On Monday, President Trump is expected to release the new National Security Strategy for the United States. Will it rein in some of the global adventurism of the Bush and Obama presidencies? Will it correct the gaping disconnect between what the White House says about places like North Korea and what the Secretary of State says? Will the neocons successfully parlay the document into a road-map for more wars? Today's Liberty Report is joined by veteran foreign affairs analyst and former US diplomat Jim Jatras to discuss our hopes and fears for this important document... read on...
Secret police are characteristic of dictatorships, or so goes the conventional thinking on the subject. Police in democracies operate for the most part transparently and within a set of rules and guidelines that limits their ability to gratuitously punish citizens who have done nothing wrong. If a policeman operating under rule-of-law steps out of line, he can be held accountable. That is also conventional thinking.
But what happens when an ostensibly “democratic” police force becomes corrupted and starts doing things that are outside its zone of responsibility, and does so to benefit a political relationship that will in turn protect those who have broken the law under cover of carrying out their official duties? That is the characteristic of what we have been calling a “deep state,” where forces drawn generally from the political class and security services conspire together to control what the public is allowed to know while also manipulating nuisances like elections to make sure that the “correct” outcome emerges.
Indeed, deep state operating in a democracy or republic is far more dangerous that the secret police in a dictatorship. That is because in a system where the forces of the state are all-powerful, nearly everyone expects that what they read and what the government says is all a lie. In a democratic system there is what intelligence officers would refer to as plausible denial, which means that even when the government is behaving very badly much of the public will believe that it is acting honorably because they want to trust that the system works. And when the deep state includes management of the media, many citizens will likewise believe what they are reading or hearing is honest reporting, even when it is not. read on...
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told an audience at the Atlantic Council this week that the US is ready for direct talks with North Korea without preconditions. This seems to be a major shift for the Trump Administration, however the US president's spokesperson insisted US policy has not changed. What's going on here? We have a few theories... read on...
Yesterday, Russian president Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit to Russian troops fighting ISIS in Syria. He announced that since the battle against the extremists was essentially won, he was ordering the bulk of Russian military forces to return to Russia. The US, on the other hand, is claiming that its troops would continue to occupy some 14 military bases on Syrian territory "as long as ISIS wants to fight," in the words of US Defense Secretary James Mattis. So the Russians, who were invited there, are leaving while the Americans, who occupy Syrian territory illegally, are staying. The Iranians are understandably not too pleased with US military bases located so close to their own troops, which are also legally in Syria at the request of the Syrian government. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but in today's Liberty Report we have an idea of how to dial down the tensions... read on...
In a fit of pique in 2016, then-President Barack Obama expelled Russian diplomats from the United States. K. T. McFarland, Michael Flynn's deputy in the Trump transition team, worried that Obama's expulsion of the diplomats was aimed at "boxing Trump in diplomatically," making it impossible for the president to "improve relations with Russia," a promise he ran on. (For her perspicacity, McFarland has since been forced to lawyer-up in fear for her freedom.)
To defuse President Obama's spiteful maneuver, Flynn spoke to Ambassador Kislyak, the upshot of which was that Russia "retaliated" by inviting US diplomats and their families to the Kremlin for a New Year's bash.
Was a crime committed by Flynn in this exchange and subsequent meeting? Not according to the FBI. Laying the cornerstone for the president-elect's promised foreign policy —diplomacy with Russia — is not illegal.
Perversely, however, lying to the US Federal Government’s version of the KGB (the FBI) — which apparently does its own share of lying — is illegal.
An easy way for the government to create criminality where there is none is to make it a crime to lie to its agents, in this case the FBI, which is Deep State Central. The object of creating bogus categories of crime, naturally, is to leverage power over adversaries; to scare them. read on...
Are they really going to audit the Pentagon? That's what the new Comptroller has promised. Will they find the estimated $6 trillion the Pentagon itself admits is missing? Don't hold your breath! More likely it will be another example of the government covering up government malfeasance. Our view on what will likely come from it in today's Liberty Report... read on...
It was the Holy Grail of #TheResistance, the smoking gun they had been desperately searching for, solid evidence that Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from its rightful owner: an email written and sent before WikiLeaks published the DNC material directing Trump’s attention to the data dump and even offering an “encryption key,” whatever that may be, so he could get a jump start on the news cycle.
Collusion! Impeach! Gotcha!
Except it wasn’t true. CNN, which initially reported the story, had the date of the email wrong: a 14 had somehow morphed into a 4. It turns out that CNN had never actually seen the email, but only had it described by “multiple sources.” CBS ran a story supposedly “confirming” the provenance of the incriminating email, and MSNBC followed suit with former Los Angeles Timesnational security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose reputation as a mouthpiece for the CIA is well-earned: Dilanian went on the air endorsing the story and tying it into the by now elaborate conspiracy theories that preoccupy #TheResistance.
Of course it was the purest coincidence that no less than three major media outlets got the Trump email story wrong. Yes, those “multiple sources” sure were busy.
It’s absurd to think that this episode is a case of simply getting it wrong: this was undoubtedly a deliberate lie, planted in the media by the same rogue “intelligence community” that invented Russia-gate. read on...
Politifact delivered a “pants on fire” slam to Fox News on Friday because one of its commentators asserted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation “has become America's secret police.” The FBI has legions of new champions nowadays among liberals and Democrats who hope that its probes will end Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a stunning reversal that may have J. Edgar Hoover spinning in his grave.
In order to boost the credibility of the FBI’s investigations of the Trump team, much of the media is whitewashing the bureau’s entire history. But the FBI has been out of control almost since its birth.
From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to smear innocent people by portraying them as government informants, to sic the IRS on people, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, communist, white racist, antiwar, and black organizations (including Martin Luther King Jr.). read on...
Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case stems from the refusal of Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery, to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The bakery was found guilty of a civil rights violation and ordered to stop refusing to bake and design cakes because they are for same-sex weddings. The bakery was also required to file reports on the steps it takes to comply and whether it turns down any prospective customers. read on...
Almost eighteen months after Obama’s Justice Department and the FBI launched the Russiagate investigation, and seven months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller took the investigation over, the sum total of what it has achieved is as follows:
(1) an indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates which concerns entirely their prior financial dealings, and which makes no reference to the Russiagate collusion allegations;
(2) an indictment for lying to the FBI of George Papadopoulos, the junior volunteer staffer of the Trump campaign, who during the 2016 Presidential election had certain contacts with members of a Moscow based Russian NGO, which he sought to pass off – falsely and unsuccessfully – as more important than they really were, and which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations; and
(3) an indictment for lying to the FBI of Michael Flynn arising from his perfectly legitimate and entirely legal contacts with the Russian ambassador after the 2016 Presidential election, which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations, and which looks as if it was brought about by an act of entrapment. read on...
