Jun 10

Today’s News 10th June 2017

  • Putin Warns Of "Hot War" And Nuclear Holocaust: "I Don't Think Anyone Would Survive"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    With tensions among the world’s super powers mounting in places like Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and  most recently Qatar and Iran, it may only be a matter of time before someone pushes the red button.

    When they do, all bets are off, and as we’ve learned from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June of 1914, once the trigger is pulled there’s no going back and hundreds of millions of lives, perhaps billions, will hang in the balance.

    Considering that Russia is closely allied with Syrian President Assad, has a direct interest in maintaining control of Ukraine’s former Crimea region, and its ties to Iran, ignoring the possibility of a global war in coming years could be a devastating oversight.

    We are, in fact, at war right now. But just as was the case from the 1960’s through the end of the 1980’s, it is a “cold war.” There have been no direct troop engagements that we know of between the Russians and the United States. But look to cyber space and it should be clear that there is a battle taking place on a daily basis. Moreover, as we’ve previously reported, nuclear war may well be on the horizon, because the confrontations taking place on the geo-political stage are no longer just talk.

    Action has already been taken by both sides:

    Putin and the Russian people believe the U.S.’s actions are going to lead to a nuclear conflict initiated by the United States.  The leadership of the U.S. is made up of politicians who began their careers as Marxist-Socialists.  Traitors now have their fingers on the triggers of the nuclear warheads, aided by “yes-men” of the general staffs who will not remember their oaths to the Constitution of the United States and the American people.  They will ignore that these charges take precedence above any orders given by a petty, dope-smoking, Marxist community organizer of dubious citizenship who was “emplaced” into office to destroy the country.

     

    Instead of statesmen and diplomats, we now have self-interested, politically-motivated belligerents backing Russia and other nations into corners and pushing them toward war.  How long the war of words will be continued is unknown; however, when the missiles begin to fly you can be certain of something.  You can rest assured that the men who spoke those words will be in bunkers and other safe places and out of harm’s way…paid for by the American taxpayer.

     

    Full Report: Nuclear War Is On The Horizon: “This Is Not Just Talk… Action Has Been Taken”

    Indeed, those who push the buttons will likely be in bunkers well before the missiles hit their targets. That’ll likely be the case on both sides.

    For the rest of us?

    Vladimir Putin has made clear how it will play out:

    The Putin Interviews between the Russian leader and the Oscar-winning director, which will be screened on Showtime, were shot between summer 2015 and February this year and give an extraordinary insight into one of the most powerful men in the world.

     

    Stone asked Putin whether the US would be ‘dominant’ in the event of a ‘hot war’ between the two nuclear powers.

     

    ‘I don’t think anyone would survive such a conflict,’ Putin said.

    Earlier this year the hacking collective Anonymous issued a frightening warning about World War III, highlighting the fact that while we are all busy enjoying the good times, elite Deep State insiders are planning for what comes next:

    All the signs of a looming war on the Korean Peninsula are surfacing… we’re watching as each country moves strategic pieces into place… but unlike past world wars… although there will be ground troops the battle is likely to be fierce, brutal and quick.

     

    It will also be globally devastating on the environmental and economic levels.

     

    …

     

    This is a real war with real global consequences… With three super powers drawn into the mix… Other nations will be coerced into choosing sides.

     

    …

     

    The citizen will be the last to know…

     

    Video

    And because the citizen will be the last to know, now may be a good time to review your nuclear war preparedness strategies and stock up on survival essentials that should include FDA approved anti-radiation pills and NBC rated tactical gas masks.

    The elite will have plenty to go around in their bunkers, but you can be 100% assured that none of the supplies they’ve been stockpiling for the last decade will ever make their way to the general population.

    Prepare accordingly.

  • EXPOSED: The Secret TRUTH about the FBI is not so different than their suspects

    (GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) – 6/9/2017 For those who are not drooling on their lazy-boy high on Prozac and Lays (both strong brands) know that the world is not as seen on TV.  But even in TV, on shows such as “White Collar” – the strange relationship between the ‘police’ and the ‘bandits’ can be seen and understood.  The differences in many cases between a career Special Agent and cat burglar can be thin circumstantial nuances; and they often ‘flip’ sides, most notably in the case we all know about Frank Abagnale, now a successful security and fraud consultant, working with the FBI to detect serious financial fraud.  Let’s take a step back for a moment; the “FBI” hires mostly accountants, and they pursue a number of crimes but most notably financial fraud.  They serve as the police for the CFTC, the SEC, for extreme enforcement actions, as well as investigating a number of issues – from their website:

    Our Priorities
    Protect the United States from terrorist attack
    Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
    Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
    Combat public corruption at all levels
    Protect civil rights
    Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
    Combat major white-collar crime
    Combat significant violent crime
    Our People & Leadership
    The FBI employs 35,000 people, including special agents and support professionals such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, and information technology specialists. Learn how you can join us at FBIJobs.gov. For details on our executives and organizational structure, see our Leadership & Structure webpage.

    What should stick out to readers in an environment where a potentially politicized and corrupt FBI (at least, the leadership) is the “Combat public corruption at all levels” – and going back to the age old regulatory paradox, ‘who watches the watchers’ let’s take a look at the old dog who made the FBI what it is today; J. Edgar Hoover.

    In case you have not, and are interested in this topic, take a weekend and read this must read book about the FBI: J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets – why bother reading about a figure who is long gone and has no surviving heirs?  Because in order to understand where we are today, with the situation with the FBI and Trump, we need to understand where we came from.  Certainly the FBI has transformed since 1972; however the power, scope, size, methods, political leanings, and other elements of the FBI still remain as established by Hoover.

    Let’s dismantle some of the false images many have about the FBI.  The FBI doesn’t ‘solve crimes’ as on popular TV shows like “CSI” – although they do have excellent forensics labs, this rarely (but sometimes) leads to a conviction.  Primarily, the FBI relies on informants, “Confidential Informants” (CIs), tips, and ‘turning’ – a technique popularized by Hoover and used to this day.  Global Intel Hub interviewed several anonymous sources to confirm this information.  Here’s how it works.  The FBI will arrest a petty low level criminal and get him to ‘turn’ on his boss; they will threaten him with life in prison, maybe poke his eyes a little or something, and get him to become a witness in court.  Also they will want a full blueprint of the organization – and in exchange they will get into the Witness Protection Program – yes this program really exists and there are literally thousands of people in this program:

    As of 2013, 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 family members have been protected by the U.S. Marshals Service since 1971.

    But before entering WITSEC, which is an endgame, the FBI can use informants for years.  CIs can be bank employees (i.e. Wall St.), mafia agents, corporate executives .. basically anyone.  Take a look at the case of CI gone bad:

    For 30 years, DeVecchio was one of the FBI ‘s most important mob busters.

    DeVecchio was Scarpa’s handler, and Scarpa was more than an ordinary stool pigeon — he had also allegedly served as muscle for the FBI when the bureau needed some extra legal assistance in making difficult cases. As a result, he was allegedly accorded special, sometimes questionable, favors, including tips on coming indictments that allowed Scarpa’s associates to skip town in advance. But, in aiding his informant to commit murder, prosecutors now allege that DeVecchio went too far in protecting his valuable mob asset. Law enforcement sources say DeVecchio may have also enriched himself in the process.

    Yes, you read correctly – for 30 years, “DeVecchio” was a CI that gave the FBI information about mob activities.  A useful asset, but the underlying conclusion is simple – the FBI doesn’t ‘solve’ crimes.   With the recent testimony of James Comey, a lawyer by trade, all of this needs to be taken into consideration.  How has the FBI and its internal politics & policies affected significant events in American history; JFK, 911, the credit crisis, and others?

    Another strategy which now is no secret used by Hoover, was obtaining secret information by trickery or surveillance, and then using it to blackmail the target to get them to do what they want.  Hoover supposedly kept dossiers on over 10,000 americans; however long the list is – the method was simple.  Get the dirt on the target then use it to manipulate them.  If you think this is fanciful; again – read this book  J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets.

    The point is that, there’s no way to know for sure what’s going on inside the FBI today.  The reason we need to look at Hoover’s FBI is because now that he’s long gone, and there’s even been a DiCaprio film about him, we can see a bigger picture of what was really going on in the FBI at that time.

    So it should be no surprise, that an FBI director, would be meddling in domestic politics – whether it be in elections or by dealing with sitting Presidents.  Everyone was scared of Hoover, even US Presidents both before and after they were elected.  Now, clearly this was a unique individual who built the FBI in his own image during a unique period in history – there will never be another Hoover.  But all this history about the FBI should be noted, following to today’s FBI that literally is ‘creating’ terrorists right here in the USA:

    WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. has significantly increased its use of stings in terrorism cases, employing agents and informants to pose as jihadists, bomb makers, gun dealers or online “friends” in hundreds of investigations into Americans suspected of supporting the Islamic State, records and interviews show.

    Undercover operations, once seen as a last resort, are now used in about two of every three prosecutions involving people suspected of supporting the Islamic State, a sharp rise in the span of just two years, according to a New York Times analysis. Charges have been brought against nearly 90 Americans believed to be linked to the group.

    The increase in the number of these secret operations, which put operatives in the middle of purported plots, has come with little public or congressional scrutiny, and the stings rely on F.B.I. guidelines that predate the rise of the Islamic State.

    While F.B.I. officials say they are careful to avoid illegally entrapping suspects, their undercover operatives are far from bystanders. In recent investigations from Florida to California, agents have helped people suspected of being extremists acquire weapons, scope out bombing targets and find the best routes to Syria to join the Islamic State, records show.

    Here’s how it works.  The FBI ‘suspects’ someone may be an extremist (they are Muslim, or at least look like).  They pose as another Muslim and start to engage in a conversation about making a ‘plot’ such as a ‘bomb’ – but at the last moment, arrest the entrapped individual.  This accomplishes a few things, one – they can make a long list of cases ‘solved’ that would have otherwise become terrorist attacks (they are working hard for their 8 Billion budget).  Two, it scares the population that the threat of terrorism is ‘real’ (when in reality, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a terrorist).  This is reinforced by the media ‘terrorism terrorism terrorism’.

    The paradoxical question here is – left to their own would these potential ‘terrorists’ have committed any acts of terror, or not?  Of course, foiling a crime before it happens is always ideal.  But at what point does entrapment become ‘encouragement’ – we’re not talking about drug dealing here, terrorism is a serious thing (people can be killed).

    But defense lawyers, Muslim leaders and civil liberties advocates say that F.B.I. operatives coax suspects into saying and doing things that they might not otherwise do — the essence of entrapment.“They’re manufacturing terrorism cases,” said Michael German, a former undercover agent with the F.B.I. who researches national security law at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. In many of the recent prosecutions, he said, “these people are five steps away from being a danger to the United States.”

    The American Mafia, once seen as one of the most popularized ‘threats’ has been on the wane, as most of them have moved from petty crimes to legitimate businesses (or semi-legit) .. An organization like the FBI needs terrorists and other artificial ‘threats’ to justify 35,000 + employees, just as the military and other parts of the DOD need “Russia” to act as a looming potential threat to justify trillions in military spending.  (Anyone with mild room temperature IQ knows Russia, China, Iran, North Korea all working together pose no real threat to USA militarily, economically, or culturally).

    Bear this in mind next time the news media tries to distract viewers from real news – Comey is not news.  It’s irrelevant.  Trump’s reaction, irrelevant.  Remember, the entire “Russia Investigation” never existed, it was all a liberal conspiracy created or to use their term ‘fake news’ in order to destroy Trump and use it in Illuminati style ‘killing two birds with one stone’ as a prelude to war and specifically to build a pipeline through Syria as the next “Iraq” to plunder, with project Ukraine a failure the virus needs to expand into untapped resources to colonize, and Trump simply stood in the way of that policy.  The FBI being a critical component of the giant global octopus with hands everywhere, needed to jump in with their own tune to play in the melody.

    For a detailed breakdown of how the global system works in reality (not ‘as seen on TV’) checkout Splitting Pennies – Understanding Forex

    Order stuff online – save money, save time – enjoy your life!  @ www.pleaseorderit.com

  • Mall Tenants Seek Shorter Leases As America's Relics Of The 80's Teeter On The Brink

    As if things weren’t bad enough for America’s mall owners, what with the having to filling their retail space with high schools, grocers and churches, it seems that retailers have grown so uncertain about the future of these 1980s relics that they’re only willing to sign 1-2 leases these days.

    As Bloomberg points out this morning, leases renewals used to be 5-10 years in length but are increasingly only being signed with 1-2 year terms.  Meanwhile, thousands of stores are closing each year and it’s only expected to get worse over time.

    After more than a dozen bankruptcies this year contributed to thousands of store closures, visibility for the industry is so poor that retailers are pushing for lease renewals as short as a year or two — down from five to 10 years.

     

    “You’re certainly seeing the renewals geared toward the shorter term, rather than the five-year renewal,” said Andrew Graiser, head of A&G Realty Partners. Retailers are now struggling to figure out how many stores they actually need, he added, and landlords are looking at them “with a much closer eye than they did before.”

     

    Somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 stores will close in the U.S. this year, said Garrick Brown, vice president of Americas retail research for commercial broker Cushman & Wakefield — more than twice as many as the 4,000 last year. He sees this figure rising to about 13,000 next year.

     

    “Everyone’s trying to figure out where the bottom of the market’s going to be,” Brown said. He estimates it could occur in 2018 or early 2019.

     

    Not surprisingly, retailers are finding it difficult to sign long-term leases in an environment where 26% of malls around the country are expected to close their doors over the next five years.

    Further complicating the lease-length dilemma is the question of which shopping centers will still be around in a decade. Cushman & Wakefield’s Brown sees about 300 of 1,150 U.S. malls shutting down in the next five years.

     

    Perry Mandarino, senior managing director and head of corporate finance at B. Riley & Co., predicts that retail bankruptcies and restructurings will further accelerate in 2018. Some of this will be the result of a long-overdue shakeout of the surfeit of U.S. store space, but the downturn is also compounded by shifts to online shopping and consumers spending on experiences rather than physical stuff, he said.

    Meanwhile, landlords are trying to fight back, though it’s a fairly difficult task both arms tied behind their backs.

    Landlords “have their backs against the wall, so they’ve been fighting back, hard,” he said. “What you have is a game of chicken up to the end.”

     

    “With all this excess inventory, landlords are trying to do whatever they can to keep malls occupied,” Agran said. “The more empty spaces, the more difficult it is to attract new tenants.”

    Frankly, it’s shocking that Abercrombie wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to scoop up some prime square footage in this mall…it already has the Chili’s awning and everything.

    Mall

  • The "Nonsense" Behind The Impeach-Trump Conspiracy

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    Pressed by Megyn Kelly on his ties to President Trump, an exasperated Vladimir Putin blurted out, “We had no relationship at all. … I never met him. … Have you all lost your senses over there?”

    Yes, Vlad, we have.

    Consider the questions that have convulsed this city since the Trump triumph, and raised talk of impeachment.

    Did Trump collude with Russians to hack the DNC emails and move the goods to WikiLeaks, thus revealing the state secret that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was putting the screws to poor Bernie Sanders?

    If not Trump himself, did campaign aides collude with the KGB?

    Now, given that our NSA and CIA seemingly intercept everything Russians say to Americans, why is our fabled FBI, having investigated for a year, unable to give us a definitive yes or no?

    The snail’s pace of the FBI investigation explains Trump’s frustration. What explains the FBI’s torpor? If J. Edgar Hoover had moved at this pace, John Dillinger would have died of old age.

    We hear daily on cable TV of the “Trump-Russia” scandal. Yet, no one has been charged with collusion, and every intelligence official, past or prevent, who has spoken out has echoed ex-acting CIA Director Mike Morrell:

    “On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. … There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark.”

    Where are the criminals? Where is the crime?

    As for the meetings between Gen. Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Sen. Jeff Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, it appears that Trump wanted a “back channel” to Putin so he could honor his commitment to seek better relations with Russia.

    Given the Russophobia rampant here, that makes sense. And while it appears amateurish that Flynn would use Russian channels of communication, what is criminal about this?

    Putin is not Stalin. Soviet divisions are not sitting on the Elbe. The Cold War is over. And many presidents have used back channels. Woodrow Wilson sent Col. Edward House to talk to the Kaiser and the Brits. FDR ran messages to Churchill through Harry Hopkins.

    As for Trump asking Director James Comey to cut some slack for Flynn, it is understandable in human terms. Flynn had been a loyal aide and friend and Trump had to feel rotten about having to fire the man.

    So, what is really going on here?

    All the synthetic shock over what Kushner or Sessions said to Kislyak aside, this city’s hatred for President Trump, and its fanatic determination to bring him down in disgrace, predates his presidency.

    For Trump ran in 2016 not simply as the Republican alternative. He presented his candidacy as a rejection, a repudiation of the failed elites, political and media, of both parties. Americans voted in 2016 not just for a change in leaders but for a revolution to overthrow a ruling regime.

    Thus this city has never reconciled itself to Trump’s victory, and the president daily rubs their noses in their defeat with his tweets.

    Seeking a rationale for its rejection, this city has seized upon that old standby. We didn’t lose! The election was stolen in a vast conspiracy, an “act of war” against America, an assault upon “our democracy,” criminal collusion between the Kremlin and the Trumpites.

    Hence, Trump is an illegitimate president, and it is the duty of brave citizens of both parties to work to remove the usurper.

    The city seized upon a similar argument in 1968, when Richard Nixon won, because it was said he had colluded to have South Vietnam’s president abort Lyndon Johnson’s new plan to bring peace to Southeast Asia in the final hours of that election.

    Then, as now, the “t” word, treason, was trotted out.

    Attempts to overturn elections where elites are repudiated are not uncommon in U.S. history. Both Nixon and Reagan, after 49-state landslides, were faced with attempts to overturn the election results.

    With Nixon in Watergate, the elites succeeded. With Reagan in Iran-Contra, they almost succeeded in destroying that great president as he was ending the Cold War in a bloodless victory for the West.

    After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson sought to prevent Radical Republicans from imposing a ruthless Reconstruction on a defeated and devastated South.

    The Radicals enacted the Tenure of Office Act, stripping Johnson of his authority to remove any member of the Cabinet without Senate permission. Johnson defied the Radicals and fired their agent in the Cabinet, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

    “Tennessee” Johnson was impeached, and missed conviction by one vote. John F. Kennedy, in his 1956 book, called the senator who had voted to save Johnson a “Profile in Courage.”

    If Trump is brought down on the basis of what Putin correctly labels “nonsense,” this city will have executed a nonviolent coup against a constitutionally elected president. Such an act would drop us into the company of those Third World nations where such means are the customary ways that corrupt elites retain their hold on power.

  • Summing Up The Week For Democrats (In 1 Cartoon)

    Time to find a new narrative…

     

    Source: Townhall.com

  • Actions Have Consequences! Ask Venezuela

    Authored by Bill Bonner via InternationalMan.com,

    Let’s turn to an economy getting doomier by the day: Venezuela.

    Actions have consequences. In public policy, it is impossible to say what the consequences will be. There are too many delusions and too much smoke.

    Take a policy said to eradicate city rats. Its real purpose is to reward a large political donor who owns a pest control firm. It ends up killing the pigeons.

    Often, policies with clear and obvious purposes end up producing outcomes completely at odds with the stated objectives.

    Prohibition, for example, increased the number of drunks. The War on Drugs fattened drug dealers’ profits.

    The War on Poverty has made poverty respectable… even attractive… to poor people.

    The War on Terror has probably made a million otherwise sane and sensible Muslims yearn to blow up something with a U.S. flag on it.

    Most often, these outcomes are not exactly surprises. Look more closely and you will often find, hidden behind the promises… a pest control firm!

    News reports, for example, tell us that U.S. arms dealers are about to get a $110 billion payday. President Trump announced a weapons deal with the Saudis – the biggest in history.

    Into the Abyss

    Although the exact consequences of public policies are obscure, the patterns are familiar.

    Win-lose deals always reduce total human satisfaction.

    Win-lose deals – unless they are imposed by petty criminals or local bullies – require government insistence. Otherwise, no one would take the losing side.

    So the more government there is… the more active, ambitious, and overbearing it is… the more win-lose deals subtract from the sum of human happiness.

    A month ago, as many as a million of these disappointed people demonstrated against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It was the “Mother of All Protests,” they said.

    What was their beef?

    Inflation is running at about 700% a year. Last year, GDP plunged 19%. Food staples – beans, rice, bread – are disappearing. Families cross the border into Colombia to buy toilet paper.

    Hospitals have no medicine, no equipment, not even rubber gloves and disinfectants. Sometimes, they have no electricity. Deaths of premature babies have increased 10,000% in the last five years.

    How did a country make such a mess of itself?

    Win-Lose

    In a sense, the country was a victim of its own good luck… and then a victim of its own bad judgment.

    The good luck happened in 1914 when the first oilfield was drilled. The money followed.

    By the 1950s, with a basically market-oriented government, Venezuela rose to become the world’s fourth-richest country in terms of GDP per capita.

    Today, the country has the largest proven oil reserves in the world – 297 billion barrels of the stuff compared to 267 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia.

    But good luck allows you to make bad judgments. With the oil wealth flowing, Hugo Chávez – who described himself as a Trotskyist two days before his inauguration as president in 2007 – could impose win-lose deals on the whole economy.

    Key industries were nationalized. Price controls were put in place. Wealth was redistributed.

    Win-lose deals can redistribute wealth but only to the extent win-win deals create it. Take away the win-win deals, and the wealth soon runs out… as it did in Cuba and the Soviet Union.

    Now the tank is about empty in Venezuela, too.

    Banana Republic

    It doesn’t matter what you call it – government is always a means for the few to exploit the many.

    The few use every resource available to them to keep the hustle going, with special attention given to manipulating the gullible mob.

    The typical citizen rarely has any idea of what is going on… and doesn’t have much curiosity about it. As long as he has credit for a new pickup and a champion who promises to smite his enemies, the common man will go along with almost anything.

    But the Venezuelan auto industry has been ruined. And there’s no credit available. So there are few new pickups on the streets, and much of the public has turned against the government.

    Not surprisingly, the policies that destroyed Venezuela delighted U.S. economists and politicians – who were eager to impose win-lose deals of their own.

    In 2007, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz praised the “positive policies” in health and education of the Chávez government.

    And in 2011, Bernie Sanders wrote:

    These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who’s the banana republic now?

    Sanders had no idea what was really going on in Venezuela. But he was right about what was going on in the U.S. It was on its way to becoming a banana republic.

    Only without the bananas. Or the republic.

  • Pelosi Has Some Advice For Donald Trump

    House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says President Trump would be a much more effective leader if he would just get some rest.

    When asked what advice she would have for the President during a segment on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Pelosi said the president should “get some sleep,” before questioning his fitness for office.

    “Bring yourself to a place where those synapses are working. I think there’s something not — more sleep might be a solution for him,” adding that his family should be concerned about his health.

    Pelosi recounted a time when Trump called her after launching a missile strike on a Syrian airbase back in April.

    “It was late at night well after it was all finished it was like midnight and he was going on and on and I said, ‘why don’t you go to sleep’.”

    The former speaker of the house also played down talk of impeachment, saying that – “unless you have the facts” – talk of removing the president just “inflames the situation.”

  • Retired FBI Special Agent Blows The Whistle On The Real Robert Mueller

    Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Shortly after former FBI Director Robert Mueller was announced as the special counsel for the Russia investigation, the screeching hordes of America’s “always wrong about everything” punditry class cheered in near unison, lauding the man as some sort of second coming. This sort of thing should always be seen as a red flag, and thanks to an excellent article written by retired FBI special agent Coleen Rowley, everyone can now know exactly why.

    But first, who is Coleen Rowley?

    Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled “Questions for the FBI Nominee” was published on the day of James Comey’s confirmation hearing.

    It’s important to be aware of that background as you read the following excerpts from the excellent post published at CounterPunch titled, Comey and Mueller: Russiagate’s Mythical Heroes:

    Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.

     

    Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.

    Well of course, that’s how you get promoted in America.

    TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.

     

    I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI’s pre 9/11 failures.

     

    A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney’s ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.

     

    Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

     

    For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.

     

    What’s not well understood is that Comey’s and Mueller’s joint intervention to stop Bush’s men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.

     

    The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn’t. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.

     

    Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

     

    Neither Comey nor Mueller — who are reported to be “joined at the hip” — deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like “G-men” with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.

     

    It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

     

    Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

    Not good.

  • Trump Hints He Has Comey Tapes, Tells Press: "You're Going To Be Very Disappointed, Don't Worry"

    Trump just dropped an awful lot of bombs in a very short period of time during a brief press conference with the Romanian President held in the White House Rose Garden.

    First, on the issue of the infamous ‘Comey tapes,’ Trump hinted that they do, in fact, exist and he will “tell you about it over a short period of time.”

    Reporter: “And you seem to be hinting that there are recordings of those conversations.” 

     

    Trump:  “I’m not hinting anything.  I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time….Oh, you’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. Don’t worry.”

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    On whether he would be willing to refute Comey’s testimony under oath, Trump said he would “100 percent” be willing to tell Special Counsel Mueller that he did not ask for Comey’s loyalty or ask for him to drop the Flynn investigation.

    Reporter:  “Would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version of events?”

     

    Trump:  “100%.  I hardly know the man, I’m not going to say “I want you to pledge allegiance.”  Who would do that?  I mean think of it.  I hardly know the man.  It doesn’t make sense.”

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    And on why Trump felt vindicated by Comey’s testimony:

    “No collusion, no obstruction, he’s a leaker…”

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