OpenCDA

May 18, 2018

‘Crossfire Hurricane’

Left J Warren-Commission-Composite-NYTWhen I read The Sulzberger Slimes online article headlined Code Name Crossfire Hurricane:  The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation on Wednesday, my first reaction to this 3800+ word piece was:   Somebody at Main Justice got a preview of the Department of Justice Inspector General’s long-overdue report regarding the FBI and DOJ’s investigation and handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, called up their favorite Slimes stenographer, and planted a pre-emptive fluff story out ahead of an expected ‘Bad Moon Rising’.

Later in the same day I learned that the Department of Justice Inspector General had finished his long-awaited report of the FBI and DOJ’s investigation and handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.  The draft report has not yet been released publicly, but it has been (or will be by COB Friday) made available to multiple subjects of the report for their review.

Judging from the nervous tics suddenly afflicting the Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac swamp rats in the respective Mahogany Rows at Main Justice and the FBI, John Fogerty* may have been foretelling some more career ending moves when he wrote:

Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye

Two other writers have prepared read-worthy articles for their respective online publications.  These two articles are decent counterpoints to the Slimes’ effort to soften the blows expected to be inflicted by the DoJ IG’s report.

Mollie Hemingway has written 10 Key Takeaways from The New York Times’ Error-Ridden Defense of FBI Spying on Trump Campaign.  It was published online in The Federalist on May 17, 2018.

Andrew McCarthy has written Spinning a Crossfire Hurricane:  The Times on the FBI’s Trump Investigation.  His article was published online in National Review on May 17, 2018.  

The Slimes’ article ‘Code Name Crossfire Hurricane’ does nothing to change my opinion expressed in my April 10, 2018, OpenCdA post entitled Renewed Request for Presidential Commission and the preceding posts linked in it.    The Slimes’ article shows just how unprepared the FBI and DoJ were to deal with a foreign information/propaganda attack which coincided with a presidential campaign and election.  The FBI and DoJ were hamstrung by their own policies of doing nothing which might be perceived as interfering with or favoring one candidate over another.   The self-inflicted hamstringing was compounded by the long-predicted and poll-supported inevitability of a Clinton landslide victory.

The politicization and misuse of our own national intelligence and security services and law enforcement agencies to violate the civil rights of US citizens was, at least until Barack Obama and Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch and James Comey decided otherwise, punishable under federal criminal statutes (e.g., 18 USC 242).   Using an intelligence asset under color of law to spy on US citizens associated with the campaign of a US presidential candidate applies here.  There is no question that Obama knew about it.

One of many relevant questions remaining is, If Obama believed that the Russians were manipulating the campaigns of US presidential candidates and if he believed that FBI infiltration was the best way to detect the manipulation, then shouldn’t the campaigns of all other candidates including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders infiltrated by FBI spies?  Were they?  Or, as many of us suspect, was the campaign of candidate, then nominee, then President-elect Donald J. Trump the only one infiltrated?

If candidate/nominee Trump’s campaign was the only one targeted, then the finger of guilt points at Obama et al for some crimes far worse than any contemplated by Nixon and his Plumbers (which, you’ll recall, included former FBI Special Agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA officer Howard Hunt).

After the murder of President Kennedy in November 1963, President Johnson immediately directed the formation of The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.  It came to be known as The Warren Commission after its Chairman, retired US Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren.

I continue to argue that a similarly constituted Presidential Commission is needed now.  To think that the Russians or any of a handful of other governments or international groups won’t continue to challenge and pose a threat to the integrity of US elections is completely absurd.  But the US government agencies and our supposedly ‘free press’ have proven their inability or their unwillingness to expose and address international and internal challenges and threats.  The difficulty is compounded when the foreign attack occurs during a national election campaign.

The folly of the Special Counsel as a useful measure to get to the bottom of anything including the seemingly bottomless cash box of taxpayer dollars should be obvious after watching Mueller’s Special Counsel for the past year.

At the same time, given the very acrimonious atmosphere in Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac, I have to question if there is anyone back there mature, honest, and nonpartisan enough to objectively evaluate the behaviors and misbehaviors of our national intelligence agencies, the DoJ, and the FBI in this continuing effort to undermine the presidency of President Donald J. Trump.

Whom would you trust to serve on such a Commission?

(*Yes, I know that ‘crossfire hurricane’ comes from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, but the lyrics to CCR’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ are more applicable to the circumstances at the DoJ and FBI.  Here’s a link to CCRs ‘Bad Moon Rising‘ on YouTube.)

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