[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]

What a bullshit … the BIG liar during the Obama years. Just like Madeleine Albright, I find their reviews and judgements looking back just plain disgusting. They should have shown leadership and foresight … they did NOT!

Role played by James Clapper … backtracking on “dodgy” dossier: “Only heard of the Steele dossier with allegations in mid-December 2016. We had nothing to do with it, it was not our intelligence.” The “dodgy” dossier had already been leaked to the FBI by August 2016, to fellow MI6 spooks and the right-wing Republicans headed by John McCain and his “intelligence” goons. What a bloody farce. No, Clapper had not seen a smoking gun of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin by the time he left his role by the DNI.

More below the fold …

Role played by James Clapper … | France24 – The Interview |

James Clapper was the head of US intelligence under Barack Obama. He recently published his memoirs, entitled “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence”. In an interview with FRANCE 24, he reacted to recent developments in the United States, including the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court and the forthcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. He also shared his thoughts on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

Former US intelligence chief James Clapper reacted to the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the US Supreme Court, pointing that it could have “impacts for decades”, especially on the issue of abortion. He also warned that Donald Trump’s travel ban could be “counterproductive” from a national security standpoint by fuelling anti-American sentiment.

The former US Director of National Intelligence welcomed the announcement of a Trump-Putin meeting next month, but cautioned that it should be well prepared and not simply another example of the US president indulging authoritarian rulers. “What seems to be uppermost in Mr. Trump’s mind is having a positive relationship with autocrats”, he told FRANCE 24.  

Yep, putting a Pentagon military as head of the DNI … not a smart move by President Obama … since then we’ve got the Pentagon people running around State on foreign policy and a harsh approach to expansion of NATO into the former satellite states of the Soviet Union. Yet only some realize what that has meant in today’s global world.

James Clapper as DNI

I’ve had my falling out with Larry Johnson over the Clinton/Obama contest and the tactics he was willing to stoop to on Hillary’s behalf. But he did post an article here back in 2007 that was very critical of Obama’s new pick to be head of the National Intelligence Agency. Lt. Gen. James Clapper [NYT] is that man, and he’s already getting a cool reception on Capitol Hill. Larry called him the worst chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in history, but the Hill seems more concerned about the (lack of) forcefulness of his personality and the mere fact that he’s from the Pentagon. In recent decades the head of the intelligence community has been a civilian, even if they had prior military experience. And Clapper has clashed in the past with the CIA over resources and authorities. I don’t really know enough about Clapper to give you a fair assessment but I do know two things. The universe of people qualified to be DNI is exceedingly small, and the universe of people who actually want the job is much smaller than that.

○ Defense Intelligence Agency’s Flynn Leaving After Rocky Tenure | Foreign Policy – April 2014 |

    Flynn made waves in military and intelligence circles in 2010 when he co-authored a paper at an influential Washington think tank that criticized intelligence agencies for spending too much time trying to understand insurgent groups in Afghanistan and largely ignoring the social and cultural currents among the Afghan people that were influencing the country’s future.

    Flynn said that U.S. intelligence agencies were consequently only “marginally relevant” to the strategy in Afghanistan. As a consequence, senior leaders in the Pentagon and the administration didn’t fully appreciate the facts on the ground, he wrote.

    Flynn’s critique was a rare public rebuke of the way the intelligence agencies worked, and it was given extra weight because it came from an active-duty Army general who had worked in special operations and seen the usefulness — or lack thereof — of U.S. intelligence on the battlefield.

○ Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan | CNAS – January 2010 |
○ Why they went after Flynn – Hersh’s source on U.S. arming ISIS
○ EU/NATO Propaganda It’s About Daesh and Russia
○ Khodorkovsky – The Interpreter – Henry Jackson Society (UK)

British MI-6 and Bloggers’ Conspiracies [Source and author known by me - Oui]

On December 13 2005 the British Secretary of State Jack Straw was questioned by the British Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs about illegal “renditions”. Straw responded:

    Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea.

Those who believed in that ‘conspiracy theory’ were right [NYT], finds the British Parliament:

    Britain’s intelligence services tolerated and abetted “inexcusable” abuse of terrorism suspects by their American counterparts, according to a report released by Parliament on Thursday that offers a wide-ranging official condemnation of British intelligence conduct in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
    …
    The committee documented dozens of cases in which Britain participated in sending suspects to other countries that were known to use torture or aided others in doing so — a practice known as rendition.

There has still not been a judicial inquiry into the issue. The parliament report notes that the British government blocked access to relevant documents and prohibited the questioning of many witnesses the parliament inquiry wanted to hear.

Ambassador Craig Murray, who blew the whistle on British complicity in torture in Uzbekistan, notes:

    Theresa May specifically and deliberately ruled out the Committee from questioning any official who might be placed at risk of criminal proceedings – see para 11 of the report. The determination of the government to protect those who were complicit in torture tells us much more about their future intentions than any fake apology.

    In fact it is impossible to read paras 9 to 14 without being astonished at the sheer audacity of Theresa May’s attempts to obstruct the inquiry. They were allowed to interview only 4 out of 23 requested witnesses, and those were not allowed “to talk about the specifics of the operations in which they were involved nor fill in any gaps in the timeline”.

There is also evidence that the British MI6 outsourced [NYT] illegal operations to other countries or agencies:

    Although British policy prohibited rendition, the committee found, British agents repeatedly aided other countries in sending suspects to places where there was a high probability they would be mistreated. In three cases, it reported, the British paid, or offered to pay, for renditions; in 28, they “suggested, planned or agreed to rendition operations” conducted by others; and in 22, they provided intelligence to enable a rendition to take place.

The United Nations considers such extraordinary renditions to be crimes against humanity. Neither the U.S. nor the United Kingdom has held anyone but a few grunts accountable for their involvement in these crimes.

Came across this interesting write-up by Lisa Pease … it’s about Hope:

○ My trip to Madison to see Barack Obama (2008)

Related reading …

○ Intelligence Trumps Politics, Always
○ Putin ‘Didn’t Do It’ – Early Analysis
○ South Africa and Amnesty Offer for Colonel Gaddafi by Oui @BooMan on Aug. 22, 2011

and with link to article –  Libya: How Gaddafi became a Western-backed dictator.

[Update-1]

UK Nerve Center Porton Down: ‘Putin Strikes Again!’

The British can’t seem to put the lid back on the vial …btw was this the same one used by US Secr of State Colin Powell in 2003 at the UN Security Council before the invasion and occupation of Iraq? The Ayatollahs of Persia be forewarned!

Excellent coverage by The Guardian in this early stage …. waiting for Boris and Theresa … sorry, we’re busy with a COBRA.

Police fear Wiltshire couple have been exposed to nerve agent

Counter-terrorism police have joined the investigation into what happened to two people in Wiltshire who are in a critical condition, amid fears that they may have been exposed to a nerve agent.

Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, who were at a property in Amesbury, were initially believed to have overdosed on drugs, but their symptoms raised alarm among medics and Wiltshire police, which led them to suspect a possible nerve agent.

The couple, both in their 40s, were in a critical condition at Salisbury district hospital, Wiltshire police said on Wednesday.

Tests were being carried out on a substance at the nearby Porton Down government defence laboratory. Whitehall sources said that it was too early to tell whether the incident was related to illegal drugs or “something more sinister”.

The couple are understood to be British citizens who are unlikely to have been the victims of a targeted attack.

…
Sam Hobson, 29, a friend of the couple, said he believed they had been struck down by a nerve agent.

He described how on Saturday morning Sturgess fell ill and was taken to hospital and how later that morning Rowley also became sick. He said both were in hospital in isolation and he was receiving regular calls from the authorities to check he was well. “They thought it was drugs at first. They now think it’s a nerve agent,” he claimed.

Must have forgotten to scrub the home front door knop of the Skripals … or was her luggage from Russia returned via FedEx? Sloppy work by the British Intelligence …

○ In the beginning was the lie …
○ UK Issued a DA-Notice On My Diary Result
○ How MI-7 Fake News in 1917 Impacted the Nazi Genocide

oaquabonita – the obsessive heckler here, here, here and here.

[Comments off-topic … want a flame war, do start your own diary]

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