[Peace-discuss] Stephen Cohen: What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.thenation.com/article/what-we-still-do-not-know-about-russiagate/
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.thenation.com_article_what-2Dwe-2Dstill-2Ddo-2Dnot-2Dknow-2Dabout-2Drussiagate_&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=92k8TC3tp3N8lXRWXYW1FA&m=LxedMTFvWBPMvolSeDXCvj2qBD2mdGx3ITUT_3T_DbA&s=WAPs4KGjSRw9azc3nzPDrIn7PStlXt7hzG1wJbNsiEw&e=>


*What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate*
*Vital questions about perhaps the worst alleged presidential scandal in US
history remain unanswered.*

By Stephen F. Cohen

SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a
more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled
against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he “colluded” with
the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election—and, still more,
that Vladimir Putin’s regime, “America’s No. 1 threat,” had compromising
material on Trump that made him its “puppet.” Or a more fraudulent
accusation.

Even leaving aside the misperception that Russia is the primary threat to
America in world affairs
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.thenation.com_article_russia-2Dis-2Dnot-2Dthe-2Dno-2D1-2Dthreat-2Dor-2Deven-2Damong-2Dthe-2Dtop-2D5_&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=92k8TC3tp3N8lXRWXYW1FA&m=M94RMedzbfd_HTZe4TVkl02Da1K423PLnEEzX0ueEGA&s=V2K5kVLf0PhCSCLHxXs4XAtY7YBVEdnVB4jrtzYDqfI&e=>,
no aspect of this allegation has turned out to be true, as should have been
evident from the outset. Major aspects of the now infamous Steele Dossier,
on which much of the allegation was based, were themselves not merely
“unverified” but plainly implausible.

Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of
international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that
he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level
Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though
their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? Nonetheless,
the American mainstream media and other important elements of the US
political establishment relied on Steele’s allegations for nearly three
years, even heroizing him—and some still do, explicitly or implicitly.

Not surprisingly, former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence
of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. No credible
evidence has been produced that Russia’s “interference” affected the result
of the 2016 presidential election in any significant way. Nor was Russian
“meddling” in the election anything akin to a “digital Pearl Harbor,” as
widely asserted, and certainly far less and less intrusive than President
Bill Clinton’s political and financial “interference” undertaken to assure
the re-election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.

Nonetheless, Russiagate’s core allegation persists, like a legend, in
American political life—in media commentary, in financial solicitations by
some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own
discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people. The only way
to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it
began—by whom, when, and why.

Officially, at least in the FBI’s version, its operation “Crossfire
Hurricane,” the counter-intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign
that began in mid-2016 was due to suspicious remarks made to visitors by a
young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This too is not
believable, as I pointed out previously
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.thenation.com_article_how-2Ddid-2Drussiagate-2Dbegin_-3Fnc-3D1&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=92k8TC3tp3N8lXRWXYW1FA&m=M94RMedzbfd_HTZe4TVkl02Da1K423PLnEEzX0ueEGA&s=gozlxi7r--eGAAscOaTaaOV4SMjsSyUvI2XCG3lbpII&e=>.
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence
agencies. That is, the young Trump aide was being enticed, possibly
entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation against Trump.
(Papadopoulos wasn’t the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)

But the question remains: why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted,
it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump’s presidential
campaign? A reflexive answer might be because candidate Trump promised to
“cooperate with Russia,” to pursue a pro-détente foreign policy, but this
was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be
Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the
twentieth century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower,
Nixon, and Reagan.

So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off
their rightful reservation and so intrusively into American presidential
politics? Investigations being overseen by Attorney General William Barr
may provide answers—or not. Barr has already leveled procedural charges
against James Comey, head of the FBI under President Obama and briefly
under President Trump, but the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of
having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential
candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John
Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National
Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits. The
FBI is no longer the fearsome organization it once was and thus not hard to
investigate, as Barr has already shown. The others, particularly the CIA,
are a different matter, and Barr has suggested they are resisting. To
investigate them, particularly the CIA, it seems, he has brought in a
veteran prosecutor-investigator, John Durham.

Which raises other questions. Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers
include associations with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover
the truth about the origins of Russiagate? And can they really do so fully,
given the resistance already apparent? Even if so, will Barr make public
their findings, however damning of the intelligence agencies they may be,
or will he classify them? And if the latter, will President Trump use his
authority to declassify the findings as the 2020 presidential election
approaches in order to discredit the role of Obama’s presidency and its
would-be heirs?

Equally important perhaps, how will mainstream media treat the Barr-Durham
investigation and its findings? Having driven the Russiagate narrative for
so long and so misleadingly—and with liberals perhaps finding themselves in
the incongruous position of defending rogue intelligence agencies—will they
credit or seek to discredit the findings?

It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not
the ideal investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much
better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the
senate, as was the Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which exposed and
reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US intelligence
agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of non-partisan,
honorable, and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be
lacking.

There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential
debates. First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of
the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have
repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.) At
every “debate” or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should
be asked about this grave threat to American democracy—what they think
about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it
health care for our democracy.

*This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen’s most recent weekly
discussion with the host of *The John Batchelor Show
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__johnbatchelorshow.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=92k8TC3tp3N8lXRWXYW1FA&m=M94RMedzbfd_HTZe4TVkl02Da1K423PLnEEzX0ueEGA&s=aMyxg_DnsFlDaOsFOMTtGWQYf3MfFoKEoRcHKd0WaFw&e=>
.* Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at *TheNation.com
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.thenation.com_authors_stephen-2Df-2Dcohen_&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=92k8TC3tp3N8lXRWXYW1FA&m=M94RMedzbfd_HTZe4TVkl02Da1K423PLnEEzX0ueEGA&s=2Eejna_PriUwu1P_X5Z1jRQfJsHtB4YheqhZqybilwI&e=>
.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190905/8340d32e/attachment-0001.html>