asserting any of this as fact.
It was just too much.
Robert Parrys Last Article
Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia)
Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)
Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text
exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were made
public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would
altogether miss the importance of the text-exchanges.)
Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a sanity check. Dec. 12, 2017 was an
exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts; we agreed they were
explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Muellers
staff investigating alleged Russian interference, until Mueller removed him.
Strzok reportedly was a hand-picked FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017
evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered intelligence community assessment
that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had
helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clintons misuse of her computer
servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabes right-hand lawyer.
His Dec. 13, 2017 piece would be his fourth related article in less than two
weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article. All three of the
earlier ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased,
perceptive journalism. Here are the links.
Bob began his article on the Strzok-Page bombshell:
The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two
romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early
Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling
scandal into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government
investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trumps
presidency.?
As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American
deep state exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office,
the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter
Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members
of the governments intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as
protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the
presidency someone as unfit as Trump.
Not a fragment of Bobs or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on
what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As a matter of fact, eight
months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled Russia-gate: Can You
Handle the Truth?, only three out of a very progressive audience of some
150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.
And so it goes.
Lest I am accused of being in Putins pocket, let me add the explanatory
note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity included in our
most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on Russian hacking.
Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence
profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free
analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which
applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda;
our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to
account our former intelligence colleagues.
We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance
between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is
purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that
reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A CIA analyst for 27 years,
he served as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and as a downtown
morning briefer of the Presidents Daily Brief.
