By Stephen F. Cohen
Information Clearing House
Monday, July 29, 2019
William Barr, a two-time attorney general who served at the CIA
in the 1970s, would seem to be an ultimate Washington insider.
According to his Wikipedia biography, he has—or he had—“a sterling
reputation” both among Republicans and Democrats.
That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into
the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I, too, have explored.
As Barr explained, “What we’re looking at is: What was the
predicate for conducting a counterintelligence investigation
on the Trump campaign.… How did the bogus narrative begin
that Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere
with the U.S. election?”
Still more, Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive
documents, made clear that his primary focus was not the hapless
FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan.
Evidently this was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles
Schumer, who assailed Barr for having “just destroyed…the scintilla
of credibility that he had left.”
Not known for a sense of irony, Schumer accused Barr of using “the
words of conspiracy theorists,” as though Russiagate itself is not
among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in
American political history.
More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal
pro-Democratic New York Times and Washington Post,
the country’s two most important political newspapers,
to Barr’s investigation.
Leaning heavily on the “expert” opinion of former intelligence
officials and McCarthy-echoing members of Congress such as
Adam Schiff, both papers went into outrage mode.
The Times bemoaned Barr’s “drastic escalation of [Trump’s] years
long assault on the intelligence community” while rejecting “the
president’s unfounded claims that his campaign had been spied on”
even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance
of the 2016 Trump campaign are now well documented.
Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers warned
ominously that Barr’s probe “effectively strips [the CIA] of its most
critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which remain
hidden.”
It “could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other
intelligence agencies.”
Not surprisingly, given the Times’ three-year role in promulgating
Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr’s investigation by
declaring that US intelligence agencies’ covert actions were part
of “a lawful investigation aimed at understanding a foreign power’s
efforts to manipulate an American election.”
Considering what is now known, this generalization seems
a whitewash both of the Times’ coverage and the agencies’
conduct.
Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed.
As paraphrased by Matt Stevens in the Times on May 3, she accused
Barr of diverting attention “from what the real story is. The real
story is the Russian interference in our election.”
According to the defeated Democratic candidate, “the Russians
were successful in sowing ‘discord and divisiveness’ in the country,
and helping Mr. Trump.” But who has actually sowed more “discord
and divisiveness” in America—the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her
supporters, by still refusing to accept the legitimacy of her
electoral loss and Trump’s victory?
Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr’s investigation has become
polarizing, with Fox News, for example, bannering each new
unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and the Post mostly
ignoring them altogether.
In particular, the Democratic Party, once traditionally skeptical
of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult
and thus of the new US-Russian Cold War.
Only a few of the party’s leaders, notably presidential candidate
Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly.
Might Democratic reticence also be due to the circumstance that
the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees
of former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about
the entire Russiagate saga?
What, as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he
know it, and what did he do?
Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life,
no matter what they think about Trump, should encourage Barr’s
probe.
To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate allegations have become
a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic
congressional candidates raising funds by promising, despite the
exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller regarding “collusion,” to
fight evil “Trump-Putin” forces in Washington.
Meanwhile, some Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence,
preposterously blame Russia itself—for the infamous Steele Dossier,
for example.
By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused in the
above-cited news accounts of “siding with” Russian President
Vladimir Putin in denying that any “collusion” determined the
outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion also
reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller
on the same “side.”
Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies
entirely independent of the White House and headed by an eminent
political figure who is not a presidential appointee, as was the 1975
Senate Church Committee.
For now, we have only Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally.
Rogue intelligence agencies subvert democracy, and the next
candidate they target—as they did Trump—may be yours.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51941.htm
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