Link here.

By Frank Costigliola, Foreign Affairs, 1/27/23

FRANK COSTIGLIOLA is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and the author of Kennan: A Life between Worlds.

George Kennan, the remarkable U.S. diplomat and probing observer of international relations, is famous for forecasting the collapse of the Soviet Union. Less well known is his warning in 1948 that no Russian government would ever accept Ukrainian independence. Foreseeing a deadlocked struggle between Moscow and Kyiv, Kennan made detailed suggestions at the time about how Washington should deal with a conflict that pitted an independent Ukraine against Russia. He returned to this subject half a century later. Kennan, then in his 90s, cautioned that the eastward expansion of NATO would doom democracy in Russia and ignite another Cold War….

….In a policy paper titled “U.S. Objectives with Respect to Russia” completed in August 1948, Kennan laid out the United States’ ultimate aims in the event that the Russians invaded Ukraine. He realized that Ukrainians “resented Russian domination; and their nationalistic organizations have been active and vocal abroad.” It would therefore “be easy to jump to the conclusion” that Ukraine should be independent. He asserted that the United States should not, however, encourage that separation.

Kennan’s assessment grossly underestimated Ukrainians’ will to self-determination. Nevertheless, two problems identified by Kennan three-quarters of a century ago have persisted, particularly in the minds of Russian leaders. Kennan doubted that Russians and Ukrainians could be easily distinguished in ethnic terms. He wrote in a State Department memo that “there is no clear dividing line between Russia and Ukraine, and it would be impossible to establish one.” Second, the Russian and Ukrainian economies were intertwined. Setting up an independent Ukraine “would be as artificial and as destructive as an attempt to separate the Corn Belt, including the Great Lakes industrial area, from the economy of the United States.”

Since 1991, Ukrainians have struggled to establish a territorial and ethnic dividing line while forging economic independence from the Russian behemoth. Moscow has undermined these efforts by encouraging discontent in the eastern Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, fomenting independence movements and now officially annexing four breakaway regions. With years of political and economic pressure and now with military brutality, Russia has tried to thwart Ukraine’s economic independence by disrupting its gas pipelines, grain exports, and shipping.

Even at the height of the Cold War, Kennan insisted that “we cannot be indifferent to the feelings of the Great Russians themselves.” Because the Russians would remain the “strongest national element” in the area, any viable “long-term U.S. policy must be based on their acceptance and their cooperation.” Again, Kennan likened the Russian view of Ukraine to the American view of the Midwest. A separate, independent Ukraine could “be maintained, in the last analysis, only by force.” For all these reasons, a hypothetical triumphant United States should not seek to impose Ukrainian independence on a prostrate Russia….

Read full article here.

By Ekaterina Blinova, Sputnik, 2/9/23

(Emphasis in original)

National Security Adviser to President Biden Jake Sullivan played a prominent role in plotting the September 26, 2022, sabotage against the Russo-European Nord Stream pipelines, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed. So, who is Jake Sullivan: “the cat’s meow,” “once-in-a-generation intellect,” or a reckless hawk?

“I have great respect for Hersh and his reporting and believe that Sullivan could certainly have been instrumental in pushing for and carrying out this deceitful campaign that likely has inflicted monumental damage on citizens worldwide while also sapping America’s remaining national prestige,” Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

In December 2021, Jake Sullivan, acting with Joe Biden’s blessing, convened men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments to come up with a plan on how to destruct Nord Stream 1 and 2 designed to pump Russian natural gas to Europe, according to Seymour Hersh’s recent bombshell.

In early 2022, the CIA told Sullivan that they knew how to blow up the pipelines. The group decided to keep the risky plot on a hush. The US Congress wasn’t informed. The US military and intelligence operatives did their best to conceal Washington’s role in the sabotage. As per the investigative journalist, the team had concerns about the legality of the plot and was well aware that it could quickly morph into a foreign policy nightmare.

After the pipelines had been destroyed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and, later, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland openly praised the development.

“When any crime is committed, the immediate question to ask when seeking suspects is ‘to whose benefit?’ Not only did it benefit the US, US officials made comments before and after the pipeline’s destruction virtually confirming their role and the benefits derived,” Brian Berletic, geopolitical analyst and former US marine, told Sputnik.

For his part, Jake Sullivan stated laconically on September 27, 2022, that the US was supporting efforts to investigate the “apparent sabotage” and “will continue [it’s] work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”

“Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream bombing is completely convincing and I know for a fact that he has reliable sources, mostly in the intelligence community, but I would rather regard Sullivan as the implementer of the attack on the pipeline by virtue of his position rather than the driving force behind it,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief, now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “To be sure, Joe Biden would have had to promote and endorse the project.”

Clinton’s Golden Boy

Jake Sullivan, 46, has long been praised as a “golden boy” by the US mainstream media. Having graduated from Yale in 1998 Sullivan became an advisor to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008 and later, after Hillary dropped out from the race, he advised Barack Obama during his general election campaign.

Sullivan was just 32 when he was sworn in as Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff for policy at the US State Department. When Clinton left the State Department in early 2013, Obama promoted Sullivan to the position of national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2015, Sullivan married Margaret Goodlander, onetime advisor to well-known hawks Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who used to previously work for the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for a New American Security. (Goodlander is currently Counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland).

Sullivan is known for being a quiet but prominent member of the Clinton-Obama team. According to the press, he was part of the “exclusive” team working on resuming relations with Cuba and striking the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. He is also said to be Hillary’s close confidante in the Libya plan, which was developed months before the 2011 NATO invasion of the North African state and brutal killing of its leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Sullivan and his boss, Clinton, adhered to the concept of “smart power,” which encompasses the use of military threat, force, and sanctions and the soft-power levers favored by foreign policy doves, which includes humanitarian aid and negotiations.

The aide was reportedly called “the cat’s meow” and a “potential future president” by Hillary, while Biden lauded him as a “once-in-a-generation intellect.”

In 2015, the sandy-haired Minnesotan joined Hillary on her 2015/2016 election cycle as a foreign policy adviser and eventually returned to the US administration as Joe Biden’s national security adviser in 2021.

Sullivan Lacks True Sense of Right Versus Wrong

However, there’s another side to Sullivan’s stellar career. “Sullivan is clearly drunk on power and lacking a true sense of right versus wrong,” according to Ortel.

“Sullivan is a fiercely partisan globalist who achieved numerous high honors in academic life so he is supremely self-confident and, sadly, often grievously wrong,” Ortel told Sputnik. “One way to get a sense of the way he operates is to look through the State Department and Podesta WikiLeaks files and the FBI Vault files on Hillary Clinton where Sullivan is frequently involved. Like the Clintons, Sullivan thrust himself into contact with powerful Democrats and operated well above his experience level early on. But unlike the Clintons, Obama, and Biden, Sullivan has yet to hold elected office.”

One might wonder why Sullivan rose to prominence so fast even though he had relatively little experience in government affairs. Hillary herself admitted that Jake wasn’t the most experienced diplomat when it came to foreign policy.

“Jake was not the most experienced diplomat at the State Department I could have chosen, but he was discreet and had my absolute confidence,” Clinton wrote in her memoir Hard Choices while describing her decision to tap Sullivan to kick off negotiations with Iran in 2012. “His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process.”

According to US media observers, Sullivan’s primary secret is that he mastered himself in delivering on his boss’s wants and needs even when it went contrary to rules and ethics. The US press quoted a senior Obama aide as saying that Sullivan was ready to do “everything” for then-Secretary Clinton.

Unsurprisingly, Sullivan had no scruples about Hillary’s unsecured email server use for classified and top secret government correspondence. He was bullish on Washington’s Libyan and Syrian interventions which spiraled out of control, completely ruining the North Africa state and leaving the Syrian Arab Republic in tatters.

“Under Obama and Biden, Sullivan is connected to train wreck after train wreck, from the Arab “spring”, to Benghazi, ISIS*, the Iran ‘deal’ and more. He seems to be a huge fan of secret negotiations that are never subject to oversight,” Ortel noted.

Sullivan got mired in Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi scandal revolving around the former secretary of state’s failure to prevent a brutal slaughter of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US nationals in Libya on September 11, 2012. During the investigation into the matter, the House committee stumbled upon Sullivan’s letter in which the official emphasized that “we need to live in a world of risks,” while touting Washington’s decision to oust Gaddafi which opened the door to chaos in Libya.

Trump-Russia “Collusion” Hoax

“In the 2016 campaign, he had every motive to hide the misdeeds of the Clintons, including corruption and tax fraud involving The Clinton Foundation and many other charities,” said Ortel, who has been conducting a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years. “Here it will prove interesting to see what [Special Councel] John Durham has to say about Sullivan, including his likely role pushing the Russian Hoax, for Trump’s impeachment and for electing Joe Biden.”

Sullivan appeared to have no scruples about actively spreading the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and keeping the myth alive even after the allegations about Trump were proven null and void. Later, Durham’s investigation shed light on Clinton campaign operatives’ role in peddling a fake Trump-Alfa Bank story and uncorroborated “dirty dossier” by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

However, when testifying under oath before the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2017, the Clinton confidante denied any knowledge of the plot or people involved in it.

US investigative journalist Paul Sperry alleged that Sullivan was well-aware that the Trump-Alfa Bank story was “cooked-up” and personally spearheaded a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin.

Sullivan was also the one who personally promoted the Trump-Russia collusion story prior to the 2016 elections. Thus, during the July 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, Sullivan met with a number of mainstream media producers and anchors to tell a story “that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.”

Around that time, the CIA intercepted Russian intelligence’s “chatter” about a Clinton “foreign policy adviser” who allegedly proposed a plan to vilify Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin in order to distract public opinion from Hillary’s emailgate scandal. Some US observers believe that the foreign policy adviser in question was Jake Sullivan.

According to Ortel, Sullivan could well be aware of many other “dirty” secrets of the US Democratic establishment, including the Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play schemes, Joe and Hunter Biden influence peddling and Team Obama’s efforts to undermine then-sitting President Donald Trump through a string of dodgy investigations and leaks.

“Simply put, Sullivan has no choice but to cover up the disasters connected to Biden, Obama and Clinton and likely cannot accept the grave errors (and high crimes) that seem to have been committed. In this effort, he will believe he is secure because his wife is a close advisor and friend of Attorney General Merrick Garland,” the Wall Street analyst remarked.

Nord Stream Reporting Not Done

When it comes to the Nord Stream sabotage, “in a just process, Sullivan and his co-conspirators would swiftly be charged, convicted and incarcerated if it is proven that he orchestrated an undeclared war against Russia,” argued Ortel.

According to Ortel, by fanning the flames of proxy war against Russia, Team Biden both pursues vested interests and seeks to cover up and obscure political misdeeds involving Biden, Clinton and Obama in Ukraine and other nations from 2009 to date.

Still, it appears that one could soon hear more about the Biden administration’s secretive and risky plot. Hersh indicated to Sputnik that more investigative pieces about the Nord Stream explosion were forthcoming, but declined to provide further details.

By Cameron Leckie, Pearls and Irritations Blog , 1/28/23

Cameron Leckie served as an officer in the Australian Army for 24 years. An agricultural engineer, he is currently a PhD candidate.

Imagine if Ukraine had capitulated three days after the Russian invasion commenced in February 2022, as some predicted? The Donetsk and Luhansk Republic’s would likely have gained autonomy within the Ukrainian state and life would have carried on like normal for most Ukrainians (minus the regular shelling for the residents of the Donbass). No doubt the capitulation would have seen changes in Ukraine’s political leadership – politics is a ruthless game; whilst the casualties resulting from Russia’s incursion would have been (from a numbers perspective) insignificant compared to the mass loss of life that has since occurred.

Or even better yet, imagine if the United States and NATO had negotiated in good faith with Russia on the proposals it presented in December 2021 that sought to address Russia’s core security concerns. The war would have been avoided, Ukrainian neutrality enshrined, and the world could have got on with solving other pressing problems. But NATO had its ‘principles’ which it must stand by. As forcefully argued by Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, the “absence of a culture of pragmatism,” meant that reaching a compromise with Russia was unacceptable to the Western powers.

Alas these and other opportunities were missed. Russia resorted to a “military-technical” solution. The focus of the Western project in Ukraine now become an opportunity to “weaken Russia,” which when the dusts settle could well be remembered as the greatest strategic miscalculation in the history of the American imperium.

Russia effectively won this war on 24 February 2022 – the day it launched its invasion. What remained uncertain then as it is now was how much territory Ukraine would lose, the extent of the death and destruction, and the geopolitical convulsions that would result.

However, the ultimate hopelessness of the Ukrainian position was not the narrative that was sold in the West. Rather we heard that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked, the Russian military incompetent, the Russian economy would collapse, Putin would be overthrown, Russia was isolated, Russia is a pariah state, Russia is running out of [insert weapon of choice here], or most farfetched of all that Ukraine was ‘winning.’

The result of these false narratives is that the West has reverse ‘OODA’ looped itself (see here for a primer on the OODA loop – a four step decision making cycle that starts with observing the situation, contextualising or orientating your thoughts to those observations before making a decision and acting). In a competitive environment such as war, the idea is that the combatant who can cycle through the OODA loop more rapidly causes the actions of the other combatant to become less and less relevant to the situation overtime until they are defeated.

The starting mindset of Western leaders, after decades of internalising anti-Russian propaganda, (best encapsulated by the infamous, and empirically false claim that “Russia is but a gas tank masquerading as a country”) was an overestimation of their own strength and an underestimation of Russia’s. This resulted in a mistake for the ages, with the assumption that the imposition of the harshest possible sanctions on Russia would be such a “slam dunk” outcome that no rigorous thinking through of the implications was required.

What actually resulted however was that the West has entrapped itself in a positive feedback loop – continuing to escalate the war on economic (nine rounds of sanctions) and military fronts (more support and wonder weapons to Ukraine) with an ever-weakening and less effective hand. No positive feedback loop is sustainable, and as I concluded in July of last year, and is becoming increasingly clear, events in Ukraine will result in the demise of the West as a major power bloc.

Now we are at the point where the inevitable and ignominious unravelling of the Ukrainian project, both within Ukraine and its Western partners is becoming impossible to hide.

In recent weeks the apparent unity of the Kiev regime has started to splinter. First, we have the resignation of Oleksiy Arestovich, President Zelensky’s Strategic Communications Advisor, over comments he made indicating that an explosion that killed 44 civilians in Dnipro was because of Ukrainian air defence intercepting a Russian missile. We have the deaths of the Ukrainian Interior Minister and other top officials in a helicopter crash. We also have the recent acknowledgement by an aide to President Zelensky that a Ukrainian negotiator was assassinated by the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) in March 2022. Finally we have a purge of senior Ukrainian officials including deputy ministers and regional governors over allegations of corruption. Whilst it is unclear exactly what is unfolding in Ukrainian internal politics, it seems safe to assume that the cracks which are forming will widen, particularly with the ever-growing number of casualties being suffered by the Ukraine.

Last December, the President of the European Commission claimed that over 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed (an average of over 350 killed per day). Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s latest estimate suggests that over 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed (an average of 450 killed per day). A recent intelligence estimate by German military intelligence suggests that Ukraine is losing hundreds of soldiers killed every day just in the battle for Bakhmut alone. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Ukraine is suffering horrendous casualties.

What is truly shocking however is the apparent ratio of Russian casualties to Ukrainian. Colonel Macgregor suggests a ratio of eight Ukrainian’s being killed for every one Russian. Whilst it is impossible to confirm this, it does seem plausible that Ukraine is suffering far more casualties than Russia for multiple reasons. First and most importantly, Russia has an overwhelming advantage in firepower, particularly with artillery. Numerous figures have been provided by both Ukrainian and Western sources on this difference, with ratio’s ranging anywhere from five to nineteen to one in Russia’s favour. Secondly, the apparent slow ‘progress’ by Russia’s forces is an indicator of their strategy. Namely to batter the Ukrainian’s senseless with its overwhelming superiority in firepower, only then risking troops in an assault once there is little resistance left. Third, Ukraine continues to reinforce locations that are supposedly “strategically unimportant” such as around Bakhmut, which actually facilitates the Russian “demilitarisation” of Ukraine. Finally, and in stark contrast to Russia’s circumstances (where previously trained reservists have been mobilised and most provided with months of refresher training), the training being provided to Ukrainian troops is clearly insufficient to develop the individual skills and physical stamina required of a soldier let alone the collective training required at platoon, company or battalion level.

Ukraine’s casualties are despite the mindbogglingly enormous support provided by the Western powers. Yet the limitations of this support are becoming all too clear. The provision of main battle tanks to Ukraine provides a pertinent example. Ukraine started the war with well over 2000 main battle tanks. We were then told that the Ukrainian Army had more tanks a month into the war than when they started. Ukraine also received around 500 Soviet era tanks from former Warsaw Pact nations. 100 or thereabouts Challenger, Leopard 2 or M1 tanks represents maybe four per cent of the tanks it already had in service or has already been provided. You don’t need to be a military expert to understand that providing a small number of tanks, with hurriedly trained crews, and the logistics burden of multiple platforms, will not make any significant difference to the outcome.

The last weeks of political theatre associated with the provision of tanks to Ukraine should be seen for what it is. A form of jockeying to prepare the ground for the blame game that will follow Ukraine’s (and NATOs) ultimate defeat. The same could be said of Angela Merkel’s recent comments on the Minsk II Accord’s which were viewed by the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France, and no doubt other NATO powers as a mechanism to buy time, rather than a pathway to the peaceful resolution of the crisis. There is also a change in the rhetoric emanating from various power centres such as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warning that it will be “very, very difficult” to force Russia out of Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile there is the unresolved issue of responsibility for the Nord Stream terrorist attack. As reported in the Washington Post, numerous European officials have concluded that there “is no evidence at this point that Russia was behind the sabotage,” implying that one or more NATO countries destroyed the energy infrastructure of another.

As others have noted, the ideologues in control of Western countries have no reverse gear. The only way is forward, no matter the cost or how slim the chances of success. Yet again we see the lack of pragmatism with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock now claiming that the EU countries are “fighting a war against Russia.”

Meanwhile, in a brilliant must read article, retired United Kingdom diplomat Alistair Crooke gets to the nub of what is driving the United States on its Ukrainian misadventure, where he argues that the resilience of Russia to the financial armageddon that was launched upon it has shattered “the plate-glass floor to western convictions about its ability to ‘manage the world’.” The United States has boxed itself into a corner from which it cannot escape with its Ukraine project.

It is difficult to predict what will happen next. The Western powers appear to have no viable strategy to bring the war to an end. The best they can do is keep Ukraine on life support while they try to figure something out, within an environment where Russia ratchets up the pressure on the battlefield and domestic pressures mount. But as Sun Tzu put it, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. The best option would be for the key Western leaders, in particular President Biden, to seek immediate negotiations with President Putin without pre-conditions. The worst option would be to continue the escalation cycle, which ultimately could lead to direct conflict between NATO and Russia, and potentially nuclear war.

As we stand on the brink of an unthinkable abyss, I for one hope that pragmatism makes a return.

Learn more about Pearls and Irritations blog here

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 1/27/23

CN Editor Joe Lauria was one of 644 Twitter accounts that secretly formed part of Hamilton 68’s fake “dashboard” that wrongly influenced major media about alleged “Russian influence.”

The editor of this website [Consortium News] is part of a secret list created by the organization Hamilton 68 that was fed to major media and Congress to identify so-called “Russian accounts” that were “sowing discord” in the United States. 

The list of 644 Twitter accounts was shared with Twitter executives who were unable to prove any links to Russia, reported Matt Taibbi in his latest installment of the Twitter Files on Friday. 

“This was digital McCarthyism, taking people with dissident or unconventional opinions and mass-accusing them of ‘Un-American activities,’” writes Taibbi.

Hamilton 68 was created in 2017 by Clint Watts, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence officer and MSNBC analyst as a project of the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a bipartisan think-tank.

On Hamilton’s advisory council sits former acting C.I.A. chief Michael Morell, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and former editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard Bill Kristol.

Twitter Pushes Back

Twitter executives were not taken in by Hamilton 68’s secret list of Twitter accounts, with Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, saying in an email obtained by Taibbi: “I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.” Twitter uncovered the secret list by analyzing Hamilton’s Application Program Interface (API) requests to reverse-engineer the list in late 2017, Taibbi reported.

Taibbi wrote:

“The two founders of Hamilton 68, the blue-and-red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie Fly and Hillary for America Foreign Policy Advisor Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the names of the accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.” Tchya, right. One look at the list reveals the real reason they couldn’t make it public.

This was not faulty science. It was a scam. Instead of tracking how ‘Russia’ influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming. As Roth put it, ‘Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.’”

But as Taibbi points out, it was not only conservatives who were targeted. “The names ranged from well-known media figures like David Horowitz to conservatives like Dennis Michael Lynch and progressives like Consortium editor Joe Lauria. It’s crucial to understand that the list captured not just Trump supporters but a range of political dissidents, including leftists, anarchists and humorists,” he wrote.

Major U.S. universities as well as members of the U.S. Congress were also duped by the Hamilton 68 scam, writes Taibbi.

39.Perhaps most embarrassingly, elected officials promoted the site, and invited Hamilton “experts” to testify. Dianne Feinstein, James Lankford, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, and Mark Warner were among the offenders. pic.twitter.com/X97OmZ3dv1

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

“Watts, who clearly knew how to play up the melodrama of his role, gave dire warnings to the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling them they should ‘follow the dead bodies’ if they wanted to get to the bottom of the Russian interference problem,” Taibbi reported.  Twitter tried to privately warn Feinstein and Blumenthal about Hamilton 68 but were ignored. By not going public, Twitter helped perpetuate the fraud, Taibbi said.

Taibbi wrote:

“The scam needed just three elements: credentials of someone like ‘former FBI agent’ Watts, the absence of any semblance of fact-checking, and the silence of companies like Twitter.

On the third point, Twitter is not guiltless. Though people like Roth wanted to go hard at the fabulists — ‘My recommendation at this stage is an ultimatum: you release the list or we do,’ he wrote — ultimately people like future White House and National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne advised caution. ‘We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly,’ she wrote. Carlos Monje, future senior advisor to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, concurred.

‘I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here,’ Monje decided.

Even if Twitter had pushed back, it wouldn’t have mattered. As it was, when company spokespeople urged reporters off the record to stay away, they didn’t — just as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal didn’t, when Twitter tried to warn them that ‘Russian bot’ stories were fake. Horne wrote several times that she had no luck in steering journalists away from these hack headlines. ‘Reporters are chafing,” she wrote, adding, ‘it’s like shouting into a void.’” …

Indeed, corporate media gobbled up what Hamilton 68 was serving. Wrote Taibbi:

“If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s ‘research.’ Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as sources.”

Illusion of Ongoing Russian Interference

28.What makes this an important story is the sheer scale of the news footprint left by Hamilton 68’s digital McCarthyism. The quantity of headlines and TV segments dwarfs the impact of individual fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. pic.twitter.com/zfyjLb5Tkq

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

Taibbi wrote: “The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it. They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal, since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton’s ‘bullshit’ stories in volume.”

He added:

“The Hamilton 68 story shows how the illusion of ongoing ‘Russian interference’ worked. The magic trick was generated via a confluence of interests, between think-tanks, media, and government. Before, we could only speculate. Now we know: the ‘Russian threat’ was, in this case at least, just a bunch of ordinary Americans, dressed up to look like a Red Menace. …

‘Outfits like Hamilton 68 don’t have to agree with us,’ says Lauria. ‘But they should just leave us the hell alone.’”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe