Glem Watergate, det var for amatører, skriver Danield Greenfield i et ‘must read’. Venstrefløjens revolutionære celle beflitter sig ikke med at hyre nogle klodsede cubanere til et natligt indbrud ide politiske modstanderes hovedkvarter, for at installere lytteudstyr. Demokraternes sofistikerede metode til at aflytte deres modstander og siden forsøge at delegitimere ham, er en hyldest til deres intime indsigt i og kontrol over Washingtons magtmaskineri fortæller Greenfield.
De fleste vil nok huske den besynderlige rapport om Donald Trump, som blev lækket af BuzzFeed, efter at CNN havde rapporteret om dens eksistens. De ved, den med Trump og de pissende prostituerede på et hotelværelse i Moskva. Rapporten var oprindeligt bestilt af en republikaner, som ‘opposition research’, men blev efter Trumps nominering til præsidentkandidat overtaget af Demokraterne, der via firmaet Fusion GPS fik en tidligere britisk efterretningsagent Christoffer Steele, til at færdiggøre den. Steele fandt, at Putins regering havde groomet Trump i fem år, med det formål at slå splid i USA som præsident.
The official story is that Steele was a dedicated whistleblower who decided to message an FBI pal for reasons “above party politics” while the Fusion GPS boss was so dedicated that he spent his own money on it after the election. Some figures in the FBI decided to take Steele’s material, offering to pay him for his work and reimbursing some of his expenses. Portions of the dossier were used to justify the FISA eavesdropping on Trump officials and were then rolled into the Mueller investigation.
That is how cells coordinate by breaking up a larger plot into a series of individual actions that just happen to produce the ideal result. Hillary and the DNC hire Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS hires Steele. Steele contacts an FBI pal. The FBI takes up the dossier. And then it’s turned into a pretext for eavesdropping.
But there isn’t supposed to be a link between the Democrats and the eavesdropping.
(…)
The first FISA request was filed in June. It was shot down by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That was the same month we were told that Fusion GPS hired Steele. The second FISA request came through in October. That was the month, Steele did his first media interview with Mother Jones.
Two birds were being killed with one stone.
Obama’s Watergate depended on extensive compartmentalization. The process that led to the eavesdropping on Trump officials and their unmasking at the hands of his officials had to appear as ‘clean’ as possible. Susan Rice and Samantha Power could make unmasking requests to the NSA, but they couldn’t be involved in generating the investigation that led to those requests.
Seeding the media with an astroturf campaign through Fusion GPS created the appearance of an organic push to investigate Trump-Russia ties. Targeting the lefty fringe of the media, Mother Jones, The Guardian, would bake in the narrative among a demographic already prone to conspiracy theories.
(…)
Obama’s eavesdropping on Trump didn’t break the norms. They had already been thoroughly broken. The network that is being uncovered, the interfaces between media insiders, top government officials and private interests, demonstrates why Obama Inc. believed that it could get away with it.
It had gotten away with all its old abuses. There was no reason to doubt it could do so again.
Det var processen selv, der bagtalte Donald K.
