By



Sheila Combes

21st Century Wire

For two and a half years we’ve been bombarded with talk of Trump/Russia collusion, the shorthand for which was the Russiagate meme. Media was relentless and unfettered in its promotion of this conspiracy theory, according credibility where no proven facts lay.

Now that this ruse has been revealed as the hoax it is, those of us who enjoyed Radio 4’s comedy ‘Who’s Line is it Anyway?’ should be asking this same question of the Russiagate hoax. Who were the major players? What were their motivations? Why did an obviously incredibly dubious narrative gain so much traction from a credulous media?

Electioneering appears to involve skullduggery on all fronts. From the ‘rotten boroughs’ of history to election campaign funding, to research into opposing candidates and their campaign members, there appear to be no holds barred in opening cupboards in which long dead skeletons lurk, or dishing dirt on candidates and their associates.

Perhaps these tactics are fair game in today’s tell all society, but when a narrative is not only contrived but runs the risk of setting two nuclear superpowers at loggerheads, one has to call this behaviour into question, call it out and ensure that these lies and their perpetrators are not let loose to disseminate the same dangerous narrative again.

‘Russian meddling’ was the theme pushed, pummelled and trumpeted by, what has to be said, is a mostly Washington NeoCon aligned media. They saw Hilary Clinton as successor to Obama as next president of the United States of America.

Obama had acquiesced to NeoCons’ wars of regime change augmenting them with five more wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Somalia. Hilary, as US Secretary of State was fully on board with these wars and fully on board with NATO expansion East toward Russia.

In 2009, at the Chicago NATO summit she stated ‘”I believe this summit should be the last summit that is not an enlargement summit.” Joe Biden subsequently undertook a tour of Eastern Europe to encourage membership of NATO. In October 2009 the US Senate endorsed NATO expansion which targeted many former Soviet client state nations, surrounding today’s Russian Federation: “The Senate also voted to give a total of $55 million in security assistance to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania. Those nations, along with Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, are seeking membership in NATO.” “This bill will help NATO extend the zone of stability eastward and southward on the continent so that sometime in the next decade we will be able to say for the first time I think in all of modern history that we have a Europe whole and free,” said Delaware Democrat Joe Biden, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.”

For NeoCons the ultimate in regime changes would be Iran and Russia. It was clear that Hilary was doing her bit toward the Russian goal, along with NATO expansion toward Russia, she supported the US/EU orchestrated coup in Ukraine, with the aim of destabilising a nation on Russia’s border. Everything pointed to Hilary’s further progression of this cause should she rise to position of President. Given the anti-Trump media onslaught, it appeared that she was indeed on course for the presidency but for one obstacle, her Democratic party running mate, Bernie Sanders.

Trump campaigned on better relations with Russia, stemming wars of intervention and rebuilding the neglected infrastructure of coal and steel towns whose residents had seen their sons and daughters join the armed forces as a career choice, having few other avenues open to them. Hilary thought she’d easily beat the man the media consistently portrayed as racist, nationalistic, sexist and physically orange, Donald Trump, but it appears that just in case, the ‘Hilary for America’ and DNC campaign investigated the possibility of undermining him should he become too popular.

Dealing with Bernie Sanders’ rising popularity required an alternative approach. Bernie Sanders appealed to the young and those who were suspicious of Hilary’s previous undertakings and her bellicose nature. This was the woman who clapped her hands with glee on hearing of the murder of leader of a sovereign nation, Muammar Gadaffi, cackling ‘We came, we saw, he died’.

It would be necessary to take Sanders down strategically and this is what leaked DNC emails revealed. The DNC who professed to be impartial with regard to the two Democratic Presidential candidates, Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders undertook a campaign to sideline Sanders to assist Clinton’s campaign. The DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz resigned as a result, but rather than leaving it there, Hilary sought to deflect from scrutiny of the leaked emails by trumpeting that the Russians had hacked her email account. Simple minded media followed her finger-pointing toward Russia rather than examine the content of the emails and the ‘Russian meddling’ contrivance was born. Luckily former intelligence personnel, one of them the former Director of the US National Security Agency, William Binney, were experienced enough to analyse the meta-data of the leaked information and discovered that the ‘hack’ was not actually a ‘hack’ but a download probably by a DNC insider. The download speeds the meta-data revealed, cannot be obtained by way of remote hack but had to be performed on site by way of transfer to an add-on device. The downloaded data was handed to a Wikileaks representative and published.

The Trump dossier was commissioned by the DNC’s law firm Perkins Coie. The intention was to commission a study to evaluate the effect on the Trump campaign of implications that Trump was somehow involved with Russia. The report was funded to the tune of a combined sum of $12 million from the Hilary for America Campaign and Hilary’s DNC team. In June 2016 Perkins Coie sub-contracted Washington-based Fusion GPS (who had previously worked for Republicans to investigate Trump prior to him being nominated for Republican Presidential candidate) to compile the report. Later in the same month, June 2016, Fusion GPS outsourced the work to retired British spy Christopher Steele. In a statement in a British court, American lawyers acting for three Russian bankers in a defamation lawsuit filed this from Steele’s testimony: “Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

“Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”

Steele left British intelligence in 2009, he subsequently co-founded the private intelligence agency Orbis Business Intelligence. Although he had not visited Russia since 1993, his firm handled Russia-related issues. As Steele had worked for Fusion GPS on previous occasions he was seen as an appropriate person to compile the report. Steele relied on second-hand evidence from intermediaries within Russia, there is also rumour that he had been given some detail for the report by former Russian spy and MI5 double agent Sergei Skripal, friend of Steele’s friend Pablo Miller. Pablo Miller would likely have been a willing partner given that he is named in the recently released Integrity Initiative documents. Integrity Initiative is a UK funded subsidiary of the Institute of Statecraft, which is funded by NATO’s Atlantic Council. Integrity Initiative’s remit is to promote disinformation about Russia, including inserting anti-Russian propaganda in the media. The UK government, since the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018, put in place a ‘D’ notice preventing media discussion of Mr. Miller.

The Trump dossier fell short of a well referenced, corroborated study but in the light of Mrs Clinton and the DNC’s confidence that she would win the 2016 presidential election, meaning it wouldn’t necessarily be needed, this wasn’t of great concern. Only after Trump had won in November 2016, was it forced in front of politicians, intelligence services and subsequently leaked by media, warts and all.

The dossier was handed by its author, Christopher Steele to a retired of British Diplomat Sir Andrew Wood in November 2016 just after Trump’s election win. Steele asked Wood to hand it to John McCain, which he did at an annual security conference in Nova Scotia. John McCain handed it to the FBI for investigation. The report was also handed to US and British intelligence, but as James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, stated in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN: “If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller’s investigation.” Therefore, accorded credibility at the highest levels, this silly dossier sparked the Russiagate investigations and the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

The report, was leaked by BuzzFeed in January 2017 when Donald Trump officially took office. It was met with derision in some quarters but accorded credibility by Clinton aligned media and Democrats. Hilary herself lamented the fact that it had not been released prior to the election date, maintaining that despite two facets of her campaign having funded the report to the tune of $12 million, she knew nothing of its existence prior to the Buzzfeed leak.

A businessman called George Papadopolous who worked on the Donald Trump Presidential campaign, was sucked into the Russiagate investigations following his negotiations with regard to an oil pipeline to be run from the Middle East, Leviathan gas field. Mr. Papadopolous revealed in a recent interview that it was President Obama who instigated an intelligence agency investigation of Mr. Papadopolous’ perfectly legal negotiations. A Russian connection was insinuated into the investigation by FBI Director Robert Mueller, resulting in Mr. Papadopolous’ court appearance and a short-term in jail. He can now be seen to be innocent of charges against him given the collapse of Robert Mueller’s FBI investigation. Mr. Papadopolous has detailed his experiences in his book, “Deep State Target”. His account should give rise to questioning of those involved in his inclusion in the Russiagate hoax. Senator Rand Paul has recently revealed that he has it on good authority that John Brennan, former CIA Director, had pressed President Obama to include Steele’s dossier in the intelligence assessment. The Senator has called for John Brennan to be called to testify under oath in Congress.

So it appears that at the crux of the Russia collusion narrative and media’s much-loved Russiagate, we have Hilary Clinton, the law firm hired by the DNC, Perkins Coie, their contractor Fusion GPS, its subcontractor Christopher Steele, Senator John McCain, John Brennan and former US president Barack Obama. Along with Robert Mueller (the person charged with leading the investigation) these people cultivated the Russiagate hoax, these entities instigated the dirty dealings, this is where scrutiny should lie. There was no ‘Russian meddling’, no ‘British meddling’ (the fall back position) and no Trump/Russia collusion and no Russian hacking of Hilary Clinton’s emails, both of which have been used to attack Hilary Clinton’s enemies, Donald Trump and the Russian Federation.

There is no need to look outside the United States of America, or even Washington, these are homegrown conspiracy theories which have damaged America’s standing worldwide.

Author Sheila Coombes is founder of Frome Stop War, an independent anti-war group based in the UK, as well as the creator of Media on Trial events tour raising public awareness of media’s role in promoting interventionist wars.

Reference links:

Hilary Clinton, NATO summit, 2009:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Tjg7Q7vIpjc ;

Senate endorses NATO expansion Eastward:

https://www.voanews.com/a/a- 13-a-2002-05-17-12-us- 66489152/552669.html

Hilary for America and DNC gives Perkins Coie $12million, they hire Fusion GPS:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ legalnewsline/2019/01/15/ allegations-that-clinton- campaign-funded-trump-russia- research-still-pending-at-now- closed-fec/#6c8d087e3d99 ;

Christopher Steele’s testimony re. Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie:

https://www.washingtontimes. com/news/2018/dec/12/ christopher-steele-hillary- clinton-was-preparing-t/ ;

Rate of speed of download described by former NSA Director William Binney:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=lCQFPDM73kY ;

Jimmy Dore, William Binney, DNC leak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Sv0-Lnv0d0k&t=7s ;

VIPS – Bill Binney – leak not hack:

https://consortiumnews.com/ 2017/07/24/intel-vets- challenge-russia-hack- evidence/ ;

James Clapper on Obama’s instigation of the inquiry:

https://www.thegatewaypundit. com/2019/03/clapper-sings- former-director-of-national- intelligence-james-clapper- tells-cnn-obama-ordered-the- trump-russia-spying-operation- video/

George Papadopolous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? time_continue=55&v=GAhLLx0p1a0

Senator Rand Paul calls for John Brennan to testify under oath in Congress:

https://ijr.com/rand-paul- investigate-president-obama/

READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate Files



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