‘The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.’
The remonstrations of history are rarely heeded in moments of mass hysteria, and the current frenzy to punish Russia for “stealing” the election from Hillary Clinton is no different.
While it’s nice to see the Party of Alger Hiss finally take America’s side in a conflict with Russia, the Democrats’ new bellicosity seems a bit cynical. As Ann Coulter mused, it would have been nice to have “this fighting spirit about 50 years ago when the Soviet Union sought total world domination and Stalin’s spies were crawling through the U.S. government.” But, hey, I’m old enough to remember when Democrats believed the greatest threat to world peace was “climate change.” At least now they’re not tilting at windmills!
But before these new Cold Warriors and their neocon fellow travelers lead us into a crusade based on an FBI report about a computer server the bureau never got to inspect, perhaps we should consider the track record of U.S. intelligence in times of war.
It’s worth asking: Do the experts the establishment relies on—people like communist-turned-CIA-director John Brennan—actually know what they’re doing? How much can we trust the War Party’s judgment?
My point here is not to impugn the honor of the United States or our military heroes—many of whom died in wars following erroneous judgments—nor is it to necessarily accuse our intelligence officials of bad faith. The lesson here is that intelligence gathering and evaluating is a difficult and imperfect task. We should be humble and judicious in using it when lives are at stake. As Aesop said, measure twice, cut once.
The following is a (partial) chronological list of U.S. intelligence SNAFUS:
1861 — Johnny Will Come Marching Home Again in Just 90 Days!
At the onset of the Civil War, the Union’s civilian and military leadership expected the entire conflict to be over in roughly three months. As historian Ernest B. Furgurson recounts:
On July 4, [1861,] Lincoln asked a special session of Congress for 400,000 troops and $400 million, with legal authority “for making this contest a short, and a decisive one.” He expressed not only the hope, but also the expectation of most officials in Washington. Many of the militia outfits rolling in from the North had signed on in April for just 90 days, assuming they could deal with the uppity Rebels in short order. Day after day, a headline in the New York Tribune blared, “Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!” a cry that echoed in all corners of the North.
The first battle soon put an end to those sentiments, and one anecdote from that day perfectly illustrates the failure of the political class in Washington, DC, to grasp the magnitude of the conflict. During the First Battle of Bull Run, “[s]warms of civilians rushed out from the capital in a party mood, bringing picnic baskets and champagne, expecting to cheer the boys on their way.” The revelers would eventually flee the field in panic as the battle turned bloody. One New York Congressman barely escaped with his life. When the dust settled on July 21, 1861, there were 4,700 casualties and four long years of war ahead.
But while the Union’s civilian leadership under-estimated the challenge, its military intelligence famously over-estimated it.
In November 1861, President Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan as commanding general of the Union forces. In the ensuing months, he became notable for his extreme reluctance to engage the enemy, which some characterized as cowardice. But as a very partial defense of McClellan, it should be noted that he was advised by his spies that Confederate general Robert E. Lee had 100,000 troops. In fact, Lee had just 54,000 men.
And that was just one of many mis-estimates during the conflict. As the CIA says in its own history, “The intelligence officer who has a due regard for his own morale will do well to pass over the history of the American Civil War.”
1898 — “Remember the Maine” … Which Wasn’t Blown Up by Spain
On February 15, 1898, the American warship the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, leaving 260 Navy men dead and sparking outrage back home. At the time, Cuba was a Spanish colony, and so the immediate verdict was that the dastardly Spaniards had destroy our naval vessel using a mine or torpedo.
“Remember the Maine!” was Uncle Sam’s rallying cry, as President McKinley launched the Spanish-American War.
The war against Spain was brief and victorious. However, the subsequent counter-insurgency to put down the insurrectos in the former Spanish colony of the Philippines—which was ceded to the United States by Spain—lasted for years and cost 10 times as many American lives as the original war with Spain, as well as the lives of some 200,000 Filipinos.
Much later, in 1974, a definitive investigation found that the cause of the USSMaine explosion was coal dust inside the ship. Spain had nothing to do with it. Oops.
1941 — The Infamy of a Sneak Attack We Should Have Seen Coming
Knowing that the Imperial Japanese were up to no good, the Australians, our close allies, broke the Japanese military code in 1939—two years before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941, the date that will live in infamy, we had plenty of access to Japanese thinking. In fact, three days before the sneak attack, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence issued a 26-page memo, focusing in on Japanese surveillance of Hawaii.
Yet as we all know, American forces were completely unprepared at Pearl Harbor, and 2,355 Americans died. Ironically, the lesson seems to be that the U.S. had too manyintelligence reports, and we couldn’t sort out the better ones from the worse ones. We had indications that the Japanese might attack American forces all over the Pacific, but we just couldn’t figure out which forces were in danger. To use the intelligence parlance, our analysts couldn’t separate the “signal” from the “noise.”
1957 — Mind the Missile Gap
In 1957, a blue-chip Pentagon advisory panel, the Gaither Committee, concluded that the Soviet Union had ten intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), whereas the U.S. had none.
Senator John F. Kennedy, gearing up to run for president as a hawkish Cold Warrior, coined the term “missile gap” to described the supposed U.S. deficit. In the meantime, the number of alleged Russian missiles grew, from 10, to 100, to 500. But we would later learn that the actual number of Soviet ICBMs was four, and that included prototypes of unknown effectiveness.
Interestingly, two decades later, in the mid-1970s, another “missile gap” was “discovered.” And once again, reports of Red military muscle proved to be greatly exaggerated.
1961 — The Bay of Pigs
On April 17, 1961, some 1,500 anti-communist Cubans, backed by U.S. logistics and airpower, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, hoping to liberate the island. The mission was a catastrophic failure. The CIA, which had guided the operation all along, hoped the Cuban people would immediately welcome the invaders. Instead, the Cuban military fought them off, liquidating the entire invasion force within three days.
The courage of the anti-communist Cubans can’t be questioned. However, the wisdom of the CIA’s mission and planning is very much to be unquestioned.
For instance, one of the enduring controversies of the Bay of Pigs operation is whether or not President John F. Kennedy ignored or reneged on a promise to supply sufficient air support for the Free Cubans. Critics argue that JFK got cold feet toward the end, thus dooming the mission. If so, that’s a reminder that intelligence must always be accompanied by sound leadership.
1968 — The Holiday from Hell
On January 30, 1968, during the Tet holiday in Vietnam, American forces were taken by surprise when the communist forces of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army (as a practical matter, the two forces were one and the same, both directed from Hanoi) attacked all across South Vietnam. The enemy even fought his way inside the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies ultimately prevailed, but the fact remained that the U.S. was taken by surprise. We had badly underestimated the communists’ ability to launch such a wide-ranging offensive.
In fact, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, declared just two weeks before Tet, “The past year has been one of sustained and unremitting effort and I believe has seen enough achievements to give us every encouragement to continue along the present lines.” Continuing in that happy-talking vein, Bunker added,“[The enemy] has been thwarted in his attempts at penetration south of the DMZ.”
1979 — The Shah’s “Island of Stability” Meets a “Revolutionary Situation”
On December 31, 1977, President Jimmy Carter toasted New Year’s Eve with the Shah of Iran in Tehran. As Carter said, “Under the Shah’s brilliant leadership, Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troublesome regions of the world.”
In August 1978, the CIA declared, “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.”
In February 1979, the Shah fled Iran, as Iranian revolutionaries, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, seized power. Oops.
1998 — A “Colossal Failure” of Nuclear Proportions
The whole theory of arms control—including the disastrous “deal” with Iran that President Trump wisely terminated—is that it’s possible for an external observer to know what a country is doing, or not, with its nuclear capabilities.
However, on May 11, 1998, the U.S. government was caught flat-footed. We had no idea that India was about to set off their first nuclear device. The New York Times headline put it best: “U.S. Blundered On Intelligence, Officials Admit.” The paper quoted the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Shelby, decrying “a colossal failure of our nation’s intelligence gathering.”
1998 — Bill Clinton’s Aspirins of Mass Destruction
On August 20, 1998, in response to Al Qaeda attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike to destroy what his administration believed was a factory for making weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Khartoum, Sudan.
As we know, the threat from Al Qaeda was deadly real, and this wasn’t the last bad call we’d make in regard to Bin Laden’s terrorists.
September 11, 2001 — The “Shock” That “Should Not Have Come as a Surprise”
Hundreds of books, reports, and monographs have been published about the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In the words of the 9/11 Commission, “The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise.”
The Commission painted a scenario reminiscent of the challenges confronting the U.S. prior to Pearl Harbor: “The combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an insufficient response to this new challenge.” In other words, they had more noise than signal.
And yet even so, despite these difficulties, the Intel Community managed to get this extremely direct warning into the President’s Daily Brief on August 6, 2001: “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” The briefing even included a warning about “suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”
As we know, the Bush administration wasn’t ready on 9/11. As the 9/11 Commission Report showed, we had all the pieces to the puzzle before us, including warnings that Bin Laden’s followers might be training at U.S. flight schools and that Al Qaeda was fixated on bringing down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.
Thus another harsh lesson: We can have good intelligence reports, but if we have bad intelligence in our leaders, it’s all for naught.
2003 — The Difference Between Yellowcake and a Cakewalk
We’re all familiar with the multiple intelligence failures of Iraq, but we can pause over three.
First, we were told that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Yes, for sure, he was an evil man, but he was no threat to the U.S. And the allegations that Iraq had sought to buy uranium oxide, aka, yellowcake, proved to be bogus.
Second, we were told by the Bush-Cheney administration that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators.” The invasion would be, as one giddy neocon put it, a “cakewalk.” Yeah, not quite. In fact, U.S. fatalities in that conflict have totaled nearly 4,500, with another 32,000 injured.
Third, we were told by President Bush, backed up by his neocon brainiacs, that Operation Iraqi Freedom would touch off a wave of democratization across the Middle East. Instead, it touched off a wave of civil wars and genocidal ethnic cleansing of ancient Christian communities, such that there are barely any Christians left in the region that gave birth to Christianity.
I could go on. I could write ten volumes on the intelligence mistakes of Hillary Clinton alone—she who voted for the Iraq War, was eager to “liberate” Libya, and left our ambassador defenseless in Benghazi.
Or I could write about Senator John McCain—who also voted for the Iraq War, cheer-led every dumb move in Libya, and has supported every other vainglorious exercise, from the former Soviet republic of Georgia to Syria. He never met a foreign conflict he didn’t want to send Americans to die in.
But as we can see, even after all these blunders, there are plenty of Hillary and McCain wannabes in Washington, and they just can’t wait to make the exact same mistakes all over again.
Disgraced FBI special agent Peter Strzok told House Judiciary and House Oversight Committee members Thursday he has never acted in a biased manner or recused himself from an investigation.
A partial transcript follows:
REP. RAUL LABRADOR (R-ID): Has there ever been a time when your professional actions or you believe you had bias where you needed to move on from an investigation at any time?
FBI AGENT PETER STRZOK: No
LABRADOR: No Has there been a time in your career that you recused yourself from a professional action?
STRZOK: No
LABRADOR: Okay, you’ll be surprised that I actually believe that the Russians tried to destabilize our economy, our way of life, our government. I think they have been doing it for a long time. I’m curious if this is the first time that Russia tried to interfere with an American election?
STRZOK: I’m aware of times where they – going back to the sixties and seventies where they planted evidence seeking to introduce items of information that were false in newspapers – I’m not aware of any direct outreach to members of a presidential candidate or his immediate team.
LABRADOR: Did they attempt to interfere in the 2012 elections?
STRZOK: I am certain they did, yes.
Strzok maintained through the congressional hearing that he expressed political opinions on his FBI work phone but that those opinions did not amount to bias which influenced his investigations of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The exchange with Rep. Labrador found Strzok taking the extra step of claiming that he has never found himself to be biased in his decades of public service.
Strzok also revealed that he self-selected which texts he turned over to Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general Michael Horowitz.
FBI special agent Peter Strzok refused to answer House Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan regarding which individuals gave the Bureau three copies of the Trump dossier, claiming the FBI will not allow him to divulge his sources.
Strzok appeared before a joint House committee hearing Thursday to discuss his role in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
After Jordan got Strzok on record admitting to having read the dossier, the Ohio representative zoned in on an email Strzok sent to a number of intelligence officials, including a woman he was having an extramarital affair with, former FBI counsel Lisa Page. In the email, Strzok discussed the different version of the dossier the FBI received from three separate sources.
“We got an e-mail that you sent. It should be presented there or should be in front of you there. I want you to take a look at this. This is an e-mail you wrote to Lisa Page, Bill, Jim, and cc’d Andy McCabe. The subject is Buzzfeed is about to accomplish the dossier. Are you familiar with this e-mail?” Jordan asked.
“I am,” Strzok replied.
“It says this, ‘Comparing now the set is only identical to what McCain had, parentheses, it has differences from what was given to us by Corn and Simpson.’ Did you write all that?” Jordan asked.
“It says ‘Peter Strzok’ and it says to ‘Lisa Page’ and a whole bunch of key people to the FBI. Did you write it?” Jordan asked.
“I did write this,” Strzok replied.
Jordan then tried to figure out who the Corn and Simpson Strzok was referencing and what their relation was to the dossier dumps. Strzok said that he is unable to answer that question under FBI direction.
Increasingly frustrated, Jordan then tried to coax Strzok to reveal the identities of Corn, Simpson and another source, Page.
“I just want to figure this out. I want to figure this out, agent Strzok. You’re referencing three copies of the dossier: the Buzzfeed copy you have, the one john McCain’s staff gave to you and the one that you said you got from Corn and Simpson. The one McCain gave to you and the one Buzzfeed has are identical in your words, but they have — the Corn and Simpson one is different,” Jordan said.
Strzok refused to answer that there were three copies of the dossier presented to the FBI, despite the fact that he referenced them in his email to intelligence officials.
The last portion of Jordan and Strzok’s interaction dealt with whether or not Simpson or anyone from Fusion GPS made contact with the FBI.
“Let me ask you one other question. Glen Simpson testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 2017. Did anyone from Fusion ever communicate with the FBI? His response, no. No one from Fusion ever spoke with the FBI,” Jordan said. “So here’s what I’m having trouble understanding. If Glenn Simpson says no one ever spoke with the FBI, how is it that you got a copy of the dossier from Simpson?”
Strzok said not only did he never speak to Simpson, he never spoke to anyone Jordan mentioned.
“Sir, I can tell you I never had contact with Fusion, with Mr. Simpson, with Mr. Corn,” Strzok replied.
“Very briefly, sir, I would love to do that. There’s an appropriate time for oversight and as you well know that is at the end of an investigation, once it’s concluded. I am certain Congress will absolutely have the opportunity to look at any investigation once it’s closed, ask all these questions, and I would love to answer each and every one of your questions once the FBI allows me to do that.”
STRZOK CLAIMS HE STILL HAS TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCE, CONTRADICTING JEFF SESSIONS
Anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok told Congress on Thursday that he still has a top secret security clearance, in contradiction with a claim made in June by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“You currently have what classification?” Strzok was asked by Georgia Republican Rep. Doug Collins during a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees.
“I have a top secret clearance with some SCI compartments,” replied Strzok, the former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. “SCI” is an acronym for highly classified materials known as Sensitive Compartmented Information. (RELATED: Sessions Claims That Peter Strzok Lost Security Clearance)
Strzok’s statement is a surprise of sorts given comments that Sessions made during a June 21 interview with conservative radio host Howie Carr.
“Mr. Strzok, as I understand, has lost his security clearance,” Sessions said.
Strzok was escorted out of FBI headquarters on June 15, a day after the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General referred him to the FBI for a disciplinary review over his Trump text messages.
Strzok was the FBI’s top investigator on the probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. During that time, he spoke critically of Trump, calling the Republican an “idiot” and mocking his supporters.
He was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in July 2017 after the discovery of his text exchanges. He currently works in the FBI’s human resources division.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy between Strzok and Sessions’s statements.
Newly available records do not fully comply with congressional House subpoenas, and barring new developments Friday, recent documents from the FBI and Justice Department do not meet deadlines set by a House resolution, according to a source close to the discussions.
Three House Republican committee chairmen, Trey Gowdy on Oversight, Devin Nunes on Intelligence and Bob Goodlatte on Judiciary, requested the records, with one subpoena issued as long ago as August of last year.
The source said House staffers — who reviewed records Thursday at the Justice Department (DOJ) because lawmakers were out of town for the holiday recess — concluded that Justice and the FBI have still not provided information and records about FBI activities before the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections officially opened on July 31 of that year.
“The House Judiciary Committee has been in contact daily with the Justice Department to ensure they produce all the documents subpoenaed by the committee earlier this year,” a Republican House Judiciary Committee aide said. “The Justice Department has produced more documents over the past weeks and has requested more time to produce additional documents. This request seems to be reasonable, and we expect the department to comply with the terms of the subpoena.”
An Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Fox News, “The DOJ gave the committee some, but not all, of the outstanding documents, so they are not in compliance.”
A Justice Department official emphasized last weekend that the DOJ and FBI had told both chambers’ intelligence committees that records, previously limited to congressional leadership known as Gang of Eight, were now available to lawmakers and cleared staff. The records were widely reported to include documents about the FBI’s alleged use of confidential sources to contact Trump campaign aides during the 2016 campaign.
In April, a subpoena was issued for a key set of records, focused on FBI activities before the bureau’s Russia case officially opened.
“What put this in motion? And of course, was what put this into motion, was something that is politically motivated, or was it based on legit law enforcement evidence?” said Thomas Dupree, former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush. “Based on [last week’s congressional] hearing and the back-and-forth we have seen over the last few months, we are in an extremely unusual, and in my view disturbing, situation, where there has been a complete breakdown and a fracture of trust.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were on Capitol Hill last week, and faced new pressure to comply after the passage, along party lines, of a nonbinding House resolution calling on Rosenstein to provide withheld documents. The resolution had the effect of putting all House members on the record.
Those who have worked with Rosenstein emphasize he is in a difficult position because, they say, it is not routine to provide records from ongoing investigations.
“I know Rod and I think he’s an honorable person and I think anybody in that position would take it personally if they’re going to say, ‘You personally have been obstructing Congress or holding things back,’’’ said Robert Driscoll, former assistant attorney general. “He views himself as a point of a spear in a process and the one who has to interact with Congress.”
Separately on Thursday, Nunes referred 15 names for public testimony to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. The majority are directly linked to the infamous Steele Dossier, as well as the firm Fusion GPS that was paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to compile the research.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to answer Fox’s questions, adding that Justice would respond to the House committees directly.
Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Friday subpoenaed former FBI Agent Peter Strzok to appear for a deposition next week.
Goodlatte issued the subpoena even though Strzok’s attorney said that Strzok is willing to testify voluntarily before Congress.
“We regret that the Committee felt it necessary to issue a subpoena when we repeatedly informed them that Pete was willing to testify voluntarily,” Strzok lawyer Aitan Goelman said in a statement after Goodlatte issued the subpoena.
A statement on the Judiciary Committee’s website said that the panel has “repeatedly requested to interview Mr. Strzok regarding his role in certain decisions, but he has yet to appear.”
As the FBI’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok oversaw the bureau’s investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. He was also a top investigator on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton email probe. (RELATED: Strzok: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump Presidency)
While working on the Trump-Russia matter, Strzok sent numerous text messages criticizing the then-presidential candidate. In one Aug. 8, 2016 text message, Strzok told FBI attorney Lisa Page that “we’ll stop” Trump’s presidency.
A Department of Justice inspector general’s report released June 14 blasted Strzok over the text messages, saying that the messages indicated a “biased state of mind” and implied “a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”
Strzok was escorted from FBI headquarters June 15. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that Strzok no longer has his security clearance. (RELATED: Strzok Loses Security Clearance)
Goelman said that his client “intends to answer any question put to him, and he intends to defend the integrity of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia collusion investigation to the extent that that’s a topic, and his own integrity,” in a letter sent to Goodlatte on Saturday.
Goelman said that Strzok “wants the chance to clear his name and tell his story.”
Former FBI Director James Comey told the inspector general that he forgot Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin was married to Anthony Weiner, according to a report released Thursday.
In 2016, the FBI identified work-related Abedin emails on a laptop owned by Weiner. A handful contained “confidential” information, the FBI found later.
Andrew McCabe, then FBI-Deputy Director, told the DOJ inspector general that he thought the finding was a “big deal.” Comey, however, acknowledged to the inspector general that at this point he didn’t understand why this was important.(RELATED: Comey Used A Private Email Account For Official FBI Business)
“I don’t know that I knew that [Weiner] was married to Huma Abedin at the time,” Comey told the IG.
