When It Comes to Meddling in the US Election, Was it the UK? by Publius Tacitus

I learned a long time ago that when you are close to the truth the opposition, if there is any, springs into action and launches a desperate counter attack. That appears to define what happened in the wake of Fox News suspending Judge Andrew Napolitano for the following claim:

that former US President Barack Obama asked British intelligence agency GCHQ to monitor President Donald Trump. . . .

Andrew Napolitano, a political commentator and former New Jersey judge, said on Tuesday Obama used GCHQ in order to "make sure there were no American fingerprints."

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice," said Napolitano. "He used GCHQ."

Well, the Brits went absolutely bonkers. GCHQ came as close to having a full blown aneurysm as any bureaucratic entity can. 

"We've made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and we've received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated," a Downing Street spokesman told reporters.

One of Judge Napolitano's sources apparently was Larry Johnson. However, according to Johnson, the Judge did not accurately report what Johnson had said. According to Mr. Johnson, President Obama did not order anything. Instead, information collected by GCHQ was passed to people in the U.S. intelligence community and then distributed in an unauthorized manner. To deny that GCHQ did not do anything in response to a request from President Obama, but that does not mean that GCHQ (aka General Communication's Headquarters) was passive and doing nothing.

Let me suggest one possible logical explanation. GCHQ, by virtue of being a foreign entity can (and does) easily and routinely collect electronic communications information in the United States. The Brits can do this without having to worry about FISA courts, probable cause, etc. Want proof? Here is the NY Times piece on 17 March 2017 that cites one example:

The conspiracy theorizing also tested what is often called the special relationship between the United States and Britain. American intelligence agencies enjoy a closer collaboration with their British counterparts than any other in the world. GCHQ was the first agency to warn the United States government that Russia was hacking Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign

Got that? US and UK have a "special relationship" and the GCHQ was THE FIRST (not the second or third) to warn Obama that Russia supposedly was hacking Democrat Party emails.  When did they warn us? Before the discovery of the DNC hack or afterwards? If afterwards, how long? Who received that warning and what steps were taken to take counter measures? Lots of questions.

Here's another one--if the Brits knew that the Russians were hacking the DNC emails then how did they completely miss the Russians passing that info to one Julian Assange, who happens to be holed up in London in the Ecuadorian Embassy?

So why the enormous pushback from the Brits on Fox News? If we were playing Poker I would call that a tell. The Brits, normally implacable, allowed us to see their left eyebrow twitching. Judge Napolitano works for the Murdoch's, who also happen to have significant economic interests in Great Britain. I have heard the the British Government leaned hard on the Murdochs to do something about the Judge. So far, he has been suspended. Remains to be seen if he comes back on air.

To recap, we have the GCHQ routinely collecting on U.S. citizens and sharing that with the United States via NSA.  Let me suggest one additional twist--the Brits decided, with encouragement from people in U.S. intelligence (John Brennan, perhaps? Mike Rogers?) to step up their collection on Donald Trump and associates and then passed that information, unfiltered and unmasked, to their U.S. counterparts. Is that what alarmed Devin Nunes earlier this week?

Let's stretch out a bit further. Is it possible that Britain's version of the CIA, MI-6, also got into the act and helped its former officer, one Mr. Steele, compile and distribute the now infamous dossier?

Why in the world would the Brits do something so risky? I think the answer to that is pretty simple, straight forward and self-evident. Trump’s policy positions on Syria and NATO represented direct threats to British interests. In Syria, Trump expressed a willingness to side with Russia in defeating ISIS and to withdraw the U.S. from the business of nation building. Trump also turned over the apple cart of status quo foreign policy by stating quite plainly that NATO was an anachronism and needed to be given a good, hard look. Anyone want to argue that our British cousins were comfortable with these policy shifts?

Therefore, it is not a train to crazy town to suggest that GCHQ and MI6 would be quite willing to lend a hand in helping take out Trump. Could that will be one of the key revelations coming down the pike in coming weeks. This also helps account for British establishments' consternation of the claims of Judge Napolitano. It also provides a plausible explanation for the tremendous pressure brought on Judge Napolitano who, without fully understanding what he was talking about, identified a the fat, ugly naked man in the room that looked a lot like the Queen (apologies to her Majesty).

Wouldn't that be a shocker--learning that the Government of Great Britain was working hand in glove with U.S. counterparts to sandbag Donald Trump and his Presidency?

Most overlook an obvious but obscure issue--GCHQ has been collecting intelligence on American citizens for years. Especially Americans of Irish descent or those with ties to Irishmen in the Northern Ireland. That was especially true twenty years ago. You do not have to hold Top Secret clearances to understand this fact. The British were collecting intelligence on Americans with names like Moynihan, O'Keefe, Lang and Kelly. Make no mistake about that.

One final point. The dog that did not bark. By that I mean that notwithstanding all of these machinations, no significant intelligence was generated that provided a smoking gun that could have spelled the end of Donald Trump. How do I know that? Only by deduction. If such information had been scooped up you can be assured that it would have found its way immediately to the front pages of the NY Times and the Washington Post. That has not happened. I think he real story is what did the Brits know and when did they know it? I suspect any further investigations into this matter will put a bit of a damper on US/UK relations.

Comments

[Eric Newhill]

Oustanding analysis! Thank you Publius Tacitus

[john Schultz]

So do you think Larry Johnson has been silenced from voicing any more opinions on the subject

[Publius Tacitus]

I don't know. You should ask him.

[Richard Armstrong]

Nothing but speculation and supposition based on hearsay and totally absent of relevant facts.

[elaine]

john, For the past 2 days I've been unable to access Larry Johnson's site,
noquarterusa.net. I've run my search though a couple different engines,
none will allow me access. Coincidence? Who knows.

[AK]

On this note, I'm sure some here have noticed that Mr. Johnson's site is now non-operational. Does anyone on the committee have any knowledge either from Mr. Johnson or other channels as to what has happened?

[Jack]

PT

Why do you think POTUS is not declassifying all this information? It surely will blow up those in the IC who believe they've become the law.

[Edward Amame]

We NYers are pretty familiar with shady doings in the real estate industry that runs our state politics and those of us familiar with the late great investigative reporter Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice are familiar with Donald Trump's.

IMO, most pre-election FBI activity regarding Mr Trump probably centered on possible criminal activity related to his connections to the Russian mob, not all the counter-intel stuff being hinted at. Let's put it this way: it may have been one thing for a NYC developer/reality show host to have some of these connections, but something else again for the possible GOP nominee for president of the U.S.

This great story in the American Insider builds on some of the great work Barrett did:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/

Pay particular attention to the chapter on "The Case of Bayrock LLC—Felix Sater" and "The Case of Iceland’s FL Group."

[doug]

I think that's been obvious for the last several days. Napolitano kicked the hornet's nest and I'm sure all the "sources" Napolitano had are being pursued. It's a given every country spies on every other, friend or foe. The intelligence community would be remiss in their duty if they didn't. But some things you just don't talk about. The more interesting question is the "unmasking." That, it seems to me, was a conscious decision intended to create leaks and should not have happened.

[The Twisted Genius]

Jack,

Perhaps POTUS does not want that information seeing the light of day. It could be damaging or embarrassing to POTUS or someone close to him. It's also possible he is concerned about exposing IC sources and methods, but I think it's uncharacteristic for him to care about anyone other than himself.

[Eric Newhill]

Edward,
The organized crime hypothesis you got from some leftist blog is not an excuse to go around discrediting the lawfully elected POTUS and his appointees. And it certainly is not what the media and Comey/IC are hinting at. So, per usual, a red herring.

I will also add that many POTUSes have had connections, financially, to organized crime. A lot of party money flows up from those sources. Kennedy in particular comes to mind, but also Nixon and Bill Clinton are prominent in that regard. Hillary Clinton? Who knows, but certainly on the dole from all sorts of international shady characters. One important and obvious direct connection to the mob was the big unions and their campaign contributions.

Again, you've singled out Trump because you are incapable of objectivity. Again, it does not excuse all of the innuendo and other BS aimed at a destruction of the presidency.

[johnf]

"Judge Napolitano works for the Murdoch's, who also happen to have significant economic interests in Great Britain. I have heard the the British Government leaned hard on the Murdochs to do something about the Judge."

The British Government does indeed at the moment have a very strong hold on Rupert Murdoch. It is to decide whether he is to be allowed full ownership - he is a part owner at the moment - of the Sky TV channels - an even larger broadcaster than the BBC. It owns the immensely profitable rights to broadcast most English Premier League football matches all around the world. It is a goldmine.

The deal looked as though it was to go through. Then on March 3rd the government's Culture Secretary announced that the deal was to be put on hold pending further enquiries.

[The Twisted Genius]

Publius Tacitus,

I found some info about GCHQ passing intelligence to their U.S counterparts for an earlier response to David Habakkuk on a different thread. This was most of my comment.

"That info about the Brits tipping off the Yanks about the DNC hack came from a 7 Jan 2017 piece in The Guardian. If the report's true, it means info from the DNC server was flowing to Moscow in the autumn of 2015 and probably earlier. "The New York Times, citing “two people familiar with the conclusions” of the report, said British intelligence was “among the first” to raise the alarm in autumn 2015 that Moscow had hacked the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee. The UK’s role suggests that the compromise of email exchanges among senior Democrats was spotted when voice intercepts, computer traffic or agents picked up content of the emails flowing towards Moscow."

Another report by Paul Wood for BBC Washington addressed an earlier passage of intelligence to the U.S. by a separate intelligence service.

"This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community.
Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign. It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence task force was created."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427

Passage of this kind of information, especially cybersecurity information, among many intel agencies outside the FIVEY community is widespread and is well covered by bilateral and multilateral agreements.

Another point you raise concerns the passage of hacked info to Assange in his London embassy before it was published on WikiLeaks and why the GCHQ didn't intercept it. The info does not have to be in that embassy for Assange to review it. A preferred method would be to view the info sitting on a server in a more secure country. That server could be accessed by an SSH connection or a series of SSH connections. I used this methodology resulting in the NSA reporting on me thinking I was physically located in Europe. WikiLeaks servers were located in Russia at least since before the release of the Podesta emails. Although WikiLeaks tried to obfuscate the Russian location of the servers, I'm sure GCHQ and NSA were aware of that fact.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Several days ago Col. Lang, in a comment, stated that Larry had taken the site off line for an undefined period. From my recollection of the comment the implication is that it was at Larry's own initiative but I'm not sure about that.

[C L]

There is no there - there.
The starting point to all this is Flynn, Manafort, and others representing foreign interests, but especially Flynn and his work for Turkey. After the failed Turkish coup and Edrogan not being shot out of the sky, all the eyes went through the reams of intel collected looking for why, who and to refute the accusation of western involvement.

Nunes has walked back all his claims No unmasked names etc...- He was probably handed transcripts of the Trump transition team (he was part of) regarding Flynn and recognized the conversations he participated in.

The deep state cover-up you are alleging is the usual cover for sources who are too sensitive to divulge.
HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE Lets say one of the intelligence units has a tap(p) on Putin's phone - would we expect GCHQ to say - 'We have proof, we heard it from Putin himself cause we got his phone tapped, just like Merkel's'. END HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE. I would expect that intel source to never see the light of day - unless Putin was heard ordering a Nuclear first strike.
There are occasions when discretion is the better part of spying and letting matters play out is the only course to avoid burning the source.

As to our President, the pity is he was elected to the wrong government system. He would have been terrific in a parliamentarian system where the President fills the role of temporary monarch/head of state without the annoyance of actual governing.

[English Outsider]

Edward Amame - an appalling record of crime and looting in the article you have linked to. Worse than that, I'm afraid it's par for the course and we're all implicated in it.

I have a confession to make. I have an account at an eminently respectable bank. Every now and again I see reports on the money laundering and other crimes the bank has been involved in or has facilitated. I don't change my bank, because the rest are just as bad. If you want to function at all in the modern world you have no choice but to engage with it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big companies I've dealt with weren't pretty dubious as well if you looked into them.

Fortunately for me the courts don't do guilt by association so I've never been charged. I don't expect to be, nor do my neighbours who are similarly guilty. Unless you live a singularly isolated life you also will be similarly guilty and I've no doubt you'll never be charged either.

Can you give me example of a case where Donald Trump has been tried and convicted of engaging in or assisting financial crime? If not then guilt by association should no more apply to him than to the rest of us.

[raven]

He'll do it all on his own.

[Edward Amame]

Eric Newhill

Look who's calling someone else "incapable of objectivity."

It's not a leftist blog Eric, not that it matters. Anyway, links to the author's credentials are below. I would recommend that you give the report a read.

And Wayne Barrett's links are below too. He wrote the book on Trump in the early 90's based on his investigative reporting during the 70's and 80s. Barrett was no partisan either: he went after both Cuomos, Ed Koch and Rudy G. He just hated public corruption.

The author of the report I linked to (which BTW is extensively researched and footnoted) is James S. Henry. He has been chief economist at McKinsey & Co. and is also a lawyer and investigative journalist. He is an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and an INSPIRE Fellow at its Institute for Global Leadership. Henry has written extensively on the problems of tax justice and development finance. Henry is a senior adviser at the Tax Justice Network.

He is also the author of "The Blood Bankers," a classic investigation of where the money went that was loaned to key debtor countries in the 1970s-1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Henry

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Bankers-Global-Underground-Economy/dp/1560257156

Wayne Barrett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Barrett

https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Deals-Downfall-Wayne-Barrett/dp/0060167041

[charly]

Organized crime is not rich enough for Hillary

[Tim B.]

The Five-Eyes Program consists of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada all recording and sharing electronic communications among themselves in order to avoid each other countries' restrictions on domestic spying. The US for years has been paying billions of dollars to the UK to fund their electronic spying. I have little doubt that the NSA records all electronic communications in the US except voice communications. I assume voice is recorded by one or more Five-Eyes countries. I'm sure this is what the Judge was referring to.

[Publius Tacitus]

Nunes has not walked back anything. He was alarmed by what was given to him. Appropriately so. Can you at least provide a link or evidence to support your contrarian assertions? Thanks
.

[Ghostship]

"Here's another one--if the Brits knew that the Russians were hacking the DNC emails then how did they completely miss the Russians passing that info to one Julian Assange, who happens to be holed up in London in the Ecuadorian Embassy?"
But Julian Assange has repeatedly stated that the e-mails published by Wikileaks did not come from the Russians but were a leak. So it's entirely possible that GCHQ detected the Russian hacks but the Russians passed nothing to Wikileaks so there was nothing for GCHQ to detect with respect to Wikileaks.
As for the monitoring of the Trump associates, that could be accidental. GCHQ could have been monitoring communications between Americans and Russians and produced a report including various Trump associates without knowing they were Trump associates which could have been supplied to the usual address list which would include members of the U.S. IC. Only after Trump was elected, started appointing his transition team and filling the positions he appoints would the information become significant and a political hot potato. Also, it should be remembered that Obama greatly expanded the distribution of intelligence across the U.S. government which might have included GCHQ material.

[Publius Tacitus]

Do tell? And on what legal basis would someone at NSA or CIA be able to start going through this database trying to match names in the press with names on the file? Please enlighten us.

[Mikey]

>I have little doubt that the NSA records all electronic communications in the US except voice communications.<

'except voice communication'? Why would voice comms be excluded? It is digitized as is data, the bandwidth is greater, I believe that the only limit to this is storage.

[Old Microbiologist]

I read recently that Flynn was refused the raw intelligence which is in of itself interesting and he was the head of all of the US intelligence, so perhaps it is the agencies not cooperating with the executive branch? A lot is confusing and I suspect there is some meat here once the worms start crawling out of the can. Comey and Rogers are the key to unravelling this and so far appear hostile. The better question is why hasn't Trump fired both of them?