by Richard Levine, Disobedient Media:

That the praying mantis kills and consumes its mate to derive sustenance seems unbelievable and wrong, until it is witnessed time after time; it then becomes expected.  The Obama administration accumulated a record of misuse of the powers of government.  This it did to minimalize or indict its political foes.  Whether it be the prosecution and the incarceration of Dinesh D’Souza for an infraction usually addressed with a fine; the IRS’s use of audits of Tea Party leaders to stifle dissent; the clandestine electronic monitoring of journalists James Rosen and, most probably, Sharyl Attkisson; the interception of communications between members of Congress and Israeli officials; or the ruination of politically unpopular businesses by targeted regulation by the EPA, the tactics were the same.  The strategy was to thwart perceived enemies through harnessing and perverting the powers of the state.

Explication of the genesis of the FBI’s Russian-collusion counterintelligence investigation is complicated.  The New York Times places the investigation’s beginning with the transfer of information, in July 2016, from Alexander Downer, the High Commissioner of Australia to the United Kingdom, to American authorities, regarding Trump aide George Papadopoulos’s hazy assertion that the Russians had dirt on Hillary ─ an utterance totally unremarkable since the whole world knew of the unsecured nature of Clinton’s email server at that time.  Indeed, the unprotected server was the subject of extensive reporting for more than a year before the Downer-Papadopoulos meeting. 

Surely, this coverage was enough for any follower of the press or of Kremlin operations to conclude that portions of Clinton’s emails were almost certainly compromised.  Therefore, such a content-free statement by Papadopoulos, parroting what was widely speculated about in the press, should have resulted in a yawn by High Commissioner Downer: instead, it resulted in a supercritical reaction and the supposed beginning of an FBI counterintelligence investigation of tremendous moment, for this inquiry led ultimately to the appointment of a special counsel.  Downer, however, was not a disinterested party: he was a long-time Clinton Foundation supporter.  Downer served as Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 through 2007.  On February 22, 2006, Mr. Downer stated, “Our partnership with the Clinton Foundation will build on the Foundation’s impressive track record to provide practical assistance with procurement, supply chains and health system strengthening.”  At Downer’s direction, the Australian Government donated $25 million to the Clinton Foundation; Australia’s support of the Clinton Foundation stopped on November 28, 2016, days after the 2016 election.

The Sleight of Hand

This narrative regarding the Downer and Papadopoulos exchange was ossified by The New York Times, in a December 30, 2017 story, for the paper engaged in a very subtle, but extremely consequential, sleight of hand, for Australian officials sat on the Papadopoulos information, obtained by Downer, during a night of drinking, until it was revealed publically that the Democratic National Committee’s servers had been hacked.  This led The New York Times to conclude, “But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.”  The professor who supposedly told Papadopoulos about Russia’s having damaging information on Hillary Clinton is Maltese, not Russian; his name is Joseph Mifsud.

Yet the wording of what Professor Mifsud is said to have said to Papadopoulos, as noted in the Stipulation for Papadopoulos to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, filed on October 5, 2017, as signed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Papadopoulos, states, “Defendant PAPADOPOULOS acknowledged that the professor had told him about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton . . . .”  The Stipulation signed by Mueller never mentions the Democratic National Committee, nor the DNC, in its fourteen pages of text.  This suggests that it was Hillary Clinton’s private emails that were at issue.  The New York Times, however, wrote in its December 30, 2017 story that, “Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public.  Even the committee itself did not know.”

By The New York Times’ insertion of language pertaining to the hack of the DNC emails in its article about Papadopoulos, the paper implied very strongly that Papadopoulos had insider information about Russian hacking.  It may be conjectured that this sleight of hand may have been engineered by Downer, since the information was not passed to American officials for two months, until after the public disclosure of the DNC hack.  This belated transfer of the Papadopoulos information created what appeared to be a causal link between the DNC hack and the Downer-Papadopoulos meeting.  This is, of course, risible logic, because something that follows another thing is not necessarily caused by that thing.  This sleight of hand seems to have been replicated in some form by virtually every U.S. newspaper or mainstream news source.  The ruse is significant, for it is demonstrative of the FBI’s putatively beginning their counterintelligence probe with nothing as their predicate. Only recently, through Downer’s own account of the meeting, given to The Australian, in April 2018, has The Times’ report been refuted by the source.  In that interview, Downer stated, “He didn’t say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her.  No, he said it would be damaging.  He didn’t say what it was.’’

Other, new, media reports suggest a precursor to this inculcation involved Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper’s querying George Papadopoulos and Carter Page about possible Russian activities.  Enticements were accomplished by employing Halper, a Cambridge professor, who, according to reports, doubled as a CIA asset.  Although Halper has been cast in the press as an FBI informant ─ that he allegedly served for years as a CIA asset is notable, for the CIA has long been prohibited from spying on American citizens in America.  (The New York Times, in a May 18, 2018 story, stated that the FBI informant (who it did not name) was, “a source of information for the CIA in past years . . . .”  Halper’s CIA ties were reported by journalist Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept and by a separate article in Mother Jones on May 19, 2018.  The CIA background of the FBI informant was asserted publically by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in a June 25, 2018 Fox News television interview, though Mukasey did not refer to the informant by name.)   

Halper reportedly succeeded in accomplishing the equivalent of a proscribed act by meeting with Papadopoulos in London.  Halper allegedly offered Papadopoulos airline tickets and a $3,000 honorarium for a meaningless paper as inducements, to spur contact.  Such actions would appear to be devised to skirt any boundaries or infractions that may be considered intrinsic to the concept that drove this endeavor.  FBI agents and managers may also have taken actions to stimulate the inquest, but the question that hangs above it all is why the FBI, perhaps working with the CIA, and a myriad of other intelligence services, both at home and abroad, would bother investigating George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, nonentities in the world of international relations, who performed almost no function in a campaign that no esteemed pundit gave a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the Presidency ─ that is until 10:00, the night of the election. 

The most obvious answer, but not the most complete, is that the extreme contempt with which Peter Strzok (Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division), Lisa Page, (Special Counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe), and other FBI agents held for Donald Trump sparked the initiation of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.  The instigation of this investigation could have been salted by John Brennan, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose publically expressed animus to an American President is singular in the record of former directors of the CIA. 

Russian Sergei Millian, the alleged “Source D” for the Christopher Steele dossier, also bears scrutiny.  Why would a supposed major source for the salacious Trump dossier exchange emails with Jared Kushner?  Why would Millian be listed as a “friend” on George Papadopoulos’s Facebook page?  The Washington Post on March 29, 2017 reported, “Millian told several people that during the campaign and presidential transition he was in touch with George Papadopoulos  . . .  Millian is among Papadopoulos’s nearly 240 Facebook friends.”  Reports assert that the Russian tried to insert himself into the Trump campaign.  If he is a primary source for the dossier, his intent in this effort appears duplicitous and his actions, orchestrated.

An investigation, therefore, is required as to whether U.S. intelligence agencies initiated directly or worked through allied intelligence services to provide synthetic information to Papadopoulos, Carter Page, or others in the Trump campaign, designed to entrench the suggestion of a relationship between Russia’s intelligence services and Donald Trump.  Keys to unraveling what transpired involve consideration of the relations between several known and several obscure participants in this drama. 

The initial information concerning Papadopoulos was probably ascertained two ways: first, when President Trump announced Papadopoulos as one of his then five national-security advisors in March 2016, Papadopoulos’s U.K. address, coupled with his inexperience, made him an attractive target for a sting (along with Carter Page).  Second, Papadopoulos’s overseas address facilitated Section 702 incidental collection.

Both Mifsud and Papadopoulos were affiliated with the London Centre of International Law Practice, where Papadopoulos was apparently a director for three months.  Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) targets non-U.S. individuals believed to be situated outside America, for the purpose of acquiring intelligence.  This capability does not require an intelligence finding or court order.  Thus, Section 702 collection could have been targeted at Professor Mifsud, especially if Mifsud was an asset of U.S. or allied intelligence. 

The Professor et al.

On November 1, 2017, Italy’s la Repubblica newspaper published the article, “Russiagate, mystery professor Joseph Mifsud speaks out: ‘Dirt on Hillary Clinton? Nonsense.’”  This appears to be the only full interview that Mifsud has given since his name was used publicly.  Several sentences from this interview appear not to have been reported by the American mainstream press, though there have been articles in the U.S. that contain other snippets from the Italian interview.  The lines omitted by the American press, which were said by Mifsud, are, however, of great consequence, if true.  Mifsud is quoted to have said, “I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations,” adding, “and you know which is the only foundation I am member of?  The Clinton Foundation.  Between you and me, my thinking is left-leaning.”  In addition, on November 1, 2017, the British newspaper, The Sun, published, “’I DISHED NO DIRT!’ Mystery British professor at centre of FBI Trump-Russia probe tracked down in Italy after fleeing his London home.”  In the article, Mifsud is quoted as stating, “I am a Democrat and a Hillary Clinton supporter.”

Unlike the American mainstream press, one observer, who did take note of what Mifsud said, is central to the inquiry as to whether Russia colluded with Trump campaign officials.  Julian Assange on November 2, 2017 tweeted, “Revealing interview with #Russiagate’s mystery professor Mifsud: ‘the only foundation I am member of?  The Clinton Foundation.’”

Of course, these statements by Mifsud might be a diversion to cloak any true ties he might have to Russia’s political establishment.  But if his statements are true, if Mifsud has or had any ties to the Clinton Foundation, the whole Russia investigation gives every indication not only to have been instigated by a setup, but that this setup was, itself, instigated by a prior setup, perhaps orchestrated by persons affiliated with the Clinton foundation or with U.S. and allied intelligence services. 

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