The Deep State Strikes Back
Last night I read at Hans Mahncke's twitter feed about a WaPo article about Kash Patel, Devin Nunes' lead investigator who rose to become a key figure in the intelligence structure during the last months of President Trump's administration--at the NSC, ODNI, and DoD. Patel is being targeted by the Deep State for supposed leaks in an article by Aaron Maté at RealClear Investigations (February 25, 2021): In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files, Nunes Prober Says .
For whatever reason I'm unable to access Twitter this morning (but see below). As I recall, Mahncke focused on the key role that Bluto Barr played in pressuring Trump not to declassify and release the most damaging documents that would disclose the full extent of Deep State criminality--both against Trump but more generally with regard to domestic spying.
Sundance has a fairly comprehensive account of this story--the targeting of Patel and the significance of it--this morning. Like Mahncke, sundance highlights the key role of Barr in this disgraceful episode, which is still playing out. Barr, of course, is one of the ultimate insiders and knew full well that the Deep State would seek revenge against patriots like Patel--as an object lesson to others to back off from any attempts to expose Deep State criminality. This makes his own role all the more reprehensible.
We all know the Deep State national security state--the Intelligence Community (especially CIA, FBI, and NSA) in cooperation with DoJ, DoS, DoD,and other agencies--has been growing in power and influence since World War Two. However, this growth has metastasized in the wake of 9/11 to the point that we see today, defying the authority of the elected president of the United States and cowing the Congress and SCOTUS into submission.
No doubt men like Barr have persuaded themselves of the righteousness of the Deep State enterprise and its necessity in maintaining the American Empire's global dominance. They refuse to recognize that its lawlessness and corruption have undermined that justification and turned the national security state into a force for global lawlessness and corruption--it's a self sustaining process, incapable of reform from within.
This is the reality that we live in today in the United States. There's no point in wringing our hands over this at this blog. Reform can only come from the electoral process--through a truly awakened electorate--and the replacement of those elected representatives who are complicit with men willing to take this bull by the horns. The merit of sundance's summary is simply to show just how stacked the cards were against Trump--virtually everywhere he turned he was faced with a Deep State stone wall, often cleverly disguised as persons willing to help and support Trump's MAGA project. True patriots were carefully marginalized.
For now, the Deep State and key senators and representatives continue to support the national security state in whose service they have labored for decades, under a Uniparty system of governance. This is the meaning of the focus on domestic politics by the Deep State's IC. Julie Kelly covered this aspect yesterday:
Baiden Intelligence Community Breaches Authority to Target the Right
Instead of prioritizing resources to confront the menace posed by America’s foreign adversaries the IC is devoting most of its time to pursuing Americans on the political Right .
While Kelly focuses on the Zhou Baiden regime, we all know this is the culmination of a process that has been metastasizing in the post 9/11 Bush and Obama regimes--Zhou is along for the ride, not in charge. The agency heads who testified before a largely fawning Senate--FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director William Burns, DNI Avril Haines (a John Brennan acolyte)--made no bones about their agenda. The transparent dishonesty and nonsense of their position:
“Domestically, lone actors and small cells with a broad range of ideological motivations pose a greater immediate threat” than ISIS and al-Qaeda, Haines said in her opening statement to the committee. “We see this threat manifest itself in individuals who…commit terrorist acts for ideological goals stemming from other influences, such as racial bias and antigovernment sentiment, which we refer to as Domestic Violent Extremism or DVE. DVE is an increasingly complex threat that is growing in the United States.”
was apparent to all, but only one senator exposed it. Everyone knew that Haines was talking about Trump supporters--Americans who wish to restore our political order to some semblance of adherence to the rule of law and constitutional norms. The threat of violence comes from the Left. But Haines is correct that citizen dissatisfaction with the ruling class stems largely from conservative sector. She's right that the threat presented by conservatives is "an increasingly complex threat that is growing in the United States.” Ignore the code words--peaceful protests morph into "terrorist acts" in her lingo, as all present at the hearing understood; "racial bias" is manifested not on the conservative side but comes virtually exclusively from the Left. But the Left is no more than a tool in the hands of the Deep State.
Who doubts what I've just written? Haines went beyond the code words to spell it out:
“Newer sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some DVEs to try to engage in violence this year,” Haines claimed in her March report.
Dissent is what is being targeted--dissent from Deep State control of the levers of power, behind the facade of constitutional government. To his everlasting credit, Representative Chris Stewart called these Deep State operatives out:
Fortunately, Biden’s intel chiefs did not find the same fawning audience in House Republicans that they found in their Senate Republican counterparts. Note that, while the Deep State is presented as "advancing the Democrats' political agenda," the reality is that this is a Uniparty agenda when it comes to the national security state:
During a separate hearing Thursday morning, Haines, Wray, and NSA Director Paul Nakasone were blasted by GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee for abusing their authority to advance the Democrats’ political agenda. Representative Chris Stewart (R-Utah) asked each official whether he or she was statutorily empowered to spy on Americans with “no foreign nexus”; each answered no.
“It’s very clear the IC has no authority to turn your tools or your resources on American citizens,” Stewart scolded. Holding up a copy of Haines’ report, Stewart asked her if she used intelligence community resources to draft the document in violation of an executive order clearly limiting the IC’s reach to “foreign security threats.”
Haines tap-danced around the question , insisting her office merely received, and did not collect, the domestic-based intelligence. But Stewart was having none of it. “Your analysts helped prepare, you did an analysis on this.” The American people, Stewart warned, “should be deeply troubled” by intelligence agencies turning their sights on Americans.
Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the committee’s ranking member, denounced the group for “characterizing wide swaths of American citizens, particularly Republicans and conservatives, as politically suspect, politically violent, and deserving of government surveillance.” He warned any attempt to abuse their authority will be met with “severe repercussions” by Republican lawmakers and the American people.
But Nunes, once again, will be fighting not just the Democrats, the news media, and the administrative state but members of his own party. As they made clear in their shameful performance this week, Senate Republicans have no plan to protect Americans—many of whom support the GOP—from an unbridled intelligence community hell-bent on exacting revenge for the election of Donald Trump nearly five years ago.
Well, yes--we're all "deeply troubled" and hope that there will be "severe repercussions." Will Election 2020 make a difference? I have no alternative to offer.
In the meantime, returning to sundance, here are some key excerpts that help sketch out the shape of what's going on. First he quotes from the WaPo:
(WaPo ) […] The battle against the deep state continued, meanwhile. Patel kept pushing, along with DNI Ratcliffe, for declassification of memos challenging the origins of the Russia investigation. Nakasone [NSA Director] strongly dissented, and Esper [Sec of Defense] backed him up in an October letter to Ratcliffe “urging that the information not be released due to the harm it would do to national security, including specific harm to the military,” a senior defense official said. Haspel [CIA Director], too, strongly opposed release of the information. Their argument for protecting sensitive information was finally supported by Attorney General William P. Barr , and Trump backed away, a source close to the events said.
“I think there were people within the IC [Intelligence Community], at the heads of certain intelligence agencies, who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn’t look good on the agency itself,” Patel said in the RealClearInvestigations interview. (read more)
Specific harm to the military? That's interesting. But ... let's be clear. Ultimately the buck has to stop somewhere. Trump wasn't perfect. Anyway, sundance then comments on a variety of related subjects. For my purposes the most pointed comments have to do with what I mentioned above--the coordinated defense of the national security state that has arisen--especially--since 9/11. That's the bottom line:
Robert Mueller had two goals as special counsel. Goal #1 was to continue the fraudulen t DOJ/FBI “Stop Trump” operation initiated by James Comey, Andrew McCabe and their crew technically named Crossfire Hurricane. Goal #2 was to bury the illegal action; to create the cover-up needed for everything that took place in the “Stop Trump” operation.
I would maintain that the "stop Trump" operation was not specific to the DoJ/FBI--there must have been a wink and a nod from the Senate and other key DC insiders letting Comey know what was expected of him. The sh*t really hit the fan when Trump--against all odds--won. That's when the cover up kicked into high gear. But that cover-up was not just for the FBI's benefit but for the entire Deep State. However, I do want to point out that, while sundance includes Horowitz in his list, I'm not aware that Horowitz hid anything of substance. And Horowitz wasn't involved with Mueller.
... Everyone in DC knew Mueller’s objective. Every person in every branch of government and every federal agency knew Mueller’s real purpose.
...
The entire system was united against the ‘outsider’ that Trump represented. Every action taken by Rosenstein, Barr, Wray, Bowditch, Boente, Horowitz and the special counsel team itself was done purposefully, because they knew the Mueller/Weissmann objective was to cover-up all of the unlawful schemes previously used against Trump.
Generally people accept that Mueller Inc was in place to target Trump. However, the lesser admitted reality is that Mueller was in place to cover for the branches, agencies and institutions that were part of the originating targeting.
...
Everyone knew.
That list of everyone includes: Bill Barr, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Susan Rice, Sally Yates, Loretta Lynch, Mitch McConnell, every member of the Senate intel committee; every member of the House intel committee… and yes, including John Durham and every member of every DOJ office everywhere.
The legislative branch knew. The judicial branch knew. The executive branch knew. The FISA court knew… All of the insiders knew the Mueller probe was one big vacuum to suck up all of the evidence that would have exposed a corrupt system to We The People.
They did all of this because the scale of the originating scandal was so severe it would be almost impossible for our nation to cope with the consequences. That fearful knowledge is also what’s behind the reality we are currently seeing with thousands of National Guard troops guarding Washington DC…. just in case. Another systemic contingency.
FWIW, my guess is that Barr took on the AG job as a way for the establishment to offer Trump some needed expertise--if he would play ball. Trump didn't play ball and Barr undermined him, slow walking the investigations. Reread the above and ask yourself what you really expect from Durham.
Meanwhile, Twitter seems to be working again:
This is so unbelievably infuriating. When Kash went on @aaronjmate 's show a while back, he was extremely careful not to reveal anything classified. It was frustrating to watch, knowing that Schiff and Swalwell would never be this guarded. Yet it's Patel who is being targeted. https://t.co/GGYTAXbBxq
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) April 17, 2021
.@IgnatiusPost has new details on the standoff over declassifying key Russiagate documents that Patel & I discussed in our interview. Patel & colleagues wanted to release more docs that showed "significant tradecraft failings." Per Ignatius, AG Barr *opposed* declassification. pic.twitter.com/cZMKpF1TmD
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 16, 2021
Just to stress that this could be political retaliation for Patel exposing US intelligence misconduct: "the investigation resulted from a complaint made this year by an intelligence agency."
And now someone is leaking that, i.e. doing what they suggest Patel may have done. pic.twitter.com/Z22mKJwRGE
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 16, 2021
And life goes on in the Imperial City on the Potomac:
Victoria Nuland skates through Senate confirmation hearing without being asked about her role in the Steele dossier saga.
Republicans didn't even ask her about it. https://t.co/JqeK8E8q71
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 16, 2021
And Barr is left to face his own disgrace--if he has a conscience. He was in a position to make a difference. He chose not to.