Bê bối Nga (Russia-Gate) đang trở thành bê bối FBI (FBI-Gate), sau khi những tin nhắn giữa cựu quan chức FBI Peter Strzok và bạn gái của ông, luật sư FBI Lisa Page bị công bố.
Mặc dù công việc trước đây của ông là trưởng bộ phận phản gián của FBI, Strzok có một ý niệm ngây thơ rằng việc nhắn tin trên điện thoại FBI sẽ không thể bị lộ.
Tuy nhiên, cũng chính nhờ sự “ngây thơ” này mà giờ đây các cơ quan chức năng Mỹ có thể có được những bằng chứng rất rõ ràng về nỗ lực can thiệp của FBI vào cuộc bầu cử Tổng thống năm 2016 theo hướng triệt hạ ứng viên Donald Trump và “nâng đỡ không trong sáng” cho ứng viên Hillary Clinton.
Theo ông McGovern, hiện đã có những bằng chứng cho thấy cộng đồng tình báo Mỹ đang cố gắng phá hoạt quá trình dân chủ của đất nước. “Giờ đây, dường như thế lực đã cố gắng làm đảo lộn kết quả của cuộc bầu cử ở Hoa Kỳ không phải là Nga, mà chính là các quan chức hàng đầu của cộng đồng tình báo Hoa Kỳ, những nhân vật bẩn thỉu thuộc về cái được gọi là Nhà Nước Chìm [Deep State]”, ông McGovern nói.
Nhiều tin nhắn qua lại giữa ông Strzok và bà Page dự kiến sẽ được công bố. Ngoài ra, Tổng Thanh tra Bộ Tư pháp cho biết cũng đang nắm trong tay những tin nhắn gây tổn hại của những người trong đội điều tra Russia-Gate của Công tố viên đặc biệt Robert Mueller.
Bên cạnh việc buộc phải sa thải Strzok và Page, việc công bố các tin nhắn cũng dẫn tới sự kết thúc sự nghiệp của Phó Giám đốc FBI Andrew McCabe, vì nó cho thấy một số kế hoạch can thiệp bầu cử được vạch ra ngay trong văn phòng của ông.
Nhưng điều quan trọng hơn, những tin nhắn đã tiết lộ một chiến dịch kéo dài 18 tháng của FBI để phá hoại ứng cử viên Tổng thống Mỹ Donald Trump, bằng cách sử dụng “hoạt động tình báo điện tử đáng ngờ về pháp lý và hồ sơ bôi nhọ” thiếu những bằng chứng thuyết phục, với sự hỗ trợ từ một “bản đánh giá chuyên môn” của CIA, FBI và NSA, trong đó quy cho Nga là đã can thiệp vào các cuộc bầu cử.
Ngoài ra, FBI cũng sử dụng các xảo thuật để giúp bà Hillary Clinton, kh đó là ứng viên đảng Dân chủ, và các cố vấn thân cận của bà vượt qua những cáo buộc khai man và tiết lộ bí mật quốc gia.
Trớ trêu thay, các tin nhắn Strzok-Page cung cấp một cái gì đó mà cuộc điều tra của Nga đã bị thiếu sót: Bằng chứng trực tiếp về ý định và hành động can thiệp bầu cử. Sau nhiều tháng tìm kiếm “bằng chứng” về sự thông đồng của Nga-Trump nhằm đưa ông Trump vào Nhà Trắng, những gì hiện nay được đưa ra ánh sáng lại là bằng chứng thực tế cho thấy các quan chức cao cấp của chính quyền Obama đã thông đồng với nhau để ngăn chặn ông Trump tiến vào Nhà Trắng.
Peter Strzok là quan chức FBI có nhiều nhiệm vụ liên quan đến cả bà Clinton và ông Trump. Là người đứng đầu cơ quan phản gián của FBI trong quá trình điều tra về việc sử dụng trái phép máy chủ email cá nhân của Hillary Clinton, Strzok đã thay đổi những từ “cẩu thả một cách thô bạo” (có thể dẫn tới việc truy tố pháp lý) đến mức ít nghiêm trọng hơn là “Vô cùng bất cẩn” trong lời nói của Giám đốc FBI James Comey về các hành động của Clinton.
Sự chuyển đổi ngữ nghĩa này đã dọn đường cho Comey kết thúc việc điều tra bê bối email của bà Clinton.
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The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate
January 11, 2018
Special Report: In the Watergate era, liberals warned about U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics, but now Trump-hatred has blinded many of them to this danger becoming real, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.
By Ray McGovern
Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate, thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Ten illustrative texts from their exchange appear at the end of this article.)
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin’s “puppet..”
Despite his former job as chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through “Security 101.” Or perhaps he was busy texting during that class. Girlfriend Page cannot be happy at being misled by his assurance that using office phones would be a secure way to conduct their affair(s).
It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages does incalculably more damage than that.
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State.
More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate.
Besides forcing the removal of Strzok and Page, the text exposures also sounded the death knell for the career of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, in whose office some of the plotting took place and who has already announced his plans to retire soon.
But the main casualty is the FBI’s 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama administration’s Russia-gate intelligence “assessment,” electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets.
Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for “evidence” of Russian-Trump collusion designed to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call “means, motive and opportunity.”
Even more unfortunately for Russia-gate enthusiasts, the FBI lovers’ correspondence provides factual evidence exposing much of the made-up “Resistance” narrative – the contrived storyline that The New York Times and much of the rest of the U.S. mainstream media deemed fit to print with little skepticism and few if any caveats, a scenario about brilliantly devious Russians that not only lacks actual evidence – relying on unverified hearsay and rumor – but doesn’t make sense on its face.
The Russia-gate narrative always hinged on the preposterous notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw years ago what no American political analyst considered even possible, the political ascendancy of Donald Trump. According to the narrative, the fortune-telling Putin then risked creating even worse tensions with a nuclear-armed America that would – by all odds – have been led by a vengeful President Hillary Clinton.
Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly “hacked” Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario.
The Trump Shock
But the shock of Trump’s election and the decision of many never-Trumpers to cast their lot with the Resistance led to a situation in which any prudent skepticism or demand for evidence was swept aside.
So, on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that he said was compiled by “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an “assessment” that Russia and President Putin were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency.
Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking. He wrote at the time: “What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
But the “assessment” served a useful purpose for the never-Trumpers: it applied an official imprimatur on the case for delegitimizing Trump’s election and even raised the long-shot hope that the Electoral College might reverse the outcome and possibly install a compromise candidate, such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the White House. Though the Powell ploy fizzled, the hope of somehow removing Trump from office continued to bubble, fueled by the growing hysteria around Russia-gate.
Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free “assessment” was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian “hack.” Even when that falsehood was belatedly acknowledged, the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the Russian “hack” conclusion. Shane’s blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media’s approved narrative of Russia-gate.
Doubts about the Russian “hack” or dissident suggestions that what we were witnessing was a “soft coup” were scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about the weaknesses of the Russia-gate narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit of the goal of removing Trump from the White House.
It didn’t even seem to matter when new Russia-gate disclosures conflicted with the original narrative that Putin had somehow set Trump up as a Manchurian candidate. All normal journalistic skepticism was jettisoned. It was as if the Russia-gate advocates started with the conclusion that Trump must go and then made the facts fit into that mold, but anyone who noted the violations of normal investigative procedures was dismissed as a “Trump enabler” or a “Moscow stooge.”
The Text Evidence
But then came the FBI text messages, providing documentary evivdence that key FBI officials involved in the Russia-gate investigation were indeed deeply biased and out to get Trump, adding hard proof to Trump’s longstanding lament that he was the subject of a “witch hunt.”
Peter Strzok, who served as a Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, second in command of counterintelligence.
Justified or not, Trump’s feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous — particularly at a time when the most urgent need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of the Resistance’s strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to “get Trump.”
Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment’s storyline that there appears to be no room for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can’t stop stoking the smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump’s impeachment.
Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of the “rule of law” and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the “rule of law” and “pursuit of truth” appear to have been reduced to high-falutin’ phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack of evidence.
Strzok and Page
Peter Strzok (pronounced “struck”) has an interesting pedigree with multiple tasks regarding both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. As the FBI’s chief of counterespionage during the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a personal email server for classified information, Strzok reportedly changed the words “grossly negligent” (which could have triggered legal prosecution) to the far less serious “extremely careless” in FBI Director James Comey’s depiction of Clinton’s actions. This semantic shift cleared the way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton.
Then, as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, Strzok led the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election of 2016. It is a safe bet that he took a strong hand in hand-picking the FBI contingent of analysts that joined “hand-picked” counterparts from CIA and NSA in preparing the evidence-free, Jan. 6, 2017 assessment accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of interfering in the election of 2016.. (Although accepted in Establishment groupthink as revealed truth, that poor excuse for analysis reflected the apogee of intelligence politicization — rivaled only by the fraudulent intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction“ in Iraq 15 years ago.)
In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page text-message exchange and told Mueller.
There is no little irony in the fact that what did in the FBI sweathearts was their visceral disdain for Mr. Trump, their cheerleading-cum-kid-gloves treatment of Mrs. Clinton and her associates, their 1950-ish, James Clapperesque attitude toward Russians as “almost genetically driven” to evil, and their (Strzok/Page) elitist conviction that they know far better what is good for the country than regular American citizens, including those “deplorables” whom Clinton said made up half of Trump’s supporters.
But Strzok/Page had no idea that their hubris, elitism and scheming would be revealed in so tangible a way. Worst of all for them, the very thing that Strzok, in particular, worked so hard to achieve — the sabotaging of Trump and immunization of Mrs. Clinton and her closest advisers is now coming apart at the seams.
