HARPER: A COUP D'ETAT UNDERWAY?

The forced resignation of President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn has grabbed headlines, continuing the mainstream media barrage of hyped claims that the November elections were hijacked by sophisticated Russian intelligence agents, working under the personal direction of President Vladimir Putin. Today, the very people who leaked classified National Security Agency intercepts to MSM figures like David Ignatius are admitting that the actual transcripts of the talks between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador in Washington contained nothing indicating criminal misconduct.

John Schindler, a former NSA analyst, posted a widely publicized message this week, boasting that "he'll die in jail"--referring to President Trump--because elements in the US intelligence community have declared war on the White House.

Are we witnessing a criminal assault against our Constitutional system by a bunch of Obama/Clinton linked "sore losers" who find themselves on the sidelines as the result of the November elections?  Has the MSM gone totally over to the dark side?  Is the plot against our Constitutional system coming from Moscow schemers or perhaps a network much closer to home, involving former President Barack Obama, George Soros and others who simply cannot believe that they have been cast out by American voters?  

The rantings of the left that "Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and should have been president" betrays a total lack of understanding of our Constitutional Republic and the history of how we devised the Electoral College. What is more, if you look at a county-by-county map of the country, you see that, outside of California, which Clinton won by 4 million votes, the majority of voters went with Trump.  This was a repudiation of both the Bush and Obama presidencies, and the very people who dragged the country into permanent wars and Wall Street bailouts are now looking to bring down a duly elected President.  Does this smack of treason?

I do not know whether President Trump will actually change the course of the US economy or end our string of permanent wars.  I do know that what is being done by this media-led, Obama-inspired, Soros-funded mob is nothing short of an attempted coup d'etat.  For once, this morning, I have taken some of President Trump's overnight tweets seriously.

Comments

[Nuff Sed]

Well, I guess now we shall see what "the brave" in the land of "the free" are made of, won't we? This is where the rubber hits the road, or where the blubber hits the Borg. Nuff Sed.

[Trent]

How has Obama "inspired" this coup?

[raven]

Baloney

[John Minnerath]

Harper,
Excellent piece.

[The Beaver]

the actual transcripts of the talks between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador in Washington contained nothing indicating criminal misconduct.

this sounds right when you can see what LTG Flynn thinks of Russia:

Flynn does part company with Trump (and, perhaps, with Secretary of State designate Rex Tillerson) in a major way regarding Russia. “There is no reason to believe Putin would welcome cooperation with us,” he writes. The Kremlin’s 2016 announcement of its intention to open new military bases on its western border and its plan to increase the readiness of its nuclear forces “are, rather, indications that Putin fully intends to do the same thing as, and in tandem with, the Iranians: pursue the war against us.”

from this article of book reviews dated January but published last week in:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/02/09/what-trump-is-throwing-out-the-window/

Interesting read considering that Eliot Cohen (whom Trump said Nyet to as far as the #2 position at Foggy Bottom is concerned) is also mentioned and dissected

[The Beaver]

sorry should read Eliot Abrams and not Cohen(who couldn't place his warhawks yesmen in the Trump Administration): both opportunists, in my opinion, to promote Israel instead of being a good American patriot

[Morongobill]

While not possessing the impressive resumes that are common here, I do have an opinion on the current goings on in DC. It is obvious to me that the president needs to somehow regain the upper hand against the rogue elements in the intelligence community and instill maximum fear in their hearts. Some of them need to experience some real personal fear, kind of like the kind one would have meeting up with an enraged Mike Tyson in a dark alley. There is no doubt that we are in a, for now, slow moving soft coup; how long before events begin to speed up?

As I wrote here the other day, perhaps it is time that we had an American Night of the Long Knives, with our military coming to the defense of the Republic before it is all over, done in by the Deep State.

Considering Trump's sales and communication skills, surely the Red part of this country could be counted on to assist in the swamp draining.

Alarmist? Possibly. But how long can our duly elected president standby and allow the whole system that has creaked along for two centuries be scrapped by un-elected elements?

Action is required. The other side is acting in their own interests, our president needs to do the same. I, for one, did not vote for a Deep State puppet as my president.

Lincoln, Wilson, FDR took actions that many at the time thought were unconstitutional. Somehow we survived as a nation. I am not sanguine on the chances of our nation's survival continuing forward if the Deep State isn't stopped now.

[bks]

As a candidate for president, Donald J. Trump embraced the hackers who had leaked Hillary Clinton's emails to the press, declaring at a rally in Pennsylvania, "I love WikiLeaks!"

To the cheering throngs that night, Mr. Trump marveled that "nothing is secret today when you talk about the internet." The leakers, he said, had performed a public service by revealing what he called a scandal with no rival in United States history.

Now, after less than four weeks in the Oval Office, President Trump has changed his mind. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/leaks-donald-trump.html

[turcopolier]

bks

The material that was give to WikiLeaks during the campaign was private, unclassified, non-governmental material. What is being leaked now by the plotters is the most sensitive government classified information that reveals sources nd methods. do you understand the difference? pl

[turcopolier]

raven

Tell us WHY it is baloney. pl

[Pundita]

Harper, thank you for this. Colonel, regarding your remark in the previous thread about the need to come up with a new definition of the 'deep state' within an American context -- Yes, it is past time. Toward that end here is my two cents:

1. In June 2013 David North and Eric London, two influential hardcore communists (Trotskyists) who write at World Socialist Web Site, itself influential on a global scale in the Leftist movement, wrote a defense of Edward Snowden in which they attacked two famous Liberal American attorneys, Jeffrey Toobin and in particular Professor Geoffrey R. Stone, who had as much accused Snowden of treason. ("Liberal advocates of a police state turn savagely against Edward Snowden")
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/14/comm-j14.html

The entire article needs to be read to fully understand North and London's argument (and Stone's) but I mention it here because they gave the reader a crash course on the key aspect of Nazi government. They explained that the Nazis conflated the German state and its administrative apparatus under the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis).

Therefore, any criticism by a German civil servant of the way the apparatus functioned under the Nazi political party was interpreted as treason.

Fast forward to November 2016, and the cry from many Americans on learning that Donald Trump had been elected U.S. President: "Not my president! Not my government!"

From those remarks and others that followed, many Americans are unable to distinguish between America's government -- a representative republic -- and a political party elected to administer it in caretaker fashion. They equate the Democratic Party with the state.

(This may be a consequence of omitting civics courses from many American public schools.)

2. Fast forward to yesterday, Rush Limbaugh's opening monologue for his show; from the transcript:

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/02/15/the-barack-obama-shadow-government-coup-against-trump/

BEGIN QUOTES

[...]

The Democrat Party really, really is dwindling away before our eyes. But don’t misunderstand me. It’s precisely because of this that the unelected Democrat Party, which is embedded in our nation’s bureaucracy, has taken over the role of the opposition party. And by that I mean all of the Obama appointees in the intelligence community. All of the Obama and Clinton appointees at the departments of justice, departments of state and the defense department, they are all there, and they are working to sabotage the administration of Donald Trump from within. They are doing this with the aid and cooperation of the media.

Now, the media isn’t who they used to be, either, just as the Democrat Party is really not a functioning political party. Now, don’t misunderstand me on this. I’m not saying that they’ve been defeated forever and gone away, but as currently constituted, they are not an opposition force that can stop anything. They simply don’t have the numbers in the House, in the Senate. In the true representative republic sense of our country, they don’t have any power.

And so they have to turn the country into something other than a representative republic, something other than a democracy, which is what they are doing [...]
And this effort to deconstruct and transform this country began in earnest with Barack Hussein Obama and it continues from the shadows of the embedded bureaucrats all throughout not just the federal government, but in the judiciary and in certain levels of state government.
[...]
END QUOTES

Somewhere in all that verbiage is I think an attempt to define the deep state, which Limbaugh is calling the "Obama shadow government." But when I look at the history lesson provided by North and London, I think Limbaugh is close but no cigar.

It's not Obama or Democrats per se, it's the conflation of politics with the state itself. But one sign of this, as Limbaugh points out, would be government workers who see serving their political party in the course of their duties as indistinguishable from serving the American state.

[La La Land Confidential]

You do know the CIA has annexes scattered throughout the U.S., in suburban and urban locations, much like the FBI has field offices? Except the CIA sites are deep cover and classified and sometimes operate under the facade of another federal agency (non-law enforcement or security) or a government contractor business. Often they work closely with FBI counterintelligence. And you do know these CIA people working there tend to be citizens-of-the-world types who fancy themselves as elites (i.e., not American patriots)? But fortunately for us their spying is limited to spying on foreign spies and enemies inside the U.S. (wink, wink).

[T G Holland]

If I, during my brief military career, had allowed cameras around sensitive national defense documents, alà the Winter White House Situation Terrace, I would have ended up at Leavenworth. As a minimum, Trump does not understand the gravity of his position and does not seem to me to be sufficiently alert to national security threats to protect American interests.

[William Fitzgerald]

One wonders how often in the past incoming administrations have communicated with foreign government officials. I would wager that such informal contacts would be the rule, not the exception.

WPFIII

[Fred]

Raven,

Makes a nice sandwich, definitely better than eating crow.

[English Outsider]

Bill Kristol ✔ @BillKristol

Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

1:36 PM - 14 Feb 2017
269 269 Retweets 504 504 likes

Copied from:-

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/15/evan-mcmullin-cia-must-defy-president-defend-constitution/

[Matthew]

Either Trump will break the CIA or the CIA will break Trump. They have drawn the line in the sane.

To my mind, this is Trump's "Alice courthouse" moment. In Robert Caro's terrific second book on LBJ (Means of Ascent), Caro describes how LBJ faced down all his advisers when Coke Stevenson began court challenges over LBJ alleged ballot-box stuffing during his 1948 Senate race. Johnson knew he was fighting for his life. He would not back down.

In that moment, Caro writes, LBJ showed why he was a leader of men.

If Trump won't take the fight to these insiders now, he doesn't deserve to be president.

[Cold War Zoomie]

"As I wrote here the other day, perhaps it is time that we had an American Night of the Long Knives, with our military coming to the defense of the Republic before it is all over..."

I looked for your prior post but ran out of time. Be more specific about the military intervention you propose. Don't mince your words. What exactly would you have all four branches of the military do?

[Bill H]

Yes, it looks to me too that the Democrats having lost the election are teaming up with the establishment (intelligence, career bureaucrat corps and corporate-controlled media) to run a Coup D'Etat.

"...outside of California, which Clinton won by 4 million votes, the majority of voters went with Trump."

And rebels claim your citation of that is bunk because "California votes count as much as the other 49 states," except that neither candidate campaigned in California. That is a very important point. Would Clinton have had a 4 million vote margin in California if both candidates had campaigned there? We don't know. The one thing we can say for certain is that it cannot be proved that she would have, so that margin means nothing, unless an election is held in which the national popular vote is at stake.

In the states where both candidates did campaign she lost the popular vote, which is also meaningless. She lost the electoral college.

A nation in which the losing side can delegititimize the winner and drive them from office cannot call itself a democracy.

[BillWade]

Trump was wrong to "forgive and forget" HRC's past and just let bygones be bygones. He should have made it clear he would go after her and her foundation with a vengeance.

[Valissa]

Given the insightfulness of previous posts by Harper, I have to admit I was very disappointed in the post. It rather sounds like blaming Obama and Soros for what's going on in the intelligence community with regards to Trump. I can go to any right wing publication and hear Soros and Obama, but especially Soros, being blamed for all kinds of things. How convenient and shallow minded.

There have been a number of good articles the past couple of days on how some facets of the intelligence community are going after Trump. Myself and other posted many of them on the Feb 14 open thread. Those were all much valuable for understanding what's going on now.

In particular, the link that LondonBob posted this morning...
EXCLUSIVE: How The Nation’s Spooks Played The Game ‘Kill Mike Flynn’ http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/15/exclusive-how-the-nations-spooks-played-the-game-kill-mike-flynn/
Former intelligence officials who understand spy craft say Flynn’s resignation had everything to do with a “disinformation campaign” and little to do with the December phone conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

They charge officials from America’s top spy counsels leaked classified government intercepts of Flynn and President Trump’s conversations with world leaders and had “cutouts” — friendly civilians not associated with the agency — to distribute them to reporters in a coordinated fashion.

… “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Retired Col. James Waurishuk, who spent three decades in top military intelligence posts and served at the National Security Council, said in an interview with TheDCNF. “We’ve never seen to the extent that those in the intelligence community are using intelligence apparatus and tools to be used politically against an administration official,” he said. “The knives are out,” said Frederick Rustman, who retired after 24 years from the CIA’s Clandestine Service and was a member of its elite Senior Intelligence Service.

... Williamson agreed, telling the DCNF, “There are individuals who are well versed in information operations — we used to call that propaganda. They know how to do it. It’s deliberately orchestrated.” Retired Marine Col. Bill Cowan, who often interacted with the intelligence operatives in combat zones, believes Mike Pompeo, Trump’s new CIA Director, must clean house. Otherwise, the administration will encounter four years of attacks.
-----------------

Throughout his campaign Trump repeatedly said that the US should not be toppling the governments of other countries, and not be involved in unproductive wars, and that he was going to stop that.

Since that is the CIA's primary job, no surprise they would be upset and fighting back. And there are other components of the military-industrial complex who make money on the wars that don't benefit the rest of America and they are going to go against Trump as well.

Both Bush and Obama said they wanted to rein in the wars when they ran for President too, and yet both got sucked in to ever more war by the various agencies/MI-complex/think tanks. This is a long term trend of Pax Americana. WTF does George Soros have to do with that?

Not a fan of Obama, but I really don't think he cares that much about fighting Trump. Obama is not a fighter, he's an appeaser by nature. I'm guessing he's enjoying his retirement and happy that he's done having to deal with all the pressure to get him to get the US involved in ever more military adventures. I'm not saying he Obama wouldn't be pleased with anti-Trump actions, I just think he's not that motivated to do anything about it himself.

[Sam Peralta]

Harper

The fact that the leaks of Flynn's call was an inside job and then there was a manufactured hysteria with the MSM leading the charge shows some elements in our intelligence agencies are seriously unhappy. Add to that reports that the intelligence agencies are now withholding information from the president and we have a scenario of agencies elements going rogue.

Not knowing how are intelligence agencies are organized I have a few questions for the Committee.

1. At what level would these decisions be taken - leaking Flynn's call and not sharing intelligence with the president?
2. Would it be easy to ascertain by the president who these people are?
3. Can the president summarily fire these people or are they protected by union rules, etc?
4. Why was Flynn let go when it seems that Trump is defending him publicly?

[JJackson]

As an outsider I am becoming more, rather than less, confused by these discussions. I do not really follow how the battle between the intelligence community has anything much to do with party politics or Obama. So far it seems a straight fight between the Borg (US foreign policy establishment) and a President who does not seem to be certain to continue the policies followed by Presidents of both parties over the last 20 years. Had it been Sanders would the same not be occurring? The establishment merry-go-round is being threatened and those who have held sway for decades are not happy that they are not going to be calling the shots by having their plans rubber stamped. Am I misreading all this?

[JJackson]

I had assumed that as-well. If nothing is promised and nothing divulged is it still illegal to talk to someone from over seas to find out what they are thinking? He was an idiot to not have lied about it and for that he should go.

[Jack]

All

Trump should order the release of the transcript of Flynn's call. This would provide irrefutable evidence of if he violated any law.

Next, Trump should order an investigation by whoever would be most competent to do that to ferret out the fifth column in the IC and then prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

If he doesn't fight back hard they will only escalate. Now it is a matter of survival for him.