3:37 AM 4/27/2019 - Jesters rule the world, and life is a tragic comedy. What elzee' iz nu? Eh? - M.N.: Ukraine shows unrest, elects comedian as president | On The Road To Dictatorship - By Michael Novakhov
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Jesters rule the world, and life is a tragic comedy. What elzee' iz nu? Eh? - M.N.: Ukraine shows unrest, elects comedian as president
On The Road To Dictatorship - By Michael Novakhov - Last Update: 3:22 AM 4/27/2019 - Post
Panopticon Observation Prison
Facebook and FBI are paving the royal Road to Dictatorship! Wake up, America!
Is the FBI capable of handling the Counterintelligence matters?
The Facebook, and their controller the FBI, are paving the royal road to the present and future dictatorships. Wake up, America! Investigate the investigators! Save the American Democracy! Reform the FBI now!
The Facebook CENSORSHIP does exactly what the New Abwehr and their asset Putin want: to restrict the freedom of information on the Internet, and despite his hypocritical assurances to the contrary.
The FBI terrorized their vassal the Facebook into the construction of the virtual Panopticon Observation Prison, presided over by the archetypes of the Jewish Mother (and not the best version of this phenomenon), Sheryl Sandberg, and the glassy-eyed Jewish Accountant pretending to be the Face Of The World and Mr. Very Sociable himself, Mark Zuckerberg. "Sheryl Sandberg’s Russia talk was an insult to our intelligence", noted the press.
The question is, my dear America: why do you allow these entities and these people to decide how and with whom you should communicate, what news you should consume, and what kind of friends you should make? Isn't it much too much? Isn't it one of the roots of our current troubles?
Here is the latest press review on this subject:
Facebook Calls For Censorship: "In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called on governments to increase regulation of internet speech".
"Social media’s censors are too illiterate to distinguish between Charles Manson and Charles Murray", observed the Wall Street Journal wryly.
"Sri Lanka social media shutdown reveals Facebook's Achilles' heel", mentions The Washington Post: "Facebook’s mission statement is to “bring the world closer together.” But its failure to rein in rampant misinformation and violent content could be the Achilles’ heel of its global ambitions."
"Facebook Could Face New Penalties In Addition To $3 Billion FTC Fine In Attorney General Probe", reports Forbes.
It is not the exaggeration to say that the modern politics are transformed by the Facebook, and this fact has the enormous significance. It appears that Facebook in fact, had prostituted itself for political purposes. Some of us say that they betrayed America and her values, just likeManafort, and his operating arm, the Cambridge Analytica.
Replace Facebook with the not for profit business model, make it better, truly social, and maybe even "socialist", and "free", in all senses. It would fit it to the "T".
The profit motives and drivers in the Information field, just like in Medicine, are inappropriate, dysfunctional, and counterproductive. The State should carry the expenses, which are minimal, if not just symbolic, for the maintenance of the Social Media Platforms. If the traditional media justified their charges by the expenses on ink and paper (with expenditures on good thinking and ideas in the very distant from those costs numbers), the digital costs simply cannot be justified at all at this stage and age. The Social Media users build their castles in the air, and the owners of the Social Media platforms and companies collect the rent; in the very nice and tangible real life pennies. The relative value of the good thinking and ideas went up, and the state should protect, defend, and nurture them, for it is them that drive the economic and social progress. The current "free for all" - "Free Enterprise" system breeds crooks, swindlers, liars, and psychopaths, and the current troubles demonstrate this vividly. We as the humans are better than that.
The FBI is the second part of this explosive equation.
The FBI and the Facebook together, almost imminently, make the perfect recipe for the potential disaster of dictatorship. Investigate the investigators! Save America! Reform the FBI now! This is my mantra for the last several years, and I am not tired of repeating it. FBI is a very sick, Mafia and Nazi style type of the organisation staffed with shrewd but brainless and soulless psychopaths. It has to be studied and researched in depth.
The FBI was thoroughly penetrated by the Nazis, the Canaris' Abwehr, and the Mobsters; and these are just the two parts of the same phenomenon connected to and by Abwehr, a long time ago, even before the WW2, and much more so after it, according to my impressions. Former Nazis were hired by the FBI en masse, and the true extent of this problem might exceed anyone's imagination.
The German espionage in America was rampant, especially before and after the WW2, and the FBI under Hoover was not able to deal with it and to contain it, not the industrial one, and much less the political one. The FBI became infected with the slow but persistent virus of the GermanMilitary Intelligence, the Abwehr; and it was turned into the deceptive and invisible weapon which destroys America from within.
From the Canaris Directive: "We have at our command in the United States efficient contacts, which have been carefully kept up even during the war."
(Quoted from: The Nazi Hydra In Fascist America - Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins -http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/janel/Hydra.pdf - Pages 289 - 290).
The New Abwehr Hypothesis of the Operation Trump puts this and the other historical calamities after the WW2 into a neat and convincing perspective. This is the largely under-researched area, and very likely due to the Abwehr's deliberate disinformation and the sophisticated use of covers.
"Are there continuing counterintelligence investigations against Trump and his associates? There are many redactions in the Mueller report, so at this juncture we simply don’t know."
The FBI's sick, unlawful, low, cynical, gypsy mentality type "secrets" and "mysteries" have to be exposed and revealed. This stupid, brainless, ever hungry, dysfunctional, ugly Beast feeds on America and her people. They are worse than KGB and Gestapo, and they are stupider too.
For example, their "hair analysts" gave the wrong testimonies and sent the innocent people to prison simply because they wanted to "make the grade", to please their superiors, and to move up the ladder.
And in addition to all that, they are simply incompetent and are not able to carry out their duties properly.
I also think that the FBI is the major threat to the sanity and the mental health of the American people. In a society where one half informs on the other half, there cannot be trust and the healthy interpersonal relationships. FBI, with its crude and outdated Nazi-KGB tactics, and inefficient security wise at that, undermines the very structure and the texture of the modern American society. They function as the "vice squad" - the moral police, and as the political police, despite all their half-hearted protestations. These two areas are easy for them to understand (or so they think), especially "sex", and the little nincompoops impose and enforce their norms (primitive, police and "law and order" oriented, largely Catholic, and the product of the lower to middle class mentality) on the rest of society.
This is the road to social degeneration. The FBI and the similar structures and agencies should understand their proper and complex role in our society. They feel that they should prove their worth to society while they have very little of it, and if anything, are detrimental to the healthy functioning of the society.
As strange as it might sound (or not "strange" at all), the sophisticated, civil and civilized, proper electronic surveillance should replace the obviously sick, pathological by its nature, the institute and practice of informants, which comes from the old historical European traditions and was perfected by Abwehr.
The FBI "COINTELPRO specialists" literally and deliberately drive America crazy, and those very talanted artistic nincompoops sincerely believe, in accordance with their limited intellectual capacities, that this is exactly their job to do. They became the inspiring model for the many monstrous "secret security services" around the world, and lately for the Israeli private spying firms who developed and expanded ad criminal absurdum the COINTELPRO tactics and techniques. Read about those firms activities and interference in 2016 Elections.
In the cartoon, a barber tells his client, “I know precisely how to cut your hair…I see it right here in your carpeta.”
The FBI practiced their infamous COINTELPRO in Puerto Rico for years, extensively and intensively, with the special vindictive gusto, after the 1954 attack on Congress by the Puerto Rican nationalists, and they, along with the Puerto Rico Police Department, still continue practicing this stinking craft, on the level of the village idiots. The Island's historical legacy as the old Spanish penal colony created the friendly ground for this total and quasi-totalitarian surveillance, informing, and the intimidation society. This circumstance stilted the Island's progress, its economic, cultural, and political growth, according to some opinions.
The Russian interference in Elections 2016 was convincingly demonstrated by the MuellerInvestigation. But in fact, there were many different and various attempts at interference, which is nothing new historically and conceptually: the interference of Germans who spy on Americahabitually, extensively, and almost openly; the Russians who always follow in the German footsteps, and now the cohorts of the others: Chinese, Ukrainians, Israelis, Oligarchs, Arabs, etc., etc. But ultimately the players are the Global Russian Jewish Israeli Mafia, and they in turn are ruled by the New Abwehr.
Undoubtedly, it was also the interference, largely invisible, by the FBI, and there were, also to be exact, many various attempts at interference by the FBI various factions and players. It is a big question if this aspect was addressed in Mueller Investigation, and how adequately it was addressed.
Many have the strong suspicions that a certain, pro-Trump faction of the FBI‘s upper echelons, possibly represented by Kallstrom (reportedly, Trump’s old childhood friend), and the Giuliani circles, (reportedly very close to the New York branch of the FBI), might have been a prominent part of this conspiracy against the U.S., or the so called FBI NY branch cabal, or according to Sidney Blumenthal: “Cabal Of Right-Wing FBI Agents” who “Took Down Hillary In A “Coup D’Etat”. Both of them, Kallstrom and Giuliani, apparently, and again, reportedly, and assumingly, aspired to lead the FBI after Trump’s win.
It is also my suspicion that the FBI engineered the Abedin – Weiner email affair as their sexual-political “sting operation”, which is an old, familiar and the favorite trick in both their own and Mr. Putin’s political toolboxes. In these circumstances, the question that logically and inevitably arises, is: What was the degree of cooperation between them and the Russians? This is the big and the important question, and it has to be addressed and answered. This affair led to the October 28, 2016 Letter, which in the opinion of the pollsters, now broadly accepted, did decide the outcome of the elections, along with other factors.
The question about how the hundreds of thousands of emails (650,000) ended up on Abedin – Weiner laptop, remain essentially unanswered. Who planted them there and with whose help?
The FBI's structure and mentality are of the same hired thugs of the Pinkerton Agency, their amoral but practical mommy. The problem is that the FBI acquired or accumulated the monopoly on Police Powers which can be quite formidable in any culture.
The today society appears to outgrow the need for these types of the ugly and perverse monopolies on Power; on both the Communications Powers of the Facebook and the Police Powers of the FBI, to be specific. These monopolies have to be broken.
The Multilayered Model of the Intelligence Services, with the overlapping responsibilities, appears to be the best, historically formed alternative. Do not trust any of them entirely, and let them all spy on each other; the accuracy of intelligence assessments and the efficiency of response and prevention will benefit. None of them should have a monopoly on Intelligence Work. The Intelligence Analysis should strive to approach the accuracy standards of the Medical Diagnosis. The Intelligence Analysis (and the same of course for the Counterintelligence Analysis) should be based on the principles of the Medical Diagnosis and it should be guided by the motto "The Truth, the only Truth, and nothing but the Truth". This way the poison of the politicization could hopefully be avoided.
And we better research and investigate all of the above, my dear America!
We should not forget that in Nazi Germany the road to dictatorship was through the elections.
Speak the Truth to Power, not the sanitized versions of it.
FBI HAS TO BE ABOLISHED, AND THE CRIMINALS IN THEIR MIDST HAVE TO BE PROSECUTED RELENTLESSLY!
The FBI and some Police Departments still practice the COINTELPRO. And this is the crime. And they should and will be punished for it. Please, pay attention to this issue, our Congressional Democrats!
We do not need the monopolies on Power and Information. These monopolies, the Facebook and the FBI, are paving the royal road to Dictatorship!
The FBI's roles and the possible interference in Elections 2016 are multifaceted and complex, and they have to be investigated and to be understood properly.
We need to understand what happened, starting from 1990-s, and encompassing both the 9/11 and The Elections 2016. The Operations Trump and 9/11, these two epochal events do seem to be closely related, they appear to be the connecting links of the same mysterious chain, as it was noted by many other observers.
The FBI has to be investigated, and very, very thoroughly.
I support Mr. Barr's plan to investigate the FBI; with the proviso that this investigation has to be non-partisan, non-political, objective, comprehensive, in-depth, and practical, namely, the reform oriented.
4.25.19
Links
Panopticon Observation Prison
The Road To Dictatorship: The Facebook Censors and the FBI's Disorientation. Like? No Like! FBI + Facebook = Dictatorship
By Michael Novakhov
Facebook and FBI are paving the royal Road to Dictatorship! Wake up, America!
Is the FBI capable of handling the Counterintelligence matters?
The Facebook, and their controller the FBI, are paving the royal road to the present and future dictatorships. Wake up, America! Investigate the investigators! Save the American Democracy! Reform the FBI now!
The Facebook CENSORSHIP does exactly what the New Abwehr and their asset Putin want: to restrict the freedom of information on the Internet, and despite his hypocritical assurances to the contrary.
The FBI terrorized their vassal the Facebook into the construction of the virtual Panopticon Observation Prison, presided over by the archetypes of the Jewish Mother (and not the best version of this phenomenon), Sheryl Sandberg, and the glassy-eyed Jewish Accountant pretending to be the Face Of The World and Mr. Very Sociable himself, Mark Zuckerberg. "Sheryl Sandberg’s Russia talk was an insult to our intelligence", noted the press.
The question is, my dear America: why do you allow these entities and these people to decide how and with whom you should communicate, what news you should consume, and what kind of friends you should make? Isn't it much too much? Isn't it one of the roots of our current troubles?
Here is the latest press review on this subject:
Facebook Calls For Censorship: "In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called on governments to increase regulation of internet speech".
"Social media’s censors are too illiterate to distinguish between Charles Manson and Charles Murray", observed the Wall Street Journal wryly.
"Sri Lanka social media shutdown reveals Facebook's Achilles' heel", mentions The Washington Post: "Facebook’s mission statement is to “bring the world closer together.” But its failure to rein in rampant misinformation and violent content could be the Achilles’ heel of its global ambitions."
"Facebook Could Face New Penalties In Addition To $3 Billion FTC Fine In Attorney General Probe", reports Forbes.
It is not the exaggeration to say that the modern politics are transformed by the Facebook, and this fact has the enormous significance. It appears that Facebook in fact, had prostituted itself for political purposes. Some of us say that they betrayed America and her values, just likeManafort, and his operating arm, the Cambridge Analytica.
Replace Facebook with the not for profit business model, make it better, truly social, and maybe even "socialist", and "free", in all senses. It would fit it to the "T".
The profit motives and drivers in the Information field, just like in Medicine, are inappropriate, dysfunctional, and counterproductive. The State should carry the expenses, which are minimal, if not just symbolic, for the maintenance of the Social Media Platforms. If the traditional media justified their charges by the expenses on ink and paper (with expenditures on good thinking and ideas in the very distant from those costs numbers), the digital costs simply cannot be justified at all at this stage and age. The Social Media users build their castles in the air, and the owners of the Social Media platforms and companies collect the rent; in the very nice and tangible real life pennies. The relative value of the good thinking and ideas went up, and the state should protect, defend, and nurture them, for it is them that drive the economic and social progress. The current "free for all" - "Free Enterprise" system breeds crooks, swindlers, liars, and psychopaths, and the current troubles demonstrate this vividly. We as the humans are better than that.
The FBI is the second part of this explosive equation.
The FBI and the Facebook together, almost imminently, make the perfect recipe for the potential disaster of dictatorship. Investigate the investigators! Save America! Reform the FBI now! This is my mantra for the last several years, and I am not tired of repeating it. FBI is a very sick, Mafia and Nazi style type of the organisation staffed with shrewd but brainless and soulless psychopaths. It has to be studied and researched in depth.
The FBI was thoroughly penetrated by the Nazis, the Canaris' Abwehr, and the Mobsters; and these are just the two parts of the same phenomenon connected to and by Abwehr, a long time ago, even before the WW2, and much more so after it, according to my impressions. Former Nazis were hired by the FBI en masse, and the true extent of this problem might exceed anyone's imagination.
The German espionage in America was rampant, especially before and after the WW2, and the FBI under Hoover was not able to deal with it and to contain it, not the industrial one, and much less the political one. The FBI became infected with the slow but persistent virus of the GermanMilitary Intelligence, the Abwehr; and it was turned into the deceptive and invisible weapon which destroys America from within.
From the Canaris Directive: "We have at our command in the United States efficient contacts, which have been carefully kept up even during the war."
(Quoted from: The Nazi Hydra In Fascist America - Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins -http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/janel/Hydra.pdf - Pages 289 - 290).
The New Abwehr Hypothesis of the Operation Trump puts this and the other historical calamities after the WW2 into a neat and convincing perspective. This is the largely under-researched area, and very likely due to the Abwehr's deliberate disinformation and the sophisticated use of covers.
"Are there continuing counterintelligence investigations against Trump and his associates? There are many redactions in the Mueller report, so at this juncture we simply don’t know."
The FBI's sick, unlawful, low, cynical, gypsy mentality type "secrets" and "mysteries" have to be exposed and revealed. This stupid, brainless, ever hungry, dysfunctional, ugly Beast feeds on America and her people. They are worse than KGB and Gestapo, and they are stupider too.
For example, their "hair analysts" gave the wrong testimonies and sent the innocent people to prison simply because they wanted to "make the grade", to please their superiors, and to move up the ladder.
And in addition to all that, they are simply incompetent and are not able to carry out their duties properly.
I also think that the FBI is the major threat to the sanity and the mental health of the American people. In a society where one half informs on the other half, there cannot be trust and the healthy interpersonal relationships. FBI, with its crude and outdated Nazi-KGB tactics, and inefficient security wise at that, undermines the very structure and the texture of the modern American society. They function as the "vice squad" - the moral police, and as the political police, despite all their half-hearted protestations. These two areas are easy for them to understand (or so they think), especially "sex", and the little nincompoops impose and enforce their norms (primitive, police and "law and order" oriented, largely Catholic, and the product of the lower to middle class mentality) on the rest of society.
This is the road to social degeneration. The FBI and the similar structures and agencies should understand their proper and complex role in our society. They feel that they should prove their worth to society while they have very little of it, and if anything, are detrimental to the healthy functioning of the society.
As strange as it might sound (or not "strange" at all), the sophisticated, civil and civilized, proper electronic surveillance should replace the obviously sick, pathological by its nature, the institute and practice of informants, which comes from the old historical European traditions and was perfected by Abwehr.
The FBI "COINTELPRO specialists" literally and deliberately drive America crazy, and those very talanted artistic nincompoops sincerely believe, in accordance with their limited intellectual capacities, that this is exactly their job to do. They became the inspiring model for the many monstrous "secret security services" around the world, and lately for the Israeli private spying firms who developed and expanded ad criminal absurdum the COINTELPRO tactics and techniques. Read about those firms activities and interference in 2016 Elections.
In the cartoon, a barber tells his client, “I know precisely how to cut your hair…I see it right here in your carpeta.”
The FBI practiced their infamous COINTELPRO in Puerto Rico for years, extensively and intensively, with the special vindictive gusto, after the 1954 attack on Congress by the Puerto Rican nationalists, and they, along with the Puerto Rico Police Department, still continue practicing this stinking craft, on the level of the village idiots. The Island's historical legacy as the old Spanish penal colony created the friendly ground for this total and quasi-totalitarian surveillance, informing, and the intimidation society. This circumstance stilted the Island's progress, its economic, cultural, and political growth, according to some opinions.
The Russian interference in Elections 2016 was convincingly demonstrated by the MuellerInvestigation. But in fact, there were many different and various attempts at interference, which is nothing new historically and conceptually: the interference of Germans who spy on Americahabitually, extensively, and almost openly; the Russians who always follow in the German footsteps, and now the cohorts of the others: Chinese, Ukrainians, Israelis, Oligarchs, Arabs, etc., etc. But ultimately the players are the Global Russian Jewish Israeli Mafia, and they in turn are ruled by the New Abwehr.
Undoubtedly, it was also the interference, largely invisible, by the FBI, and there were, also to be exact, many various attempts at interference by the FBI various factions and players. It is a big question if this aspect was addressed in Mueller Investigation, and how adequately it was addressed.
Many have the strong suspicions that a certain, pro-Trump faction of the FBI‘s upper echelons, possibly represented by Kallstrom (reportedly, Trump’s old childhood friend), and the Giuliani circles, (reportedly very close to the New York branch of the FBI), might have been a prominent part of this conspiracy against the U.S., or the so called FBI NY branch cabal, or according to Sidney Blumenthal: “Cabal Of Right-Wing FBI Agents” who “Took Down Hillary In A “Coup D’Etat”. Both of them, Kallstrom and Giuliani, apparently, and again, reportedly, and assumingly, aspired to lead the FBI after Trump’s win.
It is also my suspicion that the FBI engineered the Abedin – Weiner email affair as their sexual-political “sting operation”, which is an old, familiar and the favorite trick in both their own and Mr. Putin’s political toolboxes. In these circumstances, the question that logically and inevitably arises, is: What was the degree of cooperation between them and the Russians? This is the big and the important question, and it has to be addressed and answered. This affair led to the October 28, 2016 Letter, which in the opinion of the pollsters, now broadly accepted, did decide the outcome of the elections, along with other factors.
The question about how the hundreds of thousands of emails (650,000) ended up on Abedin – Weiner laptop, remain essentially unanswered. Who planted them there and with whose help?
The FBI's structure and mentality are of the same hired thugs of the Pinkerton Agency, their amoral but practical mommy. The problem is that the FBI acquired or accumulated the monopoly on Police Powers which can be quite formidable in any culture.
The today society appears to outgrow the need for these types of the ugly and perverse monopolies on Power; on both the Communications Powers of the Facebook and the Police Powers of the FBI, to be specific. These monopolies have to be broken.
The Multilayered Model of the Intelligence Services, with the overlapping responsibilities, appears to be the best, historically formed alternative. Do not trust any of them entirely, and let them all spy on each other; the accuracy of intelligence assessments and the efficiency of response and prevention will benefit. None of them should have a monopoly on Intelligence Work. The Intelligence Analysis should strive to approach the accuracy standards of the Medical Diagnosis. The Intelligence Analysis (and the same of course for the Counterintelligence Analysis) should be based on the principles of the Medical Diagnosis and it should be guided by the motto "The Truth, the only Truth, and nothing but the Truth". This way the poison of the politicization could hopefully be avoided.
And we better research and investigate all of the above, my dear America!
We should not forget that in Nazi Germany the road to dictatorship was through the elections.
Speak the Truth to Power, not the sanitized versions of it.
FBI HAS TO BE ABOLISHED, AND THE CRIMINALS IN THEIR MIDST HAVE TO BE PROSECUTED RELENTLESSLY!
The FBI and some Police Departments still practice the COINTELPRO. And this is the crime. And they should and will be punished for it. Please, pay attention to this issue, our Congressional Democrats!
We do not need the monopolies on Power and Information. These monopolies, the Facebook and the FBI, are paving the royal road to Dictatorship!
The FBI's roles and the possible interference in Elections 2016 are multifaceted and complex, and they have to be investigated and to be understood properly.
We need to understand what happened, starting from 1990-s, and encompassing both the 9/11 and The Elections 2016. The Operations Trump and 9/11, these two epochal events do seem to be closely related, they appear to be the connecting links of the same mysterious chain, as it was noted by many other observers.
The FBI has to be investigated, and very, very thoroughly.
I support Mr. Barr's plan to investigate the FBI; with the proviso that this investigation has to be non-partisan, non-political, objective, comprehensive, in-depth, and practical, namely, the reform oriented.
4.25.19
Links
On The Road To Dictatorship: Trump, FBI, and the New Abwehr - Web Review - By Michael Novakhov
- Links to Content - The Road To Dictatorship: The New Abwehr Hypothesis of The Operation Trump - Web Review - By Michael Novakhov
- The Road To Dictatorship: FBI + Facebook. "Like? No Like!" - By Michael Novakhov
- The New Abwehr Hypothesis of The Operation Trump - Outline and Links
- The Operation Trump and The New Abwehr
- The Operation Trump and The New Abwehr | Recent Tweets | Shared Links - Twitter - Facebook
- The Road To Dictatorship - Web Review - By Michael Novakhov - Last Update: 6:05 AM 4/24/2019
- The Manifesto Of The American Socialism
- Political Criminology - The Outline
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· · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, which is being scrutinized by countries around the world. Conditions on the company’s deal with the Federal Trade Commission could have far-reaching impact.CreditJosh Edelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Oil price recedes after ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to Russian suspensions Financial Times
"trump in financial times" - Google News
Brent crude falls back after sharp gains as Germany and Poland halted Russian imports.
Why Twitter has been slow to ban white nationalists The Verge
Why doesn't Twitter remove more white supremacists from the platform? It's one of the most enduring questions about the platform, largely because of Twitter's ...
Trying to fire Mueller despite the clear downside shows the president can’t rationally process risk, a new study states.
Donald Trump
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After months of deliberation, former Vice President Joe Biden has announced his decision to run for president for a third time, answering one of the biggest outstanding questions about the makeup of the 2020 race. "The core values of this nation ... our standing in the world... our very democracy ... everything that has made America -- America -- is at stake. That's why today I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," Biden tweeted, along with the campaign video. Biden will hold his first official event in Pittsburgh. followed by a swing through early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
#CNN #2020 #Biden
Facebook says it could be fined up to $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission over privacy issues. Meanwhile, Google employees want a town hall to address claims of retaliation over sexual harassment protests. Wired senior writer Nitasha Tiku joined CBSN to explain what a big FTC fine means for Facebook and why Google should be treated like any other company dealing with sexism allegations.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is the 21st candidate to seek the Democratic nomination for president. In his announcement, Biden highlighted President Trump's 2017 comments about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. CBS News political correspondent Ed O'Keefe joined CBSN to discuss.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was famously outraged in 2013 when she heard that the U.S. had allegedly bugged her phone, telling then-President Barack Obama: “Spying between friends, that's just not done."
But Germany’s foreign intelligence service spent years spying on American public and private sector targets, a report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel claimed Thursday.
The magazine said that it had seen evidence suggesting German security agency the BND had used almost 4,000 keywords in internal surveillance databases that related to American targets from 1998 to 2006. These included White House email addresses as well as phone and fax numbers, as well as the U.S. Department of State and Treasury.
Other targets included the US Air Force, the Marine Corps, the engineering company Lockheed Martin, space agency NASA, several universities and the NGO Human Rights Watch, Spiegel reported.
German spies also accessed data from more than 100 foreign embassies in Washington, according toDie Zeit.
The findings are likely to prove embarrassing for the German government at a time when U.S.-German relations are already strained following forceful remarks by President Donald Trump about trade and tariffs on German industries, and an awkward meeting between the president and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March.
The BND declined to comment on the reports, but its president, Bruno Kahl, did address the organization's future oversight, according to Deutsche Welle.
"The question concerning who can scout the BND and who cannot does not just depend on increasing authorization for lawmakers, but also implementing an ambitious series of controls," he said.
Merkel earlier this year said to a parliamentary committee looking into the actions of America’s National Security Agency (NSA) that she did not know about any BND spying in the U.S.
Another report in Spiegel this April said that the BND also spied on Interpol, the international crimefighting agency, and in February the magazine said it had seen evidence that the agency had accessed phones, faxes and emails of several news organizations, including the New York Times and Reuters.
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In the fall of 1992, after he cut a deal with U.S. banks to work off nearly a billion dollars in personal debt, Donald Trump put on a big gala for himself in Atlantic City to announce his comeback. Party guests were given sticks with a picture of Trump’s face glued to them so they could be photographed posing as the famous real-estate mogul. As the theme music from the movie Rocky filled the room, an emcee shouted, “Let’s hear it for the king!” and Trump, wearing red boxing gloves and a robe, burst through a paper screen. One of his casino executives announced that his boss had returned as a “winner,” according to Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio.
But it was mainly an act, D’Antonio told Foreign Policy. In truth Trump was all but finished as a major real-estate developer, in the eyes of many in the business, and that’s because the U.S. banking industry was pretty much finished with him. By the early 1990s he had burned through his portion of his father Fred’s fortune with a series of reckless business decisions. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times. When would-be borrowers repeatedly file for protection from their creditors, they become poison to most major lenders and, according to financial experts interviewed for this story, such was Trump’s reputation in the U.S. financial industry at that juncture.
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For the rest of the ’90s a chastened Trump launched little in the way of major new business ventures (with a few exceptions, such as the Trump World Tower across from the United Nations, which began construction in 1999 and was financed by two German lenders, Deutsche Bank and Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank). “He took about 10 years off, and really sort of licked his wounds and tried to recover,” D’Antonio said. As late as 2003, Trump was in such desperate financial trouble that at a meeting with his siblings following his father’s death he pressed them to hurriedly sell his father’s estate off, against the late Fred Trump’s wishes, the New York Times reported in an investigation of Trump family finances in October. And his businesses kept failing: In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy with $1.8 billion dollars of debt.
But Trump eventually made a comeback, and according to several sources with knowledge of Trump’s business, foreign money played a large role in reviving his fortunes, in particular investment by wealthy people from Russia and the former Soviet republics. This conclusion is buttressed by a growing body of evidence amassed by news organizations, as well as what is reportedly being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Southern District of New York. It is a conclusion that even Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has appeared to confirm, saying in 2008—after the Trump Organization was prospering again—that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
Trump’s former longtime architect, Alan Lapidus, echoed this view in an interview with FP this month. Lapidus said that based on what he knew from the internal workings of the organization, in the aftermath of Trump’s earlier financial troubles “he could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he’s acknowledged.”
The overseas money came initially in the form of new real-estate partnerships and the purchase of numerous Trump condos, said a former real-estate partner of Trump’s who witnessed the transformation of those years and later soured on Trump. “I think part of it was he was toxic to the banks. I think he also probably learned that personal guarantees [on loans] weren’t a brilliant idea either,” said the former business associate, who would speak to FP only on condition of anonymity. “So he was saying to himself, ‘What else could I do in the world? I’ll just convince people to buy my brand.’ And the only people who were willing to buy it were tasteless Russians, people who like the absurd, ostentatious gold-leaf lifestyle he has. You’re not going to sell that brand to blue bloods in Greenwich, Connecticut.”
Or as another Trump biographer, Gwenda Blair, put it: “Trump was on the Titanic heading down. Everyone’s drowning around him. … Suddenly he gets saved. It’s almost like a spaceship landed right next to where he was in the water.”
All this history helps put into context some recent developments in the investigations by Mueller and the Southern District of New York, which have focused on supposed Trump collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. It may have seemed odd at first that during the presidential campaign the people in Trump’s orbit—including Trump’s son, daughter, and son-in-law—were contacted by at least 14 Russians, according to information emerging from the federal investigations. Or that in November 2015, according to a sentencing memo published recently, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was approached by a Russian who offered “political synergy” between the Trump campaign and Russia (adding that a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would have “phenomenal” impact “not only in political but in a business dimension as well”).
But in fact at least some of these encounters appear to have sprung from business contacts Trump had developed over nearly two decades.
According to Trump’s former real-estate partner and other sources who are familiar with the internal workings of the Trump Organization, his post-’90s revival may have really begun in the early 2000s with the Bayrock Group, which rented offices two floors down from Trump’s in Trump Tower. Bayrock was run by two investors who would help to change Trump’s trajectory: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on seemingly bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.
With Bayrock’s help, Trump began his broad transformation from a builder to a brander. He reinvented himself and his business model—going from being a force in real estate to a nearly bankrupt but brazen self-promoter who had mainly his name to sell. In lieu of the big banks, Bayrock helped to bring Trump back into real estate by supplying him with the equity stake he needed to entice new lenders for big projects, according to a former Bayrock official. The biggest of those projects was the Trump SoHo, the troubled 46-story condominium and hotel that has been a target of lawsuits since it opened in 2010 and is reportedly being investigated by Mueller over whether it was financed partly by Russian money. That deal gave Trump 18 percent of the equity just for licensing his name. (In addition to Bayrock, the other partner was the Sapir family from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.)
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment for this article. But in a deposition related to Trump SoHo litigation, Trump said he was drawn to Bayrock because he was impressed with Kazakh-born Arif’s connections, and that Arif had brought potential Russian investors to meet him. “Bayrock knew the people, knew the investors,” Trump said.
By the time he ran for president, Trump had been enmeshed in this mysterious overseas flow of capital—which various investigators believe could have included money launderers from Russia and former Soviet republics who bought up dozens of his condos—for a decade and a half. And Felix Sater was pitching Cohen on a Moscow deal as recently as mid-2016—as Trump was clinching the Republican nomination, according to a sentencing memo recently unveiled by the Mueller probe.
As a result, some recent reports indicate that federal and congressional investigators are now focused on the Trump Organization as much as the president himself in probing alleged Russian influence. This is especially true of Democratic House members getting set to take over key committees in January. According to two Democratic staffers involved in Trump probes who spoke to FP on condition of anonymity, Democratic Senate staffers plan to work with their House colleagues—who will have subpoena power—in investigating the president’s business dealings going back to the Bayrock-Trump partnership and Trump’s other overseas sources of investment. They say another primary focus will be the Trump Organization’s more recent all-cash purchases overseas, “largely of golf courses,” in order to probe whether some of that investment may have involved money laundering.
“Our broader concern is the extent to which the Trump Organization has received an influx of foreign sources of money over the years, and if that continues to compromise the president,” said one Capitol Hill staffer. He added that this wouldn’t be an issue if Trump had followed precedent and divested himself of his business holdings, as previous presidents have.
It remains unclear whether Trump’s policies have been influenced by these past—and in some cases ongoing—business associations, or by the president’s awareness that Russian and other foreign capital helped revive his business career. But one question Mueller must certainly be probing is whether the relationships made Trump beholden to certain Russians—and whether the outreach by Russian business people to Trump and his organization reflects Kremlin tradecraft for developing intelligence assets and compromising them.
“Russian efforts either to recruit somebody as an asset or effectively coerce them into becoming an asset historically typically rely on compromise of either a financial nature or a sexual nature,” said David Kris, a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “Or some other nature by which they can gain leverage. Either induce somebody voluntarily to cooperate or blackmail them.” Kris added that “there is long history of that kind of activity, including in the context of presidential elections,” going back to Soviet efforts to offer money to Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 election.
Ever since his presidential campaign, Trump’s critics in Washington have questioned his unwillingness to criticize Putin directly and his push to ease sanctions against Russia. Most recently, the U.S. president appeared to blame both sides for Putin’s violent intervention in Ukraine, when Russian ships fired upon, wounded, and seized Ukrainian sailors, saying: “Either way, we don’t like what’s happening, and hopefully, it will get straightened out.” Trump at first called off a meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit at the end of last month, then held one anyway. And he recently appeared to let both Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman off the hook for political murder, which both leaders are accused of. “The world is a very dangerous place!” Trump said.
Trump, of course, is not known for a sense of loyalty to anyone who has helped him in the past—as Cohen, who was just sentenced to 36 months in prison, has recently discovered. And Trump’s standard response to accusations that, as a businessman, he occasionally dealt with unsavory partners is that what mattered was their money was good. If a buyer overpaid, all the better. As he told a campaign rally in 2015: “Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them?”
Some New York real-estate experts, like Joel Ross, a long-established investment banker in Manhattan, say this devil-may-care attitude is typical in the industry, and critics are overreacting in tying Trump’s business ties to his presidential policies. Though Ross says he’s “no fan” of Trump, he added that the key point is that the big 2016 Moscow negotiation went nowhere, and there is no evidence that Trump is currently basing his policies toward Russia on his business dealings. In truth, Trump’s several forays into Russia in search of possible deals is standard in big-time real estate, Ross said. And the majority of negotiations don’t pan out.
“As to any other deals, what they may earn on a management contract is not enough to get him to change foreign policy,” Ross wrote FP in an email. “This is not as serious an issue as you seem to imagine. You guys in the media have no understanding of how real estate works and how unserious these things are. Trump is not much different than most of the NY real estate developers. Obnoxious, liar, screws people, impossible to trust, etc, but in NY real estate–not unusual.”
Ross added: “None of any of that is proof of anything other than Trump was considered a bad guy who nobody trusted to do business with in the US banking world. That is far from any proof he did anything wrong as to collusion which there was none.”
What there was, at the very least, was a lot of money. The Trump-Bayrock partnership took off especially after Trump launched his reality-TV show, “The Apprentice,” in early 2004. The show featured contestants who competed for the prize of a contract to promote one of Trump’s properties. His fame escalated worldwide, and Bayrock turned that into a marketing bonanza. Real-estate experts in New York with knowledge of Trump’s career contend that Bayrock was a critical bridge back to success for him, tiding him over until the mid-2000s. That’s when lending standards had so deteriorated—during the mortgage-backed securities mania—that some U.S. lenders had become willing to deal with Trump again. Bayrock sold the debt-ridden mogul on the idea of launching an international chain of Trump-branded, mixed-use hotels and condominiums and was willing to supply him with an equity stake—the 10 percent or so any developer needs to secure a loan, the former Trump partner told FP. “Bayrock was the loyal soldier bringing him deals,” he said.
This was the period in which the Trump Organization began to grow into a global trademarking factory—he called many of his assets “Trump Marks” on his 2015 Federal Election Commission disclosure form—largely prospering on royalties, fees and rents from buildings, golf courses, and other properties and products in which Trump had little equity other than putting his name on them. As the election disclosure form revealed, among the approximately 500 corporations, trusts, limited liability companies, and other associations the Trumps hold positions in are numerous “Trump Marks” entities, from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Dubai to Toronto to Qatar. The former real-estate magnate became largely a collector of branding fees.
Bayrock’s money sometimes came from sources outside Russia and the former Soviet republics, according to one of the firm’s former employees, including an obscure Icelandic investment bank called the FL Group. But those roads too sometimes appeared to lead back to Russia. In 2017, real-estate developer Jody Kriss, whom Sater hired to help him run Bayrock, told Timothy O’Brien of Bloombergwhat happened after an Icelandic competitor of the FL Group contacted him to invest in Bayrock. When Kriss brought that offer to Sater and Arif, they told him that the money behind Icelandic banks “was mostly Russian”—and they had to take FL’s funds for deals with Trump because FL was “closer to [Vladimir] Putin,” according to O’Brien. (Kriss confirmed this account to FP.) In 2007, the FL Groupinvested $50 million in several Bayrock projects linked to Trump, including a development in Whitestone, Queens, and Trump SoHo in Manhattan. FL Group dissolved in 2014.
Kriss told Bloomberg’s O’Brien that he eventually left Bayrock because he became convinced that the firm was a front for money laundering.
Precisely where Bayrock’s other money came from remains unclear. Some of it was allegedly taken out of the Arif family chromium business in Kazakhstan, according to a lawsuit that Kriss later filed against Bayrock, which was settled for an undisclosed amount. The little development firm in Trump Tower managed to somehow locate funds “month after month, for two years, in fact more frequently, whenever Bayrock ran out of cash,” the lawsuit said. Bayrock’s owners would “magically show up with a wire from ‘somewhere’ just large enough to keep the company going.” (A spokeswoman for Bayrock, Angela Pruitt, said the company declined to comment.)
According to Trump’s 2015 Federal Election Commission disclosure form, one major bank that did continue to lend money to the Trump Organization—in the hundreds of millions of dollars—was Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest. It was the lead lender on one of the few new real-estate developments that Trump did manage to build after his debt experience of the ’90s: the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, which opened in 2008. But Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas later sued Trump for nonpayment of loans on the project (Trump countersued, and the matter was settled). And here too Russian money may have been involved, though it may not have gone directly to Trump: Federal investigators are looking into whether Deutsche Bank sold some of Trump’s mortgage or other loans to Vnesheconombank, the Russian state development bank, or other Russian banks, Reuters reported in late 2017. Since the 2000s, Deutsche Bank has worked closely with Russian state institutions, and in 2015 the bank’s Russian arm was implicated in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme; Deutsche Bank later signed a consent order and agreed to pay $630 million in fines.
Democratic Party lawmakers who are set to take over the House Select Committee on Intelligence in January are expected to investigate the relationship between Trump and Deutsche Bank, and between the bank and Russia. “There have long been credible allegations as to the use of Trump properties to launder money by Russian oligarchs, criminals, and regime cronies,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the Department of Justice on March 13. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor, said in recent interviews with The New Yorkerand Meet the Press that he planned to issue subpoenas to Deutsche Bank as part of his own committee’s investigation.
“We’re going to be looking at the issue of possible money laundering by the Trump Organization, and Deutsche Bank is one obvious place to start,” he said. A 2017 report by Reuters, citing public documents, interviews and corporate records, also found that at least 63 Russians or people with Russian addresses bought nearly $100 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded Florida luxury buildings.
(In a statement, Deutsche Bank spokesman Troy Gravitt said the bank “takes its legal obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations.” Asked if Mueller had subpoenaed the bank, he declined to comment further.)
Despite these financial connections to Russia, some of which are well documented, Trump and his associates have consistently played down the relationship. “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” Trump tweeted a few days before his inauguration. A month later, when asked whether anyone advising his campaign had contact with Russia, Trump responded: “No. Nobody that I know of. … I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.” And his then spokeswoman Hope Hicks said flatly: “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, even as Trump and his advocates—such as Cohen—were making these claims, Cohen was actively working with Sater to land a big Moscow real-estate deal, federal investigators say. But Trump also claimed to barely know Sater. “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump testified in a video deposition for a civil lawsuit two years ago. “I’m not that familiar with him.” Asked about Sater by the Associated Press in 2015, Trump responded: “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. I’m not that familiar with him.”
Yet that declaration is odd in light of the fact that by those years—the time when Trump’s career was being revived in part by Sater’s Bayrock—the Trump Organization was not very large, and Sater would have been among the few who were working closely with it. “People don’t grasp how small the Trump Organization was. I was really surprised by how few people worked there. Maybe 15 to 20,” said Blair, the Trump biographer, who visited the Trump offices about half a dozen times between the late 1980s and mid-’90s.
In a 2016 interview with ABC News, Trump did allow that he’d done one Russian deal. “The primary thing I did with Russia, I bought a house in Palm Beach at a bankruptcy,” Trump said. “I bought it for about $40 million. I sold it for $100 million to a Russian.” That 2008 sale of a six-acre Palm Beach estate to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev is also reportedly being reviewed by Mueller’s team. At the time, Trump claimed that he was able to flip the house for such a high price in only four years because of renovations. But so huge was the differential in price—especially since by the time Trump sold the property to Rybolovlev in 2008, real-estate prices were plummeting in the financial crisis—that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, has asked for an investigation into the sale.
“That deal delivered so much cash to Trump, it almost has to be seen as a campaign contribution, or the purchase of Donald Trump,” said D’Antonio. Earlier this year the buyer, Rybolovlev, appeared on a U.S. Treasury Department unclassified list of Russian oligarchs, or influential politicians and business professionals who are considered close to Putin.
Even Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have admitted that Russians supplied the Trump Organization much of its capital needs.
In September 2008, at the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in New York, the president’s eldest son, Donald Jr., said: “In terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” In 2014, his younger brother Eric—also an executive in the Trump Organization—told a well-known sports writer, James Dodson, after the latter asked him where the organization was getting the money to buy up so many golf courses: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (In 2017, after the Mueller investigation began, Eric Trump denied making the comment.)
What remains unclear is whether Trump was compromised or being blackmailed by the Russian government. It is also not clear whether businessmen such as Sater were exaggerating their relations with Putin, and what precisely the Russian president’s role might have been in any of these business contacts with Trump. In November 2015 Sater promised Cohen in an email he could get “all of Putin’s team to buy in” on the Moscow deal, and that in turn would highlight Trump’s business skills and get him elected. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”
But apparently those deals didn’t happen. Nor did any meeting with Putin occur, based on the evidence known so far. Still, Lapidus, Trump’s former longtime architect, said he was flummoxed when Trump, first as a candidate and then as president, kept protesting that he knew nothing about Russia and hadn’t tried to do much business there. Lapidus said Trump himself had sent him to Moscow two decades before, in 1997, to survey a property, the Hotel Moskva—which was built into the wall of the Kremlin—to consider purchasing it.
That deal fell through, just as the one in 2016 did. But the issue is not so much what the Trump Organization did in Russia—not much as it turns out, apart from co-owning the Miss Universe contest—but rather what Russians were doing for Trump back in America, Lapidus said. “The quid quo pro has to be in there somewhere,” Lapidus said. “Trump could not get money here. He found Russia, and the Russians gave him a lot of money. He has got to be doing a quid pro quo. It’s just logical. It’s just too much money.”
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‘No collusion’? I managed Russia operations at the CIA. Read between the lines.
Bob Woodward: FBI, CIA Reliance on 'Garbage' Steele Dossier 'Needs ...
National Review-Apr 22, 2019
Bob Woodward: FBI, CIA Reliance on 'Garbage' Steele Dossier 'Needs ... reliance on the infamous Steele dossier “needs to be investigated” in ...
Mueller Report Reveals Trump's Fixation on Targeting Hillary Clinton
The New York Times-17 hours ago
Mr. Trump wanted Mrs. Clinton investigated for her use of a private ... Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I. No charges have arisen from that examination, ...
Barr says spying on Trump campaign 'did occur,' but provides no ...
CNN-Apr 10, 2019
... the "genesis" of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation that began in 2016 of ... "I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal," Barr said, ... who has regularly called for an investigation and, as recently as last week, ...
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In-Depth-New York Times-Apr 9, 2019
In-Depth-New York Times-Apr 9, 2019
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The last time the internal politics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation got deeply entangled in a presidential election was in 1972, and that election wasn't remotely close. Nonetheless, as depicted vividly in Tim Weiner's book, Enemies, the incumbent Nixon Administration was trying to push out J. Edgar Hoover but were terrified to do so directly, in no small part because Nixon was a lot of big talk about being tough but generally choked when it came time to be tough. Hoover and the FBI had been involved in the larval stages of what would generally be summarized one day as "Watergate," including illegal wiretapping, but Hoover balked at any assignment that seemed to compromise his total control over the Bureau.
For example, after Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers and then turned himself in, the Nixon people wanted Hoover to investigate Ellsberg preparatory to an indictment under the Espionage Act. Hoover refused. Nixon got pissed, and sent his own people into the fray to, among other things, break into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. And, at that point, we were pretty much off to the races as regards to what John Mitchell ultimately would call "the White House horrors."
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For the next year, the FBI went into turmoil as Nixon tried to find a way to kick Hoover to the curb. William Sullivan, the FBI official who had helped develop the FBI's COINTELPRO domestic surveillance program, and who, as Weiner reports, was considered at the time to be Hoover's heir apparent, was infuriated at Nixon's meddling and, for the next year, as the White House geared up for re-election, Nixon and Hoover were at knifepoint and the morale in the Bureau tanked badly.
Sullivan and Hoover split when Hoover pulled the plug on COINTELPRO. Hoover was devastated by what he saw as Sullivan's betrayal and he died in May of 1972. Nixon replaced Hoover with a pliable doofus named L. Patrick Gray, who managed to stumble into involvement with the Watergate cover-up. A career FBI man named Mark Felt was passed over in favor of Gray and Felt was not happy. Soon, he was meeting in a parking garage with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post.
Anyway, the recent history of the FBI's involvement with presidential elections is not a promising one.
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It's hard to keep up with what's going on. Clearly, there are FBI sources dissatisfied with decisions made not to keep investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton's e-mails and/or the Clinton Foundation. They're talking. There also seem to be FBI sources who are frustrated with what they see as the too-close-by-half relationship of the Donald Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs up to and including Vladimir Putin. They're talking. And there are people completely outraged by the bungling attempts by FBI director James Comey to involve himself so directly in the presidential election, and they're all talking. The FBI, in short, is out of control.
It's hard to know what to believe. Reputable reporters are producing contradictory information by the bucketful, and there's just enough ambiguity in it to make great ammunition for the completely unprincipled and truthless campaign being run by one-half of this election. This has exacerbated distrust within the electorate and, I would suspect, within the FBI itself, which is not something any of us should like to have going on as a new president enters office.
But we know from sad history that electoral politics is one area from which the FBI, and every other institution of the surveillance state, should stay away—or be kept away—at all possible costs, because they can do more damage by accident than any terrorist can do on purpose. Like it or not, and I don't, the FBI is a player in the 2016 presidential election, and the agendas that are roiling it at the moment are as big a part of it as the electoral college or Scottie Nell Hughes.
This is damage that will last.
Update (6:25 PM): Like I said.
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The Mueller Report is a Sobering Recounting of Foreign Election ...
Foreign Policy Research Institute-Apr 24, 2019
The Mueller Report is a Sobering Recounting of Foreign Election Interference ... Robert Mueller states, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 ... members of the Trump Campaign, always have shown only marginal interest. ... To expand its interference in the 2016 presidential election, facilitate ...
The Mueller Encyclopedia
New York Magazine-Apr 17, 2019
... report on Russian interference in the 2016 election has been made public .... a.k.a. MBZ, who shares Trump's goal of convincing Russia to back away ...... as prosecutors must demonstrate that the defendant knew his action ...
Obstruction Of Justice Could Still Threaten Trump Politically
FiveThirtyEight-Apr 12, 2019
We're still waiting to find out why special counsel Robert Mueller ... with investigations into possible Russia interference in the 2016 election. .... can easily falter if they don't have a convincing case for wrongdoing, which ... like a Republican-controlled Senate that has shown little appetite for crossing Trump.
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