By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, 9/5/24
As the drums beat louder and louder about alleged threats from Russia, the Biden administration today blew perilous new life into the debunked and disgraced Russiagate disinformation operation.
Russiagate seems too good of a weapon for the Democrats to give up. Its initial appearance, beginning in 2016, dangerously raised tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. But in the midst of today’s escalating crisis in Ukraine, a Russiagate repeat recklessly raises risk to insane heights.
Here’s how The New York Times reported it today:
“The United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian influence campaigns in the 2024 election, as it tries to curb the Kremlin’s use of state-run media and fake news sites to sway American voters.
The actions include sanctions, indictments and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than two years ago.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland detailed the actions taken by the Justice Department. They include the indictment of two Russian employees of RT, the state-owned broadcaster, who used a company in Tennessee to spread content, and the takedown of a Russian malign influence campaign known as Doppelgänger.
‘The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse,’ Mr. Garland said. …
The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to foreign interference in an American election.”
Garland testified: “The effort in this case is to affect the preferred outcome of the presidential election. … the Director of National Intelligence has testified that Russia’s preferences have not changed from the preceding election.”
CNN’s Breaking News alert dredged up thoroughly disproven myths of “Russia’s 2016 activity, which included hacking the Democratic National Committee and leaking documents aimed at undercutting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”
The Lie That Won’t Die
Most Americans (not attentive readers of Consortium News) will believe this recycled drivel from top Justice Department and F.B.I. officials, whose predecessors promoted the same gambit.
As we pointed out four weeks ago in “Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism,” thanks to Establishment media, Russiagate continues to survive “like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.” This, even though the $32 million Robert Mueller investigation found no conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign — a main plank in the Russiagate tale.
The other main plank, that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers, was also debunked, as we shall get to shortly.
The government’s actions today were preceded by more Russiagate drivel last Saturday from a repeat offender, Michael Isikoff (via Spy Talk). This time around, Russiagate is consequential drivel as it helps grease the skids for war.
In 2017 Isikoff wrote (with David Corn) Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump — “how American democracy was hacked by Moscow to help Trump” (Amazon); a “most thorough and riveting account” (The New York Times).
It was all, as the British say, bollocks! In fact, a year after the “riveting” book came out, Isikoff had to admit publicly that the “Steele Dossier” and infamous “pee-tape” were “likely false.” He confessed during an interview on Dec. 15, 2018, (with an unsuspecting — and somewhat shocked) admirer.
[See: Michael Isikoff Cuts His Losses at ‘Russian Roulette’]
The Timing of Isikoff’s Confession
Isikoff during the Collision tech conference in Toronto in June 2023. (Vaughn Ridley/Collision via Sportsfile, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
I wondered why Isikoff volunteered his confession at the time (I had thought prematurely). Perhaps there is a clue in what follows:
On Dec. 5, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee took closed-door sworn testimony from Shawn Henry, a top official of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike hired by the F.B.I. to do the forensics on the Democratic National Committee computers.
Henry testified, we only found out years later, that there was no technical evidence that those DNC emails, which were so embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton when published by WikiLeaks, had been hacked, by Russia or by anyone else.
Did someone privy to that testimony tip Isikoff off, so that he could do a pre-emptive “modified, limited hangout” just 10 days later?
Wait! You did not know about Henry’s sworn testimony? Here’s why. Adam Schiff, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and the Establishment media have been able to keep that testimony hidden from nearly everyone for almost seven years.
The indignities do not cease. The C.I.A. analyst who wrote the first draft of the meretricious “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, which was used far and wide to “prove” Russian hacking of the DNC and other offensives, is bragging about the role he played.
Now retired, Michael van Landingham has told his story to Rolling Stone. We dissected it in our last piece.
The unrepentant Isikoff, just a few months ago, in Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk pushed the (now thoroughly discredited) claim that Russia hacked the DNC emails.
To remind one: those emails showed that, because of DNC and Clinton campaign machinations, Bernie Sanders had as much chance of becoming the 2016 Democratic Party nominee as the proverbial snowball in hell.
The Vampire
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with U.S. President Joe Biden in Kiev, Feb. 20, 2023. (White House/Adam Schultz)
“Russian hacking the DNC” is like a vampire, with no one able to drive a wooden stake into its heart and keep it there. President Barack Obama himself knew it was phony, yet he expelled 35 Russian diplomats for hacking and other alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
Is Isikoff’s latest redux in SpyTalk a harbinger of more Russophobic brainwashing as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepare a response to Russia prevailing in Ukraine?
In the piece, Isikoff peddles the dangerous fantasy that Russia is threatening Europe beyond Ukraine, while at the same time saying Russia can’t even win in the Ukrainian “stalemate.” Isikoff does this in an interview with John Sullivan, a former U.S. envoy to Moscow, who’s just published a new book about his time in the Russian capital.
He says:
“’This is all about Russian aggression,’ Sullivan continued. ‘It happens to be directed at Ukraine, which is why the point of the spear is sticking into Ukraine, but it won’t end there. And I draw the analogies, many analogies in the book, to the Second World War and the start of the war in the 1930s and the late 30s.’”
Former President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway coined the expression “alternative facts.” With folks like Isikoff and van Landingham back in the saddle — and outlets like Spy Talk and Rolling Stone willing to promote them — expect as many “alternative facts” from Donkeys as from Elephants.
What is important to bear in mind is that the “alternative facts” about Russia are more dangerous by far, given the extremely high tension between Washington and Moscow.
— Joe Lauria contributed to this story.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a CIA analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.