John Brennan's and Jim Clappers' Last Gasp? by Larry C Johnson

A flood of news in the last 24 hours regarding Russiagate. I am referring specifically to reports that the CIA ex-filtrated Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry bureaucrat who reportedly hooked himself on the coat-tails of Yuri Ushakov, who was Ambassador to the US from 1999 through 2008. He was recruited by the CIA (i.e., asked to collect information and pass it to the U.S. Government via his or her case officer) at sometime during this period. Smolenkov is being portrayed as a supposedly "sensitive" source. But if you read either the Washington Post or New York Times accounts of this event there is not a lot of meat on this hamburger.

Regardless of the quality of his reporting, Smolenkov  is the kind of recruited source that looks good on paper and helps a CIA case officer get promoted but adds little to actual U.S. intelligence on Russia. If you understood the CIA culture you would immediately recognize that a case officer (CIA terminology for the operations officer tasked with identifying and recruiting human sources) gets rewarded by recruiting persons who ostensibly will have access to information the CIA has identified as a priority target. In this case, we're talking about possible access to Vladimir Putin.

If you take time to read both articles you will quickly see that the real purpose of this "information operation" is to paint Donald Trump as a security threat that must be stopped. This is conveniently timed to assist Jerry Nadler's mission impossible to secure Trump's impeachment. But I think there is another dynamic at play--these competing explanations for what prompted the exfiltration of this CIA asset say more about the incompetence of Barack Obama and his intel chiefs. John Brennan and Jim Clapper in particular. 

A former intelligence officer and friend summarized the various press accounts as the follows and offered his own insights in a note I received this morning:

[Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin’s itineraries that Smolenkov photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov’s post-meeting verbal comments, which he turns over to the CIA.

The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny he is being paid by US taxpayers.

The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed. 

This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking most of the CIA’s Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked the books using Smolenkov’s intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and balances would never have passed muster. It’s Brennan’s leaks to the press that eventually prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov.

There is public evidence that Brennan not only cooked the books but that the leaks of this supposedly "sensitive" intelligence occurred when he was Director and lying Jim Clapper was Director of National Intelligence. If Oleg Smolenkov was really such a terrific source of intel, then where are the reports? It is one thing to keep such reports close hold when the source is still in place. But he has been out of danger for more than two years. Those reports should have been shared with the Senate and House Intelligence committees. If there was actual solid intelligence in those reports that corroborated the Steele Dossier, then that information would have been leaked and widely circulated. This is Sherlock Holmes dog that did not bark.

Then we have the odd fact that this guy's name is all over the press and he is buying real estate in true name. What the hell!! If the CIA genuinely believed that Mr. Smolenkov was in danger he would not be walking around doing real estate deals in true name. In fact, the sources for both the Washington Post and NY Times pieces push the propaganda that Smolenkov is a sure fire target for a Russian retaliatory hit. Really? Then why publish his name and confirm his location.

That leaves me with the alternative explanation--Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being trotted out by Brennan to try to provide public pressure to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that will show that the CIA and the NSA were coordinating and operating with British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald Trump and members of his campaign.

I want you to take a close look at the two pieces on this exfiltration (i.e., Washington Post and NY Times) and note the significant differences

REASON FOR THE EXFILTRATION:

Let's start with the Washington Post:

The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when President Trump revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, said the current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

What was the information that Trump revealed? He was discussing intel that Israel passed regarding ISIS in Syria. (See the Washington Post story here.) Why would he talk to the Russians about that? Because every day, at least once a day, U.S. and Russian military authorities are sharing intelligence with one another in a phone call that originates from the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center (aka CAOC) at the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar. Trump's conversation not only was appropriate but fully within his right to do so as Commander-in-Chief. 

What the hell does this have to do with a sensitive source in Moscow? NOTHING!! Red Herring.

The NY Times account is more detailed and damning of Obama instead of Trump:

But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia’s election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.’s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns — prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant’s trustworthiness. But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant agreed. . . .

The decision to extract the informant was driven “in part” because of concerns that Mr. Trump and his administration had mishandled delicate intelligence, CNN reported. But former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction. . . .

But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office, first in formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public release in January 2017. News agencies, including NBC, began reporting around that time about Mr. Putin’s involvement in the election sabotage and on the C.I.A.’s possible sources for the assessment.

Trump played no role whatsoever in releasing information that allegedly compromised this so-called "golden boy" of Russian intelligence. The NY Times account makes it very clear that the release of information while Obama was President, not Trump, is what put the source in danger. Who leaked that information?

WHAT DID THE SOURCE KNOW AND WHAT DID HE TELL US?

But how valuable was this source really? What did he provide that was so  enlightening? On this point the New York Times and Washington Post are more in sync.

First the NY Times:

The Moscow informant was instrumental to the C.I.A.’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself. As the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr. Putin, the source was also key to the C.I.A.’s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald J. Trump’s election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

The Washington Post provides a more fulsome account:

U.S. officials had been concerned that Russian sources could be at risk of exposure as early as the fall of 2016, when the Obama administration first confirmed that Russia had stolen and publicly disclosed emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

In October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement that intelligence agencies were “confident that the Russian Government directed” the hacking campaign. . . .

In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously laid the blame on the Kremlin, concluding that “Putin ordered an influence campaign” and that Russia’s goal was to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm Clinton’s chances of winning.

“That’s a pretty remarkable intelligence community product — much more specific than what you normally see,” one U.S. official said. “It’s very expected that potential U.S. intelligence assets in Russia would be under a higher level of scrutiny by their own intelligence services.”

Sounds official. But there is no actual forensic or documentary evidence (by that I mean actual corroborating intelligence reports) to back up these claims by our oxymoronically christened intelligence community.

Vladimir Putin ordered the hack? Where is the report? It is either in a piece of intercepted electronics communication and/or in a report derived from information provided by Mr. Smolenkov. Where is it? Why has that not been shared in public? Don't have to worry about exposing the source now. He is already in the open. What did he report? Answer--no direct evidence.

Then there is the lie that the Russians hacked the DNC. They did not. Bill Binney, a former Technical Director of the NSA, and I have written on this subject previously (see here) and there is no truth to this claim. Let me put it simply--if the DNC had been hacked by the Russians using spearphising (this is claimed in the Robert Mueller report) then the NSA would have collected those messages and would be able to show they were transferred to the Russians. That did not happen.

This kind of chaotic leaking about an old intel op is symptomatic of panic. CIA is already officially denying key parts of the story. My money is on John Brennan and Jim Clapper as the likely impetus for these reports. They are hoping to paint Trump as a national security threat and distract from the upcoming revelations from the DOJ Inspector General report on the FISA warrants and, more threatening, the decisions that Prosecutor John Durham will take in deciding to indict those who attempted to launch a coup against Donald Trump, a legitimately elected President of the United States.

Comments

[Larry Johnson]

No lack of confidence here. Just frustration over your preference for outdated, unverified press articles vice the actual findings by Mueller.
Here's a couple of relevant paragraphs:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with
a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the
Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert
Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer
Aras Agalarov . Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the "Crown prosecutor of Russia ... offered
to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" as "part of Russia and its government 's support
for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. immediately responded that "if it 's what you say I love it," and arranged
the meeting through a series of emails and telephone calls.
Trump Jr. invited campaign chairman Paul Manafort and senior advisor Jared Kushner to
attend the meeting, and both attended. Members of the Campaign discussed the meeting before it
occurred, and Michael Cohen recalled that Trump Jr. may have told candidate Trump about an
upcoming meeting to receive adverse information about Clinton , without linking the meeting to
Russia. According to written answers submitted by President Trump, he has no recollection of
learning of the meeting at the time, and the Office found no documentary evidence showing that he
was made aware of the meeting--or its Russian connection-before it occurred.

Your continued refusal to acknowledge the actual findings of Mueller and your insistence of repeating media memes raises questions in my mind about your real intentions. Trolling?

[The Twisted Genius]

Larry, surely you're not surprised that USI was listening to the Russian Ambassador's conversations. Flynn should have also realized this and just admitted to what he discussed. I don't think his talking with Kislyak was inappropriate at all. It makes it all the more perplexing that he would lie about the nature of those conversations. As for Flynn's ability to project sincerity to the FBI agents, kudos to him. All those years as a GO prepared him well. Too bad his sincere answers didn't match up with the transcripts of his conversations with Kislyak.

[Larry Johnson]

And USI has NO RIGHT to listen in on the Flynn part of the conversation. There was nothing illegal, immoral or unethical about it. I find it sickening that you so cavalierly accept this kind of breach of an American citizen's constitutional right. And you don't know what the "transcripts" say. Have not been released. But it is telling that his lawyer wants them released and the FBI is balking. You're a keen analyst. What does that tell you?

[Mark Logan]

I believe you haven't grasped my point, which was that LE will surely say they were justified in conducting an investigation on the Trumps because the Trumps (and by that I include the Trump campaign) lied about their foreign contacts. They did so both publicly and privately to authorities.

Here's a synopsis of some of the items in the Mueller report which documents some of the misleading statements the Trump campaign made to authorities.

https://www.justsecurity.org/65863/expert-summaries-of-mueller-report-a-collection-of-short-essays/#LinksandContactswithRussiaCohen

Cohen, et al.

[Fred]

TTG,

So it was legal to speak with the ambassador however when speaking to the FBI weeks later his words did not match word for word with the transcript of the conversation - accroding to the FBI, or at least those who overrulled the agents' interpretation of the conversation. Therefor "he lied". What was the probable cause for this investigation of Flynn? Who "unmaked" Flynn since he wasn't a target of the USI listening to the Russian ambassador? What was the lawfull reason for that unmasking? Was that directed by President Obama (since he warned Trump against making him National Security Advisor) or something done by someone in the administration like Samantha Power, who didn't always follow instructions, as noted in her vote at the UN (or is that all just a campaign of plausable deniability with her as the fall girl):
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/i-hated-my-voting-instructions-samantha-power-defied-obama-to-block-russia-from-united-nations-body

[Larry Johnson]

I fully grasp that you are opining about things you really lack substantive knowledge of. If you've actually read the Mueller report (which I doubt), you would note that the initiative for the Trump Tower Moscow came from Felix Sater. Sater was an FBI informant. In other words, it was the FBI trying to entrap Trump over a Moscow Deal. You clearly are okay with that kind of law enforcement misconduct. I'm not. It is wrong.
When you total up the number of Confidential Informants that were used by the FBI and other elements of intelligence communities in the UK and the US, there is no doubt that an illegal covert op to destroy Trump was attempted. Thank God the clown show at the FBI and CIA were staffed by people of limited talent and smarts.

[William McQuaid]

WaPo repeats falsehoods:

...intelligence agencies were “confident that the Russian Government directed” the hacking campaign. . .

Confident because DNC servers were destroyed allowing (confidence) falsehoods from CIA, etc.

But Bill Binney, NSA top expert and whistle blower proves their "confidence" was a lie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv0-Lnv0d0k&t=11s

Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Jimmy.

[The Twisted Genius]

Here's the DOJ statement of offenses which Flynn signed as being accurate under penalty of perjury. He wasn't talking about buying a set of used tires. I can see why the FBI was interested in whoever was talking to the Russian Ambassador about policy actions. The most alerting thing I see in this document is the account of Flynn talking with members of Trump's transition team. What authorized that? He must have been the target of an investigation by that time for that to occur.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download

[Fred]

TTG,

Did it escape your notice that Flynn was on the transition team, that's fact #1 on the statement? Who forbade the president elect from indicating to other nations that Trump was opposed to the Egyptian UNSC resolution, which is item 4? Best of all is the reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the election. I believe Mueller proved there was none.

[The Twisted Genius]

Fred, I wasn’t clear in my last comment. I meant what authorized the collection of Flynn’s conversations with other members of the transition team. That certainly isn’t a routine collection target. That’s why I assume he must have been the target of an active investigation at that time. The prudent thing for Flynn to do was to wait a month when when he would have been fully authorized to conduct foreign policy on behalf of the USG. Or he could have just not lied about his conversations to the FBI agents.

As for the Mueller report, it made emphatically clear that Russia engaged in “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election.” Volume I of his report focused exclusively on that point. His indictments of the IRA and GRU 12 did the same.

[Larry Johnson]

TTG, no offense intended, but you're an intel guy. What was the predicate crime? There was not one. This was a political hit job manufactured by the Obama Administration. Take a good look at the discovery Flynn's lawyer is demanding. FBI is holding that back because it will torch their crooked ass. Why are you so willing to give those lying assholes the benefit of the doubt?

There was no legal reason to target and unmask Flynn. Every thing he was doing with the Russians and other countries on the UNSC was entirely legal. Obama is a goddamn traitor and should be in jail for this abuse of power.

[The Twisted Genius]

Larry, Flynn was under a counterintelligence investigation until late December 2016. I don't know what triggered it or if it even had anything to do with the broader Russia investigation. It was not a criminal investigation.

[David Habakkuk]

Jack,

About the complexity, you are I think in large measure right.

As to how it was organised, what I suspect happened was a bizarre mixture of the ‘orchestrated’ and ‘organic.’ It would seem likely that the central driving force was Brennan.

However, this was not simply centrally directed.

And it seems to me clear that when the discovery that materials from the DNC had been leaked to ‘WikiLeaks’ caused the conspiracy to move into higher gear, in the late spring/early summer of 2016, the need to respond quickly led to failures of co-ordination and sloppy errors.

The limited interested of today’s MSM in investigating complexity has made it easier for the conspirators to cover-up some of the vulnerabilities this created.

However, the complexity problem is not really material in relation to the lawsuits which Biss and Clevenger have filed on behalf of Butowsky in response to the smear campaigns used to frustrate his efforts to bring the actual truth about the life and death of Seth Rich to light.

This means that, as it were, the obfuscations designed to obscure the fact that he provided the materials from the DNC to ‘WikiLeaks’ may be a relatively weak point in the fortifications set up by the conspirators.

If it can be successfully attacked, then the use of complexity to obfuscate may no longer work so successfully elsewhere.

In addition to the cases I mentioned, there is the most recent suit filed by Clevenger and Biss on behalf of Butowsky, against Douglas Wigdor and Rod Wheeler.

A mass of materials on all these suits is available on the invaluable ‘CourtListener’ site, and although one needs a PACER subscription to access many of them, key documents are freely available.

(See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7244731/butowsky-v-folkenflik/ ; https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14681570/butowsky-v-gottlieb/ ; https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15999245/butowsky-v-wigdor/ .)

At the time when Larry posted on Magistrate Judge Caroline M. Craven’s denial of the Motion to Dismiss filed by Folkenflik and NPR back in April, the full text of her ruling was not openly available.

It now is – see entry 58, dated 17 April 2019. The ‘Amended Complaint’, entry 54 dated 5 March, is also well worth reading.

On the most recent case, against Wigdor and Wheeler, the ‘Complaint’ is entry 1, dated 31 July 2019.

Those whoever who do not have the time to delve in any detail but want to see how potentially explosive these cases are should read the ‘Second Amended Complaint’ in Butowsky v Gottlieb, which was filed on that same day, and is entry 105 in the ‘CourtListener’ materials.

In this, which followed the attempt by Michael Isikoff to renew the smear campaign, Butowsky ‘outs’ two key sources, Ellen Ratner and Seymour Hersh, who he appears to think have not given him the support they might have.

The audio of the conversation between Butowsky and Hersh has been in the public domain for a long time.

Unfortunately, the only transcripts I can find are grossly inadequate.

It would help if, in addition to the edited excerpts including in their filings, Biss and Clevenger, or someone else, could arrange for as accurate as possible a transcript of the full fascinating 20-minute conversation to be prepared and made readily available.

This conversation, moreover, now needs to be read in the context of a key claim in the ‘Second Amended Complaint’, that ‘In a separate phone call with Mr. Butowsky, Mr. Hersh said he obtained his information about Seth Rich from Mr. McCabe, the deputy FBI director.’

What is not clear to me, having both read the transcript and listened to the audio, is whether Hersh had actually seen the FBI report to which he refers, or whether he relied upon his source’s account of it.

If indeed the source was McCabe, then we have to 1. to wonder why he should have talked to Hersh at all, and 2. whether what he was providing was a ‘limited hangout.’

This is particularly important, because the dating both of the original contact between Rich and ‘WikiLeaks’, and of the discovery of this by Western intelligence/law enforcement agencies, may be critical to making sense of all kinds of elements of this story.

Among these is the history of Smolenkov, about whom Scott Ritter has published some interesting reflections on the ‘Consortium News’ site.

(See https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/14/the-spy-who-failed/ .)

I see that one hypothesis he takes seriously is that put forward by ‘J’.

My own inclination had been to suspect that, as Larry’s friend suggested, this may have been a version of an ‘Our Man in Havana’ situation, with Brennan in the role of the ludicrous ‘Chief’ in Greene’s novel, who clearly reflected his creator’s experience in the wartime MI6.

However, one does need to keep an open mind, as making premature decisions as to what one can rule out as absolutely unthinkable is the route to getting things comprehensively wrong in matters like this.

That said, Hersh's suggestion to Butowsky that this was ‘a Brennan operation’ obviously needs to be put together with Ritter's claim that that ‘intelligence’ from Smolenkov which claimed to vindicate the claim that the DNC materials were hacked, not leaked was presented to the White House in August 2016.

If both are right, it would seem that this tends to narrow the available range of interpretations of what various actors were doing.

I do find myself wondering whether, when the smoke has finally clearly – if it ever does – we will find that Ed Butowsky has played a kind of Colonel Picquart role in all this.

[Fred]

TTG,

Flynn was not conducting foreign policy on behalf of the USG. Just like John Kerry and his meetings with Iran after Trump was elected. Thanks for repeating the "Russia, Russia, Russia" Line. On to impeachment!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/09/trump_john_kerry_is_violating_logan_act_sabotaging_talks_with_iran.html

[Jim Cunningham]

I actually have a different take than yours.

Smolenkov is Brennan's ticket out of jail. Smolenkov was Brennan's source which led him to "suspect" Trump was colluding with Putin. We need to know where Smolenkov is, probably in protective custody somewhere in Virginia.

[SEO Dubai]

Essential to concentrate on the reality they are recounting to various and even opposing stories.