Key Undersecretary admits leaking

Note: These are Internet Articles and comments that I find interesting and might choose to reference in writing my essays and blogs.

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Polly Guinn • 8 days ago
Interesting that no one has mentioned Barack Obama's very blatant attempt to overthrow Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel in 2015. Obama sent his own campaign team to Israel , they set up shop in Tel Aviv, and campaigned AGAINST Bibi with the slogan "Anyone but Bibi." Interesting because Israel and Netanyahu are allies. Obama was and is not a friend of the U.S. or Israel.

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Former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Evelyn Farkas, made some stunning admissions during an interview with MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski.

"While discussing the mad scramble by the Obama administration to collect and preserve intelligence on alleged Russian election hacking before Obama left office, it appears that Farkas accidentally implicated the Obama White House in the surveillance of Trump's campaign staff:"

"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to that intelligence."

"Furthermore, Farkas effectively corroborated a New York Times article from early March which cited "Former American officials" as their anonymous source regarding efforts to leak this surveillance on the Trump team to Democrats across Washington DC."

"I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia. So then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew they were trying to also get information to the hill."

"That's why you have the leaking.
In other words; the Obama administration was concerned about spoliation of evidence gathered through various "sources and methods" of surveillance, so a plan was hatched to leak this information to congress - also known as "The Hill."

"...Possible conspiracy to frame Russia for the DNC server breac

To sum up:

"The White House surveilled the Trump campaign and then leaked information to anti-Trump allies in congress (also known as "The Hill").
The Russian hacking claim hinges on a CrowdStrike Report from Dimitri Alperovitch.
Alperovitch was forced to retract statements in a report blaming Russia for hacking Ukrainian military equipment - a failed attempt to smear Putin.
Alperovitch, along with White House Leaker Evelyn Farkas and Ukrainian Oligarch Victor Pinchuk, are all senior fellows on the Atlantic Council - which is vehemently anti-Russia.
(As an aside - Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, sits on the board of a Ukrainian gas company reportedly owned by Pinchuk)

"Is it a stretch to suggest that the CrowdStrike report on the DNC hack was fabricated to pin the DNC hack on Russia?"

"Let's not forget that Dr. Steve Pieczenik - former CIA spookmaster and expert on all things cloak and dagger, completely laid out what's going on:"

"We initiated a counter-coup through Julian Assange, who's been very brave and really quite formidable in his ability to come forth and provide all the necessary emails that we gave to him to undermine Hillary and Bill Clinton."

"In other words, 'white hats' within US intelligence agencies passed the emails to Julian Assange in order to wrestle control of the USA out of the hands of the Clinton cabal of Neocon globalists."

It's also quite likely that Seth Rich, the mysteriously murdered DNC computer expert, assisted this effort. Recall that Wikileaks, while they would not confirm Rich as a source, offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer(s) - and then raised it to $130,000. Simply read between the lines during this Julian Assange interview.

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In a Second Article... with a more biased slant, Ms Farkus spoke with Ezra Klein.

"Evelyn Farkas served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Since leaving office, she’s been raising the alarm that there was more to the strange relationship between Trumpland and Russia than the public knew. Maybe even much more. This week, she was proven right."

"We spoke Wednesday, and the relief was evident in her voice. Far from being concerned over the new revelations, she’s comforted that the ties are finally being made public and broad pressure is finally being applied for more investigations. “I didn’t think it would happen this fast,” she says."

The investigation we need, Farkas continues, is the equivalent of running “a security clearance on the president.” The core question is, “Are you susceptible to blackmail from a foreign entity or individual?”

Farkas, who served as the executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, thinks Congress needs to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate Russia’s ties to the Trump administration and role in the election. In this interview, which is edited for length and clarity, she explains why.

Ezra Klein
What’s your level of alarm after the resignation of Michael Flynn?

Evelyn Farkas
It’s lower than it’s been since the summer, when I was first made aware of all this stuff. I’m like, finally, everybody else sees it! Seriously.

The reason I was so upset last summer was that I was getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here. I was agitated because I knew the Clinton campaign and the world didn’t know. But I didn’t think it would happen this fast. I didn’t think Flynn would survive a year, but I thought it would be most of the year.

The fact that Flynn is gone is constructive from the perspective of US foreign policy. He was getting it wrong on combating terrorism and Russia. So I feel relieved that he will not be whispering his policy prescriptions in the president’s ear.

On the bigger issue, the intelligence community, the bureaucracy, patriotic Americans, and some members of Congress are making it impossible for the White House to sweep whatever they are trying to hide under the rug. And the White House is clearly trying to hide something, or the president would have said, on day one, that he would support the investigations that began under his predecessor.

Ezra Klein
The piece of this I keep coming back to is Trump’s own actions. He’s a guy with very few consistent and clear policy positions, particularly on foreign policy. But he has always had very specific, very hard-line pro-Russian policies — questioning NATO, altering the GOP platform to be friendlier to Russia on Ukraine. And he has surrounded himself with staffers like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, who are unusually closely tied to Russia. That behavior is what, to me, creates a context that makes these contacts between his associates and Russian intelligence really unnerving.

Evelyn Farkas
It is unusual. His personnel choices line up with his words on Russia. This is the only place where we haven’t seen Trump contradict himself, but we still don’t know exactly what his policy will be. We know he’s inclined to be friendly to Putin, to cooperate with Putin, but he hasn’t articulated specifics.

Ezra Klein
Where does an investigation like this go? What do you think the investigators are looking for?

Evelyn Farkas
From the perspective of the intelligence community, the fundamental question is: Are you susceptible to blackmail from a foreign entity or individual? There’s the possibility of blackmail based on giving money or lending money or guaranteeing something. There could be some hanky-panky that opens the president up to blackmail.

It’s like you’re trying to do a security clearance on the president. The intelligence agencies want to make sure there’s no undue foreign influence on him.

Ezra Klein
The question that concerns me is whether these investigations can be sustained. What we’re seeing emerge right now is largely information that has already been gathered. But the heads of the CIA, FBI, and Department of Justice are now people Trump has either appointed or kept on. Republicans in Congress have been reluctant to really investigate. So how does this inquiry maintain momentum?

Evelyn Farkas
Congress is so politicized. For them to be in charge of an investigation is hard. So I think that what you’re going to see happen — unless the Republicans really have a come-to-Jesus moment where they decide they’ll lose in 2018 unless they pull themselves together and really investigate this in a bipartisan fashion — is Democrats and the American people will force it out of Congress and into a bipartisan, independent commission.

Ezra Klein
What would that look like?

Evelyn Farkas
It should be made up of former members of Congress, éminence grises. It could be a Brent Scowcroft, an Eric Cantor. I was the executive director of the Graham-Talent WMD commission. The thing with these commissions is you begin by establishing a baseline of facts, and only then do you proceed with the investigation.

Ezra Klein
But Congress would have to vote to form a commission like that, right? And I doubt Trump would sign that bill.

Evelyn Farkas
It would have to be veto-proof. It would have to be the result of huge outside political pressure. The upside of farming it out, for Republicans, is that the commission allocates the blame. The president can’t say, Paul Ryan, you set me up. Paul Ryan can just say, we were under huge pressure to create the commission, but I didn’t know it would lead to this!