Where’s the
Beef? The Senate Intel Committee and Russia
By Mike Whitney
October 12,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- The Senate Intelligence Committee has made it
clear that it is not conducting an open and
independent investigation of alleged Russian
hacking, but making a determined effort to support a
theory that was presented in the January 6, 2017
Intelligence Community Assessment. Committee
Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted as
much in a press conference last Wednesday when he
said:
We feel
very confident that the ICA’s accuracy is going
to be supported by our committee.
Burr’s
statement is an example of “confirmation bias”
which is the tendency to interpret information in a
way that confirms one’s own preexisting beliefs. In
this case, Burr and his co-chair, Senator Mark
Warner have already accepted the findings of a
hastily slapped-together Intelligence report that
was the work of “hand-picked” analysts who were
likely chosen to produce conclusions that jibed with
a particular political agenda. In other words, the
intelligence was fixed to fit the policy. Burr of
course has tried to conceal his prejudice by
pointing to the number of witnesses the Committee
has interviewed and the volume of work that’s been
produced. This is from an article at The Nation:
Since
January 23,… the committee and its staff have
conducted more than 100 interviews, comprising
250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000
pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than
100,000 documents relevant to Russiagate. The
staff, said Warner, has collectively spent a
total of 57 hours per day, seven days a week,
since the committee opened its inquiry, going
through documents and transcripts, interviewing
witnesses, and analyzing both classified and
unclassified material.
It all
sounds very impressive, but if the goal is merely to
lend credibility to unverified assumptions, then
what’s the point?
Let’s take
a look at a few excerpts from the report and
see whether Burr and Warner are justified in
“feeling confident” in the ICA’s accuracy.
From
the Intelligence Community Assessment:
We
assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered
an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to
undermine public faith in the US democratic
process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm
her electability and potential presidency. We
further assess Putin and the Russian Government
developed a clear preference for President-elect
Trump. We have high confidence in these
judgments.
This is the
basic claim of Russia meddling that has yet to be
proved. As you can see, the charge is mixed with
liberal doses of mind-reading mumbo-jumbo that
reveal the authors’ lack of objectivity. There’s a
considerable amount of speculation about Putin’s
motives and preferences which are based on pure
conjecture. It’s a bit shocking that professional
analysts– who are charged with providing our leaders
with rock-solid intelligence related to matters of
national security– would indulge in this type of
opinionated blather and psycho-babble. It’s also
shocking that Burr and Warner think this gibberish
should be taken seriously.
Here’s more
from the ICA:
Putin
most likely wanted to discredit Secretary
Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since
2011 for inciting mass protests against his
regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because
he holds a grudge for comments he almost
certainly saw as disparaging him.
More
mind-reading, more groundless speculation, more
guessing what Putin thinks or doesn’t think. The ICA
reads more like the text from a morning talk show
than an Intelligence report. And what is it about
this report that Burr finds so persuasive? It’s
beyond me. The report’s greatest strength seems to
be that no one has ever read it. If they had, they’d
realize that it’s nonsense. Also, it would have been
better if the ICA’s authors had avoided the amateur
psychoanalysis and stuck to the point, Russia
hacking. Dabbling in the former seriously impacts
the report’s credibility.
To their
credit, however, Burr and Warner have questioned all
of the analysts who contributed to the report. Check
out this excerpt from The Nation:
“We
have interviewed everybody who had a hand or a
voice in the creation of the ICA,” said Burr.
“We’ve spent nine times the amount of time that
the IC [intelligence community] spent putting
the ICA together.… We have reviewed all the
supporting evidence that went into it and, in
addition to that, the things that went on the
cutting-room floor that they may not have found
appropriate for the ICA, but we may have found
relevant to our investigation.” Burr added that
the committee’s review included “highly
classified intelligence reporting,” and they’ve
interviewed every official in the Obama
administration who had anything to do with
putting it together. (“Democrats and Republicans
in Congress Agree: Russia Did It”, The Nation)
That’s
great, but where’ the beef? How can the
committee conduct “100 interviews, comprising 250
hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of
transcripts” without producing a shred of evidence
that Russia meddled in the elections? How is that
possible? The Committee’s job is to prove its case
not to merely pour over the minutia related to the
investigation. No one really cares how many people
testified or how much paperwork was involved. What
people want is proof that Russia interfered with the
elections or that members of the Trump campaign
colluded with Moscow. That’s the whole point of this
exercise. And, on the collusion matter, at least we
have something new to report. In a rare moment of
candor, Burr blurted out this gem:
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Grants -
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“There are
concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion? The
committee continues to look into all evidence to see
if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not
going to even discuss any initial findings because
we haven’t any.”
Think about
that. After “100 interviews, 250 hours of
testimony, and 4000 transcript pages” there’s not
the slightest hint of collusion. It’s mindboggling.
Why isn’t this front page news? Why haven’t the New
York Times or Washington Post run this in their
headlines, after all, they’ve hyped every other part
of this story?
Could it be
that Burr’s admission doesn’t mesh with the media’s
“Russia did it” narrative so they decided to scrub
the story altogether?
But it’s
not just collusion we’re talking about here, there’s
also the broader issue of Russia meddling. And what
was striking about the press conference is that
–after all the interviews, all the testimony,
and all the stacks of transcripts– the Committee has
come up with nothing; no eyewitness testimony
supporting the original claims, no smoking gun, no
proof of domestic espionage, no evidence of Russian
complicity, nothing. One big goose egg.
So here’s a
question for critical minded readers:
If the
Senate Intelligence Committee has not found any
proof that Russia hacked the 2016 elections, then
why do senators’ Burr and Warner still believe the
ICA is reliable? It doesn’t really make sense, does
it? Don’t they require evidence to draw their
conclusions? And doesn’t the burden of truth fall on
the prosecution (or the investigators in this case)?
Isn’t a man innocent until proven guilty or doesn’t
that rule apply to Russia?
Let’s cut
to the chase: The committee is not getting to the
bottom of the Russia hacking matter, because they
don’t want to get to the bottom of it. It’s that
simple. That’s why they have excluded any witnesses
that may upset their preconceived theory of what
happened. Why, for example, would the committee
chose to interview former CIA Director John Brennan
rather than WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange?
Brennan not only helped select the hand-picked
analysts who authored the ICA, he also clearly has
an animus towards Russia due to his frustrated
attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al
Assad which was thwarted by Putin. In other words,
Brennan has a motive to mislead the Committee. He’s
biased. He has an ax to grind. In contrast, Assange
has firsthand knowledge of what actually transpired
with the DNC emails because he was the recipient of
those emails. Has Assange been contacted by the
Committee or asked to testify via Skype?
Don’t bet
on it.
What about
former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a WikiLeaks
colleague, who has repeatedly admitted that he knows
the source of the DNC emails. Murray hasn’t been
asked to testify nor has he even been contacted by
the FBI on the matter. Apparently, the FBI has no
interest in a credible witness who can disprove the
politically-motivated theory expounded in the ICA.
Then
there’s 30-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern and his
group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS). McGovern has done extensive research
on the topic and has produced solid evidence that
the DNC emails were “leaked” by an insider, not
“hacked” by a foreign government. McGovern’s work
squares with Assange and Murray’s claim that Russia
did not hack the 2016 elections. Has McGovern been
invited to testify?
How about
Skip Folden, retired IBM Program Manager and
Information Technology expert, whose excellent
report titled “Non-Existent Foundation for Russian
Hacking Charge” also disproves the hacking theory,
as does The Nation’s Patrick Lawrence whose riveting
article at The Nation titled “A New Report Raises
Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack”
which thoroughly obliterates the central claims of
the ICA.
Finally,
there’s California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who
met with Assange in August at the Ecuadorian embassy
in London and who was assured that Assange would
provide hard evidence (in the form of “a computer
drive or other data-storage device”) that the
Russians were not involved in the DNC email scandal.
Wouldn’t
you think that senate investigators would want to
talk to a trusted colleague and credible witness
like Rohrabacher who said he could produce solid
proof that the scandal, that has dominated the
headlines and roiled Washington for the better part
of a year, was bogus?
Apparently
not. Apparently Burr and his colleagues would rather
avoid any witness or evidence that conflicts with
their increasingly-threadbare thesis.
So what
conclusions can we draw from the Committee’s
behavior? Are Burr and Warner really conducting an
open and independent investigation of alleged Russia
hacking or is this just a witch hunt?
It should
be obvious by now that the real intention of the
briefing was not to provide the public with more
information, facts or evidence of Russian hacking,
but to use the prestigious setting as a platform for
disseminating more disinformation aimed at vilifying
an emerging rival (Russia) that has blocked
Washington’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and
threatens to unite the most populous and prosperous
region in the world (Eurasia) into one massive free
trade zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
Reasonable people must now consider the possibility
that the Russia hacking narrative is an Information
Operation (IO) devoid of any real substance which
is designed to poison the publics perception of
Russia. It is a domestic propaganda campaign
that fits perfectly with the “Full Spectrum
Dominance” theory of weaponizing media in a way that
best achieves one’s geopolitical objectives. The
American people are again being manipulated so that
powerful elites can lead the country to war.
Notes.
1/
Senate Intelligence Committee briefing on Russia
investigation,
CSPAN
2/
Intelligence Community Assessment,
January 6, 2017
3/
A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s
DNC Hack, Patrick
Lawrence, The Nation.
4/
Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’
Evidence
5/
Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge,
Skip Folden
Mike
Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a
contributor to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK
Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle
edition. He can be
reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
This
article was originally published by
Counterpunch
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