Spy Spin

There’s a narrative developing around the Steele Dossier, and it’s not a promising one, from the perspective of those who want and expect truth and transparency. An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal lays out this narrative, which has been hinted at before. So what’s the new spin?

That both the Clinton and the Trump campaigns were victimized by an evil Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 election and sow chaos in our politics to undermine our democracy.

Daniel Hoffman wrote this op-ed. He’s a former CIA station chief who worked in the Soviet Union. He currently works for a DC political consulting company. In his article, he emphasizes the possibility

that the dossier was part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot targeting both parties and America’s political process. This is what seems most likely to me, having spent much of my 30-year government career, including with the CIA, observing Soviet and then Russian intelligence operations. [emphasis added]

Hoffman argues that Steele would have been on the FSB‘s radar–Russian intelligence would have been watching him, a former MI-6 agent, and monitoring his communications. Therefore, the FSB would know that Steele was looking for dirt on Trump. Steele didn’t go to Russia, but instead relied upon Russians to give him kompromat. Russians keep tabs on those within their borders who communicate with foreign citizens (as do we).

Hoffman further cites the Russian hack of the DNC, which could have given them access to inside information about potential opposition research the Democrats were collecting on Trump.

A digression: That Russians hacked the DNC is, to some, still a fact not in evidence because our government has never been able to forensically examine the DNC server. Interestingly enough, however, just days ago a sudden and very convenient revelation came via the Washington Post to the effect that the Dutch government watched the hack of the DNC in real time. Wow!

Supposedly, the Dutch had these Russian scofflaws under surveillance and they immediately tipped off our government to the hack. And yet, for some reason, that fact has never before been revealed and instead what’s been cited as proof, even testified to Congress as proof, is that a private contractor, CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC, determined that the guilty were Russians. The DNC denied the FBI access to their hardware and apparently the Comey FBI was fine with that. One has to wonder whether the Dutch also watched the evil Russians hack the Republicans, as also happened according to testimony  by former FBI Director Comey.

Referring back to the WSJ op-ed, some information in the dossier is true, Hoffman says, specifically citing the fact that Carter Page did travel to Russia (although he did nothing wrong by doing so). Hoffman argues that it’s classic Russian methodology to mix truth with lies. (Wouldn’t that apply to all spies?)

Hoffman sums up his theory: The Russians probably expected Clinton to win but the dossier would nevertheless help their goal of sowing chaos because, once revealed, it would lead Trump to accuse Clinton of “dirty” politics and help discredit her [thankfully aborted] administration.

Hoffman believes that we all, Republicans and Democrats alike, should now come together in a kumbaya moment, united against our common enemy: Those darned Russians. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

According to Hoffman,

Special counsel Robert Mueller should be able to lift the veil on whether the Steele dossier was, as I suspect, a tool of Russia’s espionage.

What a card!

Hoffman adds that Steele has revealed “details about his sources” to Mueller. How he knows, he doesn’t say.

So there you have it. The new trial balloon. The new spin. The new narrative:

Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the DNC, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie–all of them, as well as President Trump–are victims of the evil Russians. The witch hunt that has been going on for more than a year and a half has been just what the Russians ordered!

Mind you, nobody made the DNC and the Clinton campaign hire Perkins Coie, so they could hire Fusion GPS, so they could hire a retired foreign spy, so he could contact Russians (in Russia), so they could invent dig up ludicrous-on-its-face dirt on Donald J. Trump, giving the Russians ability to plant a false dossier, all to further their goal of undermining American democracy. They ought not to have bothered. The DNC, the Clinton campaign and their allies, the biased members of the U.S. intelligence community, the corrupt media, and the Obama administration were doing a yeoman’s job undermining our democracy all by themselves.

Never forget the corruption implicit in what they all did, no matter if the Russians used their activities to plant false information that the Democrats and the corrupt and complicit media, and even some in the U.S. intelligence community, were more than willing to believe.

No Russians made Obama administration officials spy on and potentially illegally unmask the names of U.S. citizens. No Russians made the Obama administration illegally leak “incidentally gathered” private communications to the corrupt media. No Russians made the Obama administration, as is suspected, use the unconfirmed (as testified to by Comey) and now allegedly planted-by-the-Russians kompromat to illegally obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

Even if the Russians fooled Christopher Steele, he and his friends were more than willing to be fooled.

More fool they. Now the chickens come home to roost.

We shall see what the Nunes memo has to say. Hopefully, this week.

In the meantime, some information concerning where Mr. Hoffman works. (Dateline March 2017)

Robin Townley, who was a top deputy to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, has landed at Sonoran Policy Group, a lobbying and consulting firm. Townley was the National Security Council’s senior director for Africa when the Central Intelligence Agency denied his request for a top security clearance, POLITICO reported last month. Townley is now working as senior vice president for defense and international affairs at SPG. Townley is a former Marine intelligence officer who has also worked for the Pentagon and U.S. Special Operations Command, and as a senior executive for the Maersk Group.

 — Townley joins two others with Trump administration connections at SPG. Stuart Jolly, who worked as the Trump campaign’s national field director, is the firm’s president. And Jacob Daniels, who worked as the campaign’s chief of staff in Michigan before serving on the inaugural committee, is the firm’s vice president of public policy. SPG has also hired two others in recent weeks. John Rosenberg, who served as an Africa adviser to John Kasich’s presidential campaign, has joined the firm as senior vice president of global strategy. And Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA officer, is the firm’s new senior vice president of security and intelligence.

A related post concerns another WSJ article that claimed that our DOJ may actually charge real Russians with the DNC hack.

Will We the People ever learn the truth about what happened in the closing months of the Obama administration? Will President Trump drain this corrupt DC swamp? Will the guilty ever be appropriately punished?

For the good of our Republic, pray that the answer to all three questions is yes!

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