"The Deep State" aka the American Intelligence Community

[Farfromgeneva]

Confirmation bias is every argument you’ve ever made here.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

Absolutely….he uses “woke” more than anyone I have ever met.

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

I know it’s quite evident from time to time.

Confirmation bias was a major finding of the Durham Report.
Ya know. The topic under discussion.
It's Durham giving the benefit of the doubt to the FBI.

“Finding”…

[a fan]

TL/DNR. redundant.

I'll summarize.

You want our leaders-----wait, I forgot. You want Republican leaders to be left alone to do their worst without the FBI investigating.

So that's what you got. You 'win". And what you win is: A Federal official now has to shoot someone in broad daylight with 10-20 cell phones recording the shooting in order to "merit" a FBI investigation.

Have a look at this wikipedia page, OS. Take a good look at just how many Federal felony convictions there were under Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Watergate, IranContra, Abscam, Bribes for military contracts, fraud, House Banking scandal, bribery, MORE bribery.........


Then watch convictions slow to a crawl under Trump, and now under Biden.

Do you think our Federal government is less corrupt in 2023, and this is a coincidence?

Or do you think this is YOUR work, and the work of TeamTinFoilHat who have told the FBI and DoJ: "hands off our Federal Leaders, or we'll come after you".

Nice job, take a bow. Because you let Trump......Donald Trump......do a number on you? Now our leaders are untouchable, and don't have too worry about legal scrutiny anymore.

Way to go. America is a worse place because of you and your team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... _of_crimes

[MDlaxfan76]

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

Absolutely….he uses “woke” more than anyone I have ever met.

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

I know it’s quite evident from time to time.

Confirmation bias was a major finding of the Durham Report.
Ya know. The topic under discussion.
It's Durham giving the benefit of the doubt to the FBI.

“Finding”…

The irony is apparently lost on some.

Lemme spell it out for them.
Durham went into his "investigation" having already declared that the FBI was biased in having opened an investigation in Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of the candidacy of Trump and into the possibility that Trump and his Campaign assisted them and/or accepted their help. Indeed, Trump multiple times declared that Durham would "find" the "crime of the century".

And low and behold, after two failed attempts at prosecutions, his only "finding" was that the FBI had "confirmation bias", having observed indications of such activities that "confirmed" such "bias". (and how many convictions?) No recommendations for major changes in policy, changes in personnel, just a "finding" that "confirmed" Durham's own "bias" from prior to the "investigation".

Hoo boy...

[Farfromgeneva]

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

Absolutely….he uses “woke” more than anyone I have ever met.

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

I know it’s quite evident from time to time.

Confirmation bias was a major finding of the Durham Report.
Ya know. The topic under discussion.
It's Durham giving the benefit of the doubt to the FBI.

“Finding”…

The irony is apparently lost on some.

Lemme spell it out for them.
Durham went into his "investigation" having already declared that the FBI was biased in having opened an investigation in Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of the candidacy of Trump and into the possibility that Trump and his Campaign assisted them and/or accepted their help. Indeed, Trump multiple times declared that Durham would "find" the "crime of the century".

And low and behold, after two failed attempts at prosecutions, his only "finding" was that the FBI had "confirmation bias", having observed indications of such activities that "confirmed" such "bias". (and how many convictions?) No recommendations for major changes in policy, changes in personnel, just a "finding" that "confirmed" Durham's own "bias" from prior to the "investigation".

Hoo boy...

Lost on the tactical minds

[a fan]

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

Absolutely….he uses “woke” more than anyone I have ever met.

Somebody picked up the concept of confirmation bus recently. Must be used by some “news sources” as stalking point lately.

All his language and complaints are picked up from RightWing sources. He's unaware that he does this.

I know it’s quite evident from time to time.

Confirmation bias was a major finding of the Durham Report.
Ya know. The topic under discussion.
It's Durham giving the benefit of the doubt to the FBI.

“Finding”…

The irony is apparently lost on some.

Lemme spell it out for them.
Durham went into his "investigation" having already declared that the FBI was biased in having opened an investigation in Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of the candidacy of Trump and into the possibility that Trump and his Campaign assisted them and/or accepted their help. Indeed, Trump multiple times declared that Durham would "find" the "crime of the century".

And low and behold, after two failed attempts at prosecutions, his only "finding" was that the FBI had "confirmation bias", having observed indications of such activities that "confirmed" such "bias". (and how many convictions?) No recommendations for major changes in policy, changes in personnel, just a "finding" that "confirmed" Durham's own "bias" from prior to the "investigation".

Hoo boy...

Lost on the tactical minds

It's trumpian thinking: accuse the "other side" of what you, yourself are doing. With no sense of irony. And it works on weak minds as well as strong minds with massive partisan blinders on.

OS has been doing this since Trump arrived. It's why he's certain that the FBI was and is giving Hunter a fair shake, even though he can't even tell us what Hunter is being investigated for.....


BTW, the BIGGEST takeaway that Durham gave us is the same idiotic logic the usual suspects used in the early years of their Deep State.

Durham claimed that the FBI should have, I kid you not, investigated more BEFORE they investigated. Dead serious. Read it for yourself.

It's what I mocked in the Deep State days of 2016: FoxNation wanted the FBI to prove people guilty BEFORE they are investigated at all. Neat, right?

It's like talking to infants. Where they think they're making perfect sense, and Mom and Dad are the problem because they can't understand all the babbling and drooling means they want their blanket.

[OCanada]

The Conservatives would have had to invent the phrase if it had not already existed. You don’t have to prove anything when without proof you can just attribute it to the invisible “deep state”. Kind of like the wizard of oz. Hidden behind an invisible curtain pulling levers.

That there are some areas of influence competing to try and influence the course of events seems obvious. That is known as society or government. That they are omnipresent or even consistent does not but if you lose your witnesses or can ‘t produce receipts or whistle blowers turn out not to be what else do you have. You need a “deep state” to point the finger at.

[a fan]

That there are some areas of influence competing to try and influence the course of events seems obvious. That is known as society or government. That they are omnipresent or even consistent does not but if you lose your witnesses or can ‘t produce receipts or whistle blowers turn out not to be what else do you have. You need a “deep state” to point the finger at.

That's what I've been saying: one of the funniest parts of this "Deep State" thing is that they are CONVINCED it formed out of the ether in 2016, and disappeared into the same ether the millisecond Trump left office.

That no one at the FBI----or any other powerful Federal department--------- hated or undermined a Presidential Administration or Congressman in its 200+ years of governance, except when Trump arrived.

It's just all so transparently stupid. I just listed all the felony convictions of dozens and dozens of officials. Most investigated by the FBI. Old Salt and others are telling us that the FBI should leave them alone, and let them do whatever they want.

Well, so long as they're Republicans, naturally.

Nixon must be DYING over the fact that he wasn't smart enough to launch an investigation into the FBI while he was in office. Investigate the investigators. And they'd, shocker, find out the FBI isn't perfect. Wow, what a story.

[Farfromgeneva]

That there are some areas of influence competing to try and influence the course of events seems obvious. That is known as society or government. That they are omnipresent or even consistent does not but if you lose your witnesses or can ‘t produce receipts or whistle blowers turn out not to be what else do you have. You need a “deep state” to point the finger at.

That's what I've been saying: one of the funniest parts of this "Deep State" thing is that they are CONVINCED it formed out of the ether in 2016, and disappeared into the same ether the millisecond Trump left office.

That no one at the FBI----or any other powerful Federal department--------- hated or undermined a Presidential Administration or Congressman in its 200+ years of governance, except when Trump arrived.

It's just all so transparently stupid. I just listed all the felony convictions of dozens and dozens of officials. Most investigated by the FBI. Old Salt and others are telling us that the FBI should leave them alone, and let them do whatever they want.

Well, so long as they're Republicans, naturally.

Nixon must be DYING over the fact that he wasn't smart enough to launch an investigation into the FBI while he was in office. Investigate the investigators. And they'd, shocker, find out the FBI isn't perfect. Wow, what a story.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/23/arch ... ry-is.html

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1978 ... f-itt-pii/

The Discreet Lies of ITT

POLITICS

I appreciate this opportunity to appear before this subcommittee to clarify the facts regarding ITT's concern and actions with respect to the Chilean elections in 1970, and subsequent events.

The basic facts are'

ITT did not take any steps to block the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile...nor did ITT contribute money to any government to block the election of Dr. Allende...

UTTERING THESE WORDS five years ago last Sunday, ITT board chairman Harold S. Geneen began his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations during the last day of hearings on the multinational's activities in Chile in 1970-71. As the 29th and final witness to appear before the five-member subcommittee, Geneen's testimony epitomized the line of defense used by the cor-poration to fend off accusations of wrongdoing and illegal interference with the orderly electora' process of what was then the leading democracy in Latin America. According to the gospel of Geneen and the ten ITT executives summoned before the subcommittee, "all that ITT did was to present its views, concerns, and ideas to various departments of the U.S. Government." These actions, they clamed, were not only ITT's "constitutional right," but were also the conglomerate's "direct obligation to the shareholders and to the employees to attempt to protect their interests."

This argument clearly failed to convince the subcommittee's five senators in 1973 that the corporation behaved properly in Washington or in Santiago during the 1970 presidential elections in Chile. Yet because so little hard evidence turned up during those hearings, the subcommittee had to limit its harshest pronouncement, charging that "the highest officials of ITT sought to engage the CIA in a plan covertly to manipulate the outcome of the Chilean presidential election." Since the Senate subcommittee issued its report on ITT in June 1973, a steadily accumulating mass of evidence has reduced most of the ITT officials' testimony to a well-orchestrated collection of half-truths, dissembling statements and outright lies. At the very least,it is now definitively established that ITT officials covertly funneled some $350,000 in corporate funds to right wing opponents of the late Dr. Allende in the fall of 1970, a fruitless operation carried out with the advice of the CIA.

THE DAMNING IMPLICATIONS of this ITT-CIA conspiracy and other "dirty tricks" of the multinational have claimed some casualties in the intervening years. First came two plea-bargains, one of which featured all the niceties of a slap on the wrist. In November 1976, a former ITT public relations director for Latin America named Harold V. Hendrix pleaded guilty to a one-count charge of failing to testify fully and accurately to the Senate multinationals subcommittee during the ITT hearings. In return for dropping possible perjury charges against Hendrix, the Justice Department required Hendrix to cooperate fully with its fledgling ITT probe in subsequent months. Then came the Carter administration's Agnewesque deal with former CIA director Richard Henns last October 31. Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell at that time claimed "national security" considerations required him to allow the former superspook a nolo contendere plea to two counts of the same misdemeanor charge brought against Hendrix. The price Helms paid for this arrangement added a new dimension to the term "plea-bargain:" a pro forma pledge to cooperate with the Justice Department's ITT Investigation, a suspended two-year sentence, and a $2000 fine (which Helms's former CIA cronies raised at a special dinner on his behalf).

The Justice Department last month concluded its two-year criminal probe of the multinational, filing criminal informations against two high-level ITT executives. On March 20, the government charged senior vice president Edward J. Gerrity and regional public relations manager Robert Berrellez each with six felony counts of perjury, obstruction of government proceedings and making false statements in a government matter. The Justice Department stated that the felony charges stemmed from their false testimony to the Senate subcommittee in 1973. The criminal informations were filed only hours before the five-year statute of limitations on perjury would have lapsed.

But the real significance of the ITT case boils down to the old and increasingly familiar story of the one that got away. Today, Harold Geneen can go about the business of overseeing the globe-spanning empire of ITT that he so carefully built during the last 19 years without a single official cloud of suspicion hovering over him. Bell and the federal attorneys in charge of the ITT probe tersely informed the Washington press corps that Monday afternoon that no criminal charges would be lodged against the board chairman. Despite the many similarities between the testimony of Geneen and his accused flunkies and the factual contradictions of his opening statement and sworn answers in later years, the 67-year-old veteran of daring coups in the world of business and shady meddlings in the field of politics--both at home and abroad--will soon retire from a career unblemished by even one criminal indictment, much less a felony conviction.

WHILE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT predictably declined to explain its decision to let off Geneen, some experts familiar with the ITT case and its operations in Chile questioned the last-minute resolution of the investigation. "It's clear that although Geneen didn't tell the subcommittee what happened, and that he probably lied outright, I would say that he was a lot more careful about his testimony than either Gerrity or Berrellez," Jack Blum, the associate counsel to the Senate multinationals subcommittee in 1973, said in a telephone interview Monday. Presently running a private practice in Washington, Blum extensively participated in the questioning of three ITT principals during the subcommittee's March-April 1973 hearings. "I for one think Geneen should have been prosecuted," Blum said, since "he certainly attended those hearings with the full intention of misleading the subcommittee, obviously in coordination with the other people from ITT who testified. Certainly in that degree, Geneen was part and parcel of the whole thing."

Edward M. Korry, U.S. ambassador to Chile at the time of the ITT-CIA conspiracies to prevent Allende's election as president, said in an interview last month that "the reason why the ITT case was covered up is because it would have exposed the whole network of relationships between various branches of the federal government--the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and successive administrations going back to the Kennedy administration--and the multinationals." They sought to conceal the aid extended by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to U.S.-based multinationals, which were trying to protect their investments in Latin America and elsewhere. 'Korry added that the Carter administration permitted the Justice Department to continue its ITT investigation in order to cloak the whole matter with the department's "mantle of legitimacy."

AS A CONSEQUENCE OF HIS EFFORTS to get out the story about the ITT-CIA plots and the chronology of covert U.S. government action in Chile, Korry has become, in his words, a "non-person" among his former government colleagues. The Justice Department's failure to bring to trial men like Helms and Geneen may speak pointedly to the sincerity of the Carter administration's pledge to an "open" administration. But it should in no way reflect upon the accuracy of Korry's accusations or upon the merits of his crusade to "set the record straight." By demanding a comprehensive Justice Department investigation of his charges two years ago, Korry performed an invaluable service to the American public's right to know. His single-minded dedication to forcing Helms and the ITT principals to provide at least a symbolic accounting for their actions has kept alive the flickering hope that the trials of Messrs. Berrellez and Gerrity will eventually reveal additional details of the sordid machinations in which ITT and this nation's premier intelligence agency engaged.

[old salt]

It's trumpian thinking: accuse the "other side" of what you, yourself are doing. With no sense of irony. And it works on weak minds as well as strong minds with massive partisan blinders on.

Uh huh. Like the Clinton campaign originating the Trump-Russia collusion narrative,
...which CIA Director Brennan reported to Obama when it was starting.

[old salt]

Durham went into his "investigation" having already declared that the FBI was biased in having opened an investigation in Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of the candidacy of Trump and into the possibility that Trump and his Campaign assisted them and/or accepted their help. Indeed, Trump multiple times declared that Durham would "find" the "crime of the century".

And low and behold, after two failed attempts at prosecutions, his only "finding" was that the FBI had "confirmation bias", having observed indications of such activities that "confirmed" such "bias". (and how many convictions?) No recommendations for major changes in policy, changes in personnel, just a "finding" that "confirmed" Durham's own "bias" from prior to the "investigation".

Hoo boy...

Yet AG Garland released Durham's report without comment or modification.

[old salt]

Durham claimed that the FBI should have, I kid you not, investigated more BEFORE they investigated. Dead serious. Read it for yourself.

It's what I mocked in the Deep State days of 2016: FoxNation wanted the FBI to prove people guilty BEFORE they are investigated at all. Neat, right?

It's like talking to infants. Where they think they're making perfect sense, and Mom and Dad are the problem because they can't understand all the babbling and drooling means they want their blanket.

You are thinking like an infant & revealing your ignorance of the process of how a formal investigation is opened & the investigation resources to complete it are committed.

[a fan]

It's trumpian thinking: accuse the "other side" of what you, yourself are doing. With no sense of irony. And it works on weak minds as well as strong minds with massive partisan blinders on.

Uh huh. Like the Clinton campaign originating the Trump-Russia collusion narrative,
...which CIA Director Brennan reported to Obama when it was starting.

That's an Old Salt no-no, remember?

What's the CIA doing "investigating Hillary"? Old Salt say that's bad, and a "weaponization of the CIA to go after Hillary"


You just don't understand that it's your thinking that's the problem. You're upside down on this issue.

I WANT them keeping an eye on Hillary. Why are you unable to digest this????

If you don't want a "Russian Narrative"? Don't hire a guy who worked for Putin, Old Salt. Don't meet Russian spies at TrumpTower.

You can't dance your way out of this. I want BOTH of these ***holes----both Hillary AND Trump, out of my government.


YOU want one but not the other. It's insane you don't get how ridiculous you're being.

[a fan]

Durham claimed that the FBI should have, I kid you not, investigated more BEFORE they investigated. Dead serious. Read it for yourself.

It's what I mocked in the Deep State days of 2016: FoxNation wanted the FBI to prove people guilty BEFORE they are investigated at all. Neat, right?

It's like talking to infants. Where they think they're making perfect sense, and Mom and Dad are the problem because they can't understand all the babbling and drooling means they want their blanket.

You are thinking like an infant & revealing your ignorance of the process of how a formal investigation is opened & the investigation resources to complete it are committed.

I read the entire thing, thank you.

It's an opinion piece, OS. No rules were broken. No laws were broken. And as YOU KEEP TELLING ME: every case is different.

The FBI didn't report Nixon, OS. That's what you want to go back to. No sale.

[old salt]

Durham claimed that the FBI should have, I kid you not, investigated more BEFORE they investigated. Dead serious. Read it for yourself.

It's what I mocked in the Deep State days of 2016: FoxNation wanted the FBI to prove people guilty BEFORE they are investigated at all. Neat, right?

It's like talking to infants. Where they think they're making perfect sense, and Mom and Dad are the problem because they can't understand all the babbling and drooling means they want their blanket.

You are thinking like an infant & revealing your ignorance of the process of how a formal investigation is opened & the investigation resources to complete it are committed.

I read the entire thing, thank you.

It's an opinion piece, OS. No rules were broken. No laws were broken. And as YOU KEEP TELLING ME: every case is different.

The FBI didn't report Nixon, OS. That's what you want to go back to. No sale.

Read this analysis, quoting the report.

https://www.racket.news/p/damn-thats-th ... -sucks-the

Eight Takeaways From the Durham Report
Susan Schmidt examines the highlights and lowlights of the new Special Counsel report on Trump-Russia
SUSAN SCHMIDT, MAY 16, 2023

1. There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.

From the report:

It is the Office's assessment that the FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia. Similarly, the FBI Inspection Division Report says that the investigators “repeatedly ignore[d] or explain[ed] away evidence contrary to the theory the Trump campaign... had conspired with Russia... It appeared... there was a pattern of assuming nefarious intent.” An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.

The entirety of the evidence the FBI used to launch its investigation of the Trump campaign is contained in what came to be known as “Paragraph Five,” because it ended up in that spot in a FISA warrant application on Trump volunteer Carter Page. The information in Paragraph Five came from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and was derived from an interaction he had at a London wine bar with young Trump foreign policy volunteer George Papadopoulos, ostensibly concerning Russia.

Australian diplomats told Durham that the impetus for passing the Paragraph Five info to the U.S. government in late July 2016 was the release of hacked DNC emails by Wikileaks. The entire case came down to an abstract of a diplomatic cable, quoted here in full:

Mr. Papadopoulos was, unsurprisingly, confident that Mr. Trump could win the election. He commented that the Clintons had “a lot of baggage” and suggested the Trump team had plenty of material to use in its campaign. He also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton and President Obama. It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of sic through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump's team reacted to the offer.

On the strength of that tiny bit of information, the FBI opened full investigations into four Trump presidential campaign aides, seeking to determine whether they were “witting or and/or coordinating activities with the government of Russia.”

2. “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”

As soon as the FBI received Paragraph Five, Counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok and a supervisory agent rushed to London, where they met with an FBI legal attaché (UKALAT) and interviewed diplomats at the Australian High Commission. In a taxi on the way to the interviews, Strzok reportedly said, “There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground,” as the attaché later told the FBI’s inspection division.

One of the Australian diplomats told the FBI team that “the Paragraph Five information was written in an intentionally vague way because of what Papadopoulos did and did not say,” and, because of their uncertainty about what to make of it. The report says Downer told the FBI that Papadopoulos “simply stated, ‘The Russians have information…’ He made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance.”

British intelligence officials, the FBI attaché said, “could not believe the Papadopoulos bar conversation was all there was.”

3. “It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”

A message exchange on August 11, 2016 between the attaché and the supervisory agent shows the Americans were as skeptical as the British.

UKALAT-1: Dude, are we telling them [British Intelligence Service-I] everything we know, or is there more to this?

Supervisory Special Agent-1: That’s all we have.

Supervisory Special Agent-I: not holding anything back

UKALAT-1: Damn that’s thin

Supervisory Special Agent-I: I know

Supervisory Special Agent-I: it sucks

4. The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began

According to Durham, the senior FBI officials who ordered the probe did not look at the Bureau’s intelligence databases, or consult its experienced Russia analysts, who could have told them they had seen no information about Donald Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials.

Nor did they seek such information about Trump and Russia from the CIA, the NSA or the State Department.

“Neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” when the investigation began, the report said.

Further, the FBI opened a full-scale investigation “without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information.”

5. Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.

Declassified FBI documents from the period surrounding publication of two influential New York Times articles include Strzok’s annotated refutations of the Times stories, which cited as sources “four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” Strzok wrote that there was no information “indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials.”

Durham’s report disputed the Times accounts that saying US law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted communications of Trump associates and campaign officials showing repeated contacts with “senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election”; that the intercepted communications had been captured by the NSA; and that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been heard on intercepted calls. The Times has repeatedly said it stands by those stories, including as recently as February of this year when former Times reporter Jeff Gerth wrote about Strzok’s rebuttal of that reporting in the Columbia Journalism Review.

6. FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.

Getting a bead on Page was “a top priority for the director,” one intelligence agent said. The attorney who prepared the first of four FISA applications on Page “recalled being constantly pressured to move forward by FBI management.” The report cites Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in stating that McCabe and Comey were agitating for lawyers to complete the Page FISA. McCabe told interviewers that, “Comey repeatedly asked him ‘Where is the FISA, where is the FISA? What’s the status… with the Page FISA?”

The FISA was found by the IG to be deeply flawed, riddled with false information and errors. Comey declined to be interviewed by the Durham team.

7. At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.

These tapes were in the possession of Crossfire Hurricane investigators, who discounted their denials and ignored exculpatory information they provided in seeking FISA warrants. From the report:

The FBI chose to adopt an interpretation of Papadopoulos's denials of any knowledge of the Trump campaign's involvement with the Russians in connection with the DNC computer intrusion and subsequent publication of certain DNC emails as being “weird,” “rote,” “canned,” and “rehearsed.”

The Bureau ignored assertions by Papadopoulos that assistance from the Russians would be “illegal,” and that “espionage is treason.” Agents were so determined to elicit incriminating comments from Papadopoulos that they pressed one of his friends into making 23 separate recordings of him, challenging him with “approximately 200 prompts or baited statements which elicited approximately 174 clearly exculpatory statements.” None of this information ever reached either the FISA court or the news media.

8. Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”

In late July, 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies “obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis” alleging Hillary Clinton approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Trump, by “tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Then-CIA Director John Brennan thought the information was important enough to brief the President, Vice President, Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI director and other senior officials. On September 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to Comey and Peter Strzok, but the two have said they don’t recall hearing about it. Numerous others at FBI were informed about it, the report said.

The report concludes the FBI:

Failed to act on what should have been—when combined with other incontrovertible facts—a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.

The report notes in detail how false information intended to damage Trump – the Steele Dossier and the Alfa Bank claims – was provided to the FBI by people tied to the Clinton campaign. Had the FBI investigated what Durham termed the “Clinton intelligence plan” as it pursued its “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, it “would have increased the likelihood of alternative analytical hypotheses and reduced the risk of reputational damage both to the targets of the investigation as well as, ultimately, to the FBI.”

Durham added that if the FBI looked into the “Intelligence Plan,” it might at least have cast a critical eye on the phony evidence it was gathering in Crossfire Hurricane, and/or questioned whether it was “part of a political effort to smear a political opponent and to use the resources of the federal government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support of a political objective.”

Both Clinton campaign Chairperson, John Podesta and Senior Policy Advisor Jake Sullivan called the information “ridiculous,” but the failure to investigate it in real time had a lasting impact.

[a fan]

It is the Office's assessment

I did read it. Did you? This part, in particular? It's an opinion piece.

Any referrals to the DoJ? Any laws broken? No, right? So guess what? I don't care. Not even a little.

I want the FBI all over our people. Doubly so when guys like you look the other way because of your stupid party.

You lecture the forum about classified info. and document, but when we point out that Kushner and his little R was rejected for clearance?

You didn't care. You don't care now.

But sure, you're upset about the FBI.

Personally? I wish we could go back and do it all over again. I'll know to not listen to your feigned concern about honesty in Government, knowing all you care about is your little R. And I will CHEER every leak, and every slight you perceive, knowing you wouldn't say boo if Hillary was under their investigation.


Show me your 1,000 posts complaining about Hunter, OS. Your "show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" is nowhere to be found on that.

Crickets. But sure. Deep State.

[old salt]

It's trumpian thinking: accuse the "other side" of what you, yourself are doing. With no sense of irony. And it works on weak minds as well as strong minds with massive partisan blinders on.

Uh huh. Like the Clinton campaign originating the Trump-Russia collusion narrative,
...which CIA Director Brennan reported to Obama when it was starting.

That's an Old Salt no-no, remember?

What's the CIA doing "investigating Hillary"? Old Salt say that's bad, and a "weaponization of the CIA to go after Hillary"

The FBI reluctantly opened MYE based upon a referral by the IC IG.
The FBI eagerly opened CH based upon :
unconfirmed London wine bar gossip & confirmation bias of the Clinton campaign-Fusion GPS-Steele disinformation op/campaign dirty trick.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... estigated/

Tale of two FBI cases: Clinton got warned, Trump got investigated
BY JAMES CASEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/26/20

A new release of documents by the Senate Judiciary Committee continues to highlight the wide gulf that existed in how the FBI, and then the Mueller Team, worked two significant investigations.

“Mid-Year Exam” was the codename for the investigation into Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server; “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename of the FBI’s look at Russian collusion by four subjects in the 2016 election, which became the Mueller investigation. It is beyond debate that these investigations were handled differently. What has not yet been concluded — and we may see if U.S. Attorney John Durham’s probe into Crossfire Hurricane sheds any new light — is the motive for why this was so.

The FBI is aggressive and tenacious by nature. Leaving no stone unturned in an investigation is a hallmark of FBI work because, more often than not, the bureau has the resources to throw at any investigation it pursues. Mid-Year Exam was referred to the FBI by the intelligence community’s inspector general (IG) because the potential crimes of mishandling classified information and/or espionage fell under the FBI’s mandate. Clinton’s presidential candidacy put the FBI in the untenable position of being afraid that, no matter what it did, it could look political.

The FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) engaged in a series of un-FBI-like tactics during the investigation. Among those was granting immunity to six people in a case in which nobody was prosecuted — unheard of in the FBI’s 112-year history. After Congress sent out preservation letters about potential evidence, a computer hard-drive was destroyed by a company hosting Clinton’s servers, without any legal repercussion. Numerous individuals were found to have lied to the FBI during initial interviews but were allowed to clean up their statements months later — very much unlike what happened in Crossfire Hurricane. The chief witness (if not the actual subject) of Mid-Year Exam, Hillary Clinton, was interviewed with a cadre of her attorneys in the room — including her chief of staff, herself a witness if not a potential subject of the investigation.

By contrast, the FBI and Team Mueller played hardball in Crossfire Hurricane, except when they decided not to seize the Democratic National Committee computer servers alleged to have been hacked by Russian intelligence. Although no collusion was discovered, witnesses were threatened with or prosecuted for process crimes. Volume II of the Mueller Report is a law school case-study on obstruction of justice and the executive branch resulting in no prosecution.

But perhaps no area highlights the difference in how these two cases were handled than the way the FBI approached the principals when it perceived a counterintelligence threat.

We learned in this week’s Senate document release that, in 2015, the FBI was concerned about campaign contributions from a foreign government to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Clinton Foundation. In March 2015, FBI headquarters ordered one of its field offices (likely New York) to defensively brief Mrs. Clinton about this; in October 2015, FBI headquarters also briefed several of Clinton’s attorneys about the threat. This briefing included five “specific examples of issues known to be of importance to the foreign government,” all redacted from the Senate report.

Numerous exchanges between the field office and FBI headquarters were highlighted, concerning the field office’s request to institute a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against a target related to the campaign contributions. In April 2015, the head of the field office emailed then-FBI Director James Comey, inquiring about the months of foot-dragging and saying it was critical the FISA be approved before Clinton announced her presidential candidacy. The nature of that target, or whether the FISA request was approved, is not known.

By contrast, the FBI knew of an alleged threat to the Trump campaign by at least July 31, 2016, when Crossfire Hurricane began. The FBI says its team did not learn about the now-discredited Steele dossier until September 2016 even though its author, Christopher Steele, briefed an FBI agent about his concerns on July 5 in London. Then-Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok traveled to London at the end of July to interview Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat whose conversations with Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos allegedly predicated Crossfire Hurricane. According to the DOJ’s inspector general, the FBI knew the identity of Steele’s primary — and only — source in October 2016, yet failed to interview him until January 2017, after the election. During this six-month period, nobody from the Trump campaign or transition team was given a defensive briefing specific to Crossfire Hurricane.

When the FBI twice briefed Trump, we now know both were handled as intelligence-gathering operations, not actual briefings. An agent gave Trump a generic briefing about how to protect himself from threats on Aug. 17, 2016 — but wrote it up with his own observations about Trump and his then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in a communication to the Crossfire Hurricane file. When Comey briefed Trump on Jan. 6, 2017, it was exclusively on the salacious portions of the Steele dossier, not on any potential threats from the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Four days later, Buzzfeed published the entire dossier, throwing the Trump transition into a tizzy.

Days later, the FBI learned Steele’s sub-source information was no more than “bar talk over beers” — and yet, in several subsequent meetings and calls, Comey never told the president anything about Crossfire Hurricane. The obvious conclusion is that, despite zero evidence, the FBI considered Trump a subject of Crossfire Hurricane.

In thousands of pages of testimony, Senate and House reports, multiple IG reports, and the Mueller Report, no proof exists to substantiate that the four subjects of Crossfire Hurricane were counterintelligence threats. And yet, unlike with his opponent, the FBI did not brief Trump, as a candidate or as president, about what it was doing — which was the equivalent of picking sides.

James M. Casey was a police officer and FBI agent for 32 years. He was assigned to the National Security Council in 2004-2005 and was a section chief in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Section for three years. He retired in 2012 as special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville Division, and is president of FCS Global Advisors, a private investigative and crisis-management firm.

[old salt]

It is the Office's assessment

I did read it. Did you? This part, in particular? It's an opinion piece.

Any referrals to the DoJ? Any laws broken? No, right? So guess what? I don't care. Not even a little.

I want the FBI all over our people. Doubly so when guys like you look the other way because of your stupid party.

You lecture the forum about classified info. and document, but when we point out that Kushner and his little R was rejected for clearance?

You didn't care. You don't care now.

But sure, you're upset about the FBI.

Personally? I wish we could go back and do it all over again. I'll know to not listen to your feigned concern about honesty in Government, knowing all you care about is your little R. And I will CHEER every leak, and every slight you perceive, knowing you wouldn't say boo if Hillary was under their investigation.

Show me your 1,000 posts complaining about Hunter, OS. Your "show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" is nowhere to be found on that.

Crickets. But sure. Deep State.

All cases are the same. One size fits all. Toddler logic.

What classified matl did Kushner mishandle or reveal ? What "need to know" access was he granted ?

His BI read like the CV of a Clinton Foundation fundraiser.

[a fan]

It's trumpian thinking: accuse the "other side" of what you, yourself are doing. With no sense of irony. And it works on weak minds as well as strong minds with massive partisan blinders on.

Uh huh. Like the Clinton campaign originating the Trump-Russia collusion narrative,
...which CIA Director Brennan reported to Obama when it was starting.

That's an Old Salt no-no, remember?

What's the CIA doing "investigating Hillary"? Old Salt say that's bad, and a "weaponization of the CIA to go after Hillary"

The FBI reluctantly opened MYE based upon a referral by the IC IG.
The FBI eagerly opened CH based upon :
unconfirmed London wine bar gossip & confirmation bias of the Clinton campaign-Fusion GPS-Steele disinformation op/campaign dirty trick.

That's not the CIA. What's the CIA doing investigating Hillary, Old Salt? What's the probable cause? Did Hillary break a law?

Nope. So tell me, why is ok for Brennan to investigate Hillary, when it's an "Old Salt no-no" to do that? He even sent out a memo on what he alleged. How is it Ok to do that?

I'll wait.

[a fan]

What classified matl did Kushner mishandle or reveal ? What "need to know" access was he granted ?

A new low.

"Who cares"? Is your answer.

Neat. Go vote Republican. That fixes all the problems in your world.