How The CIA Used The Media to Ensnare Michael Flynn


A GUEST CONTRIBUTION: Authored By Jack Cashill

If Vladimir Putin was willing to help President Barack Obama seal the misbegotten Iranian nuclear deal, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),was not. His resistance made him a target, especially once he started advising candidate Donald Trump. As to who launched the disinformation campaign against Flynn, the jury is still out. Best evidence, however, suggests forces within the CIA working in tandem with its friends in the media.

The co-conspirators started publicly setting the trap with a February 2016 Reuters article teasingly titled, “Trump being advised by ex-U.S. Lieutenant General who favors closer Russia ties.” https://reut.rs/2EwzoEL This was a bold gambit. As recently as July 2015 Obama was telling Tom Friedman of the New York Times, “We would have not achieved this [Iran nuclear] agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us and the other P5-Plus members in insisting on a strong deal.” https://nyti.ms/3jaDTnz 

Obama praised Putin a year after Putin annexed the Crimea. That invasion was so much water under the bridge for Obama but apparently not for Flynn. Just months later, it was considered newsworthy that Flynn would advise Trump to “work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues.”

“Flynn raised eyebrows among some U.S. foreign policy veterans,” wrote Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball of Reuters, “when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today, an international broadcasting network funded by the Russian government.” The reporters’ “three sources,” all said to be “former foreign policy officials,” failed to mention that Flynn had been briefed by the DIA before the dinner and debriefed afterwards.

What made me suspicious about this article was the Mark Hosenball byline. Hosenball appears to have been carrying water for the intelligence community (IC) for at least twenty years, maybe twice that long. To say the least, he has a curious background.

Hosenball moved to England when he was 17 to attend school. After spending a year in England and three in Ireland, he moved back to England to become a reporter. This information comes from a 1977 British appeals court document explaining why the United Kingdom chose to deport the 25-year-old Hosenball “in the interests of national security.”

“The Secretary of State believes that Mr. Hosenball is a danger to this country. So much so that his presence here is unwelcome and he can no longer be permitted to stay,” reads the document. Reportedly, Hosenball was one of a group of people who were “trying to obtain information of a very sensitive character about our security arrangements.” The document does not identify on whose behalf Hosenball was allegedly spying, but it affirms the government’s decision to deport him nonetheless.

The American intelligence community did not appear troubled by Hosenball’s actions. As the New York Times reported at the time, “A United States Embassy spokesman said that he knew of no United States pressure on Britain to discipline Mr. Hosenball.” https://nyti.ms/3jeLgdO Nor did the deportation seem to hurt Hosenball’s career. By 1993, he was working for Newsweek. By 1997, he was using Newsweek to spread CIA disinformation.

In 2003, I met Hosenball at the Newsweek office. At the time, I was promoting First Strike, a book I co-authored with James Sanders on TWA Flight 800, the 747 that mysteriously exploded off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996.

In that pivotal election year, surely with a nod from the Clinton White House, the CIA quietly masterminded the disinformation campaign that followed TWA 800’s destruction. After sixteen months of behind-the-scenes chicanery, the CIA assured America that what the eyewitnesses actually saw was not a missile streaking toward the 747, but the fuselage of the burning, climbing 747 rocketing upwards some three-thousand-plus feet after its fuel tank had blown up spontaneously. As would happen again in 2016, the FBI publicly fronted for the CIA. In a presidential election year, the media, of course, played along.

At the time, no reporter endorsed the CIA’s fraudulent scenario more enthusiastically than did Hosenball. His Newsweek article on the subject began with a dig at “conspiracy theories” and went nowhere positive from there. https://bit.ly/3lk50OM CIA analysts had convinced Hosenball that “infrared images captured by spy satellites” proved its theory of the plane’s demise. This revelation came as news to the FBI. Its comprehensive summary issued just a week before Hosenball’s November 1997 article did not once mention the word “satellite.”

The NTSB’s final report made only vague mention of “infrared sensor information from a U.S. satellite” and that in reference to the CIA’s video recreation. The New York Times avoided the subject altogether. Yet here was Hosenball saying that the CIA had “spy satellites designed to monitor unfriendly foreign countries pointed at the Eastern Seaboard.”

This was bunk. If the satellites showed what Hosenball claimed, federal officials would not have needed the CIA’s trumped up zoom climb animation. Surely, too, the FBI and NTSB would have used the data to buttress their shaky, inconclusive summaries. In a letter to then congressman John Kasich two months after the press conference, the CIA quietly buried the subject: “No satellite imagery of the disaster exists.” This translates, “No satellite imagery exists that would help us make our case.”

Hosenball uncritically embraced the CIA video. Under his byline, Newsweek ran a fully affirmative, nine-frame, full-color recreation captioned with the unlikely boast, “CIA Photos.” For Hosenball, the video provided a necessary rebuttal to “speculation about a mystery missile.” As he told the story, “some” of the “244” FBI witnesses claimed to have seen a streak of light arcing across the sky. In reality, 258 of the 736 official FBI witnesses claimed to have seen a missile or missiles attacking the plane, several of whom were pilots.

Had Hosenball been sporting a CIA nametag he could not have done more to legitimize the agency’s crude rewrite of history. As it happens, his Newsweek writing partner at the time was Michael Isikoff. I met with both of them. Neither had any interest in seeing the information Sanders and I had gathered.

Oh, yes, that was the same Michael Isikoff who in September 2016 first revealed that intelligence officials were investigating Trump adviser Carter Page’s “private communications with senior Russian officials.” Christopher Steele was Isikoff’s direct source. A few weeks after the article’s publication in Yahoo News, the DOJ and the FBI packaged the Isikoff article along with the Steele dossier in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), specifically to monitor Carter Page.

Renegade Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi was the only journalist on his side of the barricades to say what should have been obvious to everyone in the media: “Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump.”

To check out Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama, or his previous book, TWA 800: The Crash, The Cover-up, The Conspiracy, please see cashill.com.

Sunday Talks – Devin Nunes Discusses The Vast Mailbox Conspiracy Theory…


HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the Democrats conspiracy theory about President Trump removing mailboxes.

Additionally, Devin Nunes discusses the contrast between how the FBI gave Hillary Clinton a defensive briefing based on an actual risk of foreign influence, yet the FBI did not give Donald Trump a defensive briefing based on a Russian influence conspiracy they were creating with the Clinton campaign.

 

Sunday Talks – Devin Nunes Discusses Clinesmith and California Taxes…


HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss the recent criminal plea agreement between the DOJ and former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

 

‘Comma la, Kamalot’, Whatever!


Democrats as they are Sullivan and Goodstein would rather focus on Harris’ first name than her game

Judi McLeod image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and ArchivesAugust 14, 2020

‘Comma la, Kamalot’, Whatever!

The ongoing Coronavirus Lockdown leaves some folk with far too much time on their hands.

This would include Richard Goodstein, an adviser to Democratic campaigns, interviewed on on Tucker Carlson’s prime time Tuesday night Fox show and Margaret Sullivan over at the Washington Post, both in hissy fits all because Carlson got the pronunciation of Harris’ first name wrong.

Both think that there is no bigger sin than mispronouncing the name of Kamala.

Even though stridently anti-Catholic Kamala herself wouldn’t believe in mortal sin, it’s a mortal sin if you bungle the first name of “the first woman of color to be named to a major-party presidential ticket”!

Lordy, Lordy!

This is Sullivan’s blow-by-blow run-down of how Tucker “mangled” Harris’ first name:

“Tucker, can I just say one thing?” said Richard Goodstein, an adviser to Democratic campaigns. (Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2020)

“Carlson: “Of course.”

“Goodstein: “Because this will serve you and your fellow hosts on Fox. Her name is pronounced ‘comma’ — like the punctuation mark — ‘la.’ Comma-la.”

“He went on: “Seriously, I’ve heard every sort of bastardization of her —,” and then Carlson broke in: “Okay, so what?”

“With his familiar mocking laugh, Carlson demanded to know what difference it made if he pronounced it KAM-a-la, with the first syllable like “camera.” Or Ka-MILL-a. Or, properly, Comma-la.

According to Sullivan, “Tucker Carlson’s mangling of Kamala Harris’ name was all about disrespect.”

“When I was a young reporter, I had an editor who was a stickler for getting people’s middle initials correct in news stories.(WaPo)

“If you get the name wrong, there’s no reason for anyone to trust anything else you write,” he’d say.

“An extreme position? Maybe, but it is journalistic bedrock that getting names right really matters.”

The editor’s advice was obviously lost on Sullivan, who went on to work for Fake News WaPo, who get so much more than the middle initials in a person’s name wrong.

Sullivan continued:

“Which is why it was so instructive — if utterly predictable — to watch Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s handling of Kamala Harris’s slightly challenging first name on his prime-time show Tuesday, hours after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden named the senator from California as his running mate.

“Not only did Carlson mispronounce it, but when a guest went out of his way to politely correct him, Carlson had one of his trademark fits of pique.

“Carlson’s reaction shows he has no interest in such a thing when it applies to Harris, who made history Tuesday as the first woman of color to be named to a major-party presidential ticket.

“Here’s the thing: It’s really not that hard to get Harris’s name right.

“I was pronouncing it wrong myself until sometime last year when a friend corrected me. (The friend happened to share the candidate’s ethnicity, in part, but that certainly wasn’t the only way to find out. Harris goes out of her way in her 2019 memoir to explain the pronunciation, also using the hint that it’s like the punctuation mark.)

Shame on you, if you didn’t read Harris’ 2019 memoir in which she “goes out of her way” to explain the appropriate pronunciation of her name!

“Even Biden himself doesn’t always get the pronunciation just right; he needs to figure that out, and fast. “

Would that be after basement Joe gets the date and place right?

“But with Carlson, it wasn’t really the mistake. It was his indignant refusal to stand corrected. (WaPo)

“And when you act as if proper pronunciation doesn’t matter — or isn’t worth bothering to learn — that sends a strong message.

According to Sullivan, Goodstein “was merely suggesting a modicum of respect, just a basement-level floor a decent person wouldn’t sink below.

“But for Carlson — who specializes in race-baiting, mockery and smarmy nastiness — there’s no such thing.”

Democrats as they are Sullivan and Goodstein would rather focus on Harris’ first name than her game.

Meanwhile, while Sullivan and Goodstein are trying to get Carlson to place the ‘em-fa-sis’ on the right ‘sill-a-ble’ for Harris, he’s already moved on to investigate ‘Comma-a-la’ Harris for her deadly record on the 2nd amendment.

Before this election campaign is brought to a merciful end, ‘Comma-la’s, ‘Kamalot’s’ name will be mud.

Proactive Distancing – The Special Counsel Operation…


With the Clinesmith criminal information at the forefront, a reminder about the Special Counsel motives.  Again, it is important to remember the special counsel had the agenda and responsibility to carry on the resistance operation…. that was their sole function.

As a result, this is just a short article on a singular footnote within the Weissmann/Mueller Report that looks completely different in hindsight.

Kevin Clinesmith was the lead FBI lawyer during the counterintelligence operation called Crossfire Hurricane; origination date July 31st 2016. When Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel (May ’17) he took over the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, adding additional DOJ lawyers to staff but retaining the FBI team which included Peter Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith.

When Kevin Clinesmith manipulated the CIA email to gain the third renewal for the Carter Page FISA (June 29, 2017) he was working on behalf of the Mueller investigation.

Clinesmith was removed from the special counsel team in February 2018 after his biased texts were identified by the inspector general. Clinesmith resigned in/around September 2019 “after the inspector general’s team interviewed him.” (link) Not coincidentally that Sept ’19 exit timeline aligns with the first notification to FISC Judge Collyer. (link)

Obviously, special counsel Robert Mueller would know the issues regarding Clinesmith prior to removing him in February 2018; and well in advance of his report published in March 2019.

Now… take a look at footnote #1, of page 13 from Mueller’s report:

 

From fn 1:

“¹FBI personnel assigned to the Special Counsel’s Office were required to adhere to all applicable federal law and all Department and FBI regulations, guidelines, and policies.”

An FBI attorney worked on FBI-related matters for the Office, such as FBI compliance with all FBI policies and procedures, including the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DOIG). That FBI attorney worked under FBI legal supervision, not the Special Counsel’s supervision.”

Tell me that isn’t a big flashing CYA footnote from the Special Counsel – going out of their way to proactively state that FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith worked under FBI legal supervision, not the Special Counsel’s supervision?

It seems clear in hindsight that Weissmann and Mueller knew the FBI misconduct that was likely to surface, as it has; so they made sure to position blame on FBI Director Chris Wray and FBI Legal Counsel Dana Boente back in March 2019.

It’s 5:00pm…


I am very well aware of events today.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

WASHINGTON – A Former FBI attorney will plead guilty to making false statements in documents used to obtain a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page, his lawyer told the Associated Press Friday.

The guilty plea from Kevin Clinesmith is the first legal action taken in an investigation led by John Durham, a U.S. attorney looking into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and other intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign.

Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, told the Associated Press that his client will plead guilty to a single false statements charge as part of a cooperation agreement with the government.  (more)

Tuesday.

Kevin Clinesmith – Criminal Information….


It’s not an indictment, it’s a Criminal Information with no grand jury, which suggests counsel for defendant approached DOJ to structure an agreement.  The plea agreement likely also included an agreement for method of public release. [LINK HERE]  Last year John Spiropoulos explained the Clinesmith information for OAN TV.  WATCH:

 

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Bill Barr Interview With Sean Hannity….


Bill Barr calls into Sean Hannity for an interview.

 

Devin Nunes Interview With Maria Bartiromo…


Devin Nunes appears on Fox Business News for a discussion on current investigations.

 

Igor Danchenko and a 34 Month Long DOJ/FBI Cover-Up Operation….


CTH friend, researcher and producer John Spiropoulos helps connect the dots within the operation to cover-up corrupt activity by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Christopher Wray, Dana Boente and the entire special counsel group.

In this video John walks us through the internal evidence showing how the FBI intentionally hid the statements by Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source Igor Danchenko.  The result…. a 34 month cover-up operation.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released the declassified documents on July 17th. [Thank You John Ratcliffe] The documents relate to how the intelligence apparatus conducted surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign in 2016; and ultimately the Trump administration after the inauguration.

 

The first document [Direct pdf here] is the Washington Field Office (WFO) FBI briefing summary of a three day interview with Chris Steele’s primary sub-source. The document is highly redacted, but we already know from the IG release what the total content of the briefing revealed. The first interview was conducted on January 12, 2017, during the transition period between administrations. The classification term “SIA” stands for Source Identifying Attribute.

Per Senator Lindsey Graham:

♦ This document not only demonstrates how unsubstantiated and unreliable the Steele dossier was, it shows that the FBI was on notice of the dossier’s credibility problems and sought two more FISA application renewals after gaining this awareness.

♦ The document reveals that the primary “source” of Steele’s election reporting was not some well-connected current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian based contract employee of Christopher Steele’s firm. Moreover, it demonstrates that the information that Steele’s primary source provided him was second and third-hand information and rumor at best.

♦ Critically, the document shows that Steele’s “Primary Sub-source” disagreed with and was surprised by how information he gave Steele was then conveyed by Steele in the Steele dossier. For instance, the “Primary Sub-source”: did not recall or did not know where some of the information attributed to him or his sources came from; was never told about or never mentioned to Steele certain information attributed to him or his sources; he said that Steele re-characterized some of the information to make it more substantiated and less attenuated than it really was; that he would have described his sources differently; and, that Steele implied direct access to information where the access to information was indirect.

In total, this document demonstrates that information from the Steele dossier, which “played a central and essential role” in the FISA warrants on Carter Page, should never have been presented to the FISA court. (Senate Link)

Here’s the FBI Briefing Summary: [Direct pdf Link]

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The inspector general already reviewed this briefing material and explained the content in the IG report on FISA Abuse in December 2019. Here’s the nub of that full review:

The aspect of the primary sub-source deconstructing and undermining the underlying material within the Steele Dossier is critical because ultimately the dossier underpinned the FISA application.

When you recognize the FISA application itself was based on a fraudulent premise; and you recognize the intentional ignoring of the underlying evidence; then the motive behind the FISA becomes clear. The FISA against Carter Page was used as a justification for surveillance of Donald Trump that had been ongoing by Obama intelligence officials.

This context becomes stunningly more important when you look at how the FISA was used by the Mueller investigation to continue its weaponization throughout 2017 and even into 2018. Remember, in July of 2018 long after the source material was debunked, the special counsel office was still telling the FISA court the predication for the FISA application and renewals was valid.

Drive this point home.

This is a key to understanding the scope of how weaponized the Mueller team was.

In July of 2018 the special counsel resistance group was lying to the FISA court in order to protect the cornerstone document that permitted them to weaponize the intelligence apparatus.

This letter was written July 12, 2018. It is NOT accidental that only a week later, July 21st, the special counsel released the FISA application under the guise of FOIA fulfillment.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The Mueller team running the DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application. The resistance unit running the DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

On page #8 [Source Document Here] when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the special counsel group notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.

This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.

By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid. Why?

It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.

In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.

This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority. That’s the motive.

In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation. The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.

If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending. The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.

♦ The FISA was also released in July 2018 in order to retain the false premise behind it. The copy that was released by the special counsel, through Rod Rosenstein, contained redacted dates because the special counsel needed to hide the fact the FBI (Washington Field Office) had actually used the FISA to catch a leaker of classified intelligence, James Wolfe.

Again, Wolfe’s story is the fulcrum…. tell that story and the House of Cards collapses like the Potemkin village it is. {GO DEEP}

The resistance lawyers in the Mueller team released the same initial FISA application (and first renewal) used to catch Wolfe; they had to release that specific March 17, 2017, copy. However, they had to redact the dates on the document they released because the dates were changed by SSA Brian Dugan to catch Wolfe.

The March 17, 2017, copy of the FISA, an FBI investigative equity, went into Main Justice with the leak trap visible. When the special counsel released the FISA application to Rosenstein for public FOIA fulfillment they had to redact the dates or people would ask questions about why this specific version had different dates than the original.

The March 17, 2017, copy of the FISA application is the only one to date that has been in the public sphere; including reviewed by OIG Michael Horowitz. That’s why when Horowitz originally released his FISA report, the OIG kept the dates redacted and only revealed them after the irrelevance of classification was pointed out.

The March 17th Wolfe copy of the first half of the full FISA application (original and first renewal), is the only copy that has ever been made public. If we were to ever see the modified and unredacted copy the FBI gave to Wolfe, the dates would not match with the actual dates of the application(s). The dates were used as part of the leak trace.

The Mueller team knew the explosive nature of the FBI investigation to catch the SSCI leaker. The Mueller team, with full control over Main Justice, was the group that buried FBI Supervisor Special Agent Brian Dugan’s explosive investigative findings.

Expose the conduct of this group and everything about the insurance policy falls into place: