Watergate Deja Vu and Fake News by Publius Tacitus

If you have HBO I encourage you to carve out some time to watch their latest documentary on the life and times of former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. The most important take away from the film is how different the so-called Russian collusion scandal is from Watergate, which brought down Richard Nixon. Yet, in watching this documentary you can easily grasp the desperate fantasy of the Trump-haters who are hoping for a repeat of a President being humiliated and forced from office.

The other major event in Ben Bradlee's life that provides more insight into the current Trump Derangement Syndrome that has seized most of the media is the Janet Cooke scandal. Cooke, an African-American woman hired by Bradley, became infamous for fabricating a story about an 8 year old inner city heroin addict. Her editors included Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee. Their desire for the story to be true blinded them to the bald lies of Cooke. She won a Pulitzer for her story, but it fell on Bradlee to inform the Pulizer committee that the award could not be accepted. This was a major stain on his legacy.

That sure sounds a lot like the current state of the media. We have witnessed this type of hysteria ourselves in just the last two days. First there was the Brian Ross debacle, which entailed Ross peddling the lie that Trump ordered Flynn to contact the Russians. That "fake news" elicited an emotional orgasm from Joy Behar on The View. She was on the verge of writhing on the floor as she prematurely celebrated what she thought would seal the impeachment of Donald Trump. Whoops. Ross had to retract that story.

 

Second, there was today's claim that the ironically named "Independent Counsel" Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank demanding Trump's Bank records. That report struck me as quite odd because this was old, recycled news. Remember this from last July? (Here's the link, dated 20 July 2017):

Deutsche Bank, which had loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars when no one else would, even after he sued the firm. Now, investigators probing the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia are wondering why—and they’re beginning to take a closer look at the president’s accounts with his favorite bank, which also happens to have strong ties to Russia itself.

The New York Times reports that banking regulators are currently “reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Mr. Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit . . . to [see] if the loans might expose the bank to heightened risk.” Meanwhile, the Guardianreports that executives at Deutsche are “expecting that the bank will soon be receiving subpoenas or other requests for information from Robert Mueller,” and that the special counsel’s investigative team and the bank have “already established informal contact in connection to the federal investigation.”

What the hell? Why was the media today cheering and acting like this was some new revelation. Then things took another weird turn. The White House and Trump lawyers flatly denied the story:

“We confirmed that the news reports [that] the special counsel had subpoenaed financial records related to the president are completely false,” Sanders said during the daily press briefing.

“No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources. I think this is another example of the media going too far and too fast and we don't see it going in that direction," she said.

Now please compare and contrast today's events with those from the Watergate era. Back then Richard Nixon accused the press of lying and making up facts, but it turned out that the press largely had the story right. It was Nixon who was lying.

Trump is derided regularly as a liar and mocked for his attacks on the press but, so far, it is the press that has been pushing prevarications. Trump, by contrast, is not experiencing the humiliation of Richard Nixon, who insisted he had no knowledge of the Watergate break in. Nope. Trump strongly insists that neither he nor his campaign colluded with Russian and the evidence revealed to date backs him up.

Watergate and "Russiagate" do share a common trope. During Watergate the Washington Post was mostly a lone voice covering the story. Washington Post publisher at the time, Kate Graham, reportedly remarked that she was worried that none of the other papers were covering the story. And it was an important story. It exposed political corruption and abuse of power and a threat to our democracy.

How is that in common with Russiagate? The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired  to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. Hardly anyone in the media, mainstream or fringe, are writing about this fact and trying to rally public support for action. What is one to say when confronted with the fact that the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump that was initially commissioned by the Clinton campaign. And who is the FBI Agent paying for the dossier? Why a fellow now revealed as a Clinton partisan.

This piece is intentionally short. I just want to get the discussion rolling. But there is something rotten in Washington and it is not Donald Trump, no matter how boorish he is at times.

Comments

[blue peacock]

David Habakkuk

Would you have a suggestion of a paper that most accurately describes the Litvinenko affair?

Your posts have greatly intrigued me and I would like to learn more. This story seems incredibly fascinating. A recruited Russian "MI6 agent" killed by polonium poisoning. By whom? Why? And what is the real back story? Why was the farce of the Owens inquiry even ordered? And of course what role did Chris Steele, the author of the "Trump dossier" play in all this?

[JamesT]

Mr. Solomn

My thinking is very much in line with that of Publius Tacitus, but the fact that you have actually met Trump (twice in fact) gives me pause. I think that a lot of the Trump haters overestimate their knowledge of someone they have never met. The fact that you have actually met the man is very salient in my opinion, and I appreciate you sharing your impressions of the man.

[JamesT]

If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would in 2017 consider Fox News to be the most reliable MSM news outlet, I would have rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically. Yet it is true. I am not quite sure what I should deduce from this but I think it is something along the lines of "one cannot be too cynical about the news media".

[Imagine]

Real News: Outstanding official independent post-mortem of Charlottesville. Includes maneuver tactics, I think y'all will like it.

http://www.charlottesville.org/home/showdocument?id=59615

[JMH]

Prince is a rather dim bulb in my opinion, which is why his current ideas get zero traction anywhere. He got lucky at the outset of the GWOT but it's hard to catch lighting in a bottle twice.

[AK]

English Outsider,

"Any idea why?"

He certainly gives them plenty of ammunition. However, I believe a great deal of the vituperative outrage directed at him has much (possibly primarily) to do with exactly whom he bested in the general election. Not to pile on, but see David E. Solomon's comments on this thread. One can't underestimate the cult of personality that was so carefully crafted around Hillary Clinton for the past two decades. Their chosen strategy of identity politics only kicked it into hyper-drive over the past eight years. Still, this phenomenon existed long before Trump, The Politician, and even before Obama and his own cult. Many of these people were able to put their expectations on hold for eight long years. Obama was a result they could at least live with temporarily - "Just eight more years, and then they owe her." They had their very structures of reality built around a certain outcome, which didn't come to pass. So, the disappointment was all the more bitter when they realized that their waiting was in vain. That's a tidal wave of cognitive dissonance unleashed by that unimaginable (for some) occurrence of her defeat. He didn't put paid to Martin O'Malley or even Bernie Sanders. He vanquished The Queen. That sort of thing never goes down lightly.

[AK]

Richardstevenhack,

"As I've said before, I think Trump only ran for President for 1) ego, and 2) he knows he will have access to billions of dollars of business deals once he leaves office, with the cachet of having been President.

You might as well assert that lions only hang out around watering holes because 1) there's water there, and 2) gazelles and zebras have to drink water. Can you point me to one President from living memory who did not 1) run for the Office at least partially out of ego, and 2) take advantage in his subsequent "private life" of these exact perks of having held the Office? I ask seriously, because it seems you are pining for a nobility in presidential politics which to my recollection hasn't existed for at least three generations. Cincinnatus, they ain't. Maybe Ike, but anyone else is a real stretch.

[David Habakkuk]

blue peacock,

On the Litvinenko mystery, my initial responses to Owen’s report were posted here on SST back in January 2016. There is a great deal more material in the exchanges of comments that followed. Some further material relating to patent fabrications in the evidence presented to the Inquiry, and the fact it now seems clear Owen himself must have been consciously colluding in fabrication, was presented in comments of mine in a discussion last month.

(See http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/01/david-hakkuk-on-sir-robert-owens-inquiry.html http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/11/harper-a-reminder-of-the-obscene-power-of-the-israel-lobby.html .)

As to the background, there are a number of matters to do with ‘perception management’ or ‘StratCom’ operations about which it is important to be clear. One is that attempting to combine these with intelligence analysis is fraught with pitfalls. This was done rather successfully in the Second World War disinformation operations, which repeatedly blinded the Germans to the actual places where the Allies intended to land.

But the conditions – including a large degree of separation between the conduits in which intelligence was coming in and those through which disinformation was channelled – were I think distinctly atypical.

The problem is compounded when ‘perception management’ depends upon painting the world in black and white terms. It is most of the time true, to hark back to the aphorism of the novelist Graham Greene, that the world is not black and white, but black and grey.

Last but hardly least, a common ‘perception management’ strategy is, as it were, to attempt to achieve a ‘snooker’ – to put the adversary in a situation where he or she has no effective counter-move. One way of doing this is illustrated by the passages I quoted. Because some of the material relating to Mogilevich is likely to be true, Litvinenko and his associates could embroider it with a whole mass of falsehood, countering on the inability of their targets effectively to counter the falsehood without admitting some of the truth.

What is clear about the events of October-November 2006 in London is that when the story of Litvinenko’s poisoning was first made public, those in the know in the Russian security services believed that Counter Terrorism Command would have to identify a timeline of his movements on the day he was supposedly poisoned that would incriminate him in trafficking polonium. So, they thought that they had managed a ‘snooker’ against Berezovsky and MI6.

To avoid this, these colluded – with Steele clearly playing a key role – in massive fabrication of evidence. It is likely that they thought they had escaped the ‘snooker’, and achieved one of their own. What then seems to have happened is that Lugovoi consulted lawyers in London, who worked out a means of bringing a case, probably under human rights law, on the basis that he had been accused without the evidence against him being released. This, in essence, forced the British into resuming the inquest.

Once again the group around Berezovsky – the names mentioned in the letter to the Mitrokhin Commission from which I quoted – were placed centre stage, and there had to be industrial scale fabrication of evidence. Of course, as Steele was no longer running the MI6 Russia Desk, one cannot be absolutely certain that he was at the centre of things, but it seems overwhelmingly likely.

Be that as it may however, what is important is that Americans realise that he is a serial fabricator – the forging of evidence, and the corruption of judicial processes, are parts of his stock in trade. He is, to put it bluntly, a 'sewer rat.'

As to the claims about Manafort, Firtash, Mogilevich et al. These are a natural product of ‘perception management’ run riot. The whole history of the intermediary companies in the gas trade through Ukraine is a complex one, on which I am currently engaged in trying to get ‘up to speed.’ However, it is not a simple story of ‘black’ and ‘white’, and attempting to reduce it to one produces nonsense.

So, for example, back in 2010 there were allegations and counter-allegations about involvement with Mogilevich, with its being claimed that the supporters of Timoshenko had destroyed a dossier which would incriminate her. In 2008, she and Putin had reached an agreement to eliminate the intermediary company RusUkrEnergo, with which it has been very credibly argued that the mobster was involved, and which has indeed subsequently been wound up.

Its key role, it has plausibly been argued, derived from the fact that Ukraine, having a strangehold on the pipeline network connecting supplies from the former Soviet Union to Europe, exploited this to avoid paying for gas. The intermediary allowed Gazprom to get paid, and also by dealing directly with end using companies to produce differential pricing which stopped important ones going bankrupt.

It also, critically, provided a means of ‘greasing palms’ on both sides, and as well as Yanukovich, this included Yushchenko. So Timoshenko’s supporter Oleksandr Turchinov charged that the accusations against about the destruction of the material incriminating her in relation was an ‘elaborate ruse’ by Yushchenko and his circle to divert attention from their plans to preserve RosUkrEnergo as an intermediary.

(See https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/new-and-conflicting-details-emerge-over-mogilevich-92521.html ; for background, see https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/ifri_Gazprom_guillet_anglais_mars2007.pdf ; http://russiaotherpointsofview.typepad.com/russia_other_points_of_vi/2009/01/the-pipe-is-blocked-in-kiev.html#more )

As to the notion that Yanukovich is ‘Putin’s man’, it is nonsense. He is Yanukovich’s man, pure and simple, out for his own ends, and would have signed the Association Agreement with the EU had the terms not been patently unacceptable. On this, see https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/trumps-ukrainian-connection/ .

A crucial question which needs to be sorted out is for whom Glenn Simpson and his associates at Fusion GPS are working. What Harding calls ‘asset tracing’ has been a critical activity, and here, it is relevant that Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky were given their first lessons in Western ‘business practices’ as early as 1989 by Christopher Samuelson and Christian Michel of Valmet, a company with clear links to some of the more dubious elements in Western intelligence. They were experts in creating elaborate structures to hide the real ownership and control of assets.

(See http://mikhail_khodorkovsky_society_two.blogspot.co.uk .)

What has to be explained is the apparent paradox that Simpson et al were collaborating with Steele, and at the same time, supposedly, working against Browder. This could indicate that they were indeed simply ‘hired guns’, or alternatively, it could point to an elaborate deception, designed to disguise the fact that they were really working for Western intelligence.

Here, there is a further paradox, in that one of the few good pieces of reporting on the mysterious death of the Menatep lawyer Stephen Curtis, who had been part of the circles involving Samuelson and Michel, in a helicopter accident in March 2004, was done by Thomas Catan, now a partner in Fusion. What this demonstrated was that, if as seems likely Curtis was murdered, Putin and the Russian security services were among the least plausible suspects.

At that time, Catan demonstrated, Curtis had started ‘singing sweetly’ to what was then the National Criminal Intelligence Service – and what he was telling them would have been music to Putin’s ears.

(See http://offshorenet.com/before_the_crash/ .)

As part of their attempt to wriggle out of the mess into which they had got themselves with the lawsuits provoked by the dossier, ‘BuzzFeed’ produced some melodramatic pieces claiming that all kinds of people had been assassinated by the Russian security services.
(See https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil .)

One of those included is Curtis. That this is nonsense is something that Catan, it seems to me, must know. Unlike Harding, who is a clown, he was a very good investigative journalist indeed. Perhaps he has simply gone over to the dark side. The large sums of money to be made by doing so are, unfortunately, very tempting. But then, sometimes, ‘devil’s bargains’ blow up in people’s faces.

[Morongobill]

It sure looks like a fight to the death. Unfortunately for the media, they are taking on a wily street fighter.

[Eric Newhill]

TTG,
I am not really a birther. I am agnostic. Obama could have been born in Kenya, or it could be that he used a story about a foreign birth to gain both financial aid and street cred in the liberal world, when he was actually born in the US as he later claimed when that became more convenient.

I don't really care where he was born, not now and not when it was an issue.

It is noteworthy that his own brother, who is Kenyan, says that Obama was born in Kenya. My spider sense says that the brother is telling the truth. My spider sense counts for nothing beyond my own head and is of less value than Snopes in a public discussion.

At one point, Obama was boasting Indonesian citizenship. The guy is a chameleon. Again, I don't really care. There is enough lack of clarity around where he was born that we might as well accept that it was in the US. He was legitimately elected.

I say again that private citizen DJT questioning this is quite different than all the secretive alphabet agencies actually looking to depose in a coup d'état.

[Patrick Armstrong]

Read what I said and think about what I said and what question I was answering. (PS I believe BHO was born in Hawaii)

[Patrick Armstrong]

Try this https://www.amazon.com/Phony-Litvinenko-Murder/dp/0615559018

Developments since then of course

[Account Deleted]

PT

I agree with @sbjonez. Though I thoroughly agree with the thrust of your article, I would respectfully advise that your analysis that the FBI paid Steele not be described as a "fact" until, or unless, hard evidence of such sees the light of day.

The best way to counter the 'Trump collusion with Russia' narrative is to be absolutely rigorous in supporting a factual counter narrative, whilst demanding that each and every allegation be substantiated, or retracted.

[Seamus Padraig]

I, too, thought the whole Tea Party thing--especially the birther stuff--was crazy. But Trump Derangement Syndrome is just an order of magnitude crazier. For openers, hardly any non-Fox media outlet ever even gave a hearing to the birthers' 'theory'. But now, the whole media and entertainment complex (except Fox) are on the impeach-Trump-now bandwagon. Secondly, as dumb as birtherism was, at least it wasn't a threat to our national security. Hillary's 'Russiagate' accusations, by way of contrast, are designed to worsen our relations with a nuclear-armed super-power. Very scary indeed.

[Richardstevenhack]

Oh, I agree completely.

But in my lifetime, most Presidents at least TRIED to "act Presidential" (with some exceptions). Trump isn't even trying.

Also, some Presidents (Reagan, for example) actually had some sort of ideology they wanted to push. Trump's got nothing but some vague notions he probably holds only because it plays to his supporters.

The main point is that every single President since Ike has been worse than the last, and we had real devolution since Reagan, and a complete collapse since Clinton (although a case could be made that Clinton started the collapse). Bush, Obama and now Trump - an unmitigated disaster.

[Charles]

He will be 79 when he leaves office.
He will still be a billionaire.
He will still have a loving family and grandkids.
I can not think of a president who did not have a noticeably grand ego before he was elected. Some left humbled by the job, this president appears to be rising to the job quite nicely.
While the Clintons and now the Obamas are the standard setters for milking the presidency after they departed it; they are not representative of honest Americans.

[helenk3]

http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/08/18-questions-cnn-needs-to-answer-after-getting-busted-for-fake-news/#.WisXNL9HxUQ.twitter

18 questions for the Clinton News Network.

fact checking does not seem to be a requirement to have a story printed there. They make the gang that couldn't shoot straight, look like the smartest guys in the room

[blue peacock]

David Habakkuk

Thank you!

What was the general reaction in Britain to the Owens inquiry? Did anyone in parliament or those with access to the media ever question its integrity and raise the contradictions in the various pieces of so called evidence?

Did any reporter see through the obfuscations and provide more realistic interpretations of what actually happened and the sordid attempts by Steele and his minders to fix the evidence?

I am particularly interested in the role of Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson who I believe was previously a WSJ reporter, in both the Litvinenko matter as well as the production of the "dossier" on Trump. Fusion GPS was apparently hired by Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager, and the main person at Elliott Management initially to do oppo research on the different GOP presidential candidates. Singer is an ardent zionist and uses his immense wealth to influence politics. Once Trump won the primary, Singer ended the contract with Fusion GPS, and this is where the Clinton campaign and the DNC enter into a deal with Fusion GPS to produce material on Trump. Fusion GPS then hires Steele to create the salacious dossier on Trump. It seems Glenn Simpson and Steele had some linkages during the fabrication of evidence in the Litvinenko affair.

It would seem rather obvious that MI6 and the US intelligence agencies have some role to play in this game of disinformation and attempts to derail a legitimately elected POTUS, due to the fact that Steele was employed by MI6.

Considering that some of the characters who were deeply involved in the Litvinenko cover-up are also involved in "Russiagate", I am curious what else they are involved in? We continue to read about the lead "investigators" on the Mueller team from both the FBI and DoJ, as well as the Judge who approved the FISA warrant to wiretap Trump associates have been found to be political partisans.

Would you care to speculate on what actually happened in both the Litvinenko affair and "Russiagate"?

[LeaNder]

interesting. I forgot to add, when I stumbled across your comment.

I wasn't aware how much she published. But your allusion*/"intelligence?" made me realize she didn't surface on Wikipedia in one context I expected her to surface. She may no doubt have been 76 at that point in time. But?

Which of her other publications do you feel could be important? Did she have influence on one or the other historians? More arbitrary question. Not that I would expect anything but usage to prove a point as cynic.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Radziwill%2C+Catherine%2C+Princess%2C+1858-1941%22

[David Habakkuk]

blue peacock,

The history of the coverage of the Litvinenko mystery, on both sides of the Atlantic, from the time the story broke through until the Owen cover-up and subsequently, illustrates the collapse alike in standards of integrity and of basic journalistic competence in the MSM. The only honourable exception among British journalists is Mary Dejevsky.

Given the way that Mogilevich, having been used in ‘information operations’ against Kuchma, Putin and Romano Prodi, is now being used against Trump, some of the history deserves to be better known.

As I noted, according to Luke Harding, Glenn Simpson met Steele in 2009. Meanwhile, in his attempts to wriggle out from the libel case brought by Aleksej Gubarev, the latter has referred to a confidentiality agreement supposedly made in January 2010, in relation to work carried out for him by Fusion – not the other way round.

From what I know about the Litvinenko mystery, it seems to me that the work that Simpson et al were doing at that time could have involved a number of matters. One is asset tracing to do with Mogilevich. More likely however, is asset tracing in relation to issues to do with the Tambov Gang, a St Petersburg mafia outfit with links to Colombian drug cartels – Fusion has Latin American involvement and expertise.

Another possible candidate has to do with the lawsuits about the estate of Berezovsky’s erstwhile partner Arkadi ‘Badri’ Patarkatsishvili, who died, probably of a heart attack, in February 2008. His close relationship with Lugovoi is central to understanding the Litvinenko mystery, and the lawsuits were intimately involved with the covert struggles between Berezovsky and MI6 on the one hand, and Putin and the Russian security services on the other. Here, there was a strong American angle, because Patarkatsishvili’s American lawyer, Emanuel Zeltser, was a crucial figure.

A third possibility is that Fusion were already being used as an instrument of media manipulation – which of course takes us back to the question of why the company was making payments to journalists.

What is important both in relation to claims about Mogilevich and these other matters is that anything coming from Steele or Fusion, separately or jointly, was always likely to be a mixture of truth and the most outrageous falsehood. This is where the ability of such people to manipulate the MSM, as demonstrated by the history of the Litvinenko cove-up, becomes critically important.

A pathbreaking investigation which did appear in the MSM was a piece entitled ‘The Specter that Haunts the Death of Litvinenko’ which the veteran American investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein published in the ‘New York Sun’ in March 2008.

(See http://www.nysun.com/foreign/specter-that-haunts-the-death-of-litvinenko/73212/ .)

What Epstein did was go to take the trouble to go to Moscow and interview the Russian investigators. Curiously, however, while his account suggested that the Italian angle to the story might be crucial, he did not probe it. Describing the crucial meeting with Mario Scaramella on the day Litvinenko was, supposedly, poisoned, Epstein wrote that that the Italian ‘had been involved with Litvinenko in, among other things, a Byzantine plot to penetrate the operations of a suspected trafficker in prostitutes, arms, and enriched uranium.’

This is Mogilevich. The supposed operation had been central to a piece which appeared in the ‘Guardian’ the previous January, an article entitled ‘Why a spy was killed’ by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy. This was inept – the authors simply swallowed wholesale wildly implausible claims by associates of Litvinenko.

(See https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jan/26/weekend.adrianlevy .)

Concluding his article, Epstein wrote:

‘After considering all the evidence, my hypothesis is that Litvinenko came in contact with a Polonium-210 smuggling operation and was, either wittingly or unwittingly, exposed to it.’

In May that year, the ‘Guardian’ published an interview with Lugovoi by Luke Harding, entitled ‘Prime suspect.’ A key paragraph:

‘Recently, Lugovoi’s claim that he is the victim has been gaining some ground. In an article in the New York Sun, the veteran US investigative journalist Edward Epstein claimed that Britain's evidence against Lugovoi was weak – and said that British prosecutors had failed to submit Litvinenko’s autopsy report. Litvinenko was an international polonium smuggler, Epstein speculated. The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky wrote a similarly revisionist piece, raising doubt about the British case against Lugovoi.’

(See https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/21/ukcrime.internationalcrime .)

What Harding was doing here was smearing Epstein, by attributing to him a suggestion that Russian sources had indeed made, but he had not. Moreover, any competent editorial team would have done the obvious, and asked British sources whether it was true that the autopsy report had not been submitted, and if not, why not. A more appropriate subject for a book called ‘Collusion’ would be the way in which the current ‘régime’ at the ‘Guardian’ has turned what was once a great liberal paper into stenographers for corrupt spooks, policemen, and judges.

As it happened, some rather elementary Google checks had a good while before alerted me to some very good coverage of the Italian angle which had appeared a site called ‘European Tribune’, after the story initially broke, from a blogger using the name ‘de Gondi’, who I already knew because of his work at the Italian end of the transnational Niger uranium forgeries investigation. Based in Rome, his actual name is David Loepp, and his ‘day job’ is as an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques.

It seemed to me time that rather than dead-beat MSM journalists, it was time that someone of proven investigative competence took a fresh look at the Italian angle, so I posted a long piece on ‘European Tribune’, setting out what I thought was the state of the evidence. Among the materials David Loepp produced in response was the translation of an excerpt from the request by Italian prosecutors to use intercepts of conversations involving Scaramella in connection with their case against him for ‘aggravated calumny.’

The request was unsuccessful, but it was ‘hiding in plain sight’ on the website of the Italian Senate, complete with detailed summaries of the conversations. The passage David translated read:

‘3) - 4) - 5) - 6) - 7) - 8) - 9) conversations that took place on number [omissis] on December 1st, 2005, at 16:10:08 # 833, 16:43:40 # 848, 17:13:02 # 856, 17:56:45 # 860, 18:15:48 # 861, 19:56:22 # 867, 20:20:50 # 873, containing precise references to the campaign organized by Scaramella and Litvinenko to support the thesis of a conspiracy to assassinate Guzzanti, attributing the responsibility to TALIK and elements of the Russian mafia, the camorra and Russian and Ukrainian secret services, with the indication of relevant documents acquired by Scaramenlla and sent to Senator Guzzanti, or to be acquired and transmitted. The conversations are of particular relevance if confronted with intercepted conversations in the acts between Litvinenko and Ganchev on one part and between TALIK and his wife on the other, having as their object the same facts albeit their reconstruction appears quite different, as noted in the motivations behind the arrest warrant emitted against Scaramella (Scaramella calls Guzzanti and tells him that at least ten different press agencies in Ukraine have mentioned the assassination attempt against Guzzanti, including the declarations of Litvinenko as referred by him. Litvinenko received dozens of calls from Ukranian reporters and Litvinenko mentioned Talik's name. Guzzanti tells Scaramella that he received a letter in Russian from Litvinenko; Scaramella will send the translation which corresponds to the registration but omitting all references to Mario Scaramella. Guzzanti notes that there is a problem since in the letter Litvinenko asserts that he works for the Commission; Scaramella says that Litvinenko had in precedence undertaken activity concerning nuclear [?] in Italy that they [the commission] had acquired; at the London meeting, official missions, documents countersigned by Bukowsky, Gordievsky, Svorov and Palombo. Conversations intercepted between CUCHMA (he lost the elections against Yushenko) and MOGILEVICH/FSB. SHVEZ, ex-president of the KGB took the material [?] to the USA. Scaramella tells Guzzanti that in Ukraine there is an agency, "the fifth element," probably close to Berezovsky, that follows the work of a commission similar to the Mitrokhin Commission that investigates facts of Soviet Union espionage. This agency had interviewed Litvinenko, and Scaramella sent the article to Guzzanti. In the interview Litvinenko talks about the Ukrainian aspects and also mentions Guzzanti (indicated as Paolo Guzzante), Talik, etc. They study the article together even if it is in Russian or Ukrainian. A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic- Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.)’

The ‘letter in Russian from Litvinenko’ is that I already cited, which attempted to establish that Putin had been involved in using Mogilevich to try to equip Al Qaeda with nukes. That and the remainder of the intercept gives you rather a vivid picture of the kind of utter garbage which Litvinenko, then an agent of MI6, whose Russia Desk was run by Steele, was fabricating, and how it was disseminated. From the intercepts, it was clearly that shortly after this conversation Scaramella left on a trip to the United States.

A mass of material gathered by myself and David Loepp, with crucial input from an American lady called Karon von Gerhke who was a long-term contact of Yuri Shvets – the ‘SHVEZ’ referred to in the passage – was drawn by me to the attention of Owen’s team. It included the full text of the ‘documents countersigned by Bukowsky, Gordievsky, Svorov and Palombo’ (Vladimir Bukovsky, Oleg Gordievsky, ‘Viktor Suvorov’ aka Vladimir Rezun, and Louis Palumbo – the last three all connected to British/American intelligence agencies.) This contains a collection of garbage allegations even more ridiculous than those I already discussed.

Almost all the crucial evidence was suppressed by Owen and his team.

The piece I originally posted on 'European Tribune', together with further pieces I posted on that site in 2008-9 containing a lot of material still currently relevant, together with some mistakes, is at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:1857/diary.

Other relevant material is included in three pieces which David Loepp and I wrote jointly following Scaramella’s conviction in the second ‘aggravated calumny’ case against him in November 2012 are on his page at the site, at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/de%20Gondi/diary .

[rjj]

LeaNder, don't have a clue. Between ignorance and the endemic American handicap of innocence, can't know. She is too dodgy for anybody to believe her proto-tabloid versions of events, BUT [!!!] the dates (she would have been a young woman when Bulow was active), plus something about the intensity of her description of him are attention getting and make for a qualified suspension of disbelief on that subject.

Apologies for cluttering a thread containing David Habakkuk's content rich posts.

[Frank]

Trump manages to attract critics from all walks of life. No need to single any one out.