By Philip Giraldi
October 02, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" -
The problem with the current
imbroglio over Ukraine is that the discussion
does not begin where it should. Here is the
timeline: the United States decided to make a
serious effort to bring about regime change in
Ukraine under the Obama Administration after that
country’s election on June 2010 returned Viktor
Yanukovych, who sought closer ties with Russia
rather than Europe, as president. The White House
claimed that the election results were fraudulent,
even though international observers disagreed, and
decided to intervene. The job was given to noted
Democratic Party-linked neoconservative Victoria
Nuland, who had been appointed Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in May
2013. One might recall that she and other intense
Russophobes like Senator John McCain would appear in
Kyiv in late 2013 after the Maidan protests began,
handing out cookies and giving advice to dissidents,
suggesting that the United States would support a
popular uprising. The uprising did indeed come in
February 2014, to include still mysterious snipers
who shot into a crowd of demonstrators, and
Yanukovych was forced to step down.
Nuland
immediately stepped into the void. On February 4,
2014, a Russian intercepted recording of a phone
call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,
Geoffrey Pyatt, that took place a week earlier was
published. In their phone conversation, Nuland and
Pyatt considered how they would arrange for their
candidate Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become the new prime
minister after the government collapse. They
discussed specifically what would have to be offered
to other candidates to have them step aside and set
up a meeting with a number of political leaders to
make arrangements. Their conniving was successful
and Yatsenyuk became prime minister of Ukraine on
February 27, 2014. During the phone discussion,
Nuland famously dismissed the European Union as a
possible mediator for the Ukrainian government
transition saying, “Fuck the EU.”
*(Victoria Nuland (R) and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey
Pyatt (2nd R), Kiev December 11, 2013. Credit:
Andrew Kravchenko/ Reuters)
One might reasonably suggest that U.S.
involvement with Ukraine, which amounted to an
intervention that makes even the most toxic
interpretations of so-called Russiagate pale in
insignificance, began under Barack Obama and it was
a neocon project. Ukraine, in a dramatic shift,
became dependent on support from Washington while
also turning its back on Moscow, a development that
the Kremlin accurately saw as an existential
security threat, leading to the "annexation" of Crimea
and the simmering conflict between Kyiv and Moscow
that continues to this day.
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Joe Biden just happened to be Vice President
while all of this was happening and, from the start,
he reportedly
took an interest in what was developing in Ukraine.
Enter Joe’s son Hunter who somehow in early 2014
became a member of a “high profile international
board” to oversee the largest natural gas producer
in Ukraine, Burisma Holdings. Hunter received
compensation of $50,000 a month, for a total of in
excess of $3 million by the time he resigned in
April 2019. As Hunter Biden contributed little or
nothing but his name to Burisma there was even
concern expressed among the Obamas that the whole
thing smacked of a conflict of interest at a
minimum.
Then the story gets murky. In March 2016 Joe
Biden connived at the firing of the country's top
prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was accused of
blocking corruption investigations. President Trump
and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, however,
claim that the firing was instead motivated by a
desire to protect Hunter by stopping any
investigation into corruption at Burisma Holdings.
There is a testimony that goes both ways, but there
have been credible denials that the Vice President’s
son was actually being investigated.
In mid-July 2019, Trump froze $391 million in
military aid shortly before a July 25th
telephone conversation with new Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump may have suggested
to Zelensky that aggressively advancing
investigations of corruption in his country would
benefit the bilateral relationship. An intelligence
community official, possibly CIA, serving in the
White House subsequently turned whistleblower and
went public with his or her largely hearsay account
of the phone call, which led to demands that records
of it be turned over to Congress. After a partial
summary transcript of the conversation and
associated documents were released by the White
House, on September 24th the U.S. House
of Representatives initiated a
formal impeachment inquiry against Trump over the
issue of his possibly having used foreign aid to
Ukraine to damage Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential
campaign.
First of all, it should be understood that the
impeachment will likely be a replay of that of Bill
Clinton. The House, where there is a solid
Democratic majority, will recommend impeachment, but
the Senate, which must vote by a two-thirds majority
to actually carry out the expulsion from office, is
unlikely to do so because it is controlled by the
GOP. That is, of course, only true as long as there
are not fifteen plus Republican Senators willing to
vote with the Democrats to get rid of Trump and
have Vice President Mike Pence as president,
which is unlikely but possible.
Given that the impeachment will likely fail, it
is interesting to note other aspects of the story,
which are playing out currently. First of all, the
drama began with the whistleblower complaint by a
staffer from the intelligence community.
Intelligence officers seconded to the NSA or White
House are normally regarded as spies for their
parent organizations with good reason. There are
credible
independent reports that the U.S. intelligence
agencies recently modified their whistleblower
procedures to permit complaints based on second hand
rather that direct access to alleged illegal
behavior. This is significant, as it appears that
the White House whistleblower did not have any
direct contact with the activity that was the source
of the complaint and it further might lead one to
believe that we are experiencing yet another Deep
State coordinated assault on Donald Trump.
The Republicans are claiming that there was no
actual quid pro quo in the phone
conversation and that there is nothing actionable as
illegal activity in terms of what was discussed. The
Democrats claim, on the contrary, that the message
regarding Biden was clear even if it was not
explicit. Reading the partial text as presented in
its clearly edited form, it is possible to support
either side depending on one’s inclinations, but it
is clear that the Democrats are already overplaying
their hand. House Intelligence Committee head Adam
Schiff is considering demanding all records on
all Trump's phone calls with foreign heads to
state to determine if there was any damage to
national security.
The real question will be how the impeachment
product is sold and how the public will regard the
activity. The emerging narrative will determine how
Senators vote and also on the 2020 election. And it
has to be noted, of course, that no matter what
happens, Joe Biden and son will come out smelling
bad, two more entitled wealthy men exploiting public
office to become even richer even if they did not
actually break any laws.
And there are other considerations. Foreign aid
is, in fact, frequently used to compel other
governments to act in ways that are considered
desirable by Washington. So even if Trump suggested
something about aid linked to other behavior it
would not be unprecedented. What is unprecedented is
that the target of the request may have been a
senior politician of an opposition party, but Trump
could plausibly argue that that is coincidental and
that the real target was the pervasive corruption in
Ukraine.
And there is also a problem with the
whistleblowing itself. Paul Craig Roberts
has observed that under the statute allowing
intelligence agency whistleblowing, 50 USC sec.
3033, the complaint has to involve “intelligence
activity,” which was not the case with the phone
call. Also, under the statute the “whistleblowing
must concern either a person or activity that is
under the authority of the Director of National
Intelligence. One cannot use this statute to whistle
blow to the Inspector General of the Intelligence
Community, a subordinate official of the DNI, on
anything that the DNI has no authority over….” Not
included under DNI authority are the president's
phone calls to foreign heads of state. So, the
intelligence agency whistleblower was not even
acting legally.
The involvement of the leadership of the
intelligence community in certifying a whistleblower
complaint that was not legitimate under its own
statutory obligations again suggests a Deep State
hand. And, of course, there is a long history of
attempts to first vilify candidate Trump and then
destroy his presidency from inside after he was
elected and inaugurated. One need only cite the
names of former Director of Central Intelligence
John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and
former Director of National Intelligence head James
Clapper, all of whom conspired against Donald Trump.
Finally, even if we Americans are witnessing a
Deep State operation to free itself of Trump, there
is certainly plenty of blame to go around for how
the president has been handling the issue. One
wishes that he would keep his mouth shut and let the
facts speak for themselves. Lashing out in the
ubiquitous tweets and labeling opponents as
“treasonous” or as “spies” while hinting at the
death penalty for their sins and raising the specter
of civil war in America is not likely to generate
much broad-based support for an embattled leader.
But this has been Donald Trump’s problem all along
and if he persists, he might find that former
friends have decided to keep their distance from
him, which could very well lead to his downfall.
Philip Giraldi is Ph.D.,
Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest. A former CIA Case Officer and Army
Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas
in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism
cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University
of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from
the University of London.
This article was originally published by "AHT"-
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==See Also==
House Democrats Call in Fired US Ambassador to Testify:
Corrupt Official Refused Visas to Ukrainians Who Had Dirt on
Obama to Give to Trump
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