Warning: Absurdist Irony Abounds:
From Patrick Martin at wsws.org, Oct. 9, 2019:
‘Why do the CIA assassins and coup-plotters love this “whistleblower”?’
“Ninety former national security officials under the Obama and Bush administrations—and three who served for a period under Donald Trump—have signed an “Open Letter to the American People” defending the CIA officer, as yet unidentified, whose whistleblower complaint has become the basis for the House of Representatives opening an impeachment inquiry into the president.
The signers “applaud the whistleblower not only for living up to that responsibility but also for using precisely the channels made available by federal law for raising such concerns.”
They further claim, “A responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed … What’s more, being a responsible whistleblower means that, by law, one is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation.”
They draw the conclusion that the anti-Trump whistleblower’s identity must be protected at all costs, writing that “he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection.”
This professed defense of whistleblowing as a critical function of democracy would be more convincing if it did not come from high officials in the administration that prosecuted more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous US administrations combined.
The signers include former CIA directors John Brennan, Michael Hayden and Michael Morell, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, former Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (Obama’s point-woman on Ukraine). Bush administration officials who signed the letter include Matthew G. Olsen, former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy, Department of Homeland Security. Among the former Trump aides who signed is Andrea Kendall-Taylor, former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Security Council.
These officials had a much different attitude toward genuine American whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and John Kiriakou, who exposed crimes of US imperialism. Manning supplied WikiLeaks with Pentagon files documenting US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as State Department cables showing US conspiracies against governments around the world. Snowden brought to light NSA spying on the entire world. Kiriakou exposed CIA torture in secret overseas prisons during the “war on terror.”
None of these genuine whistleblowers received any form of protection. On the contrary, they were rebuffed in their efforts to expose atrocities by the US military-intelligence apparatus and felt compelled to release the information to the public. For their courageous actions, they have been brutally persecuted.” [snip]
“In a recent commentary in Consortium News, Kiriakou noted the contrast between his own treatment and that accorded the “whistleblower” in the Ukraine case. He wrote, “If he’s a whistleblower, and not a CIA plant whose task it is to take down the president, then his career is probably over. Intelligence agencies only pay lip service to whistleblowing.” [snip]
“In other words, the former CIA agent suggests, the entire “whistleblower” complaint against Trump is likely an operation directed by higher-level officials at the agency.
Similar questions are raised in a remarkable article posted Monday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine, written by its main political writer Matt Taibbi.”
And if you haven’t seen it already:
“Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd grills senator: “You don’t trust the FBI and CIA?”, Barry Grey, wsws.org
And of course Grey speaks to the irony and hypocrisy afoot with Senators Ron Johnson and Chris Murphy as well:
“When Johnson evaded Todd’s questions concerning Trump’s bullying of Ukraine to advance his personal electoral chances, and instead repeatedly raised the Clinton campaign’s collaboration with Ukrainian officials against Trump, Todd exclaimed as though in exasperated disbelief:
“Do you not trust the FBI? You don’t trust the CIA?”
Johnson replied, “Absolutely not,” to which Todd responded incredulously, “You don’t trust any of those agencies?” [snip]
“The Democrats and their media chorus present what was rightly known as America’s “Murder, Incorporated,” along with its domestic counterpart, the FBI, as pillars of “democracy,” improbable as this would seem to anyone familiar with the criminal history of these organizations. They evidently believe that the public is infinitely gullible and suffering from collective memory loss.
These, after all, are the organizations that justified the war in Iraq on the basis of the Big Lie of “weapons of mass destruction.” They created the fraudulent narrative of the “war on terror” to justify aggressive wars in Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Africa that killed millions and destroyed entire societies. Meanwhile, in Libya and Syria, they funded and collaborated with Al Qaeda-linked terrorist militias in wars for regime-change.
The CIA has engineered coups and installed military dictatorships and far-right regimes all over the world. It would take many volumes to detail all of the lies and crimes of these pillars of the “deep state” against the people of the United States and the entire world.” [snip]
“Todd’s next guest was Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat from Connecticut), who co-sponsored with Johnson the bill to provide more arms to Kiev. Murphy repeatedly attacked Johnson for a lack of “patriotism.”
The final guest was John Brennan—now a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC—whom Todd presented as a national hero unjustly slandered and victimized by Trump and his political allies. Introducing the 25-year veteran of the CIA, who served as deputy executive director under George W. Bush and director under Barack Obama, Todd asked: “And how would you explain to somebody, you have been completely character assassinated and eviscerated … Do you understand how you got here?”
Brennan replied that he has indeed been “pilloried as an example of the deep state.” To which Todd exclaimed indignantly: “Well, at this point, it’s a campaign to destroy the credibility of the intelligence community. Even now, Senator Johnson would not affirm that he trusted the CIA and FBI right now. What does that say about those two agencies right now and their ability to conduct the work of protecting America?”
Brennan took the opportunity provided by Todd to denounce the “disinformation” that is “inundating the airwaves,” singling out “social media platforms,” with the implication that media sources that do not disseminate the CIA line should be shut down or censored.”
Grey finishes with a brief resumé of Brennan’s fascistic Imperial crimes.
From MTP on Twitter:
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
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café babylon 
the smart money about the true reasons are reflected in this:
‘The Campaign to Stop William Barr’, daniel lazare, strategic-culture.org, Oct. 5, 2019
“The furor over Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky has not been easy to figure out. Contrary to initial reports, the president said nothing about a quid pro quo, and he didn’t push the Ukrainian president to “dig up dirt” on Joe Biden either. All he did according to the official transcript was ask Kiev to look into his activities, and all Zelensky did in response was guarantee that any such investigation “will be done openly and candidly.” An honest inquiry into a politician who cheerfully confessed to forcing out a prosecutor looking into his son’s company – what’s wrong with that?
But now the mystery is solved. The uproar is not about Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani investigating the former vice president. It’s about William Barr investigating Russiagate, which is far more important.
This became clear early this week when the New York Times reported that Trump had also phoned Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and asked him to cooperate with the attorney general. Suddenly, Giuliani and Biden were forgotten as the rest of corporate media screamed themselves hoarse. “Democrats’ worst fears about William Barr are proving correct,” declared the Washington Post. “AG Bill Barr finds himself ‘neck deep’ in Trump scandal,” said MSNBC. The Daily Beast called for his impeachment while the Guardian accused him of nothing less than attempting to “rewrite the history of the 2016 US presidential election.”
This was cheeky coming from a newspaper that tried to rewrite history itself by falsely accusing imprisoned whistleblower Julian Assange of meeting with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in connection with stolen Democratic Party emails.
But it was all nonsense. Trump’s crimes – waging war on Yemen, blockading Iran, attempting to starve Venezuela into submission, etc. – are almost beyond enumeration. But this is not one of them. Despite the cries of outrage, he did nothing wrong in phoning up Scott Morrison, and neither did Barr in flying to London and Rome to seek their cooperation. Indeed, both men would have been remiss if they didn’t.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/05/the-campaign-to-stop-william-barr/
Well, that’s the thing isn’t it. This is a much ado about nothing relative to the crimes both sides of this bs commit openly and regularly, It is nonsense. like Lazare states regarding Trump. It’s an Orwellian type situation, what’s up is down, what is a crime isn’t a crime and what isn’t is, all based on the ruling class struggle for power. As usual and forever and ever amen.
One thing that really irks me is the thought process that this is the deep state after Trump. I think it’s just different factions of the ruling class struggling for power to enact their own agenda. It’s like the mafia bosses in New York, or Gangs of New York. From that respect suggesting that Trump should “drain the swamp”, as suggested in the comments under your essay at the democratic party blog C99, is like hoping one mafia boss takes out the others. There’s still going to be a mafia, man.
The deep state is really how deep this all goes and how hard it will always be to take down. From the corporations to the banks, think tanks, police state, the political system, the who ball game is totally rigged against us.
it is indeed all bogus, from russia-gate to next step ukraine-gate. of coures the Ds want the impeachment ‘inquiry this’ narrow lest obama’s war crimes creep into it. and *if* the spooks are afraid of the mueller-durham investigation of them, this letter shows both teams are going for broke.
that fellow said he should actually eradicate the intelligence agencies, all of them, but i’d only noticed he’d suggested he’d vote for trump when alligator ed asked me if i supported ‘the syrian’, and had become a war hawk. well, the first was hyperbole, cuz everyone knows that the great orange one won’t do such a thing, but that list curled my hair for certain.
but i think this really and truly is a cia palace coup against trump, and yes, it’s evidently the ruling classes of both parties, as i’d said over yonder. none of it has anything to do with ordinary working class americans whose lives haven’t recovered from the 2008 meltdown, and sense that the next one’s comin’ like a freight train barrelin’ down on them/us.
but only a socialist revolution can save us now: socialize banks, the fed, most corporations, if not all, but especially bigPharrma, etc. but that ain’t gonna happen, although the labor strikes and other strikes against the elites (as in haiti and ecuador) are encouraging.models.
i’m out for the night, and the closing song’s just gotta be from the brilliant parodist weird al yankovic; g’ night.