RussiaGate

Conditioning Americans For War With Russia

September 6, 2024 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! Propaganda, Russia, RussiaGate, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

As the drums beat louder and louder about alleged threats from Russia, the Biden administration today blew perilous new life into the debunked and disgraced Russiagate disinformation operation. Russiagate seems too good of a weapon for the Democrats to give up. Its initial appearance, beginning in 2016, dangerously raised tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. But in the midst of today’s escalating crisis in Ukraine, a Russiagate repeat recklessly raises risk to insane heights. Here’s how The New York Times reported it today: Garland testified: “The effort in this case is to affect the preferred outcome of the presidential election. … the Director of National Intelligence has testified that Russia’s preferences have not changed from the preceding election.”

Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit In Journalism

August 8, 2024 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! History, Journalism, RussiaGate

Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets. The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA blamed the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was released two weeks before Trump assumed office. The thoroughly politicized assessment was an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence. Worse, it was consequential in emasculating Trump to prevent him from working for a more decent relationship with Russia.

CrowdStrike Further Tainted By Worldwide Crash

July 20, 2024 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! Computers, Congress, Crowdstrike, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internet, RussiaGate

House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the F.B.I. had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016. The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber crime investigations unit. Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

Russiagate And Gaza

January 31, 2024 Elizabeth Vos, Consortium News. Educate! Ceasefire, Congress, Gaza, Israel, Nancy Pelosi, Palestine, Russia, RussiaGate, US Imperialism

Just a few years ago, the Russiagate narrative dominated the news sphere: anyone who questioned the status quo was labeled a Putin puppet or a Russian bot, including American journalists. In recent months, Israeli officials have similarly labeled anyone and any organization who opposes them as anti-Semitic or Hamas sympathizers, even going so far as to label the International Court of Justice anti-Semitic. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took both narratives a step further over the weekend, calling on the F.B.I. to investigate pro-Palestinian protests for alleged financial ties to Russia. Her statements came in the wake of the ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which stated that there is prima facie evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza though the ruling stopped short of ordering a cessation of Israel’s military actions in the strip.

Leftists Embracing Imperialist Narratives Laid Groundwork For Wave Of Censorship

October 18, 2023 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Censorship, Imperialism, Journalism, Leftists, Media, RussiaGate, US Imperialism

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023, By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik ceased its broadcast. This was not a voluntary decision by the show’s hosts, Sean Blackmon and myself, Jacqueline Luqman. For legal reasons, there is not a lot I can say about the ending of our show and our termination. What I will say is that the ending of our show was a consequence of our commitment to anti-Zionist principles, which we adhered to in our personal organizing and expressed in our work on the show throughout its existence. While we consistently presented our guests with whatever corporate media narrative was spun about a given controversial topic we had invited them to discuss, we understood the power of imperialist propaganda and never legitimized the lies of the US empire and its lackeys and vassal states.

US Prosecution Of Uhuru Activists Threatens ‘First Amendment Exception’

October 18, 2023 Anya Parampil, The Grayzone. Educate! First Amendment, Legal System, Russia, RussiaGate, State Repression, Uhuru 3

Tampa, Florida – Defense attorneys representing three US citizens accused of operating a Russia-directed “malign influence campaign” to “sow discord” in the United States urged Federal Magistrate Judge Anthony E. Porcelli to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) case against their clients this September 28, arguing their continued prosecution threatens to “blow a hole in the 1st Amendment.” “This is a very dangerous case. I have not seen anything like it in 25 years of practicing law. The government is trying to put three of its critics in jail for making political speeches, organizing peaceable rallies and publishing political articles,” Leonard Goodman, an attorney representing one of the defendants, commented to The Grayzone outside the US district courthouse in Tampa, Florida.

No, The Truth About Biden Is Not Democratic

July 28, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Elections, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, RussiaGate, Wikileaks

Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining a light worthy of a night game at Yankee Stadium on the party’s corrupt machinations to destroy Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in the service of the first Goldwater Democrat, the ever-endearing Hillary Clinton. Pause a moment to summon the time. Now recall the following Sunday, July 24, when Robbie Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, appeared back-to-back on the Sunday morning news programs to proclaim that never-named “experts” had never-shown “evidence” that it was the Rrrrrrussians who pilfered the mail and gave it to Julian Assange’s operation.

Russiagate’s Missing Pieces

June 5, 2023 Seymour Hersh, Scheer Post. Educate! Donald Trump, Durham Report, FBI, RussiaGate

The first thing to understand about John Durham is that he was a fearless prosecutor who went after organized crime and put in prison retired and active FBI agents who protected the mob for money or other enticements. One of the agents he stopped had enabled James “Whitey” Bulger Jr., once one of America’s most wanted men, the Winter Hill Gang boss who evaded arrest for sixteen years. In his forty-five years as a state and federal prosecutor in Connecticut and Virginia, Durham worked often and closely with FBI agents, especially on cases that involved violations of federal racketeering statutes.

John Durham And The Burying Of American History

May 24, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Censorship, History, Media, Propaganda, RussiaGate

There are certain things I do not quite get since Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the epically corrupt conduct of Donald Trump’s enemies during the 2016 election campaigns went to Congress last week. Many things, actually. For all the ground Durham covers in his 306–page report, I don’t get why he left a lot of things undone and unexamined, a lot of names unnamed and a lot of conclusions unconcluded after a four-year investigation into the very unfunny fiasco known as Russiagate. And then there are a few things I do get. Chief among these is that, with the already-evident burying of the Durham Report, we now witness the obliteration of a highly significant passage in our national history.

Why The Conspiracy Theory About Trump And Russia Won’t Go Away

May 22, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Media, Russia, RussiaGate, Trump

There is no report, investigation or new revelation, including the recent release of Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” that will implode the myth that Russia was responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Myths are impervious to facts. They fulfill an emotional yearning. They are a short circuit from reality into a world of childish simplicity. Hard and painful questions are avoided. Thought-terminating cliches are spat out to blissfully embrace a willed ignorance. The cynical con the Democratic Party and the FBI carried out to falsely portray Donald Trump as a puppet of the Kremlin worked, and continues to work, because it is what those who detest Trump want to believe.

Durham Report Reveals The Real Threat To ‘Democracy’

May 20, 2023 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democrat Party, Donald Trump, FBI, Politics, RussiaGate

Six years and millions of dollars later, the “Durham report” released on May 15th confirmed once again what a few of us had the nerve to argue before all of the reports and stories that subsequently emerged – that “Russiagate” was the most massive fraud ever perpetrated on the U.S. public by a section of the capitalist rulers and represented a maturing of a form of U.S. neofascism unique to this historical moment. The public may have forgotten that during the Trump Administration U.S. Attorney General Bob Barr assigned John H. Durham as special counsel to review the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. The Durham report, as it is being referred to in the media, corroborated many of the conclusions reached by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in 2019.

How The Press Misled The Public On Russiagate

February 26, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Donald Trump, Media, Russia, RussiaGate, Vladimir Putin

A new four-part investigation for the Columbia Journalism Review by Jeff Gertz examines the role of the media in pushing the “Russiagate” narrative that dominated headlines during the Trump administration. Doubts about the veracity of claims of Russian interference from the FBI and even the CIA were repeatedly ignored and pushed aside by mainstream media outlets in their push to hold the narrative together. Jeff Gertz joins The Chris Hedges Report for a deep dive into the role of the Hillary Clinton campaign and individual press outlets in the media show we’ve come to know as “Russiagate.”

The Chris Hedges Report: Matt Taibbi On Russiagate And Censorship

February 12, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resistance Report Censorship, Disinformation, Media, Russia, RussiaGate

Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, revelations that a Russian disinformation campaign had helped sweep the 45th president to power shook the media and the wider culture. The unfolding drama of the Mueller Report and a Senate investigative panel gripped the nation for the next four years. But now, journalist Matt Taibbi has revealed that the source of many of the claims of ongoing Russian disinformation during the Trump presidency, Hamilton 68, was itself a disinformation operation concocted by former US intelligence officials. Matt Taibbi joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his findings and dissect how legacy media, the public, and even Congress were taken along for the ride in the ‘Russiagate’ saga.

The Victory Of ‘Perception Management’

February 5, 2023 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! CIA, Media, Propaganda, RussiaGate

Joe Lauria: On CN Live! Wednesday night, as we were interviewing journalist Matt Taibbi of Twitter Files fame about the psychological aspects of Russiagate, I thought back to one of Robert Parry’s major revelations for Consortium News: the existence of a C.I.A. perception management program begun during the Reagan administration. It had the aim of selling false stories to the American people to further the interests of the national security state. There had been previous programs of deception run by the C.I.A., including infiltrating the media and the arts. But the Reagan-era program was geared to a post-Vietnam public that had grown dangerously wise to U.S. militarism and official lying. Parry discovered the documents outlining the program while rooting around in the Reagan presidential library archives, and he first wrote about it in CN on June 30, 2008 when he broke the story.

On The Media Of ‘Russiagate’ And Related Fake Stories

February 3, 2023 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Media, Russia, RussiaGate, Twitter

Last week Matt Taibbi, with access to Twitter's internal papers, debunked the fake Hamilton 68 propaganda dashboard that was used to create many stories about alleged Russian disinformation. I had done similar five years earlier but had no access to the original data. There were enough secondary indications to conclude that the dashboard was a sham. Still, have the case made with primary data is a valuable addition. There has been no Russian influence or disinformation campaign. Two days later the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) published a five part longread from an 18 month long investigation into the 'Russigate' drama and on how the media had cooked it up. CJR's editor wrote the intro: No narrative did more to shape Trump’s relations with the press than Russiagate. The story, which included the Steele dossier and the Mueller report among other totemic moments, resulted in Pulitzer Prizes as well as embarrassing retractions and damaged careers. For Trump, the press’s pursuit of the Russia story convinced him that any sort of normal relationship with the press was impossible.For the past year and a half, CJR has been examining the American media’s coverage of Trump and Russia in granular detail, and what it means as the country enters a new political cycle. Investigative reporter Jeff Gerth interviewed dozens of people at the center of the story—editors and reporters, Trump himself, and others in his orbit.

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